Search Results (19)

Studies on the presence of the Old Testament (OT) in the New Testament (NT) have evolved significantly over time. Scholars have moved from a focus on identifying the textual version employed by the evangelists to attempts to systematize the various levels of the OT’s presence, classifying them as quotations, allusions, or echoes. In reality, biblical references permeate the NT, often going unnoticed. Unveiling them and, above all, approaching them through the interpretative logic characteristic of Judaism at the turn of the era imparts a surplus of meaning to the NT text. This is what this article demonstrates through an example from the Gospel according to Mark. There is no doubt about the strong biblical resonances in the passage describing Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (Mk 11:1-11). In addition to a quotation from Psalm 118 (Mk 11:9-10), scholars recognize an allusion to Genesis and multiple references to texts from the book of Zechariah. This article will illustrate how drawing upon Jewish exegetical tradition from the turn of the era sheds light both on the way these OT references are interpreted and on how the various biblical references interconnect, enriching and expanding the meaning of the Gospel passage. Full article

This article investigates Jesus’s identity in the Synoptic Gospels by examining the Gospels’ literary features. I take a narrative approach to determine how the evangelists, in unique and shared ways, reveal to their audiences who Jesus is. Certain literary features in the evangelists’ texts provide an answer to Jesus’s question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt 16:15; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20). For Mark, Jesus is “Christ” and “Son of God” (Mark 1:1); as the plot unfolds, these terms become guideposts suggesting that characters in the Gospel (and by extension the audience, too) come to a deeper understanding of who Jesus is. For Matthew, the good news of Jesus commences with the relationship between Jesus and Israel’s past through figures like David and Abraham. By observing how Matthew characterizes Jesus in the Gospel, the audience learns that Jesus stands in continuity with Israel. Finally, Luke starts his account with a focus not on figures from Israel’s history, but rather on its institutions, like the temple and the priesthood (see Luke 1:5, 9). Luke’s audience learns who Jesus is by paying attention to Luke’s use of settings and themes. Thus, the particular literary artistry of each synoptic evangelist provides a way for a contemporary audience to know Jesus. Full article

This article uses two case studies to promote the idea that British evangelicalism is sometimes marked by the denial of inconvenient facts. First, it takes a critical look at the apologetic impulse to explain away the problems that Scripture sometimes presents and to deny their affective dimensions. Second, it considers some of the abuse scandals of recent years and the way in which the evangelical church has tended to respond by covering them up and silencing the voices of accusers. This response appears to be motivated by the fear of quenching what appear to be successful ministries or of tarnishing the reputation of the church. The common theme that these examples share is that they are motivated by the instinct to present the gospel in the best possible light, but this appears to stem from an unarticulated functional atheism that does not truly trust God’s people to the Spirit. As a remedy, two linked practices are proposed, drawing on the work of Eugene Peterson and Cheryl Bridges-Johns. These are Sabbath-keeping as a means of rediscovering the primacy of God’s presence and work; and the re-enchantment of Scripture by means of a Pentecost imaginary, which offers the possibility for the transrational. Full article

Zwingli never considered it likely for the old Confederacy to endure being split between two confessional camps. Therefore, his sermons were a powerful impetus for mobilizing the cantonal governments in favor of a conversion of the entire alliance to the reformed Gospel. However, facing fierce reluctance, he tried to bypass the Diet by rallying local support among parishioners, thus bringing the whole Confederacy on his side. This purpose, allegedly uttered with the intent of securing peace, underpinned the use of symbolic violence and coercion. With the Christian Civic Union between Bern and Zurich, the local parishes found themselves at the core of these efforts, relying on majority votes. Preachers would certainly try to explain how the community would temporarily be divided before achieving a superficial unanimity by voting to abolish the Mass. While Zwingli’s death marked an end to these ventures, French-speaking preachers translated these views and beliefs into Western and then French communities and the accusations of sedition and political disruption the protestants faced since years suddenly bloomed again. The transposition of those concepts to less republican contexts than those of Ancient Switzerland created one of the first manifestations of a link between Calvinism and Democracy, although in a controversial way. Full article

The Torah is central to Judaism. Jesus’s relationship with it sparks conflict with Christianity. Some Jews think that Jesus violated the Torah, while some Christians believe that he sinlessly followed it. This clash escalated on 22 June 2023, when Ultra-Orthodox Jews protested a Messianic convention in Jerusalem. Social media videos and comments highlighted Jesus’s purported Torah compliance, placing Matthew 5:17 at the center stage. The comments proved indicative of the gaps within the literature as neither determined all the unique Written and Oral Torahic/legal issues raised within the Gospels nor quantified the extent of Jesus’s compliance. To address these gaps, this study employs artificial intelligence (LDA), statistics, and legal analysis and exegesis to determine Jesus’s compliance with the Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, and Mishneh Torah. The findings show the Gospels’ consensus: Mark, Luke, and John reflect that Jesus was non-Torah-compliant (14.80, 43.80, and 0.00%, respectively); Matthew states otherwise (70.80%). Overall, the study revealed that Jesus kept 79 of 162 Written and Oral Torah laws (48.80%). This study has significant implications for Christian doctrines, the definition(s) of sin, and the missionizing ethnoreligion members and serves as a case study that illustrates AI’s impact on religious authority (i.e., clergy, scholarship, and doctrines). Full article

