gMark is intended to be history writing
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 12:25 am
I think the crucial evidence that the author of gMark presents his story, his narrative, as history writing comes right off the bat, when he inserts his story into the frame of prophecy: "As it is written in the prophet Isaiah" (Mark 1:2). His story may be one very special form of history writing, but nevertheless history writing indeed, i.e. a story relating real events.
To my knowledge there is no evidence that the prophetic predictions of Scripture were generally considered as anything other than predictions of actual, real events to come. That is, reality. And that is what history is thought to be: reality. As such, prophecy is a kind of proleptic history writing, because the real author of the prophecies was considered to be somebody who knows what is going to happen in the course of history, and that is God. Therefore, when Mark presents his story as fulfilment of prophecy he presents it as real events of the (recent) past, and that is the most basic definition of history writing.
And so everytime Jesus does something in the story where he fulfils prophecy or speaks about the fulfilment of prophecy this is evidence that we're dealing with history writing, because prophecy is history, not fiction. It makes no sense at all to write a 'fictional' or symbolic story of somebody who fulfils prophecy. Prophecy is history.
So when many of the characters in the story are persons we know to be historical from outside the biblical writings, such as Pilate and Herod, this is simply because Mark is intending to present historical events. Another small piece of evidence might be the appearance of the character Simon of Cyrene, because Mark here seems to explicitly refer to his cross bearing as a historical event when introduces this character with reference to his sons, which is a reference to persons in the real world, i.e. outside of the narrative.
The three other gospels in the NT have even more explicit evidence that they also want to present historical events. Luke explicitly presents his story as history writing in his introduction, when he says he wants to do the same thing that "many" othes have tried to do, i.e. to write an "orderly account of the deeds that have been fulfilled amongst us" (Luke 1:1-4). Here he is referring to historical accounts that he knows of, which may in fact be the other gospels.
John at the very end of his story tells us that he has only presented some of the "signs" that "Jesus did", but that he did many other signs also, and as such this author also means for his story to be history writing (20:30-31). The extended ending to John even explicitly assures us that the things presented in the story are historically true, as they are the written testimony of a disciple, and "we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24).
Both Luke and John, then, has a narrator who addresses the reader directly in a way that reveals the intended historical aspect of the story. And this is also something that normally characterizes history writing, that the narrator of the events appears to the reader overtly as a chronicler or historian, from time to time addressing the reader directly with his personal comments or opinions on the related events.
Like Mark, Matthew doesn't do this same thing as Luke and John, with an overt narrator. But there are even more evidence in gMatt than in gMark that he also intends his story to be history writing. First of all the many fulfilment quotations: "All this happened to fulfil what has been spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying: 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and ...'" (Matt 1:23). It couldn't be more clear that this is intended to be historical events narrated in the story. Another small piece of evidence in gMatt is one place where there is an overt narrator, in Matt 28:15, where the soldiers at the tomb are given a sum of money to propogate a false story that the disciples had stolen Jesus' body: "And this story is still told among the Jews to this day" (Matt 28:15). Here, the narrator in gMatt suddenly (and uncharacteristically for gMatt) addresses the reader directly in a way that reveals that this event with the soldiers and their false story is the historical cause for this lie among the Jews.
So we can see that all four gospels clearly intend their stories to be understood as historical events. The gospel that has the least characteristics of history writing is gMark, in that the narrator is extremely covert and never ever addresses the reader directly in a way where he breaks his narration of his narrative, as chroniclers usually do. The one exception, like I pointed out, might be the reference to two persons that have no relation to the story, i.e. the sons of Simon of Cyrene, "Rufus and Alexander". They have no role in the narrative but the narrator apparantly expects his readers to know these two persons in the 'real' world, i.e. outside of the narrated events, whereby the narrator steps away from his role as narrator and becomes a real person who references other real persons known by him and his 'real' readers.
Now, the gospels' special form of history writing of course do not live up to our modern form of history writing. Actually, I believe that it didn't even live up to the contemporary understanding of history writing. Except for one particular form of history writing that we know of: Scriptures (OT).
Scriptures were generally regarded as history writing, of this there can be no doubt. The stories of Adam and Eve, the Flood, Abraham, the Exodus, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Exile, the whole thing, all regarded as historical events of the past. In this way Scriptures presented a unified version of world history. And like I said, prophecy is also history writing, the future historical events, as it were.
One characteristic of the Jewish and Christian 'apocalyptic' worldview was that they had had revelations that had revealed the meaning of the prophecies, meaning that they knew the future events to come. In this way they had a revelation of the entire world history: from beginning to end. Their understanding, or version, of world history was characterized by the same traits that characterizes a narrative, a story. History as story. Meaning that world history had characters that act throughout the whole story to form a unified plot. And like most stories, narratives, world history was also structured according to the scheme: harmony -> disharmony -> harmony restored.
