Page:The production of the Gospel of Mark – An essay on intertextuality.pdf/6

Production of Mark In the next section an attempt will be made to take the fact seriously that Mark probably did not invent the material, but that he nevertheless made up his own story of Jesus for his own purposes and in his own circumstances. This will be done from the perspective of the production of the text and not from its growth. 



3 THE PRODUCTION OF MARK: MARK AND PRECURSOR TEXTS 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 390