The analysis delves into the conflict inherent within the thematic discourse surrounding the two tables as portrayed in Mark’s Gospel, with particular emphasis on the section concerning the multiplication of loaves of bread (Mk 6–8). Noteworthy is the conflict arising from the juxtaposition of Jewish and pagan individuals at a shared table. This theological tension finds resonance in the narratives presented by Paul in Galatians and Romans, albeit Galatians 2:9 intimates a seemingly facile resolution, a departure from the intricate portrayal in Mark’s Gospel. Mark’s narrative accentuates two salient dimensions: firstly, the ethnic substrate of the conflict, and secondly, its contextual specificity within the historical milieu of Syria after the Jewish war. The ethnic genesis of this conflict, as delineated in the accounts of Flavius Josephus, furnishes a background essential for comprehending the dual incidents of bread multiplication: the initial instance catering exclusively to Jews and the subsequent occurrence inclusive of both Jews and other disparate ethnic groups “from afar” (Mk 8:3). The spatial symbolism in the section pertaining to the multiplication of loaves may symbolically represent the heterogeneous composition of the recipients, thereby exacerbating the challenges inherent in reconciling conflicts rooted in ethnic diversity. Full article

Interest in the Gospel of Mark has been steadily growing in the field of biblical studies for years. Although Mark’s narrative had long been treated as less polished and thus theologically lacking compared to the other canonical gospels in the past, many scholars now recognize it as a complex narrative with various intertwining and intentionally employed plots and storylines. This study aims to contribute to this growing scholarship which takes the narrative skill of Mark’s author seriously when it traces the term ἐξουσία (exousia) throughout the whole gospel. Special attention will be paid to the way ἐξουσία (exousia) is connected to conflict. Read through this lens, several interesting developments in the Markan presentation of Jesus, the disciples, and reader involvement will emerge. Finally, the question of why ἐξουσία (exousia) is totally absent from the Markan passion story will be answered. This study proposes to see Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross as a consequence of his practice of ἐξουσία (exousia) for which readers are prepared from the beginning of Mark’s narrative. Full article

While both narrative and performance criticisms take whole-story approaches to the texts they are engaging with, performance critical approaches are uniquely suited to considerations of the body, and particularly of gender. Alongside the growth in performance critical analyses of the gospels that place prominence on the embodied, performed dimension of the texts, when thinking about gender it becomes critical to examine the ways in which masculinity is constructed in and through performance, particularly in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. This article is an examination of the masculinity of Jesus as it is presented in the Gospel of Mark, as it argues that the Gospel of Mark presents a seemingly “unmasculine” depiction of Jesus that performers (as well as later interpreters) would have had to make performance choices about in their own depictions of Jesus for a given performance event. While narrative approaches have more space to hold multiple interpretations in tension with one another, performances of the texts would have necessitated making singular choices that would impact an audience’s understanding of the text. Full article

In keeping with the call of this Special Issue, this article is but one voice in the midst of a much broader conversation, attending to whether the differences between narrative and performance criticism are a matter of degree or kind. Narrative and biblical performance criticisms are natural bedfellows. The two appear genealogically related as they share similar founders, attend to similar features, and to a degree share similar interests with regard to interpretation. In fact, their interests appear to be so closely aligned at several points that attempts to distinguish between these two approaches run the risk of simply “splitting hairs”. Yet, our recognition of these distinctions is essential for highlighting the unique contribution of each approach. In what follows, I suggest that the differences between performance and narrative criticisms are rather (at least theoretically) a “shifting of gears”, a progression toward a more complex understanding of how biblical texts work in various contexts and how we as scholars may approach them as objects of study. While the object of study in narrative criticism is relatively well established (again, at least theoretically), this is not necessarily the case for performance criticism. In short, by way of contrast, I will suggest that for performance criticism, its object is similar to yet distinct from the object of study of narrative criticism. Such a claim is by no means groundbreaking, especially among the performance critics, nor should it necessarily be viewed as controversial. Rather, in exploring the contours of each approach, this contribution aims to provide additional theoretical credence to certain areas within this conversation. In doing so, this inadvertently has implications not only for our thinking in this particular volume, but also perhaps more broadly for biblical studies. Full article

