Mark for All Christians? The Theological Implications of Audience

Abstract

This essay considers the theological implications of “audience criticism,” the widely held hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark was written to address the needs of a specific audience, and not, as Richard Bauckham has argued, with a general audience of all “Christians” in mind. The “all-Christians” hypothesis has generally been embraced by evangelical scholars, but less so by non-evangelicals. In agreement with Adele Reinhartz, I find an unstated theological premise underlying Bauckham’s argument, which is that the focus on Gospel audiences detracts from their witness to Christ. After consideration of references to the Marcan audience within the text and scholarly reconstructions of the Marcan community in space and time, I consider the theological implications of audience in light of the ancient doctrine of the communion of saints, with particular reference to the so-called “minor characters” of the gospel, some of whom, I cautiously suggest, were modeled on members of the Marcan community/communion.

1. Introduction

The topic of this essay stems from a chapter I recently wrote on “audience criticism”: the idea that each Gospel was written to address the needs of a specific church community, a position that has been critiqued by Richard Bauckham (see Beavis, forthcoming b). Bauckham’s “For Whom Were Gospels Written?” argued influentially that contrary to the consensus view that the canonical gospels were written to address the needs of the evangelists’ respective churches, they were actually written for “all Christians”: “an evangelist writing a gospel expected his work to circulate widely among the churches, had no particular Christian audience in view, but envisaged as his audience any church (or any church in which Greek was understood) to which his work might find its way.” (Bauckham 1998, p. 11). Bauckham’s dispute with the consensus view has inspired a wave of studies premised on the “Gospels for all Christians” hypothesis, especially with reference to Matthew, Luke, and John. However, Mark has received little attention from practitioners of this brand of audience criticism (as opposed to the literary method of audience-response criticism, an interpretive strategy that holds that the meaning of a text does not lie in the author’s intended message but in the thoughts and feelings of the reader/audience as they experience the text)1.

While the “all Christians” hypothesis seems to have purely historical, as opposed to theological, implications, it has generally been met with approval by evangelical scholars but with skepticism by non-evangelicals. As Adele Reinhartz has pointed out, Bauckham has a discernible though not explicit theological agenda, as evidenced by his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Bauckham 2006). For Bauckham, the focus on local audiences/communities distracts from the christological heart of the gospels, where Christians encounter the “real Jesus.” (Reinhartz 2010, pp. 150–52). For Bauckham, this refers to the theologically inflected Jesus encountered in the canonical Gospels, based on the eyewitness testimony of a variety of named and unnamed eyewitnesses, because “Christian faith has trusted that in these texts we encounter the real Jesus, and it is hard to see how Christian faith can work with a radically distrusting attitude to the Gospels.” (Bauckham 2006, p. 2). Bauckham is not so much interested in the hermeneutical relevance of an audience of “all” (first-century) Christians for the Gospels, but in the Gospels as sites of christological encounter. In sum, Bauckham’s critique of audience criticism, as defined above, is grounded in an unstated theological concern to uphold the integrity of the Gospels in the context of Christian faith. I would add that Bauckham’s argument has a perceptibly evangelical tone, implying that, since the gospel must be preached throughout the world for the conversion of all people and nations, so must the canonical gospels have been destined for this purpose. This is not an historical claim but a theological presupposition that many biblical scholars do not share. My issue here is not that the “all Christians” hypothesis is theologically grounded, but that it is unstated in Bauckham’s pivotal essay.

