In Word and Deed

Is this not the reason why you err, because you understand neither the scriptures nor the power of God? - Mark 12:24

Interpretation, literary critic Frederic Jameson once observed, "is not an isolated act, but takes place within a Homeric battlefield, on which a host of interpretive options are either openly or implicitly in conflict." Above all this is the case with biblical interpretation. Today in the church a crucial "battle for the Bible" is under way. It is not. however, the one defined by the old liberal vs. fundamentalist debate. It concerns how scripture will be used in the church in its struggle to decide where and how to stand in a world of epidemic violence and oppression.

It is nor enough simply to appeal to the Bible's "authority." There are self-proclaimed "Bible believing" Christians who are convinced that the president's military and foreign policies reflect divine imperatives. And there are other Christians who invoke the biblical mandates to provide sanctuary to fleeing refugees or beat swords into plowshares in their protest actions against the very same policies. Authority is nothing more or less than how we read the Bible, and then what we do with what we read. Authority is about interpretation and practice.

It is said that Karl Barth consulted two things each morning: the Bible and the newspaper. Interpretation of the Word must preserve a fundamental accountability to this world. This series of six studies on the gospel of Mark will endeavor to attend to this double responsibility. It acknowledges some of the difficult issues involved in interpreting this ancient story and gives priority to understanding the text first in its own literary and socio-cultural context.

At the same time, with an eye firmly fixed upon the social, political, and economical issues facing us in our world, these studies will take a firm stand on the "interpretive battlefield." You are encouraged to study along with the text of Mark before you - and the newspaper of your choice!

PROBABLY NO BIBLICAL BOOK has received more popular exposition and scholarly exegesis than the gospel of Mark. As the very first account of Jesus of Nazareth, it stands at the center of both historical and theological investigation. Throughout much of this century, however, most New Testament critics considered Mark theologically "primitive." The dominant schools of "form" and "redaction" analysis believed the text of the gospel could be dissected in order to ascertain the earliest traditions about Jesus. Concern to distinguish the alleged "authentic" sayings and events of the "Jesus of history" meant that critics tended to look through the text rather than at it.

Fortunately, despite these scholarly endeavors, conventional Christian wisdom continued to assume, out of respect for the scriptures, that the whole gospel should be taken seriously. But if a gospel is not an archaeological site through which we sift for fragments of antiquity, neither is it intended to be a scientific biography of Jesus. Centuries of comparative study of the four gospels has shown that they neither can nor should be harmonized; each is a distinct, purposeful portrait of Jesus. Each evangelist had a creative hand in adapting and arranging his sources according to the concerns facing the writer's audience - just as any preacher should.

It was Mark who invented the gospel form, a dramatic presentation of Jesus' ministry in carefully composed episodes. Like any good storyteller, Mark used the literary devices of plot, crisis, characterization, and setting to structure his account and to draw his readers into its pathos. In order to respect the whole narrative then, it is now widely accepted that Mark should be appraised with the tools of literary analysis. If we wish to discover what the author meant to say about Jesus, we must understand his "narrative strategy"; that is, attend not only to what Mark tells us, but also how he tells it.

Why, for example, does Mark's story begin and end with reference to Galilee, as opposed, say, to Luke's account, which begins and ends in Jerusalem? Why does Mark choose to narrate several important events twice? Why are the scribes always portrayed as the arch opponents of Jesus? Why do boat trips across the Sea of Galilee figure so prominently in the first half of the story, only to disappear in the second? And why does Mark, alone among the evangelists, decline to narrate an appearance by the resurrected Jesus, something so troubling to later readers that several apocryphal endings were added?

MARK'S NARRATIVE STRATEGY tells us a great deal about how he understood Jesus' message and practice to relate in his own social and historical context. This is because "story line" always reflects "worldview."

We observe this in our modern society every day, especially in the media, which are always "reporting" the world to us in the shape of stories. The media's stories too are the result of a highly selective and ideological editorial process. Why is a relatively minor State Department pronouncement given more time on the evening news than a major demonstration against intervention in Central America? And the stories we do hear have been care fully shaped already, with an angle for the media producer and a "catch" for the media consumer.

The point is not to denigrate the integrity of an ancient gospel by comparing it to that of the disinformation mills of modern media. It is only to recognize, with sociologists of culture, that human communication revolves around narrative forms (from literature or song to campaign speech or advertisement), and these in turn interpret the social formation from which they emerge. And every story, regardless of its own claims to be fictional or factual, has a social function in relation to the prevailing ideologies, authority structures, and economic mechanisms of that formation.