The abundance of ritual descriptions in the Gospel of Mark suggests a discourse about ritual between the narrator and early audiences of the Gospel. The prominence of the ritual of baptism at the beginning (Mark 1:9–11) and anointing at the end (16:1–8), and the recurrence of themes introduced in Jesus’s baptism at turning points in the Gospel (9:2–8; 10:38–39; 15:38–39) suggest broader ritual—and specifically baptismal—significance in the narrative. Recent changes helpfully differentiate narrative- and performance-critical interpretive approaches as text-oriented (narrative) and audience-oriented (performance), but these hermeneutical methods also work in concert. This article combines cognitive studies of narrative immersion with observations about the role of ritual in group identity formation and the impartation of religious traditions to analyze the narration of ritual acts in Mark. Giving attention to the use of internal focalization and description of bodily movements in ritual narrations, this article argues that depictions of rituals in Mark involve the audience in ways that deliver audience-oriented interpretations through text-oriented means. This analysis shows how Mark’s ritual narrations are conducive to evoking the audience’s experience of baptism, familiar to audience members as described in the undisputed Pauline epistles, the only descriptions of the rite that clearly antedate the composition of Mark. Publicly reading these narrated rituals creates an audience experience that neither requires the performance of the ritual in the context of the reading event nor an “acting out” of the ritual depicted in the narrative to create a participatory, communal experience of the text. Full article

The rise of performance criticism prompts questions about its relationship to other disciplines, most notably narrative criticism. While narrative critics traditionally focus solely on the textual elements within their cultural context, performance critics adopt a broader understanding of the term “text”, encompassing not only the cultural context but also performative aspects, such as the setting for public reading, the involvement of a skilled performer, and dynamics introduced by a diverse performance audience. This article demonstrates the distinctiveness of a performance-critical approach through a reappraisal of Mark 11:27–33, showing how such an approach yields different interpretive results when compared to traditional narrative criticism. More specifically, whereas traditional narrative readings generally conclude that Jesus is merely evading his interlocutors, I argue that a performance-critical approach suggests that many ancient listeners would have concluded that the lector-as-Jesus was insinuating, for those with ears to hear, that Jesus’s authority derives from God and was granted at his baptism. Full article

This article explores how art installed within a church space contributes to the church’s cultural witness, drawing from the contemporary example of Alison Watt’s Still, installed in Old Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland. While the object’s capacity to proclaim is present, this case study extends the exploration of art’s cultural witness to include imaginative participation in the Gospel narrative as well as its transformation of the space in which it is installed. Focus then turns to the Church’s patronage of the visual arts, arguing that this is another example of cultural witness. In this case, one finds a relationship between church and artist that is marked by trust, collaboration, and protection. Full article

Most interpretations of the Temple and Torah in the Gospel of Mark have held a negative view toward the Jewish institutions, declaring that the old has been replaced by the new, meaning Jesus is the new Temple and the Church has replaced the Jewish people. This article presents a post-supersessionist reading of the Temple and Torah in Mark’s Gospel, focusing on the Parable of the Vineyard (Mk 12:1–12) in the broader narrative context (11:1—13:1) and the canonical narrative, thereby maintaining the Gospel’s connection with the Jewish people and their covenant relationship with God. These two contexts frame the parable and set parameters for its interpretation, thereby preventing anti-Torah and anti-Temple interpretations and the theological belief that Christians are Abraham’s true and rightful heirs. Full article

Instead of trying to recreate the ancient life of Jesus, Mark Dornford-May’s film Son of Man depicts many famous scenes from the gospels, reworked to tell the story of Jesus in the fictitious “Kingdom of Judea, Afrika” with the concerns of local and global poverty, violence, and imperialism. Jesus’s life turns when he directly challenges the Judean leadership, and his arrest, torture, and death reinterpret the dynamics of power from first century imperial Rome in brilliantly analogous fashion both for a localized South African setting and for global settings that struggle under violently repressive governments. Jesus’s death stands as the focal point of communal resurrection, inspiring Mary to challenge the oppression perpetrated by those in power. Jesus’s death serves to express the complexities of international injustice in South Africa and other countries in Africa and around the world, to embolden and unite an oppressed community, and to shine a light on a mother as the leader of this resurrected community. Full article

This article addresses the problem of the perception of Mark’s endings as expressed in its manuscript tradition. I will argue that, unlike the modern standardized image, manuscript evidence offers a complex phenomenon in which the endings were perceived in diverse ways that move across the threshold that separates a text from paratexts. Further, the manuscripts show an influence between the endings and their associated paratexts. I will show this phenomenon by examining (i) the hypotheses before the Gospel, (ii) marginalia that engaged Mark 16, and (iii) postscripts after the Gospel. In conclusion, the article recommends revisiting the standard perception of the “endings” within their larger paratextual ecosystem. Full article