I agree with Reinhartz that Bauckham’s critique of audience criticism is an outcome of his implicit wish to integrate history and theology: “The ‘all Christians’ hypothesis allows him to set aside an intractable set of issues in order to focus on the content of the Gospels themselves; it also allows him to see himself in continuity with a chain of serious readers and hearers stretching across two millennia and many continents and countries.” (Reinhartz 2010, p. 151). As Reinhartz, a Jewish New Testament scholar, observes, those who do not share Bauckham’s theological motivation will be the least likely to be persuaded by his arguments (ibid.), and this is borne out by subsequent studies inspired by the “Gospels for all Christians” hypothesis, which tend to be written by evangelical scholars (Beavis, forthcoming b). It is significant to note that, although Bauckham’s rejection of audience criticism is at least partially grounded in his conviction that attention to the audiences of the Gospels is a distraction from their christological testimony, the studies published by both Bauckham’s critics and supporters have sharpened the focus on Gospel audiences, whether ideal or real-life, more closely and resourcefully (ibid.). An exception, as we shall see, is (Watson 2016). And, although it has become de rigeur for commentators to cite Bauckham’s “all Christians” hypothesis, they do not necessarily accept it (e.g., Parsons 2015, p. 17; Talbert 2010, p. 2; Marcus 1999, pp. 28–37; Levine and Witherington 2018, p. 9).

While Bauckham has helpfully drawn attention to the pitfalls of simply assuming that each Gospel was written expressly for a specific church community, I agree with Reinhartz that reconstruction of the “original communities” of the Gospels is difficult but not impossible and far from unfruitful. As she states:

I find the consensus position to be a fruitful one for imagining a complex and vibrant set of “Christ-confessing” communities within and later outside of Judaism, considering the process of identity formation that must have taken place in the decades after Jesus’ death, and pondering the elements of power, gender, race, and ethnicity that can sometimes be discerned, if only dimly, beneath the surface of the Gospel narratives. The idea that the Gospels were written in the context of living communities that had their own perspectives, their unique histories and circumstances, and were home to a set of unique individuals, continues to spark my imagination (Reinhartz 2010, p. 152).

Reinhartz’s fascination with Gospel audiences stems from the important issue of the parting of the ways between Judaism and emergent “Christianity.”2 For the purposes of this essay, my focus will be on reconstructions of the audience of Mark, and, in distinction from Bauckham’s concern with christology, I will expressly explore the question of the theological relevance of the question of the community of the Gospel. I offer this perspective in full acknowledgement of my own feminist theological positionality, and my appreciation of the doctrine of the communion of saints in the light of the Anglican tradition.

2. Particular References to the Marcan Audience

As Ian Henderson has pointed out, Mark’s Gospel contains several pointed references to an audience outside the text. “At several points in the story Mark’s narrator or, more often and characteristically, the character Jesus appears to engage the extra-textual audience relatively explicitly. ” (I. Henderson 2013, p.15). For example, in Mark 14:6–9, the anointing at Bethany, the (ironically) anonymous woman who anoints Jesus is lauded for her act of devotion: “Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her” (v. 9). The authoritative character, Jesus, commands the reader/audience to honour her “by narrating and imitating her prophetic action.” (ibid.). Even more explicitly, Mark 13:14 is “an instruction for the reader-performer rather than to the audience as a whole.”3 The context of this direct address to the reader (ὁ ἀναγινώσκων) throughout the discourse is punctuated by Jesus’ exhortations to the audience to attend to the eschatological signs of the times (13:5, 9, 23, 33, 35, 37). (ibid., p. 16). This discourse, ostensibly directed only to Peter, James, John and Andrew (13:4), ends with a sweeping address “to all” (πᾶσιν); as the parable of the doorkeeper in 13:34 implies, “only the doorkeeper is commanded to stay awake, as a few of Jesus’ disciples and ‘all’ of Mark’s listeners are.”4

Mark 9:42–50, Henderson asserts, is decisive for the reconstruction of Mark’s projected audience (ibid.). Here, he contends, the initial reference to the “little ones who believe” is, contra Bauckham, not to all Christian readers throughout the world (ibid., p. 17), but to the would-be “big men” to whom Jesus speaks and to the “little believers” about whom he speaks. “That is, Mark’s Jesus here makes an argument against disunity among ‘big men’ and abuse by them of ‘little believers’ which applies to Mark’s audience without the sort of social scientific, redaction-critical ‘mirror-reading’ which Bauckham and others criticize.” (ibid., pp. 17–18).

