The Gospel for All Christians Revisited

Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 57, Pt 2, October 2006

T H E M A R K A N C O M M U N I T Y, M Y T HO R M A Z E ? B AU C K H A M ’ S T H E

G O S P E L F O R A L L C H R I S T I A N SR E V I S I T E D

AbstractThis study is a follow-up to Richard Bauckham’s thesis that the canonicalGospels were composed for Christians in general and not for isolatedcommunities. The study focuses on Mark’s Gospel and argues that scepticismis warranted against any postulation of a so-called ‘Markan community’because no link between the Gospel of Mark and a particular community canbe firmly established and that even if a Markan community did exist it isimpossible to identify its situation and location with any degree of certainty.

Introduction

One of the standard assumptions in Gospel scholarship ofthe last century has been that the Evangelists wrote for, and tosome extent about, their own respective communities. On thisview, Mark, for instance, wrote for a ‘Markan community’,and scholars debate whether this Markan community was locatedin Rome,1 Galilee/Syria, or somewhere else in the east.2

1 Cf. e.g. B. W. Bacon, Is Mark a Roman Gospel? (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1919); S. G. F. Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1967), pp. 221–82; Ralph P. Martin, Mark—Evangelist and Theologian (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1972), pp. 51–79; Rudolf Pesch,Das Markusevangelium (2 vols.; HTKNT; Freiburg: Herder, 1976–7), vol. 1,pp. 3–12; Martin Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (London: SCM, 1985),pp. 28–30; John R. Donahue, ‘Windows and Mirrors: The Setting of Mark’sGospel’, CBQ 57 (1995), pp. 1–26; Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary onhis Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 1026–45;C. Clifton Black, ‘Was Mark a Roman Gospel?’ ExpT 105 (1993), pp. 36–40; id.,Mark: Images of an Apostolic Interpreter (Columbia, SC; University of SouthCarolina Press, 1994), p. 238; Donald Senior, ‘The Gospel of Mark in Context’,TBT 34 (1996), pp. 215–21; Brian J. Incigneri, The Gospel to the Romans: TheSetting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel (BIS 65; Leiden: Brill, 2003); Ivan Head,‘Mark as a Roman Document from the Year 69: Testing Martin Hengel’sThesis’, JRH 28 (2004), pp. 240–59.

2 Cf. e.g. Willi Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist: Studies in the Redaction Historyof the Gospel (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1969), pp. 54–116; id., An Introductionto the New Testament: An Approach to its Problems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968),p. 143; Werner Kelber, The Kingdom in Mark: A New Time and a New Place(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), p. 130; Helmut Koester, An Introductionto the New Testament (2 vols.; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1975), vol. 2,pp. 166–7; H. C. Kee, Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel

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Commentators then endeavour to reconstruct the setting,situation, and history of the community as mirrored in theMarkan text. However, this entire approach of using the Gospelsas windows into particular communities has been called intoquestion by Richard Bauckham and associates in the bookThe Gospel for All Christians (1998).3 Bauckham’s primarycontention is that the Evangelists wrote not for any singlecommunity but for Christians in general.

Bauckham was not the first to argue along these lines andothers have urged a more general audience intended for theGospels.4 Nevertheless, he has revived the debate andhis proposal has been warmly received in some quarters.5

(London: SCM, 1977), pp. 102–5; Peter J. Achtemeier, Mark (ProclamationCommentaries; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), pp. 125–31; Dieter Luhrmann,Das Markusevangelium (HNT 3; Tubingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 1987), pp. 6–7;Burton Mack, Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia:Fortress, 1988), p. 315; Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social andPolitical History in the Synoptic Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), p. 257;Ched Myers, Binding the Strongman (Maryknoll: Orbiss, 1994), pp. 53–4;Rick Strelan, Crossing the Boundaries: A Commentary on Mark (Adelaide:Lutheran Publishing House, 1991), p. 21; Joel Marcus, ‘The Jewish War and theSitz im Leben of Mark’, JBL 111 (1992), pp. 441–62; id., Mark 1–8: A NewTranslation with Introduction and Commentary (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1999),p. 36; H. N. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical andSocial Context (NovTSup 114; Leiden: Brill, 2004).

3 Richard Bauckham (ed.), The Gospel for All Christians: Rethinking the GospelAudiences (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).

