Daniel Smith on Narrative, Historicity, and Verisimilitude in the Passion Narratives

I mentioned Dnaiel Smith's short article, The Trouble with Q, the other day. He has a new oped piece today also on Bible and Interpretation that is well worth a read.  It is clear, illuminating and I I wholeheartedly agree with it!

Narrative, Historicity, and Verisimilitude in the Passion Narratives; or, What I Learned from “Big Fish” About Reading the Bible
Daniel Smith

I recently watched Tim Burton’s film Big Fish (2003) again. I must have first seen it around the time that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) came out. Although these films are now several years old, the issues they raise are illustrative for how we understand ways of reading the Bible, especially where claims about the historicity (what “really happened”) or the verisimilitude (the appearance of being true or real) where biblical narratives are concerned. Where The Passion tends to use its own narrative to concretize abstract theological concepts (for example, the medieval notion of the superhuman suffering of Christ) or to historicize familiar moments from the history of Christian piety or art (for example, Jesus’ encounter with Veronica), Big Fish sees the relationship between narrative and history in a much more ambivalent way. For the characters in the film, narrative is foundational for community and relationship in spite of troubling questions about truth and verifiability.

Read more . . .

Passion Podcasts 1: Are the Passion Narratives "Prophecy Historicized"?

Around this time of year, as Easter approaches and as I get to the end of my latest  Historical Jesus class, I like to theme my podcasts with the Passion.  One of the latest episodes is NT Pod 53: Are the Passion Narratives "Prophecy Historicized"?  It discusses the origins of the Passion Narratives, contrasting John Dominic Crossan's theory of "prophecy historicized" with the idea that they are actually "tradition scripturalized".

For those who would like to explore further, I have an article out on the topic and I've reproduced it on the web for those who don't have access to the book:

Mark Goodacre, "Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative" in Geert van Oyen and Tom Shepherd (eds.), The Trial and Death of Jesus: Essays on the Passion Narrative in Mark (Leuven: Peeters, 2006): 33-47

I also have an unpublished piece available here, the Swan lecture at Nebraskan Wesleyan University, February 2006:

Mark Goodacre, "When Prophecy became Passion: The Death of Jesus and the Birth of the Gospels"

If you are interested in other episodes of the podcast, please visit the NT Pod web page or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes. Or, of course, you can follow the NT Pod on Twitter or on the NT Pod Facebook page.

The Trial and Death of Jesus

This book is new from Peeters. My copy arrived today:

The Trial and Death of Jesus
Essays on the Passion Narrative in Mark

Series: Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 45

Editors: Van Oyen G., Shepherd T.

Year: 2006
ISBN: 90-429-1834-9
Pages: XI-268 p.
Price: 40 EURO


What is the significance of the trial and death of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark? In its annual meetings the Mark Group of the Society of Biblical Literature studied the trial of Jesus in 2003 and the death of Jesus in 2004. Both speakers and audience expressed the desire to bring some of the papers together in book form. The current volume fulfills this wish. The contributions presented here represent an up to date expression of one of the most important themes in Markan exegesis. The editors use the metaphor of a prism to illustrate the two sections of the book. Like a concave prism spreading light, the first section presents a range of understandings of the meaning of the death of Jesus. Like a convex prism focusing light, the second section uses multiple methodologies to focus attention on the trial of Jesus, particularly the charge of blasphemy. The papers together raise questions, challenge common views, and interrelate themes that push Markan scholarship forward.
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I have an essay in the volume called "Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative". Here's the full list of contents:

Section One
The Meaning of Jesus’ Death

Sharyn DOWD and Elizabeth Struthers MALBON
The Significance of Jesus’ Death in Mark: Narrative Context and
Authorial Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Mark GOODACRE
Scripturalization in Mark’s Crucifixion Narrative . . . . . . . . . 33

Geert VAN OYEN
The Meaning of the Death of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark: A Real
Reader Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Jocelyn MCWHIRTER
Messianic Exegesis in Mark’s Passion Narrative . . . . . . . . . 69

William SANGER CAMPBELL
“Why did you abandon me?” Abandonment Christology in Mark’s
Gospel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Stephen P. AHEARNE-KROLL
Challenging the Divine: LXX Psalm 21 in the Passion Narrative
of the Gospel of Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Section Two
The Trial of Jesus

Adela YARBRO COLLINS
The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14:64 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Jeffrey B. GIBSON
The Function of the Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14:64 . . . . 171

Michael E. VINES
The “Trial Scene” Chronotype in Mark and the Jewish Novel . . 189

Kelli S. O’BRIEN
Innocence and Guilt: Apologetic, Martyr Stories, and Allusion in
the Markan Trial Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Tom SHEPHERD
The Irony of Power in the Trial of Jesus and the Denial by Peter –
Mark 14:53-72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