The discourse in 7:1–23, teachings on ritual purity, contains another comment directed to the reader/audience: “Thus he declared all foods clean” (v. 19b). Henderson notes that “Any reader performing Mark 7 for a live audience would have had to decide whether to perform ‘katharizōn panta ta brōmata’ (7.19) in the voice of Jesus or in that of the narrator as a parenthetic aside on the implication for them of Jesus’ speech.” (ibid., p. 19). Mark’s implicit argument “was calculated to impact different classes of hearer differently, warning the whole audience against reliance on ‘human tradition’ (paradōsis tōn anthrōpon, 7.8; see 7.3, 13) while providing leaders a positive basis for toleration of varying food practices.” (ibid.). Another discourse that evidences a concern with a complex understanding of the reader/audience is Mark 4:1–34. Thus, Suzanne Watts Henderson states:

On the one hand, we must acknowledge the text’s overarching claim… that Mark’s Jesus addresses a vast and unscreened audience… On the other hand, only those ‘with ears to hear’ step forward from the crowd to pursue greater elucidation. In this group, identified first as ‘those around him with the Twelve’, we can detect Mark’s audience as heirs to Jesus’ privileged instruction (S. W. Henderson 2006, p. 134; I. Henderson 2013, p. 21; Beavis 1989, vol. 4, pp. 11–12, 157).

Although the literary audience of the parables discourse may be “vast and unscreened” (Mark 4:1), those who strive to understand Jesus’ words (“those who were around him along with the twelve,”, v. 10) amount to a small, dedicated group (cf. 4:34). Whether this group represented a local church community or an inner circle of “leaders,” or both in differing degrees, the discourse is not simply designed to highlight Jesus’ teachings, but rather to convey them to a limited extra-textual audience. As I have argued elsewhere, the coding of the Gospel for those with ears to hear and eyes to see—to readers/hearers who perceive the meaning of Jesus’ teachings through the eyes of faith—is embedded in its literary structure, bookended as it is by the parables discourse with its repeated injunctions to hear/listen, and the eschatological discourse with its corresponding commands to see and to watch (Beavis 1989, pp. 163–65).

Ian Henderson’s argument is that Mark addresses not one but two audiences: one, an elite group of leaders with expertise in the scriptures and their interpretation; the other, a more general audience for whom the “leaders” explicated the meaning of the text (ibid., pp. 24–26). While the examples of the evangelist’s audience-awareness he offers do not prove that Mark had a specific, local audience in mind, it does suggest that the evangelist was one of these “leaders” with firsthand knowledge of the needs of an audience (perhaps a house church) to which he belonged:

Mark and the other Gospels do seem to place some obstacles in the way of easy accessibility by any audience not already predisposed to a Christian narrative. Even so, attitudes toward Romans, for example, may reflect writers’ awareness that the real readership of a literary text can rarely be limited to its focal, designed audience. Mark’s author tried to produce a text that would be of interest to any Jesus-enthusiast and at the same time would not be very attractive to anyone without a prior interest in Jesus traditions (I. Henderson 2013, p. 7).

To Henderson’s list of Marcan nods to a defined audience one may add 3:31–35, where the “true family” of Jesus, as opposed to his biological family, is defined as those who do the divine will (v. 35a). Here, one can visualize the reader-performer significantly making eye contact with the likely small audience of believers as he quoted the words of Jesus: “And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’ (vv. 34–35). Another example is the reference to the sons of Simon of Cyrene, Alexander and Rufus (15:1), brothers apparently known to Mark’s earliest audience, but omitted by Matthew (27:32) and Luke (23:26).

Finally, although there are many studies of the theme of disciples and discipleship in Mark (e.g., Best 1981; Tannehill 1977; Tyson 1961; Weeden 1968; Donahue 1983; Malbon 1983; S. W. Henderson 2006), the fact that outside the Gospels and Acts the term “disciple” is never used in the NT has not been adequately considered. It is simply assumed that the historical Jesus had followers called disciples (mathētai, talmîdim) and that the evangelist simply conveyed, rather than created, this tradition. Whether or not this is the case, it is apparent that the Gospel of Mark is responsible for the literary transmission of the idea that Jesus had, not only miscellaneous followers, but also a group of disciples including but not confined to the twelve, who demonstrated their discipleship more or less satisfactorily.