4 Martin, Mark, p. 79; Robert M. Fowler, Loaves and Fishes: The Functionof the Feeding Stories in the Gospel of Mark (SBLDS 54; Chico, CA: Scholars,1981), p. 83; Mary Anne Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World inLiterary and Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), pp. 53, 304–5;M. A. Beavis, Mark’s Audience: The Literary and Social Setting of Mark 4.11–12(SheYeld: SheYeld Academic Press, 1989), pp. 171–2; Bengst Holmberg,Sociology and the New Testament: An Appraisal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 199),pp. 124–5; H. F. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1995), p. 102; Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels andthe One Gospel of Jesus Christ, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM, 2000),pp. 106–15.

5 See reviews: J. DuV, Anvil 16 (1999), pp. 134–5; Paul Ellingworth, EQ 71

(1999), pp. 273–5; B. E. Bowe, CurThM 27 (2000), p. 295; Craig L. Blomberg,Themelios 25 (2000), pp. 78–80; T. Baxter, Evangel 19 (2001), p. 55; MarkMatson, ResQ 43 (2001), pp. 54–6. Other positive estimations can be found inBen Witherington, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (GrandRapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 28–30; R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark(NIGTC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 36; Thorsten Moritz,‘Mark, Book of’, in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, ed.Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 480.

THE MARKAN COMMUNITY , MYTH OR MAZE? 475

At the same time he has not convinced everyone and severalcritical responses have been levelled against his thesis.6 In viewof that, the aim of this study is to substantiate the viability ofBauckham’s proposal as it relates to the Gospel of Mark. Themanner in which this will be approached is by: (a) arguing thatscepticism is warranted regarding a link between the Gospel ofMark and a Markan community; and (b) arguing that even ifa Markan community existed it is almost impossible to identifyits setting and situation with any degree of certainty.

The Problem of Identifying Mark

with a Particular Community

The idea that behind the Gospel of Mark stands a communityis seldom questioned. Bauckham himself does not deny theexistence of a Markan community, but merely challenges thenotion that the Gospels were addressed to single communitieswith no thought of wider dissemination. There can be no doubtthat there were communities or clusters of Christians spreadthroughout the Mediterranean in the mid to late first century.However, positing a correspondence between the Gospel of Markand a specific Christian group is exceedingly problematic, moreso than is often recognized. To begin with, there is no physicalevidence for the existence of a Markan community, making itimpossible to establish a relationship between a text and a groupin the same way as is often done with the Qumran sectarians andthe Qumran scrolls. Drawing analogies between the Pauline andJohannine epistles (which were written to specific communities),and the Gospels is objectionable because of the significantdiVerences in genre (letter versus narrative). What is more,no explicit mention of the designated audience is made inthe Gospels (other than Luke’s ‘Theophilus’, which is perhapssymbolic). It seems that we are left, then, with literary evidenceupon which a sketch of the Markan community can be drawn—but herein lies the problem for several reasons.

6 Philip F. Esler, ‘Community and Gospel in Early Christianity: A Response toRichard Bauckham’s Gospels for All Christians’, SJT 51 (1998), pp. 235–48; JoelMarcus, Mark 1–8 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1999), pp. 26–8; Ernest van Eck,‘A Sitz for the Gospel of Mark? A Critical Reaction to Bauckham’s Theory onthe Universality of the Gospels’, HTS 54 (2000), pp. 973–1008; David C. Sim,‘The Gospel for All Christians? A Response to Richard Bauckham’, JSNT 84

(2001), pp. 3–27; Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark, pp. 17–22;Incigneri, The Gospel to the Romans, pp. 32–4; Margaret M. Mitchell, ‘PatristicCounter-Evidence to the Claim that ‘‘The Gospels Were Written for AllChristians’’ ’, NTS 51 (2005), pp. 36–79.

476 M I C H A E L F. B I R D

First, there is no definitive internal evidence in the Gospelof Mark that necessitates that the document emerged in acommunity or that it was written for a community.7 The argumentsfor situating the Gospel in aYliation with a community areviciously circular. It is supposed that the Gospel of Mark wasdrafted in the setting of a community and the proof of thisis the text of the Gospel itself. To avoid this illogic a thirdelement must be imported into the study, that is, reading the textthrough the lens of an a priori hypothesis concerning the originof the Gospel in a particular environment. When studied in thismanner the text essentially becomes a mirror and the communitydiscovered in Mark is precisely the hypothetical one broughtto the text in the first place.

