The Beginning of the Gospel by Joshua D. Garroway

Author:Joshua D. Garroway
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783319899961
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Between these verses, Mark adds a non-sequitur: “First the gospel must be preached to all the Gentiles” (Mark 13:10). Commentators have supplied various reasons to construe this verse as an insertion by Mark, usually pointing to its distinctively Markan vocabulary or the contrast between its prose style and the poetic arrangement of Mark 9, 11–13. Most revealing, however, is Mark’s inclusion of the word “first.” If Mark 13:10 said something along the lines of “this is your opportunity to preach the gospel to all the nations,” it would fit nicely. In that case, Jesus would say that the appearances before governors and kings will provide the disciples the opportunity to spread the gospel, at which hour they should not be frightened by the stage. But “first” mucks everything up. It probably links back to “this is not yet the end” in Mark 13:7, but its appearance in between Mark 13:9–11 (rather than before or after them) appears nonsensical because those verses form a natural temporal sequence: you will be brought to courts, where you will know what to say. The transition between Mark 13:9 and 13:11 may even have been smoother before Mark stuck 13:10 in between them. There is no reason for the temporal clause at the beginning of Mark 13:11, and even more so for the repetition of “deliver up.” The redundancy is best explained if Mark inserted 13:10 after 13:9 and then tried to smooth out the text by adding a resumption clause at the beginning of 13:11.

Of the seven occurrences of euangelion in Mark, only Mark 14:9 is not obviously the result of Mark’s redaction. To the end of the story of Jesus’s anointing at Bethany (Mark 14:1–8), someone has added a saying of Jesus: “Truly I say to you that wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, even that which she has done will be mentioned in remembrance of her” (Mark 14:9). Mark did not necessarily add the verse himself, however. He may have received the story in this form.33 Nevertheless, Marxsen concludes probably correctly that “what is true of six passages is probably true of the seventh.”34 If Mark added euangelion in the previous six examples, the most likely source of the insertion in Mark 14:9 is also Mark. In which case, all seven instances of the gospel in Mark result from deliberate redaction.35

Mark, it seems, is bent on linking Paul’s gospel to Jesus and his ministry. Not only does he inject the gospel into the Jesus traditions he organized and transmitted, he sets the term “gospel” over the entire narrative (Mark 1:1) and makes it into the teaching of Jesus himself (Mark 1:14–15). Unsurprisingly, then, Mark and Mark’s Jesus endorse the three fundamental tenets of Paul’s gospel. Over the course of the narrative, Mark demonstrates unmistakably (1) that the humiliating death of Christ on the cross provides redemption for the sinful; (2) that this redemption is available to Jews first but also to Gentiles ; and (3) that the redemption afforded by the cross renders the Law obsolete.

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