More about Mark

I mentioned in the last post that the community Mark is writing for was mainly non Jewish and that the earliest copies of this writing is Greek.  I would imagine that one thing this group would know in common would have been Greek or Hellenistic culture.   Alexander the Great had conquered all of the Mediterranean and the Middle East as far as present day Pakistan leaving Hellenistic culture in his wake. After his death, Palestine was part of the Selucid kingdom.  The Herrads were all about a renaissance of Hellenistic culture and the Romans, taking their turn as world conquers, were also steeped in Greek culture.  Everyone in the possible location of Mark's community would have been versed in Greek thought, philosophy, myth and probably aware of the various mystery religions.

Another interesting thing about Mark's Gospel is that it puts Jesus' teachings in the context of stories about his life and makes the biography an intrical part of the message. The Gospel of Thomas, which is believed to be earlier, is a list of Jesus' sayings with no biographical information or context.  I would imagine that this would be the more common way a Rabbi's teaching would be recorded if written down.  Not knowing much about the literature of the first century, this seems unique to me.  Was there a form of biographical literature that he was following or influenced by?  The examples that come to mind are the stories of Moses, the prophets and kings in Jewish scripture.  Perhaps the myths of the Greek gods and the stories about Ceasar that were part of the Roman civic religion.  Whatever the influences may be, the stories about Jesus gives context to the teachings and gives us the author's interpretation for sayings that in straight lists like the Gospel of Thomas can be quite enigmatic.

I should also mention that the dating of this book, 60 A.D., would put it at the time of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and most certainly amongst the Jewish revolt.  Even if the community was outside of Palestine, it would have been unsettling times full of apocalyptic rumours about Judgement and the end of the world.  Jesus and his disciples saw themselves as totally faithful to Judaism and the loss of Temple worship would only reinforce the communites' faith in their interpretation of Judaism as legitimized by God.

It was also a time when there is historic mention of some persecution of Christians.  Nero is said to blame them for the great fire in Rome.  Adhering to a religion other than the Roman state religion was tolerated as long as one also practiced the civic religion and took part in the socially expected religious ceremonies and practices.  This was something that even the mainstream sects of Judaism did.  However, the early Jesus communities were known for refusing to participate.  A few Jews doing this could be ignored by gentiles as a quirk of their race.  But when communities of mainly non-jews did this I would imagine that it caused the greater community to be less sympathetic.

I could probably say more, but as a last word before I get to the actual text, I just want to remind myself that more than the story of Jesus this is the story of this communities' traditions and vision of who Jesus was to them.  The teachings and stories chosen and the way they were interpreted reflect what was important to this group, how they saw the world, who they saw themselves as and their hopes for the future.