Second, even if the Gospel was produced in connection witha community, there remains an element of ambiguity as to whatthat connection was and how it relates to the composition,purpose, audience, and reception of the Gospel. Was the Gospelcomposed for a community, allegorically about a community, orin a community but for wider circulation? Thus placing Mark’sGospel in the setting of a community does not guarantee thatthe text yields anything concrete about the community in whichthe author wrote. Raymond Brown was correct to state thatscholarship is simply not equipped to ‘reconstruct the profile ofthe community addressed by Mark’.8 There also remains theproblem of what is meant by a ‘community’ in the first place.9

Is a community a group of Christians meeting in an insula inRome, in the triclinium of an Alexandrian noble, the Christianfaction in a Galilean synagogue, a network of Christians spreadthroughout rural Syria, several house churches in Corinth, oreven all the Pauline churches of Asia Minor? One must admitthat the type of community amidst which Mark wrote entailsno limits in terms of its size, make-up, or geographical spread.In this case the boundaries of any purported community must bedrawn so flexibly and made so malleable that it risks becoming

7 Ernest Best, ‘Mark’s Readers: A Profile’, in F. Van Segbroeck et al. (eds.),The Four Gospels 1992 (3 vols.; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), vol. 2,p. 842, notes the ambiguity of Mark’s relation to a community: ‘Did he [Mark]write up [w]hat they already knew or did he write to inform them of things theydid not know? Is the Gospel a product of its community or is it written to someextent from outside the community?’

8 Raymond Brown, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York:Paulist, 1984), p. 28.

9 See also Stephen C. Barton, ‘Can We Identify the Gospel Audiences?’in Bauckham (ed.), The Gospel for All Christians, pp. 174–5.


hermeneutically meaningless. This is because the notion ofa ‘community’ behind the Markan text must accommodatea wide variety of sociological and ecclesiological possibilities.

Third, Dwight Peterson oVers one particularly penetratingcriticism of the Markan community hypothesis, namely, thatone should not assume that the influence of the communityupon the text was unidirectional. Peterson believes that somedegree of reflective stimulus may have existed whereby theMarkan Gospel itself potentially exerted influence upon thesocio-historical situation in which it materialized. That wouldsuggest that Mark’s Gospel represents a dialogue between textand community, as opposed to an unfettered representationof the community in the text that makes the reconstructed socio-historical circumstance the hermeneutical key to all meaning.Under such circumstances retrieving a portrait of the communityfrom the text becomes impossible since the Gospel is alreadyinterwoven into the social and theological fabric of thecommunity.10

Fourth, it is worth broaching options other than having Markwriting a Gospel amidst a single Christian community.11 If welay aside for the moment the evidence for authorship based onthe superscript and church tradition because they are so sharplycontested, we actually know very little about the author from thetext. William Vorster underscores this point when he declares:‘It is no longer possible to determine with any certainty whoMark, as we normally call the author of the Gospel of Mark,really was.’12 What can be said about the author as a bareminimum is that he (or she) has a basic facility in Greek, in alllikelihood knows Aramaic and understands Latin terms, is wellacquainted with the Septuagint, exhibits an apocalyptic outlook,has either experienced or is fearful of persecution, is apparentlyaware of Jewish customs, probably holds to a Pauline view ofJesus’ atoning death and the Jewish law, and is a follower ofJesus, whom he considers to be the Son of God. There isvery little to work with here in terms of recreating an author,let alone reconstructing the contours of a community. If allowedto conjecture for a moment, and if permitted to postulatePaul’s one-time travelling companion John Mark as the author

10 Dwight N. Peterson, The Origins of Mark: The Marcan Community inCurrent Debate (BIS 48; Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 168–9.

11 See also Bauckham, ‘For Whom Were the Gospels Written?’, p. 36.12 William S. Vorster, ‘The Production of the Gospel of Mark’, in J. Eugene

Botha (ed.), Speaking of Jesus: Essays on Biblical Language, Gospel Narrative andthe Hellenistic Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 1999), p. 465.