The harmony/disharmony element in this story consists basically of one thing: obedience/disobedience to God. As long as there is disobedience to God, there is a story, there is disharmony, and as soon as the disharmony vanishes, there are no more events to relate, and the story ends, like with all other stories: They lived happily ever after. No more disharmony means end of story. A story about harmony is no story. And because world history is such a story, then world history ends when disharmony ends, when harmony is restored, and in the case of this story of reality, world history, that means when there is universal obedience to God. And everyone lives happily ever after, end of story, end of history. They lived happily ever after, in fact, eternally ever after!
This means in turn, that the worldview of these religious folks were that reality is in fact a narrative. The main characters throughout the great narrative of world history is God, Israel, humanity (or 'the nations') and Satan, and as a new character compared to the Jewish version, God's son. So everything that happens is then chategorized under these characters. If the Romans do something, it is the character 'the nations' who is acting, and as such the Romans are given the same character traits as this character has always had throughout history, as revealed in Scripture.
Now we can see why Mark's story is history writing: Reality is a narrative, history is a story. All the various complicated events that take place in the 'real' world are in fact events that are done by the 'main characters' of reality, God, Israel, humanity, Satan or God's son. No matter what great event takes place, such as the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, this is viewed as part of the great meta-narrative, so that it has to be one of the main characters who is acting. Although on the surface it looks like it is just the Romans, it is in fact the character God who is acting against the character Israel using the character 'the nations', as God sometimes do in this story.
But there is the problem with the 'history writing' of gMark that the narrator, the 'chronicler', does not come across at all like a chronicler. He doesn't even try, except perhaps for the introduction in Mark 1:2. Some events are narrated where we get to know the inner thoughts of the characters and some of the events couldn't possibly have been known by the 'chronicler' (Mark), such as Jesus' private prayer in Gethsemane. It can only be described as history writing which has the characteristics of what we would call fiction.
We simply have to conclude, that even though Mark wanted his story to be understood as historical, he also had no problem in presenting history in a kind of ordered way, so that it comes across to us as fictional. So the real problem is, that Mark wanted his story to be historical and at the same time he wanted it to be didactic and symbolic. But he definately wanted the events to be understood as on the whole historical, or else he wouldn't have presented them as fulfilment of prophecies. Also, the crucifixion of Jesus would surely have been regarded as a historical event in itself.
In the end, I think he just tried to mimick the 'history writing' he and his fellow Christians found in Scripture. Especially the stories of Elijah and Elisha.
To my knowledge there is no evidence that the prophetic predictions of Scripture were generally considered as anything other than predictions of actual, real events to come. That is, reality. And that is what history is thought to be: reality. As such, prophecy is a kind of proleptic history writing, because the real author of the prophecies was considered to be somebody who knows what is going to happen in the course of history, and that is God. Therefore, when Mark presents his story as fulfilment of prophecy he presents it as real events of the (recent) past, and that is the most basic definition of history writing.
And so everytime Jesus does something in the story where he fulfils prophecy or speaks about the fulfilment of prophecy this is evidence that we're dealing with history writing, because prophecy is history, not fiction. It makes no sense at all to write a 'fictional' or symbolic story of somebody who fulfils prophecy. Prophecy is history.
So when many of the characters in the story are persons we know to be historical from outside the biblical writings, such as Pilate and Herod, this is simply because Mark is intending to present historical events. Another small piece of evidence might be the appearance of the character Simon of Cyrene, because Mark here seems to explicitly refer to his cross bearing as a historical event when introduces this character with reference to his sons, which is a reference to persons in the real world, i.e. outside of the narrative.
The three other gospels in the NT have even more explicit evidence that they also want to present historical events. Luke explicitly presents his story as history writing in his introduction, when he says he wants to do the same thing that "many" othes have tried to do, i.e. to write an "orderly account of the deeds that have been fulfilled amongst us" (Luke 1:1-4). Here he is referring to historical accounts that he knows of, which may in fact be the other gospels.
John at the very end of his story tells us that he has only presented some of the "signs" that "Jesus did", but that he did many other signs also, and as such this author also means for his story to be history writing (20:30-31). The extended ending to John even explicitly assures us that the things presented in the story are historically true, as they are the written testimony of a disciple, and "we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24).
Both Luke and John, then, has a narrator who addresses the reader directly in a way that reveals the intended historical aspect of the story. And this is also something that normally characterizes history writing, that the narrator of the events appears to the reader overtly as a chronicler or historian, from time to time addressing the reader directly with his personal comments or opinions on the related events.
