[Dialogue] 4/01/10, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part XVIII: Mark, the First Gospel

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Thursday April 01, 2010 

The Origins of the New Testament
Part XVIII: Mark, the First Gospel

The original gospel, the one we know as Mark, was written, I believe, after the fall of Jerusalem and its subsequent destruction by the Roman army under the command of a general named Titus, in 70 CE. It was the climax of a war that began in Galilee in 66 and would finally culminate in a mass suicide of the final defenders of the Jewish cause at a place called Masada in 73. The echoes of this fall of the "eternal" city are heard in a number of places throughout Mark's text. The apocalyptic words recorded in Chapter 13 seem to describe the pain endured by the residents of the holy city in that catastrophe and includes the suggestion that they must flee into the hills of Judea and perhaps even to Galilee. The story of Jesus being transfigured on a mountain in Chapter 9 a lso suggests that in the minds of his disciples he has now replaced the Temple as the meeting place between God and human life. On him the "shekinah," the light of God, that once was believed to have enveloped the Temple as a sign of God's presence now shines on him. I do not believe that a story like that of the Transfiguration would have been written unless the Temple itself had not already been destroyed. Even the rise of the story of a traitor named Judas, introduced for the first time in Christian history by Mark's gospel, suggests that those Jews, who were followers of Jesus, wanted to put some distance between themselves and the Temple authorities. To make the name of the traitor identical to the name of the now defeated nation, Judah, over which the Temple authorities had once exercised authority, accomplished that task. These are just a few of the things that cause me to date the writing of the first gospel around the years 71-72.
We have previously suggested that the synagogue had to be the setting in which the story of Jesus was remembered, recalled and retold during the time that we call the "oral period" of Christian history. That assertion is based on the fact that when this first gospel appears the story of Jesus has already been wrapped inside the sacred scriptures of the Jews. This could only have happened in the synagogue, since that would be the only place in which first-century people would ever hear the Jewish Scriptures read, taught or engaged. There was no such thing in that day as a "family Bible." Books, which had to be copied by hand, were far too expensive to be individually owned, so the scrolls of the Hebrew Scriptures were community property — treasured, kept and read only in the sacred setting of the s ynagogue.
When Mark's Gospel appeared, its text revealed that the memory of Jesus had already been incorporated into those Jewish scriptures. The story of Jesus had been orally transmitted in and through the synagogue. Mark reveals this in the first verse of his gospel when he announces that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ "as it is written in the prophets." Then he starts his story by quoting first Malachi and then Isaiah. When this gospel introduces John the Baptist for the first time it is clear that John has already been interpreted as the Old Testament figure of Elijah, who in the expectations of the Jews had to precede the coming of the messiah. John is clothed by Mark in the raiment of Elijah, camel's hair and a girdle around his waist. He is placed in the desert where Elijah was said to dwell. He was given the diet of locusts and wild honey that the Hebrew Scriptures said was the diet that Elijah ate. Then Mark relates the story of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River at the hands of John the Baptist. That was the moment, Mark asserts, when the power of God in the form of the Holy Spirit entered into the human Jesus and he was acclaimed to be God's son. Mark has obviously never heard of the story of the virgin birth, which offers a different way for this divine presence to enter Jesus. Next Mark moves on to tell the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness for forty days, but he gives no content to those temptations. That was destined to come in later gospels that expanded Mark with developing stories. One can see the oral period at work here, for in the synagogue on the Sabbath first the law was read, then the prophets and then the disciples of Jesus would relate Jesus stories that seemed appropriate to those readings. Increasingly they saw in the Hebrew Scriptures the anticipation of the messiah's life and when they became convinced that Jesus was the expected messiah, they began to interpret these scriptures as antici patory of their day and the life of Jesus became more and more the one to whom all the Hebrew Scriptures pointed.
The second clue that reveals the synagogue as the place in which the story of Jesus was remembered, told and retold is that the gospel of Mark reflects the liturgical year of the Jews and thus has an appropriate story about Jesus designed to be read at each of the great liturgical observances of that year. One cannot see this, however, if one is not familiar with these liturgical synagogue patterns relived annually by the Jews. So let me file, almost by title, the major events recalled in the worship life of the Jewish people during their liturgy. 
The first worship event in the synagogue, which marked liturgically the birth of the Jewish nation, was called "the Passover." It re-enacted annually the Jewish flight from slavery in Egypt and thus their beginnings as a separate and distinct people. Passover is to the Jews what the Fourth of July is to the citizens of the United States. It was celebrated on the 14th and 15th days of the Jewish month of Nisan which, according to the book of Leviticus, was the first month of the Jewish calendar, although Jewish practice was not consistent as to when the year began.
The second great observance of the Jewish year was Shavuot, or Pentecost, which comes fifty days after Passover, hence the name Pentecost, which means fifty days. On this day the Jews commemorated God's giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, and it was observed in traditional Jewish circles with a 24-hour vigil dedicated to recalling and celebrating the beauty and wonder of the Torah. The law represented to the Jews God's greatest gift to God's people.
After Shavuot there were no major holidays in the Jewish year for about four months. Then in the seventh month of their calendar, a month known as Tishri, three major observances occurred in rapid succession. The celebration began on the first day of Tishri with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah was observed by blowing the shofar, the ram's horn, to gather the people together. When they gathered the announcement was made that the Kingdom of God was at hand and the people were urged to prepare for its arrival. It was the promise of each new year that the Kingdom of God would someday come.
On the tenth day of Tishri came the observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This was a day of deep penitence that included both confession and sacrifice. Liturgically this was an attempt to cleanse the people of their sins and thus to allow them to have their sins borne away, which would, of course, leave them fit to enter the presence of God as only the High Priest could now do and he only once a year at Yom Kippur.
Beginning on the fifteenth day of the month of Tishri and lasting for eight days was the Festival of Booths, also called Tabernacles, or Sukkoth. This was the harvest festival, the Jewish day of Thanksgiving, but it also recalled the years of Jewish history when the people were homeless wanderers in the wilderness between Egypt and the land they regarded as their promised destiny. It was, therefore, observed by the erection of booths or temporary shelters, which recalled their wilderness years. Sukkoth was the happiest and most anticipated holiday of the Jewish year. It was also the last Jewish festival for about two months.
When the month of Kislev arrived, located as it was in the dead of winter, the Jews observed a "festival of lights" known then as Dedication, but known today as Hanukkah. This was a celebration born in the Maccabean period of Jewish history (167-63 BCE) and it recalled the restoration of the light of God to the Temple after it had been defiled by the Seleucid King of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, who was defeated in battle by Judas Maccabeus. The end of the Jewish year came in the early spring with the month of Adar, which brought the people back liturgically to the month of Nisan and its celebration of the birth of their nation.
Every year the people of the synagogue relived this cycle of feasts and fasts and every year for at least forty years the followers of Jesus, who were still part of the synagogue, thought of him and spoke of him inside this liturgical framework. When the first gospel of Mark was written, this liturgical framework was clearly present and it became, probably quite unconsciously, the organizing principle of Mark's gospel — and because both Matthew and Luke built their gospels on Mark's model it became the organizing principle of all three.
We know that Mark began the custom of setting the story of the crucifixion inside the celebration of Passover and because of this Jesus was increasingly seen as the new paschal lamb who, like the lamb of Passover, died to dispel the power of death. What we do not see so clearly is that if we attach Mark's story of Jesus' passion to the Jewish season of Passover and then roll Mark's gospel backward across the liturgical year of the Jews, we will discover that an appropriate Jesus narrative falls at exactly the right spot in the gospel to fit the calendar to enable it to illumine the festivals and fasts of the Jewish year and in their proper order.
Next week I will develop that correlation, and then I trust it will become clear that Mark was written as a liturgical book to be read in the synagogue with the purpose of revealing Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. It is not a history book. It incorporates the memory of Jesus into the ongoing life of the synagogue. If you, my readers, are like me, then once this key unlocks the story, the gospel of Mark will never be the same.