(who is just as good a ‘Mark’ as any),13 the following may be saidabout him from Christian sources:

John Mark, a member of a Cypriot Jewish family settled in Jerusalemand a member of the early Jerusalem church, was then in Antioch,accompanied his cousin Barnabas and Paul on their missionaryjourney as far as Pamphylia, later accompanied Barnabas to Cyprus,and is finally heard of in Rome, if Philemon is written from Rome,where 1 Peter also places him.14

What was John Mark’s community—Jerusalem, Antioch,Cyprus, Rome, or even, according to later tradition,Alexandria? If John Mark wrote in Rome, would his Gospelreflect elements of experience gleaned from various communities,over years of travel, in missionary activity, and through disputeand dissension in the synagogues and churches of the easternMediterranean? If the author was an itinerant missionary orteacher like John Mark, or even a refugee from Judaea, anemigrant, or travelling merchant, then his relationship to anyone or more communities will be elastic and fluid. What kindof a portrait of a community would emerge from the Gospelwritten by an author of this variety? Incigneri is quite correctto suggest that ‘Mark’s Gospel is human experience commu-nicated’,15 but it can be argued that the Markan experiencethat runs through the text might have been formulated overdecades, in various geographic, cultural, and social settings, andforged in a variety of theological and ecclesiastical circumstances.In any event the Christian experience that pervades the Gospelmay be significantly wider than any one geographical or temporalsetting. If this is the case then it would go some way toexplaining the power of the Markan narrative to evoke pathosin Christians who were beyond the boundaries of anyone particular community (be it Rome, Galilee, or Syria)without assuming that the Gospel’s purpose was ‘forgotten’,

13 The sharp disagreements about the authenticity of the traditions that linkJohn Mark to the second Gospel can be observed by contrasting the words ofW. G. Kummel (Introduction to the New Testament [London: SCM, 1975], p. 97),‘The tradition that Mk was written by John Mark is therefore scarcely reliable’,and Vincent Taylor (The Gospel According to St Mark [London: MacMillan,1953], p. 26), ‘There can be no doubt that the author of the Gospel was Mark,the attendant of Peter’. D. E. Nineham (Saint Mark [Baltimore: Penguin, 1963],p. 39) points to a further complication in that Marcus was one of the mostcommon Latin names in the Roman Empire.

14 Bauckham, ‘For Whom Were the Gospels Written?’ p. 35.15 Incigneri, The Gospel to the Romans, p. 19.


‘deliberately set aside’, or ‘misunderstood’ by others likeMatthew and Luke.16 The pattern of Christian experience thatexudes from Mark may well be a tapestry of stories and voiceswrestling with the question of what it meant to be a followerof Jesus in the Greco-Roman world.

Fifth, the form of the Gospels is not conducive to solvingthe type of intra-Christian crises alleged to have provided thecontext or catalyst for the Gospels. Mark announces itself ase2agg0lion not didac0. Form and function dovetail, and theGospel of Mark is the announcement of the life and death ofthe Son of God for all readers/hearers.

Martin Goodman questions the utility of the Gospels forsolving in-house Christian issues given ‘the oddness of biographyas a vehicle for theological didacticism’.17 In other words,the Gospels are a poor choice of medium for generating sectariandogmatics. Tolbert asserts: ‘While a letter may have been aneVective medium for directly challenging a community’s practiceor correcting its theological views, a narrative purporting torelate the actions, words and views of characters from an earliertime is not.’18 Narrative, especially the sort one observes in theGospels, is more useful for imparting general information.The mode of narrative itself is not suitable to addressing heresy,division, and dissension with the same clarity and immediacyas an epistle or speech. Previously I have argued that:

[I]f one is attempting to validate a certain teaching, enforce a particularvision of community, marginalize an opposing faction, or dictate atheological agenda, then writing a Gospel (i.e. a connected narrativeabout Jesus) appears to be a rather convoluted way of doing it and ishighly susceptible to being misunderstood. Why not write a list ofcommunity rules (1QS, CD, 4QMMT), quote the Hebrew Scripturesrepeatedly in an epistle (1 Clement, Hebrews), compose a list ofsapiential sayings of Jesus (e.g. Gospel of Thomas, Q), make somecreative exegetical notes (Targums, Pesher, Midrash, Allegory), appealto episcopal authority (Clement, Ignatius), or even refer to sayings ofvenerated leaders (Mishnah)?19

16 Ibid. p. 364.17 Martin Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea (1987), pp. 22–3, cited in

Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), p. 3.18 Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, p. 303.19 Michael F. Bird, ‘The Formation of the Gospels in the Setting of

Early Christianity: The Jesus Tradition as Corporate Memory’, WTJ 67 (2005),p. 116.