Along with the theme of disciples and discipleship, Mark introduced to the literary Gospel tradition the portrayal of Jesus as teacher (didaskalos)—again, a christology not developed apart from the gospels—with disciples who followed him both literally and metaphorically. The spread of his teaching beyond the disciples is accomplished by the Marcan discourses, and, as many scholars have observed, readers/hearers of the gospel are encouraged to participate in a kind of discipleship. That is, the Markan presentation of Jesus as a disciple-gathering teacher is more than narrative christology, but narrative pedagogy meant to appeal to the reader/audience within and in front of the text.5 As John Donahue put it: “Mark summons readers to think about discipleship as an enterprise of utmost seriousness which involves standing before the mystery of God, a mystery both awe-inspiring and enticing.” (Donahue 1983, pp. 4–5).

These references do not necessarily mean that the gospel was meant for a specific, localized community, but they do imply that the evangelist meant to address real-world issues with which his audience was familiar, rather than an imagined, international audience of “all Christians” who might or might not find such pointed teachings relevant. Moreover, the evangelist addressed the audience through apostrophe (Mark 13:37: “what I say to you I say to all”), through directions to the reader-performer (Mark 13:14: “let the reader understand”), through characters meant for the audience to identify themselves (e.g., Mark 3:34–35), (cf. Beavis 1988). and, above all, by the portrayal of Jesus as a teacher with disciples.

3. Reconstructions of the Marcan Audience in Place and Time

In twentieth-century scholarship Theodore J. Weeden’s Mark: Traditions in Conflict was an early and influential attempt to reconstruct Mark’s audience (Weeden 1971). He argued that the Marcan evangelist opposed a heretical faction within his church (a “theios anēr party”), represented by the disciples, that claimed that the son of man had already returned and that they had the ability to perform signs and wonders. In opposition to this theology of glory, Mark’s Jesus models for the Marcan community the willingness to accept persecution, suffering and death. Howard Clark Kee’s Community of the New Age was more specific about the setting of Mark, which he claimed was written before 70 C.E. for a Galilean or Syrian group that combined Cynic–Stoic itinerant preaching with Jewish apocalypticism (Kee 1977). Somewhat more specifically, Joel Marcus argued that the Marcan community was Gentile, located on the “borders of Israel” during the Jewish War, and feared the Jewish revolutionary movement (Marcus 1992).

Other scholars have developed the Papias tradition that Mark was a Roman Gospel.6 For example, Donahue and Harrington argued that the Gospel reflects the situation of the Roman church subsequent to the Neronian persecution (Donahue and Harrington 2002). For Donahue, “The gospel tells the community that Jesus not only predicted their sufferings but experienced them in his own execution by the brutal power of Rome and betrayal by those closest to him.” (Donahue 1995, p. 24). In the same vein, Brian J. Insigneri combined external evidence and internal analysis to place the Marcan church in Rome, late in the year 71, shortly after the Roman triumph over Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple (Incigneri 2003).

Most scholars opt for either Rome or Palestine–Syria as the location of the Marcan church, and either is feasible considering the available evidence. Though Roman provenance is supported by early Christian tradition, the Palestine–Syria hypothesis has since become widely held (Marcus 1992). Both locations place the composition of the Gospel within a situation of hardship and danger (the Neronian persecution, the Jewish War), with a message to a struggling local church to remain steadfast in the midst of suffering, fear, division and persecution.

Contrary to the position held by “Gospel for all Christians” proponents that audience criticism has been unproductive with respect to Mark, it has produced some tentative, but significant, results. On the following pages, I will ponder the theological implications of the “original community” hypothesis with reference to what Elizabeth A. Johnson called “a sleeping symbol”: the doctrine of the communion of saints (Johnson 1998, pp. 7–24).

