The production of the Gospel of Mark – An essay on intertextuality/Section 3
I have already mentioned that there is no certainty about the identity of the author of the Gospel or about his audience. It is probable that he was a bilingual Jew, and it is possible that he wrote his Gospel for an audience in either Galilee or in Rome (see Vorster 1990 & 1991). We do not know what the place where he wrote his Gospel looked like, whether it was a study in a private house, or some other room where he had different manuscripts at his disposal. We assume that much of his material was known to him through the tradition in which he stood. It is also possible, as I have already said, that he had some manuscripts of Old Testament writings available.
The main thing, however, is that we have a text, written in Greek with different allusions to and quotations from precursor texts. This last observation underscores the fact that Mark as a reader/hearer of texts reacted to different intertextual codes, and thus created a new text which refers to different texts and codes intertextually. These include parables, miracle stories, controversy stories, bibliographies, stories of cult heroes, speeches about the future, stories of suffering and resurrection stories. In addition Mark apparently knew themes, words, phrases and stories from the Old Testament. He must have had acquaintance with the Elisha cycle and with other performers of miracles. He must also have known the economic, political and other cultural codes of his time. However, we still do not know exactly how he went about creating his story of Jesus — that is, how he made his Gospel.
Two recent attempts at explaining the making of the Gospel are, however, worth mentioning. Mack (1988:322-323) maintains that Mark’s Gospel was ‘…not a pious transmission of revered tradition. It was composed at a desk in a scholar’s study lined with texts and open to discourse with other intellectuals. In Mark’s Study were chains of miracle stories, collections of pronouncement stories…’. Mack assumes that Mark had different Hellenistic Jewish texts, the Scriptures and other Christian texts in his study. One need not agree with Mack, but he has at least given some thought to what might have been possible in the production of a text in the first century.
Botha (1989:76-77), on the other hand, maintains that the Mediterranean world of the first century was predominantly oral. Mark came from an oral community and his Gospel should be seen as oral literature. Mark told his story of Jesus orally and at some stage dictated it to somebody who wrote down his words. It still bears the signs of oral literature. Again, Mark is taken seriously as the producer of a text and not simply as a conduit through which a stream of tradition flowed, or a (passive) exponent of a community out of which his text arose (see also Vorster 1980).
The next question is whether we can say more about the actual process of the making of the Gospel by using a concept of the phenomenon text which is different from the concept we know (the traditional approach we have dealt with above), and by asking different questions concerning the making of texts. My hypothesis is that a concept of text different from the one we are used to in New Testament scholarship, and a rethinking of the process of production, can help us understand the Gospel of Mark and its relation to precursor and other texts. This would, however, imply a total rethinking of the traditional approach.
The idea that any text is a network or mosaic of different texts referring to other texts is challenging. The concept ‘intertextuality’ has not been sufficiently explored by New Testament scholars (see however Draisma 1989; Phillips 1991; Vorster 1992).
There is no reason to doubt that the written Gospel of Mark echoes many different precursor texts and intertextual relationships. In this regard the use of the Old Testament in Mark’s Gospel is helpful. I have elsewhere argued that Mark’s use of the Old Testament is totally different from that of Matthew or Mark who use the Old Testament within a promise-fulfilment scheme (see Vorster 1981). Allusions to and quotations from the Old Testament are usually absorbed into Mark’s story in such a manner that, except for a few cases where he specifically mentions the origin of the quotation, the allusions and quotations form part of the story stuff. They are so embedded into the story that, if it were not for the references in the margins and a knowledge of the Old Testament, the reader would not have noticed that Mark uses an allusion or a quotation (see Mk 15:24). This is best seen in Mark’s story of the passion of Jesus.
It has often been noticed that psalms of lamentation such as Psalms 22, 38 and 69 concerning the suffering of the just, are knitted into the passion narrative in such a manner that one can say that the passion narrative of Mark is narrated in the language of the Old Testament. The point is, however, that the allusions and ‘quotations’ form such an integral part of the passion narrative that it ts impossible for the naive reader to realize that the text is enriched by its intertextual relationships concerning the suffering of the Just.
One of the significant things about the use of the Old Testament in Mark is that he had no respect for the original context of the quotations and allusions to Old Testament writings in his text. The story of John the Baptist at the very beginning of the Gospel proves the point. In the first place the very first quotation (Mk 1:2-3) does not come from Isaiah the prophet, as Mark asserts. It is a composite reference to Exodus 23:20, Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 which he connects to Isaiah the prophet. The quotation is taken out of context and worked into his story of John and Jesus in order to show the relationship between the two. The beginning of the Gospel does not prove the fulfilment of the Old Testament, it characterises John as the predecessor of Jesus. Only at a later stage does the reader realize the resemblance between the apocalyptic John and the apocalyptic Jesus.