If one is trying to undermine a ‘divine man’ Christologyor attack the key figures in the Jerusalem leadership,20 thenby utilizing the device of narrative the Evangelist haschosen a rather obtuse and tortuous manner of communicatingthis point, and furthermore, one must really wonder if he wassuccessful.

A denial of the utility of Mark for generating sectariantheology should not be taken as a denial of the theological natureof narrative. Josephus composed his Antiquities of the Jews,in narrative form, so as to demonstrate the antiquity of Judaismand the magnanimity of the Jewish people, and so to legitimizeJudaism in the Roman Empire. On this viewpoint it iseasy to repel Incigneri’s objection to Tolbert that this way ofreading the text denies the ‘transforming power’ of the Gospelnarrative to impact individuals and communities.21 On thecontrary, the dynamic impact of the narrative upon readers isduly acknowledged, but it does not render the text compliantto excavations of intra-communal machinations within a groupbehind the text.

Sixth, what is the referent in the Gospel of Mark or what doesthe Markan text signify? In some readings, Mark’s Gospel has asits form a pre-Easter Jesus story, but its essential referent is thesetting, history, and debates of a Markan community. I find itmore plausible that the primary referent of the Gospel of Markis the life and death of Jesus. The Gospel of Mark is a Jesusstory that forces its readers to look beyond their own history,occasion, and time and into the pre-Easter ministry of Jesus ofNazareth. Jurgen Becker writes: ‘When the gospels define thetime of Jesus as Christianity’s normative primeval time, theydemonstrate their interest in the historical Jesus and show thatthey are not simply wanting to write a commentary on the post-Easter confession of faith.’22 This means that the intentionalityof the text is to provide information about somethingthat we might broadly define as the ‘historical Jesus’.23

20 Cf. Theodore J. Weeden, Mark: Traditions in Conflict (Philadelphia:Fortress, 1971).

21 Incigneri, Gospel to the Romans, p. 32.22 Jurgen Becker, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. James E. Crouch (New York:

Walter de Gruyter, 1998), p. 6.23 It is important to note that proponents of a community hypothesis do not

deny that the Gospels are also windows into the ‘historical Jesus’ in some form.Marxsen (Mark the Evangelist, p. 24) believes that the Gospel of Mark can bestudied in the light of the Sitz im Leben of Jesus’ ministry, the Sitz im Lebenof the early church, and also the Sitz im Leben of the author and his community.


The Gospel is about Jesus, and not a Markan Jesus who ispurely a cipher for internal matters in need of resolution.24

In stating that, several qualifications are necessary:

1. There is no need to deny that community needs haveshaped and interpreted the story in both its transmission and itsfinal form. The point is that community needs have not whollydetermined its content or comprised its referent. Every tellingof a Jesus story imports some aspect of the storyteller into thetelling. However, it is illegitimate to infer from that point thatall we have in the story is the storyteller himself. What isembedded in the Gospel of Mark is a self-contained storyworld (narrative horizon) that mirrors the concerns of its readersand author (synchronic horizon) and provides a window into anextra-textual reality diachronically accessible through the text(historical horizon).