List of contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Index of Ancient texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Judith Newman on Scripturalization

It's good to see the following abstract mentioned on Torrey Seland's Philo of Alexandria blog:

Judith H. Newman, University of Toronto
The Composition of Prayers and Songs in Philo's De Vita Contemplativa (30 min)
Discussion (30 min)
Abstract: "In contrast to Greek pagan prayer and in spite of its infinite variety, early Jewish prayers are marked by their interpretive engagement with Torah. How can we account for this production of scripturalized prayers? This paper compares the "philosophy" practiced by the Therapeutae at Mareotis with the nature and function of prayers at Qumran to argue that all such utterances were offered as manifestations of internalized torah, conceived through the prophetic gift of divine spirit."

This is part of a session at the SBL Annual Meeting in November with the following information:

S19-72Philo of Alexandria
Joint Session With: Philo of Alexandria, History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
11/19/2006 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM Room: 140A - CC
Theme: Reception of Philo of Alexandria in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity: The Question Revisited

The entire session looks most interesting, and lines up James Kugel (Newman's teacher), Maren Niehoff and Daniel Boyarin. (Perhaps I may add that I am a fan of Kugel's work -- his The Bible as It Was is a real favourite).

The reason for my interest in Newman's work on what she calls "scripturalization" is that I have attempted to apply the same concept to New Testament texts and specifically the Passion Narrative. I have a piece due out soon on this called "Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative" in Geert Van Oyen and Tom Shepherd (eds.), The Passion in Mark (Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology; Leuven: Peeters, 2006): 33-47. I have another article on the same topic due out next year.

Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative

I've uploaded, temporarily at least, a copy of my paper for the SBL Annual Meeting Mark Group:

Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative

It's a Word document. Of course there is still lots to do on it, but at least I've begun the process of exploration which writing a conference paper offers.

Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative

Things have been quiet for a couple of days on the blog because I've had the usual enormous backlog of administration, and especially an enormous backlog of correspondence, all made worse by having to prepare teaching after returning early on Monday morning from Rome. But one happy interlude has been provided by the sheer necessity to get an article written on "Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative", which I will be giving in the Mark Group at this year's SBL Annual Meeting. We had our Graduate Biblical Studies Seminar in Birmingham today and it gave me the chance to give the new paper, which I finished at around 2.30 a.m. last night, a first try-out. Here's a summary at the end of the paper, pending my posting the whole paper on-line at the weekend after I have done a little more tweaking:

Allow me to summarise our discussion. (1) Scholars still seldom appreciate just what an extraordinary undertaking it is to have tried to write a narrative about a hero who was crucified. (2) Mark overcomes the problem with this anomalous frightful by grounding his story in God’s will as revealed in the Scriptures. (3) The process concerned is one of scripturalization, the retelling of traditional materials in the light of the Scriptures, a view more plausible than the alternative of prophecy historicized. (4) The context for the Scripturalizing work was one in which Mark was in continuity with Christians going back at least to 50s Corinth, and no doubt to 30s Jerusalem, and it was the liturgy, something that has left its own mark on the text in circumstantial evidence.

It is simultaneously a pleasure and an irritation (but I think more of a pleasure) that one is working towards a conclusion on this kind of thing only to find oneself getting a host of extra ideas. One thing that I have been struck by has been the way in which Jesus' cry of dereliction functions in Mark's narrative. This may not make a lot of sense without the whole context, but I am in the mood to share it here. What I am concerned about is the scholarly cliché of seeing the cry of derelection as a sign of "embarrassment". Is Mark really in any way embarrassed by this moment? I don't think so. Rather, the more that one dwells on the magnitude of the task Mark has embraced, that of telling a story in which a hero is a victim of crucifixion, the more such a cry makes perfect sense.

In these verses, where Jesus is, of necessity, largely silent, the Scriptures speak all the more loudly. They provide Mark with the means of telling a plausible story (a crucified victim might be depicted uttering a few choice words, but extensive conversations are quite out of the question if one wishes to keep one’s narrative plausible) at the same time as making it theologically robust. It acts as a useful reminder that discussions about the cry of Jesus from the cross as being an embarrassment, as being the more likely historically because of that, as quite out of place. Mark is not in the least “embarrassed” by this cry. It is an ideal means of expressing plausibly the horror of the cross at the same time as reaffirming, by quoting the Psalms, that it is in God’s will.

We had two other papers today, the first my colleague David Parker discussing Textual Criticism and Theology and the second his student Richard Goode talking about Orality and Textuality in the Gospel, both stimulating.