Like Mark, Matthew doesn't do this same thing as Luke and John, with an overt narrator. But there are even more evidence in gMatt than in gMark that he also intends his story to be history writing. First of all the many fulfilment quotations: "All this happened to fulfil what has been spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying: 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and ...'" (Matt 1:23). It couldn't be more clear that this is intended to be historical events narrated in the story. Another small piece of evidence in gMatt is one place where there is an overt narrator, in Matt 28:15, where the soldiers at the tomb are given a sum of money to propogate a false story that the disciples had stolen Jesus' body: "And this story is still told among the Jews to this day" (Matt 28:15). Here, the narrator in gMatt suddenly (and uncharacteristically for gMatt) addresses the reader directly in a way that reveals that this event with the soldiers and their false story is the historical cause for this lie among the Jews.
So we can see that all four gospels clearly intend their stories to be understood as historical events. The gospel that has the least characteristics of history writing is gMark, in that the narrator is extremely covert and never ever addresses the reader directly in a way where he breaks his narration of his narrative, as chroniclers usually do. The one exception, like I pointed out, might be the reference to two persons that have no relation to the story, i.e. the sons of Simon of Cyrene, "Rufus and Alexander". They have no role in the narrative but the narrator apparantly expects his readers to know these two persons in the 'real' world, i.e. outside of the narrated events, whereby the narrator steps away from his role as narrator and becomes a real person who references other real persons known by him and his 'real' readers.
Now, the gospels' special form of history writing of course do not live up to our modern form of history writing. Actually, I believe that it didn't even live up to the contemporary understanding of history writing. Except for one particular form of history writing that we know of: Scriptures (OT).
Scriptures were generally regarded as history writing, of this there can be no doubt. The stories of Adam and Eve, the Flood, Abraham, the Exodus, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the Exile, the whole thing, all regarded as historical events of the past. In this way Scriptures presented a unified version of world history. And like I said, prophecy is also history writing, the future historical events, as it were.
One characteristic of the Jewish and Christian 'apocalyptic' worldview was that they had had revelations that had revealed the meaning of the prophecies, meaning that they knew the future events to come. In this way they had a revelation of the entire world history: from beginning to end. Their understanding, or version, of world history was characterized by the same traits that characterizes a narrative, a story. History as story. Meaning that world history had characters that act throughout the whole story to form a unified plot. And like most stories, narratives, world history was also structured according to the scheme: harmony -> disharmony -> harmony restored.
The harmony/disharmony element in this story consists basically of one thing: obedience/disobedience to God. As long as there is disobedience to God, there is a story, there is disharmony, and as soon as the disharmony vanishes, there are no more events to relate, and the story ends, like with all other stories: They lived happily ever after. No more disharmony means end of story. A story about harmony is no story. And because world history is such a story, then world history ends when disharmony ends, when harmony is restored, and in the case of this story of reality, world history, that means when there is universal obedience to God. And everyone lives happily ever after, end of story, end of history. They lived happily ever after, in fact, eternally ever after!
This means in turn, that the worldview of these religious folks were that reality is in fact a narrative. The main characters throughout the great narrative of world history is God, Israel, humanity (or 'the nations') and Satan, and as a new character compared to the Jewish version, God's son. So everything that happens is then chategorized under these characters. If the Romans do something, it is the character 'the nations' who is acting, and as such the Romans are given the same character traits as this character has always had throughout history, as revealed in Scripture.
Now we can see why Mark's story is history writing: Reality is a narrative, history is a story. All the various complicated events that take place in the 'real' world are in fact events that are done by the 'main characters' of reality, God, Israel, humanity, Satan or God's son. No matter what great event takes place, such as the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, this is viewed as part of the great meta-narrative, so that it has to be one of the main characters who is acting. Although on the surface it looks like it is just the Romans, it is in fact the character God who is acting against the character Israel using the character 'the nations', as God sometimes do in this story.
But there is the problem with the 'history writing' of gMark that the narrator, the 'chronicler', does not come across at all like a chronicler. He doesn't even try, except perhaps for the introduction in Mark 1:2. Some events are narrated where we get to know the inner thoughts of the characters and some of the events couldn't possibly have been known by the 'chronicler' (Mark), such as Jesus' private prayer in Gethsemane. It can only be described as history writing which has the characteristics of what we would call fiction.
We simply have to conclude, that even though Mark wanted his story to be understood as historical, he also had no problem in presenting history in a kind of ordered way, so that it comes across to us as fictional. So the real problem is, that Mark wanted his story to be historical and at the same time he wanted it to be didactic and symbolic. But he definately wanted the events to be understood as on the whole historical, or else he wouldn't have presented them as fulfilment of prophecies. Also, the crucifixion of Jesus would surely have been regarded as a historical event in itself.
In the end, I think he just tried to mimick the 'history writing' he and his fellow Christians found in Scripture. Especially the stories of Elijah and Elisha.