2. Positing the pre-Easter Jesus story as the Evangelist’sprimary referent does not negate the theological and pastoralpower of the narrative to address Christians in their particularcircumstances. Mark tells a Jesus story not to preserve itsaccount in the annals of history but because he believes that itis of urgent relevance—but to whom? This is a question thatcannot be settled with any certainty, and we must therefore beprepared to answer it in the broadest possible terms. It may bethat it is geared towards elucidating the ‘story of Jesus addressedto Christians in the Graeco-Roman world’.25

The Problem of Finding the Markan Community

A further problem is the impossibility of identifying thelocation of a Markan community. In scholarship there is a broaddiversity of opinions concerning the locations and characteristicsof these Gospel communities. Wedderburn states: ‘The theorieswith regard to the regions in which the communities of the

Gerd Theissen, likewise, has produced studious works concerning both thehistorical Jesus, the colouring of the tradition in transmission by the earlychurch, and also its application to Gospel communities. The problem is that thispartitioning assumes a sharp bifurcation between the ‘Christ of faith’ and the‘historical Jesus’ which is foreign to the texts where, instead, faith, memory,theology, interpretation, and tradition are intertwined and not superimposedone over another.

24 Francis Watson, ‘Towards a Literal Reading of the Gospels’, in Bauckham(ed.), The Gospel for All Christians, pp. 211–16.

25 Martin, Mark, p. 79.


various evangelists are to be located are too varied to allow usto assign their traditions with confidence to a particular area.’26

Markan scholars tend to be polarized as to whether Rome orGalilee/Syria constitutes the original setting for the Gospel ofMark. This lack of consensus is observable in two recentmonographs that have both embarked on a rigorous a study ofthe Markan community and arrived at two radically diVerentoptions: Brian Incigneri, in The Gospel to the Romans: TheSetting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel (2003), presents aforthright case for a Roman provenance, while H. N. Roskam,in The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and SocialContext (2004), contends for a Galilean setting. Here one findstwo well-researched monographs that look at the same text butarrive at diametrically opposing conclusions about the place ofthe Markan community. It is hardly unexpected that someauthors find the entire debate dizzying and plead an honestagnosticism about locating the geographical position of Mark’sreaders.27

The assumption that Mark’s community, specifically itslocation and character, is retrievable, however, remains highlysuspect. Bauckham decries such a proposal because:

This consists in supposing that all textual indications of the characterand circumstances of the audience must all apply to the whole of theimplied audience. Then one need only compile all such indicationsin order to produce an identikit description of the evangelist’scommunity.28

For a case in point, although the Gospel of Mark presents Jesusspending a significant amount of time in rural areas, it shouldnot be supposed that this signifies that Mark’s readersthemselves lived in a rural setting. Theissen and Kee proposethat the rural focus in Mark and the agrarian parables indicatea setting for the Markan community in rural Syria over andagainst urban Rome.29 Alternatively, Incigneri defends a Romanlocation for the community, whereby members of the Roman

26 Alexander J. M. Wedderburn, A History of the First Christians (UBW;Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2004), p. 6.

27 Robert A. Guelich, Mark 1–8:26 (WBC; Dallas: Word, 1989),pp. xxv–xxxii; Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to St Mark (BNTC;London: A & C Black, 1991), p. 8; William R. Telford, The Theology of theGospel of Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 17; James G.Crossley, The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity(JSNTSup 266; London: T & T Clark/Continuum, 2004), pp. 79–80.

28 Bauckham, ‘For Whom Were the Gospels Written?’, p. 24.29 Theissen, Gospels in Context, p. 238; Kee, Community, p. 102.


church lived in the nearby rural countryside and met withother Christians in house-churches in the city.30 Of courseanother possibility is that Mark simply believed that Jesusspent most of his time in rural environs and depicted himas such. In which case the locale of Mark’s readers, ineither a bucolic or metropolitan setting, is neither here northere in the text.

Likewise, the suVering motif in Mark could be associated witha range of locations. The early Jerusalem church experiencedpersecution resulting in the deaths of Stephen (Acts 7:57–60),James son of Zebedee (Acts 12:2), and James the Just (Josephus,Ant. 20.200). According to Luke, Saul of Tarsus embarkedon a journey to Damascus in Syria in order to persecuteChristians there (Acts 9:1–3; 22:4–5; 26:11–12). The ApostlePaul evidently experienced persecution from his fellow Jewsin a number of places in the Mediterranean (Gal. 5:11; 1 Cor.4:12; 2 Cor. 4:9; 11:24–6; 1 Thess. 2:14–15). Christians in RomesuVered infamous persecutions under Nero (Tactius, Ann.15.44.2–8). A further complication is whether the suVeringand persecution motif in Mark represents something real orperceived. Zeba Cook, in a dual review of Incigneri and Roskam,writes:

[I]t is possible that the reference is not to any concrete suVering at all,since both authors agree that Mark’s perception of the suVering of hisreaders is the only thing of which we can be certain, but not that therewas necessarily actual suVering. The perception of the risk of suVeringcould have occurred anywhere in the Roman Empire.31

Regardless, then, of whether the suVering and persecutions thatMark warns of are real or perceived, it hardly narrows the fieldconcerning the location.

