Figuring Out Jesus - Mark (viii)

Lion of St. Mark, Piazza San Marco, Venice

This posting is the eighth in a series looking at the Gospel of Mark from the perspective of a historian. The first posting in this series is (here).  Where the other postings in this series thus far were originally written in 1998, this one is a fresh offering.

Richard Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2006), is a fascinating read—if you're "into" New Testament studies and especially the whole question of the historical Jesus (i.e. what can we know historically and factually about the actual historical person of Jesus?)  Baukham argues that the four Gospels are all based on eyewitness accounts derived from people who know Jesus personally.  In terms of the Gospel of Mark, he agrees with the tradition of the ancient church that Mark is based on the memories especially of Peter.  More largely, Baukham believes that the four Gospels including Mark are credible and reliable examples of ancient historiography, which valued eyewitness accounts of events above all other sources of evidence.

At the end of the book and almost in passing, Baukham observes that eyewitness accounts of events offer an "insider knowledge" of historical events and an "engaged interpretation" of those events.  He writes, "Witnesses of truly significant events speak out of their own ongoing attempts to understand." (p. 505)  In other words, in the Gospel of Mark we have a record of (a window into) the attempt of those who knew him to figure out who Jesus really was.  One reason the author wrote this gospel was to make sense for himself of what those close to Jesus witnessed.  This rings true.  Historians engage in research and writing for the sake of discovering truths about the past, and they frequently begin with something important to themselves that they want to understand more deeply in historical perspective.  The Gospel of Mark thus is not only a record of events written down for the sake of preserving memory of those events for future generations.  It is that.  And it is also the work of someone personally seeking to better understand Jesus.  We have clear hints of this possibility in the way the author of Mark has framed the whole Gospel as a progressive unveiling of who Jesus was.  Jesus boggled people's minds, and the first generation of Christians struggled to make sense of him.  They went to the Old Testament for help in doing so, and some of them wrote gospels as further attempts to get some kind of hold on Jesus.

The Gospel of Mark is not a theological treatise written to delineate certain doctrines.  It is one record of the search for the meaning of Jesus, one based on events and on the attempts of the eyewitnesses to make sense of those events.  We have the same freedom and responsibility today to make sense of the person of Christ, and the function of the Gospel of Mark both gives us fodder for reflection and an example of how our ancient brothers and sisters in the faith did their reflection.  Cool.