Page:The production of the Gospel of Mark – An essay on intertextuality.pdf/3

W S Vorster that Matthew and Luke made use of Mark in compiling their Gospels, and that they also had a hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus normally called Q (that is, ‘Quelle’ = ‘source’), at their disposal when they wrote their Gospels. On the grounds of this hypothesis it is much easier to explain the origin of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke than it is to explain that of Mark. The question therefore arises whether Mark also had other, perhaps written, sources in addition to the ‘traditional material’ referred to above when he wrote his Gospel.

First of all there is the so-called Old Testament. It is probable that Mark had copies of the Old Testament in either Greek or Hebrew in written form at his disposal. Whether he had these copies on his desk is difficult to determine. This is also not the place to argue the problem. That his Gospel echoes the Old Testament is clear from both the quotations and the many allusions to Old Testament writings. There are, moreover, large chunks of material in the Gospel, such as a collection of miracle stories, parables, an apocalyptic speech and the passion narrative, for example, which have prompted scholars to investigate the possibility of other written sources behind the Gospel of Mark (see Vielhauer 1975:332-336 and Neirynck et al 1992:646). The passion narrative is presumably related to the Gospel of Peter, which is basically a passion story (see Crossan 1988); Mark 13 is based on an earlier Jewish leaflet (see Brandenburger 1984); Mark 4 on a collection of parables, and the miracle stories in chapters 5 and 7 on catenae of miracle stories (see Kuhn 1971). It has furthermore been proposed that some of the sayings material is also related to the material found in Q (see e g Neirynck 1991:421ff). In addition, it has been argued that Mark’s Gospel is based on an original lost Urmarkus or Grundschrift being either the ‘proto-Mark’ or ‘deutero-Mark’, or that it is a revision of the Secret Gospel referred to by Clement of Alexandria (see Koester 1990:273 ff). However it may be, there seems to be little evidence that Mark invented the material in his Gospel.

From the perspective of the making of the Gospel, different viewpoints have been advanced in accordance with views on the role attributed to the person who was finally responsible for composing the Gospel. Mark has been regarded as a collector, a composer, a redactor (editor) and an author (see Vorster 1980). These perceptions are based on data assumptions. Underlying assumptions concerning authorship, the phenomenon text, text types, the history of early Christianity, the origin of early Christian literature and other aspects of the Gospel are responsible for the current state of affairs. Let us briefly discuss this viewpoint since I have treated the problem elsewhere in more detail (see Vorster 1980).

In the 1920's the idea that Mark was written by an author was replaced by the current view that he was nothing more than a collector of traditions. The Gospels Rh