A given narrative will tend either to legitimate or subvert the dominant ideological assumptions. It might reinforce particular social patterns by glorifying them (for example, Sylvester Stallone's series of boxer-soldier-cop hero films), or by simply accepting them into the story-scape without question (most popular romance novels). Or it may challenge these assumptions, by criticizing or ridiculing key social policies or symbols (as in the South African play "Woza Albert!"), or by imagining an alternative world (as in much of Ursula LeGuin's fiction). This is why every ruling group, including that in the United States, endeavors to censor certain narratives and promote others.

Jameson refers to this as "narrative as a socially symbolic act." If we wish then to understand the significance of the gospel story for its world - and ours - we must examine the social function of its narrative strategy. And the same tools we use for reading Mark will be equally relevant to our reading of the newspaper. As we must strive to interpret Mark's symbolic use of bread and boat trips, so must we interpret the fictions of contemporary propaganda. What does Jesus mean by inviting disciples to "take up the cross," and what did [then-]President Reagan mean by claiming that "America is back walking tall"?

To give due place to narrative structure and symbolism in no way takes away from the gospel's historical character. History is itself only one kind of narrative, and it too always has a particular social function, as can be seen in any U.S. high school history textbook. Why is the story of pilgrim settlement more important than that of Native American culture? Where are the sections on black or labor history? And what about the contemporary struggle over how to depict the Vietnam War?

THE GOSPEL OF MARK is both a product and a reflection of a historical era far removed from our own. We must always seek to understand the gospel first within its own socio-cultural context, with particular attention to idiomatic expressions of "social discourse."

In our culture, consider news headlines such as "White House Warns Reds Over Star Wars" or "Redskins Roll Over 49ers," or the commercial jingle "Coke is it." These metaphors are as immediately intelligible to us as they are mysterious to a foreigner, who may understand the words but not the social meanings. Journalistic sensationalism and consumer seduction are common forms of social discourse to us, as are ceremonial chants or totems to other societies.

In Mark we encounter the idiomatic expressions of first-century Mediterranean social discourse. (I agree with those who place the writing of Mark in northern Palestine in the late years of the Jewish Revolt, just before the fall of the Temple in 70 C.E.). The single most important aspect of the social discourse of this time was the utter lack of distinction between the spiritual and the socio-political realms. It is simply historical nonsense to argue that Jesus' disputes were "religious" and not "political," or to describe his social world, as is commonly done, as a "theocracy."

Palestine was ruled not by God but by the complex condominium of Roman military-colonial bureaucracy and collaborating native Jewish aristocracy, each with their respective legitimating theologies. Church and state distinctions are part of modem dogma, and highly suspect. As anthropologist Mary Douglass is fond of saying, societies that think they are secularizing the highest (most sacred) social institutions only end up sacralizing the secular, hence the religious tone of political discourse in the United States.

We cannot hope to appreciate the social function of Mark's story about Jesus' healing of a leper (1:40ff.) without some grasp of the complex system of ritual purity regulations in Jewish culture at that time. Neither can we appreciate Jesus' parable about tenant farmers and absentee landlords (12:1ff.) without some idea of the social fabric of agrarian Palestine; or Jesus' lament over poor widows who were exploited by the profiteering of a scribal establishment (12:38ff.) without understanding the political economy of late second-Temple-era Judaism.

BIBLE READING is, then, something of a "cross-cultural" endeavor, and as such it is hard work. Yet, at the same time, we come to these stories believing that they speak powerfully and authoritatively to our social context as well. This gives both urgency and excitement to the labor of interpreting scripture.

A "socio-literary" interpretation, upon which the following studies of Mark are based, reads the gospel as a whole and assumes that there is nothing in the narrative that Mark did not include for a specific reason (much of which later evangelists, for different reasons, omitted). It focuses upon both the author's stories (content) and story lines (form) and pays close attention to all the devices used to present the "theater" of the drama. These are examined for their meaning and function in Mark's social world, and then in ours.

Mark was written as a manifesto for radical Christian discipleship, and, I believe, remains one today. In contrast to other writings of its time, it is a story about and for the poor and the common folk. Its narrative strategy is clearly subversive of the social status quo of Roman Palestine.

Mark's Jesus, through symbolic actions of word and deed, systematically challenges the dominant order, with its assumptions about power and piety, sacred space, and social class. And this Jesus forges a model of new social possibilities, in which the socially disenfranchised are welcomed to table and Jew and Gentile struggle to overcome the powerful ideologies of enmity between them.