–John Shelby Spong
 



Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong


John from Llansadwm, Wales, UK, writes:
There is a great deal in the liturgy that cannot be taken literally. How can someone recite the words with a good conscience?
John from Llansadwm, Wales, UK, writes:
There is a great deal in the liturgy that cannot be taken literally. How can someone recite the words with a good conscience?



Dear John,
Literalism is not the only way to understand words. Words are also pointers to a truth, which they cannot articulate. Words are symbols designed to free the mind from culturally imposed straitjackets. Why is it that religion's quest for security seems to dictate that if something is not literally true, it is not true at all?
Is the story of Little Red Riding Hood literally true? Of course not. Isn't it an attempt to translate a human experience that is profoundly true in a story form? Of course. The experience is puberty. The Red Riding Hood is the symbol of the menstrual flow of adolescence. The pubescent young girl is instructed to keep on the "straight and narrow" path through the woods or the wolf will get her. Is that not a way to address a true experience in non-literal story form?
I doubt if Humpty Dumpty ever sat on a great wall only to fall and be shattered in such a way that all the king's horses and all the king's men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. I do think it is literally true, however, that some human actions have irrevocable consequences, which can never be overcome, so this nursery rhyme points to truth that mere words cannot capture.
Much of the religious language of both the Bible and the liturgy is this kind of communication. No, Jesus was not born of a virgin, but people met something in him that they did not believe human life by itself could ever have produced. No, Jesus did not ascend into the sky of a three-tiered universe, but people were convinced that since he had come from God, he had to return to God, and so the ascension was the way they chose to communicate this truth.
Liturgy is a series of pointers to that which words cannot embrace. That is why liturgical words are expanded, puffed up and not capable ever of being literalized without being falsified.
Take off your blinders, John, and listen to the liturgy with your heart and your emotions. They constitute a song, which I, for one, still find great meaning in singing.

– John Shelby Spong






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