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Narrative Space and Mythic Meaning in Ma (Biblical Seminar)

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Elizabeth Struthers Malbon is a leading scholar on Markan narrative. Those familiar with her recent work on the characterization of Jesus in Mark, Mark's Jesus: Characterization as Narrative Christology, will be grateful to find in her first work the same rigorous narrative analysis and perceptive insight applied to Mark's spatial settings.

She employs a Levi-Straussian structuralist methodology to analyze Markan settings, but does not allow the methodology to obscure or overwhelm Mark's narrative itself. Her research and conclusions are presented in clear, accessible prose, helpfully augmented by tables, diagrams, and charts as visual learning aids. No prior acquaintance with structuralism is necessary.

After a first chapter briefly and simply introducing the method, she isolates and treats in three chapters the geopolitical, topographical, and architectural suborders of settings, before reintegrating them in the final chapter's discussion of Markan space as a whole.

Whether or not one subscribes to a strictly structuralist approach, Malbon's presentation of the raw textual data and her discussion of it is certain to stimulate, educate, and benefit any serious student or teacher of Mark's Gospel. I heartily recommend this book.

Anyone attempting to study the entire gospel (which is the ONLY way to study Mark) must read this as reference material. Although a bit technical to begin with, the author does a great job at explaining the spatial and temporal meanings of the places and time references in the gospel. This may come as a disappointment to those who prefer to believe that Mark is acutal biography or history, but the understanding contained in this book should dispel any notion that Mark was creating anything other than a literary work. Malbon's work is thorough and well thought out, and explained with plenty of examples from the text itself. It's a shame that others have not picked up where this book leaves off and delved even further into the mythical meanings of Mark's text.