4. Beyond Christology: The Communion of Saints

The communion of saints is an ancient doctrine held by various Christian denominations. The way the doctrine is articulated is surprisingly uniform across confessions, although there are differences. The Catholic formulation prioritizes “holy things,” especially the eucharist, by which “‘the unity of believers, who form one body in Christ, is both represented and brought about” (Lumen Gentium 3) and refers “also to the communion of ‘holy persons’ (sancti) in Christ who ‘died for all,’ so that what each one does or suffers in and for Christ bears fruit for all. ‘We believe in the communion of all the faithful of Christ, those who are pilgrims on earth, the dead who are being purified, and the blessed in heaven, all together forming one Church; and we believe that in this communion, the merciful love of God and his saints is always [attentive] to our prayers” (Paul VI, Creed of the People of God 30) (US Catholic Church 2012). On the evangelical end of the theological spectrum, F. Q. Gouvea explains:

The traditional, and probably the best, interpretation refers the phrase to the union of all believers, living or dead, in Christ, stressing their common life in Christ and their sharing of the blessings of God. Some medieval interpreters, including Thomas Aquinas, read the phrase as “the communion in holy things” (a reading which the Latin text allows), referring it to the sacraments, especially the Eucharist… To the traditional view… must be added a more modern emphasis on the need for this unity to be actualized in the church (Gouvea [1984] 2001, pp. 277–78).

The discussion here will prioritize the notion of the unity of believers, in full recognition that neither the Marcan evangelist nor his addressees was familiar with the full-fledged doctrine. However, as Johnson has contended, the doctrine is grounded in Jewish notions of the One Holy God and the identity of Israel as a Holy People (“be holy for I am holy” [Lev 19:2]), in which she finds the potential for inclusive interpretation: “Set within the biblical narrative, the holiness of God shows itself in a deeply relational manner, reaching to the poor and enslaved in a special way and seeking the good of the whole world. The call to be holy as God is holy implies a share in this world-embracing love.” (Johnson 1998, p. 58). The remainder of this essay will highlight ways in which the Gospel resonates with aspects of the doctrine. In particular, I will argue that Mark presents an egalitarian model of the holy community that prioritizes the living members of a specific church but does not exclude others who confess the name of Jesus (9:38–39), or even the blessed dead (12:24–27; 9:2–8), and reveals an ecumenical concept of mission (13:20; 14:9). This does not mean that the church addressed by the evangelist necessarily held to all of these values at all times, but that the Gospel presents an implicit vision of the ideal community for their edification.

5. From Christ to Community

As the discussion above suggests, the portrayal of Jesus throughout Mark is designed with the needs of a specific community, or closely related cluster of communities, in mind. In view of the extremely small number of churches in the first century scattered throughout and beyond the Roman empire—fewer than 10,000 by the year 100 (0.017% of the total population of the empire) (Wilken 2012). Mark’s church was one of a thin smattering of sectarian groups that hardly constituted a worldwide movement. Whether they were located in Rome, Syria, Galilee, or elsewhere, Mark’s suffering Jesus would, as Donahue and Harrington asserted, be most meaningful to a community in difficult circumstances: “The shadow of the cross, opposition from powerful leaders, divisions among Jesus’ followers, persecutions and betrayals—all these themes in Mark’s Gospel would have been meaningful to an early Christian community that had suffered for the name of Jesus and was expecting even more suffering.” (Donahue and Harrington 2002, p. 43). This is not a message that would have been particularly appealing to “those outside” (4:11) or even existentially relevant to believers in relatively tranquil settings. This is a message crafted to enhance the commitment of an already dedicated group of followers, less likely to attract new members to the group.