One of the inferences one should make from the use of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark is that the author created a new story with the aid of intertextual codes that helped him to communicate his own point of view. The Old Testament quotations and references formed part of the new story that Mark created in order to convince his readers of his point of view concerning Jesus and the implications of Jesus’ life, works and words for the prevailing situation.
Somebody may argue that the Old Testament is a special case and that it does not say much. However, let us argue the use of traditional material in the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of intertextuality.
It is an illusion to think that Mark was a conservative redactor. In fact, Mark not only reshaped his story of Jesus by retelling the story for the sake of a particular situation, he also told it from his own perspective. Whether he transmitted tradition ‘conservatively’ or ‘creatively’ is of little significance. Even eyewitnesses shape their messages for their own purposes. Vansina (1985:5) correctly observes:
…[M]ediation of perception by memory and emotional state shapes an account. Memory typically selects certain features from the successive perceptions and interprets them according to expectation, previous knowledge or the logic of ‘what must have happened’, and fills the gaps in perception.
This is all the more true of the Jesus tradition which has been shaped by eyewitnesses as well as those who retold the tradition for their own purposes and in their own circumstances. That is already clear from the different versions of the same stories of and about Jesus in the canonical gospels. First of all we do not have any (unbiased) eyewitness reports; furthermore, the retelling of the Jesus tradition was done in different circumstances for different purposes. This is, for instance, confirmed by the ‘same’ version of the ‘same’ parable in different contexts in the different gospels. Retelling of the ‘same’ event or word of a specific person involves creativity. What is apparent regarding the use of the Old Testament in Mark seems to be even more applicable to the tradition incorporated in the Gospel of Mark. Let us take individual units such as controversy stories between Jesus and his opponents in the Gospel of Mark as an example.
From a form-critical perspective most of these stories presuppose a sociological situation of conflict in early Christianity. In addition, some of the stories are transmitted in Mark’s Gospel in a mixed form — that is, a story which relates conflict between Jesus and opponents within the framework of a miracle story. These stories seem to have been created around a saying of Jesus and reflect situations in early Christianity which the other evangelists used in their own stories about Jesus. In retold form, these stories were used not only for different purposes but also for different messages, depending on new situations.
Retelling involves creativity, whether in oral or in written form. It is impossible to tell the ‘same’ story twice. Each telling has its own context and its own message. The truth of this statement is confirmed by the retelling of the stories of the Old Testament within the Old Testament, as well as in later Jewish literature. Each time a Story or event is retold, it is done for a specific purpose and from a specific point of view. In other words, each account involves creativity. The same applies to oral transmission of history.
Even if Mark’s version of narrative units is based on authoritative transmission of tradition, or on written accounts of certain chunks of material in his Gospel, he made up his own story by putting the narrative units into the order he wanted and into the framework he developed. It is important and significant to see that Mark knitted the Jesus tradition into a new narrative web of his own.
Even if he had based his version of Jesus’ speech on the Mount of Olives in Mark 13, for instance, on an existing Jewish flyleaf, as is often assumed, this narrated speech of Jesus, which is a network of quotations and allusions to the Old Testament, has its own Marcan message and function (see Vorster 1987). As it stands, it refers back to precursor texts and to intertextual codes of apocalyptic disruption and disaster, but it also takes up the apocalyptic theme of the imminent coming of the Son of Man, which is a Marcan creation (see Mack 1987). The same applies to other material in the Gospel of Mark which can probably be connected to pre-Marcan collections or pre-Marcan written or oral compositions.
In addition to the many studies on the texts behind and in the Gospel of Mark, two recent attempts have been made at describing the Gospel as the rewriting of Old Testament stories. Although I am not convinced about the total outcome of either (see Roth 1988; Miller & Miller 1990) they have both indicated how important it is to regard Mark’s Gospel as a creation of a new text. The Millers correctly observe that New Testament writers created what they call new midrashim on older texts. They argue that Mark did not simply interpret the Old Testament midrashically. Mark created a new midrash — that is, new Scripture in typical Jewish fashion. This is another way of seeing the importance of creativity in Mark’s Gospel. It also supports my argument.
We have already noticed that Mark did not hesitate to use the Old Testament out of context, and that it is probable that he did the same with the tradition he received. This simply underscores our notion that he retold tradition for his own purposes. By doing this Mark created a new text from other texts, traces of which can be seen in his text.
The relationship between the final text of the Gospel of Mark and precursor and other texts is an intertextual relationship. There is no causal relationship between this new text and the texts out of which Mark made his text. Mark quoted other texts, and his story alludes to other texts and absorbed other texts. This is how his story becomes meaningful and different from other stories with the same theme when the reader interprets Mark’s texts in the light of other texts known to him/her.
There is a total difference between an attempt where the Gospel of Mark is understood from the perspective of its production, and an attempt where it is understood from the perspective of its growth. The first approach seriously considers that any allusion or quotation from another text forms an integral part of the new text, even when it seems to be out of context. The latter regards the final text, which has relationships with precursor texts, as the result of a causal process.