Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best controversy about MARK since the Marcan Hypothesis, June 6, 2003
If you follow the Quest of the Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer and the Jesus Seminar, then you will enjoy this brilliant analysis of the internal text of the Gospel of Mark.Nineteenth century Protestant theologians, aided by the Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, demonstrated that the Gospel of MARK is the earliest Gospel we possess. LUKE is a modification of MARK, and MATTHEW is a modification of LUKE, while JOHN roughly uses MARK's model to produce a work of art sixty years later. Theodore J. Weeden continues this line of thought and analyzes MARK in great detail with "redaction criticism" (a theory that each Gospel is the result of several changes by several authors whose individual outlines can be identified even today). Weeden's historical, textual and literary analysis of the Gospel of MARK shows its internal stitches. Before the final redactor gave us the copy we have today, he had in his hands *two* sources for the Gospel of MARK. Each source had its own community, and each community was in competition with the other. Briefly put, the two communities may be called the Divine Man community and the Suffering Servant community. The Divine Man community held to a Preterist doctrine that the arrival of Jesus was the main event of salvation. The Suffering Servant community held to an Eschatological doctrine that the future coming of Jesus will be the main event of salvation. The first part of MARK is about the Galilean Jesus, the Divine Man. The second part of MARK is about the Jerusalem Jesus, the Suffering Servant. When these two contradictory traditions were merged together by the genius of the final redactor of MARK, the Gospel as we know it today was born. Weeden seeks to show that the final redactor was an Eschatologist who attempted to modify the earlier, Divine Man tradition, bending it into an Eschatological shape. Weeden's theory is not an attack on the Gospel, but is a scientific approach to the Gospel with the aim of finding the real and historical Jesus (very likely the Galilean Jesus). I highly recommend this scholarly book. Five stars.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
On the right track, but with the wrong train..., December 6, 2001
The author recognizes the Gospel of Mark for what it is and has been for nearly two millennia - not just a "gospel" but a clever if crude polemic against the influence of the Jerusalem (Petrine) community of the early Christian Church, which interpreted the life and death of Jesus as a continuation of Jewish salvation history. Some of the book's specific arguments and interpretations are unnecessary (particularly the redaction critical claims), unconvincing (the exorcisism in Mark 9:38-40), incorrect (e.g., the "young man" present at the handing over at 14:51 and again at the empty tomb in 16:5 is not an angel; the post-crucifixion report of Jesus going to Galilee at 16:7 is figurative, not literal) and incomplete (anti-Gnostic rhetoric also abounds throughout Mark's narrative, an area still ripe for socio-rhetorical scholarship). Nonetheless, the recognition of the first half of the gospel as parody in reaction to nascent Christian theologies removes the cover of orthodox bias masquerading as "The Messianic Secret" interpretation of Mark that has obscured the value of its true meaning for decades.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting idea, July 1, 2009
I first read this book, a reworked doctoral dissertation, when teaching Mark's Gospel to undergraduates in Canberra, Australia, in the 1980s and 90s. Weeden's idea cannot be simplified into a couple of sentences, but the essence of it is that he thinks Mark wrote a book in the fashion of "popular" Hellenistic biography rather than "classical" biography, and he draws on evidence of trivial detail in Mark, compared to the other synoptics, such as that at the feeding of the 5000 the grass was green. (Other scholars don't find that to be trivial, but let it be.)
This leads Weeden to ask what Mark's purpose was, and to this end he focuses redaction-critically on the portrayal of the characters in Mark, again drawing on themes of popular biography. He argues that "the Twelve" [apostles] function as a single main character in the narrative, along with Jesus, the Jewish leaders, and the crowd. As is well known, Mark's picture of the Twelve is less than complimentary; Weeden thinks this is because of the way some itinerant apostles were proclaiming themselves in the early church as more authoritative and important because they were among the Twelve, perhaps like the "super-apostles" Paul opposes in 2 Corinthians. So Mark writes an account that is critical of them and puts them firmly in their place.
It's an interesting idea, and I have often found as a teacher that students get involved in responding to it. Some are dismissive, others are intrigued. But it provides a good discussion starter. My original copy was lost many years ago by a student who then lived in cyclone-prone North Queensland. He said the book got washed away in a very heavy storm, and I could not replace it as it was out of print. It still is, but I found some second-hand copies through Amazon, and look forward to offering it to a new generation of students in the southern Spring Semester.
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by Hector Avalos
by Hyam Maccoby
by Rene Salm