In support of the “gospel for all Christians” hypothesis, Francis Watson complained that in the consensus view the Jesus of the gospels is simply a reflection of their respective audiences:

“despite appearances, the Gospels are not to be understood as speaking of Jesus of Nazareth, a figure belonging to another time and place and yet, as the Christ and the Son of God, of ultimate significance to all times and all places.” (Watson 1998, p. 207). Rather, Watson insists (in agreement with Bauckham) that the Gospels were written first and foremost as reliable witnesses to Jesus the Christ for an undifferentiated audience of “Christians,” not for the sake of a specific church community bound by space and time. However, with respect to Mark, the consensus view, against which Watson argues, is supported by the content of the Gospel, which implies that the evangelist was not primarily concerned with conveying historical information about Jesus, or with christology for its own sake, but with the pressing needs and concerns of the community to which the evangelist belonged and for whom he wrote. This does not mean that the evangelist and his audience were uninterested in the words and deeds of Jesus—obviously they were, or the gospel in biographical form would not have been written and transmitted to subsequent generations of believers. But to the Marcan audience the teacher Jesus was more than an historical figure, and although they may have regarded him as of great significance to people of all times and places, above all he was their teacher/rabbi, of significance to them, in communion with them through the medium of the gospel. It is also important to remember that Mark’s depiction of Jesus is eschatologically charged; the parable of the doorkeeper (13:32–37) is directed not only to the disciples, but pointedly to the audience: “Keep awake!” (vol. 37). For them, the reign of God was imminent, and the teachings of Jesus were the of vital importance to their share in it.

6. Reconstructing the Marcan Community

The Marcan community—whether a single group or a cluster of churches—was not “Christian.” This is a designation that did not exist in Mark’s time (c. 70 CE), and when it does occur in the NT (Acts 11:26; 26:38; 1 Pet 4:16), it appears to be a pejorative term used by outsiders (Parsons 2008, p. 168). A typical house-church of the era would have been made up of a small group of twenty to fifty members with varying levels of commitment (Styles 2017, p. 3). They may have called each other disciples (mathētai) or more likely, “brothers and sisters” (3:31–34), and had an awareness of themselves as a union or communion of believers, in relationship with Christ their teacher/rabbi, as commemorated in ritual and preaching. Mark’s Gospel ostensibly rejects hierarchical leadership, citing the example of Jesus the teacher: “Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many’” (10:42–45). Whether they were of Jewish or non-Jewish ethnicity, they probably did not identify as “Gentiles” (ethnōn) (10:42). They respected the Jewish scriptures and the Law of Moses (Torah). They distinguished between “the commandment of God and human tradition” (7:1–23, esp. v. 8) but could be highly rigoristic regarding commandments which they regarded as essential (10:1–12, 17–22; 12:28–34). They celebrated a form of what would later be called communion or the eucharist, presented by the evangelists in its earliest narrative form (14:22–27), where they partook in the sacred meal initiated by Jesus (Dowling 2014, pp. 221–42); they also were probably received into the community through some form of baptism (cf. 1:4–8) (Wheatley 2023, pp. 1–18). Jesus was their example and teacher. Likely, following the example of Jesus, they practiced miracle-working and exorcism, although, not surprisingly, they sometimes found it difficult (11:22–23; 9:28–29). They may have been familiar with some of the letters of Paul, but they did not share his Christ mysticism: for them, Jesus was a prophet perfectly aligned with the will of God, not divine himself, and not an object of worship (10:18; cf. 1:14; 3:35; 11:22): i.e., they were theocentric, not christocentric (Donahue 1982, pp. 563–94). Similarly, in the Gospel, while Jesus may been the main character, God is the main actor—even Jesus can do nothing apart from God.7 As Donahue observed:

The summons of Jesus in 1:15 is to believe in the gospel and 3:35 states the fundamental condition of that belief, doing the will of God. The other gnomic sayings then provide concrete instances of such doing the will of God. This involves respect for God’s creative intent in marriage (10:11); losing one’s life “for the gospel” (8:35); forsaking riches (10:30); enduring persecution (13:13); welcoming the powerless children (9:36–37); living a life of service (10:43–44); performing the duties of hospitality (9:41); and trust in the power of prayer (11:23). Even though the motivation at times seems christological, the addition of “for the gospel” in 8:35 and 10:29, the view that the one who is not consciously a disciple is “for us” (9:40) and the indication that the one who receives Jesus receives the one who sent him (9:37), all suggest a theistic grounding for discipleship which is response to the gospel of God and fulfilling God’s will (ibid., p. 586).