The structure around which Mark builds this narrative is the ever-present dramatic tension of a double plot. One plot is the impending showdown between Jesus and his kingdom and the authorities and their cross. The other is the deepening misunderstanding of Jesus' way by his own closest followers. These plots converge tragically when Jesus' disciples abandon him at the very moment in which the authorities seize him (14:50).

It is part of the literary genius of Mark that the reader is compelled in the course of the narrative to identify with the disciples in their crisis and tragedy, as we shall see. We struggle with them to understand the meaning of Jesus' word and deed. Will we, as readers, allow this Jesus also to challenge the dominant social ideologies that condition us in our world? And most important, will we enlist into that terrible journey to "Jerusalem"?

Gospel, Wilderness, Temple
Mark opens his story of Jesus with a shocking manipulation of social discourse familiar to his audience: He titles his work a "gospel" (1:1). It was characteristic for ancient writers to establish their ideological credentials by appealing to a recognizable authority at the outset of their work - think of the credits in a modern film's opening moments. Thus Matthew, in good Jewish fashion, appeals to a genealogy (Matthew 1), while Luke, the Hellenistic historiographer, acknowledges his benefactor (Luke 1:1-4). But what was "gospel"?

The term, meaning literally "glad tidings," so thoroughly religious to us now, was to Mark's readers a wholly secular term, most commonly associated with Roman propagandizing. The imperial image was promoted among the far-flung provinces through a highly developed rhetorical tradition that wove together allegory and archetype with contemporary events and personalities. This included the eulogizing of Caesar as the "divine man," so well documented by the coins of the period and the later emperor-cults of Asia Minor. By calling his story of the anointed man Jesus a gospel, Mark sideswipes the authority of Rome by expropriating their vehicle of propagation for his own, quite non-imperial "good news."

Then, as the curtain rises upon the first act, we hear a voice from offstage reading from the Hebrew scriptures, the true legitimating authority (1:2). By anchoring his story in this prophetic voice, Mark implies that what is about to follow is a continuation of the salvation history narrated by Isaiah. This was a bold claim, coming at a time when many Jews believed that the prophetic voices of Israel had fallen silent forever. No, booms the voice, a new way is about to be constructed. The language calls to mind the journey of the people of God toward liberation (Exodus 23:20), and "way" will become in the story synonymous with the vocation of discipleship. Immediately there is dramatic tension. Something is about to happen. But what, or more important, where?

Mark's citation is in fact a quite conscious conflation of prophetic texts. The first part (1:2) is not Isaiah at all, but rather a paraphrase of Malachi's warning of the apocalyptic advent of God (Malachi 3:1). Conspicuously omitted, however, is Malachi's claim that this epiphany will take place "in the temple."

A Voice in the Wilderness
Where then will this great event take place? Now comes an almost literal quotation of Isaiah 40:3: The messenger will appear in the wilderness (1:3).

Wilderness (or desert) had many connotations for Mark's readers. Literally, it was a place of uninhabited desolation; symbolically, the refuge of the people of God in flight (Exodus and apocalyptic literature); geopolitically, a place in which contemporary resistance movements were spawned. The point is this: Mark could not have picked a narrative "coordinate" further removed from Malachi's temple. He has by omission implied a tension between two archetypically opposite symbolic spaces, a tension which will shortly become explicit.

The first act opens with the introduction of John the Baptist, who appears preaching repentance in the wilderness (1:4-6). John's costume is a good example of social discourse: Mark's audience would have immediately thought of Elijah. Mark uses John-as-Elijah to build upon the tensions he has just introduced. What was the last cry before the prophetic voices fell silent? It was Malachi's promise: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes" (Malachi 4:5).

The tension of expectation builds. Who was Elijah? The great prophet who went head to head with the powerful, as John will with Herod later in the story. Political tension is introduced.

In 1:5, Mark reports - in characteristic Semitic hyperbole - that "all of Judea and Jerusalem" came out to John (1:5) in the wilderness. Here the spatial tension (wilderness vs. temple) becomes manifest.

According to the dominant ideology of Judaism, Jerusalem was considered the center of the world to which all peoples would sooner or later come to worship (see Psalms 69:35, Isaiah 60:10-14). But for Mark the circulation of salvation history is reversed: The prophetic word is being regenerated not at Zion, but at the margins!

This is another wry sideswipe, this time at the Jewish ruling elite. The priestly establishment, who controlled the mechanisms of social redemption from their power base in the Jerusalem temple, would necessarily take strong exception to this wilderness revival.

