Page:The production of the Gospel of Mark – An essay on intertextuality.pdf/8

Production of Mark 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. 392