Peterson has put forward a rigorous challenge to the projectof postulating a Markan community in his monograph TheOrigins of Mark: The Marcan Community in Current Debate(2000). Peterson not only questions the hermeneutical valueof reconstructing a Markan community,32 but states that the

30 Incigneri, Gospel to the Romans, pp. 78–82.31 Zeba A. Cook, Review of The Gospel to the Romans and The Purpose the

Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context, in JBL 123 (2005), pp. 556–7;see also Black, ‘Was Mark a Roman Gospel?’, p. 39; Crossley, The Date of Mark’sGospel, pp. 79–80; Ernest Best, Mark: The Gospel as Story (Edinburgh: T & TClark, 1983), p. 36.

32 Peterson, The Origins of Mark, pp. 196–202.


‘lack of agreement among Gospel community constructorsis related more to the futility of the entire enterprise than toa need for further study’.33 This remark echoes the earliersentiment of William Telford: ‘The quest for the Marcancommunity is unresolved to date, and may never indeed beresolved, given the diYculties of working back to it from thetextual evidence.’34 The implication to be drawn is thatone must reckon with the possibility, as Hooker notes,that Mark could have been written nearly anywhere in theGreco-Roman world.35

The problematic nature of inferring the location of a Markancommunity from the Gospel of Mark should result not merelyin agnosticism, but in an alternative proposal. After readingPeterson one might readily concede the impossibility of tryingto locate a community and using it as an interpretative gridfor Mark, but nonetheless maintain the existence of suchan inaccessible community. Here Bauckham and the generalaudience hypothesis represent a reasoned alternative. Mark couldhave been written nearly anywhere in the Greco-Roman world,because it seeks to engage the mind, heart, fears, and hopesof Christians spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Theinability to locate an exact provenance for Mark is directlyattributable to the literary purpose of Mark that aims toengender attitudes, patterns of behaviour, hope, and an ethos ofdiscipleship in a broad and undefined audience of Greek-speaking Christians.

Conclusion

I have attempted to reinforce Bauckham’s Gospel for allChristians hypothesis by pointing out that postulating anyrelationship between the Gospel of Mark and a singlecommunity is problematic as there is a whole range ofpossibilities and external factors that may count in favour ofan alternative scenario. Furthermore, the possibility of identify-ing and retrieving a Markan community from the Markantext remains virtually impossible owing to the nature of theevidence. In the light of this, Bauckham may be right whenhe boldly states: ‘Thus any reader who finds the argumentof this chapter convincing should cease using the terms

33 Ibid. p. 4.34 W. R. Telford, Mark (SheYeld: SheYeld Academic Press, 1995), p. 151.35 Hooker, The Gospel According to St Mark, p. 8.


Matthean community, Markan community, Lukan community,and Johannine community. They no longer have any meaning.’36

I do not imagine that the community hypothesis willimmediately fade from the pages of scholarship,37 but in theinterim it would be wise to put terms like ‘Markan community’in inverted commas so as to do justice to its disputed andindeterminate nature. A shadow of doubt has been cast onany theory of Gospels origins that depends on a communityhypothesis. This may pave the way for future studies on theGospels, especially Mark, with a view to it being written asan exhortation for Christians in the Greco-Roman world,as Missionsschrift, or even as a composite of both.38

Michael F. BirdHighland Theological College

[email protected]

36 Bauckham, ‘For Whom Were the Gospels Written?’, p. 45; cf. Hengel,The Four Gospels, p. 107.

37 Discussion of Mark’s community continues unabated, as evidenced byFrancis J. Moloney, Mark: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Peabody, MA:Hendrickson, 2004), pp. 10, 11, 13, 159–78.

38 On this point see further David Aune, The New Testament in its LiteraryEnvironment (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), pp. 59–60.


Documents

The Gospel for All Christians Revisited