Nowheresville and Apocalypse
All these tensions are deepened in the second act, in which Jesus from "Nazareth in Galilee" appears onstage (1:9). Mark was fully aware that introducing the main character in this fashion was tantamount to saying "Jesus from Nowheresville." There is no attestation to the village of Nazareth in any other ancient source; it is entirely unremarkable.

Galilee, a province in northern Palestine, was, however, notorious to good Jews. It was considered unclean since it was surrounded by Hellenistic cities, populated by every sort of Gentile, and geographically cut off from Judea by Samaria. Yet it is to this obscure figure, from these doubtful social origins, in this remote place, that the divine voice speaks.

In the account of Jesus' baptism, the story is suddenly invaded by apocalyptic imagery. Jesus rises from the river Jordan's waters to a vision of the heavens torn apart by a mysterious voice; and he is then driven further into the wilderness for a confrontation with Satan and the angels (1:10-13). Is this the "day of the Lord" for which the prophets yearned (see Isaiah 64:1)? Where then are the "new heavens and new earth"?

Apocalyptic symbolism was, in Mark's time, the popular social discourse of political dissent. Its mythic narrative heralded the "fall of the powers" as an end, not to the physical universe but to the order of oppression. Throughout the story, especially in the presentation of Jesus as the "Son of Man," Mark draws heavily upon the apocalyptic stock of Daniel, a manifesto of resistance to Hellenistic imperialism written two centuries before.

Mark's insertion of apocalyptic symbolics here gives such a political dimension to Jesus' baptism. In this ritual of new birth, Jesus is declared radically free of the social obligations as defined by the dominant order. Jesus becomes, so to speak, an "outlaw"; he will indeed shortly begin challenging the structures of law and order around him.

This subversive edge is sharpened by Mark's transition in 1:14. We read that Jesus takes up John's preaching of repentance after John was arrested. This tale of political intrigue, however, Mark suspends for later in the story (6:14ff.).

EVENTS HAVE UNFOLDED in rapid sequence in these opening verses of the gospel. "Isaiah" announced the arrival of a messenger, and John appeared; John announced the arrival of a "stronger one" (1:8), and Jesus appeared (1:9). Now, in 1:15, Jesus announces the arrival of the critical moment of the kingdom. This narrative strategy builds in the reader a sense of being on the verge of something momentous. The world is about to end!

What happens in the next scene is thus exceedingly anticlimactic: Jesus simply bids some common laborers to accompany him on a mission (1:15ff.). Yet Mark's "call" stories in fact narrate the concrete clash between the old order and the invasion of the new. Here the teacher is shown choosing his students, a reversal of the normal practice of rabbinic recruitment in Mark's day. Jesus encounters people at their workplaces - a family fishing business (1:17,19), a toll collection office (2:14) - yet he calls them to abandon their trades. Such a demand in antiquity would have entailed more than loss of economic security, but a rupture in the social fabric as well, since the world of the extended family centered around the means of livelihood.

The call to discipleship is an uncompromising break with "business as usual." The kingdom demands not just an assent of the heart, but a radical reordering of all socio-economic relations.

These fishermen are then called to become "fishers of men" (1:17), a notoriously misunderstood metaphor in the evangelical tradition. The image is taken from Jeremiah 16:16 as a symbol of God's censure of Israel. Elsewhere it is a euphemism for judgment upon the rich (Amos 4:2) and powerful (Ezekiel 29:4). Taking this mandate for his own, Jesus invites these common folk to join him in overturning the structures of power and privilege in the world.

The world is being turned upside down - including our personal universes. The kingdom has dawned, and it is identified with the discipleship adventure.

Exorcism and the Establishment
The tone of the narrative so far makes confrontation inevitable, and it erupts in act four. Jesus inaugurates his public ministry with a dramatic exorcism in a Capernaum synagogue (1:21ff.). Here we encounter for the first time a "miracle story."

The manipulation of the physical or spirit world is not the central point of these stories; what the act symbolizes is most important. Mark goes to great lengths to discourage us from seeing Jesus as a popular magician. Not only does Jesus constantly discourage people from dwelling upon acts of healing or exorcism in themselves (cf. 1:44; 3:12; 5:18,43; 7:36), he actually exhorts his disciples (and the reader) to look into the deeper meaning of his symbolic actions (8:17-21).

In 1:21 Mark is again employing the symbolic use of space. Jesus has suddenly gone from the margins to the heart of the provincial Jewish social order: a Capernaum synagogue on the Sabbath. Immediately identified with this space is a plot conflict which will become central to the entire story: the struggle between Jesus and the scribal establishment. The exorcism story proper is framed (1:22,27) by Mark's report of the amazement of the crowd that Jesus represents an authority "unlike that of the scribes."