Although their primary concerns were local, the Marcan ekklēsia had a nascent sense of ecumenical mission (13:10; 14:9) and common cause with believers from other communities (9:38–41). An anonymous member, later known as Mark and remembered as a saint, committed to writing the collective memory of the community, organized around the figure of Jesus, in a way designed to meet their immediate needs for instruction and encouragement—a founding myth grounded not only in historical memory, but in an interpretation of the past constitutive of the community’s identity that provided them with continuity (Huebenthal 2020). For the Marcan group, this included continuity with the prophets and heroes of Israel, the righteous dead awaiting resurrection, Jesus and his followers, and other believers in the world as they understood it. For them, “God’s presence… [was] found no longer in the temple, but in the teaching and story of Jesus and the community which possesses this good news is the temple not made with hands (14:58).” (Donahue 1982, p. 594; See Juel 1977, pp. 208–9). Whether or not the anonymous author was considered to be a “leader” of the community is unknown, as is the question how fully they realized the utopian ideal expressed in 10:42–45.

7. From Community to Communion

A common explanation of the difference between community and communion is that “community” refers to a group of people with common values, interests, and setting, whereas “communion” implies an intimate, spiritual connection between and among people; in Greek, roughly the difference between ekklēsia (church, assembly) and koinonia (partnership, communion). My argument here is that the reader/audience addressed by the evangelist was both a community and a communion and that the evangelist shared an intimate bond with them; i.e., they participated in a “common life in Christ and… sharing… blessings of God.” (Gouvea [1984] 2001, p. 277). Together, as suggested above, they held an egalitarian model of the holy community exemplified by figures like the woman who anointed Jesus (14:3–9). They prioritized the living members, but their self-understanding was not confined to them.

Who were the living members of the Marcan community/communion? The author of Mark’s Gospel is anonymous, but we almost certainly know the names of two of the members of his circle: Alexander and Rufus, the sons of Simon of Cyrene (15:21). Bauckham surmises that the names of the brothers were widely known as transmitters of the eyewitness testimony of their father to the events surrounding the crucifixion (Bauckham 2006, p. 52), but, if so, it is hard to explain why their names are omitted in Matthew and Luke. If they were not members of the evangelist’s church, they were better known to the group than their father, Simon, whose identity was known relative to them. If we were to construct a litany of saints belonging to the Marcan church, Alexander and Rufus would be the two whose names are extant.

Alexander and Rufus are of significance not only as possible eyewitnesses to some of the events surrounding the crucifixion; they were also possibly members of the Marcan community. Nonetheless, literarily they are minor figures, named only due to their relationship with their father Simon, who, in turn, is identified with reference to them. That is, they are what scholars categorize as “minor characters,” who “lack a continuing or recurrent presence in the story as narrated.” (Malbon 2000, p. 192; See also Williams 1994). Elizabeth Struthers Malbon has classified these minor characters as “enemies” (religious leaders), “fallible followers” (disciples), and “exemplars,” who “in their brief moments of narrative time… serve as models for attitudes and behaviors appropriate also for the major characters of the narrative and especially for the implied audience.” (Malbon 2000, p. 198). Some of these, I tentatively suggest, are not only “exemplars” of paradigmatic behaviors and attitudes, but also are modeled on members of the community known to the evangelist, and recognizable by the reader/audience—points of contact for personal connection. Such recognizable “exemplars” might include the poor widow who donates “her whole living”—perhaps too much—while richer members offer large sums (12:41–44); a woman who is too shy to ask for a healing miracle, while a prominent official publicly requests healing for his child (5:21–43); a man whose dubious profession causes him to be viewed with suspicion by the group (2:13–27); a group of anonymous disciples puzzled as to why they are unable to effect an exorcism (9:14–29); unnamed disciples who need instruction on faith and prayer (11:22–25).8 I am not claiming here that such characters are directly modeled on members of the Marcan community; rather, they are types known to the evangelist and his audience through the experience of community life. Not only are some of these “minor characters” of “major importance,” marking “where the implied audience is to pause, reflect, connect” (Malbon 2000, p. 221); they also give us a glimpse, through a glass darkly, of the some of the kinds of people who participated in the Marcan community, granting us a more personal level of connection.

In reflecting on the doctrine of the communion of saints from an Anglican perspective, Stephen Reynolds observes:

The habit of remembering “the friends of God” has been one of the great delights of Christian people since the dawn of the Church. The reason for this is neither fancy theology nor sub-Christian superstition. It is simply that the history of God’s mighty acts of salvation is always a personal history. The Church believes that the divine purpose of justice, mercy, and love is revealed in the stories of particular persons. Indeed, it is through the stories of individual saints that the Almighty renews and strengthens the witness of the whole community of “the holy people of God (Reynolds 2007, p. 11).

My suggestion is that some, although by no means all, of the minor characters in Mark are of major importance because they, like Alexander and Rufus, recall particular persons through whom “the divine purpose of justice, mercy and love” are revealed on the pages of Mark to “renew and strengthen” the witness of the holy community (cf. 10:13–16, 41–45).

8. Theological Relevance

The aim of this essay is not to reject outright Bauckham’s “Gospels for all Christians” hypothesis, although, like all scholarly arguments, it is vulnerable to critique (see also Reinhartz 2010, p. 151; Esler 1998; Marcus 1999, pp. 25–39; Sim 2001, pp. 3–27; Sim 2008; Mitchell 2005; See also Beavis, forthcoming b). Rather, my purpose has been to explore the theological relevance of audience–critical interpretation. The consensus position that the evangelists wrote the Gospels to meet the needs of their own communities is a working hypothesis that has offered some enticing insights into the nature of the earliest churches. It is not necessary to reject this hypothesis—or to accept it uncritically—in order to engage in reflection on the historical Jesus, much less theological interpretation. For the purposes of this essay, it provides an intriguing window into an early generation of believers who lived in community and in communion with each one another and with God—“friends of God and prophets” (Wis 7:27). The Marcan church was, as Reinhartz put it, one of “a complex and vibrant set of ‘Christ-confessing’ communities within and later outside of Judaism.” With her, but here, for theological rather than historical reasons, my imagination is sparked by the idea that, Mark, like the other Gospels, was “written in the context of living communities that had their own perspectives, their unique histories and circumstances, and were home to a set of unique individuals.” (Reinhartz 2010, p. 151–52) The consensus view, more than the rather bland and generic “all Christians” hypothesis, enables the reader to imagine herself “in continuity with a chain of serious readers and hearers stretching across two millennia and many continents and countries.” (ibid., p. 151). In other words, Mark’s gospel is a witness to the devotion, struggles and fears of a group of individual believers far removed from the present-day, but recognizable through the familiar, but always ambiguous, text.

As Gouvea wrote, “the communion of saints implies the need for the unity among believers inherent in the doctrine to be actualized in the church.” (Gouvea [1984] 2001, p. 278). Envisioning the small, struggling Marcan community of Jesus-followers revealed through audience-oriented interpretations has relevance to Christ-confessing believers in these times of social fragmentation and culture wars. Although distant from the Marcan audience in space, time and even religious identity, Mark’s contemporary readers must continue to strive to uphold values of community, ecumenism, service, generosity, compassion, equality, and inclusion. The evangelist’s presentation of Jesus as teacher and example was crafted to support and uplift faith communities, as it has continued to function for countless generations of believers through the example and memory of the minor, major characters that appear on its pages.