No sooner has Jesus set foot upon the scribes' turf than he is confronted by a man with an "unclean spirit" (1:23). The demon challenges Jesus (1:24) with the protest of someone anticipating invasion by hostile forces: Why do you meddle with us? (see Judges 11:12, 1 Kings 17:18). The demon's defiance quickly, however, turns to fear: "Have you come to destroy us?" Upon whose behalf is the demon speaking? Could he be the voice of the very scribal aristocracy whose "space" - its social role and power - Jesus is threatening?

Such an interpretation may seem at first far-fetched - until we examine the only other episode in the gospel in which Jesus converses directly with a demon. This exorcism episode takes place in an entirely different symbolic context, but exhibits striking parallels to the synagogue story. Later in the gospel, Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee to Gentile territory for the first time (4:35-5:1). Again, just as he sets foot on this "foreign" turf, Jesus is confronted by a man "with an unclean spirit," who also challenges his mission (5:2ff.).

This latter story is much more elaborate, including its symbolic inferences. The setting is designed to suggest to the Jews the prototypically "unclean." The Decapolis ("Ten Cities"), one of the eastern frontiers of the Roman empire, was strongly pagan. The cemetery environment (the madman dwells "among the tombs"), and the subsequent role of the herd of pigs, reeks of impurity (see Isaiah 65:4). The demon's protest is directly symmetrical to the synagogue encounter (5:7). This time, however, Jesus is addressed not with the Semitic title "holy one of God," but the very Hellenistic "son of the Most High God."

The clue to the social symbolism of the story of the Gerasene demoniac is its recurring military terminology. The powerful demonic horde identifies itself to Jesus as "Legion," a Latin term which had only one meaning in Mark's social formation: a division of Roman soldiers. Jesus drives Legion into a "herd" of pigs (5:11). This term - inappropriate for pigs, who do not travel in herds - was sometimes used to refer to a band of military recruits. Jesus' command, "he gave them leave," is a military order, and the word describing the pigs' rush into the lake connotes troops charging into battle (5:13).

Enemy soldiers being swallowed in the sea brings to mind, of course, the Exodus 14 narrative. It can hardly be incidental that the number of swine drowned, "about two thousand" (5:13), corresponds to the number of soldiers in a Roman legion! Finally, when we read that Legion, who is so powerful that no one can restrain him (5:4), "begged him earnestly not to send them out of the district" (5:10), the conclusion is irresistible that this is a symbolic representation of the Roman military occupation of Palestine.

One social anthropologist has noted that in the folklore of many cultures, oppression by a foreign power often is symbolically articulated as possession by a foreign spirit. This would explain why this exorcism provokes the hostility of the surrounding townspeople (5:14-17). Historically, Jewish struggles for self-determination and the inevitable Roman backlashes had made more than one city in the Decapolis region a battleground.

THESE TWO EXORCISMS represent a dramatization of the "inaugural challenge" posed by the kingdom to the powers. To interpret them solely as isolated acts of curing epileptics is to miss the profound socio-political impact of story-as-symbolic-discourse. The demons personify - quite credibly as far as the ancient mind was concerned - Jewish scribal and Roman imperial power, respectively. They correctly perceive Jesus as challenging their continued hegemony.

In Mark's narrative strategy, once this demon has been symbolically vanquished in exorcism, Jesus is free to begin his compassionate ministry to the masses. Hence, upon leaving the synagogue, Jesus attends to the healing of the Jewish crowds (1:29ff.) and does the same for the Gentiles the next time he has crossed the sea back to their turf (6:53ff.). Oppression has been unmasked, and liberation announced.

It has been pointed out that most Hellenistic miracle traditions originated from the upper classes and thus stressed the role of divination in the maintenance of the status quo (think of the Delphic oracle). In contrast, the gospels reflect a perspective of social dispossession in which charismatic miracles assert the possibility of a radical change in the ordering of power. We will see this symbolic aspect in every case of healing and exorcism in Mark.

Throughout the opening acts of his story, Mark has upset the readers' expectations by subverting their social discourse and challenging recognized authority structures through dramatic action. His narrative functions to undermine the symbolic equilibrium of the dominant social order, in order to clear space for a new world to break in. This new order, as we shall see in the next study, is embodied in the alternative practice of Jesus and his community. Thus does Mark begin the gospel's bold challenge to the ideological strongholds of Roman Palestine - and imperial America.

Ched Myers, a longtime activist against the nuclear arms race in the Pacific region, was completing a book on Mark's gospel when this article appeared.