Mark (Hermeneia | HERM)

by Adela Yarbro Collins

Publisher:

Fortress Press

, 2007

Overview

Professor Adela Yarbro Collins brings to bear on the text of the first Gospel the latest historical-critical perspectives, providing a full treatment of such controversial issues as the relationship of canonical Mark to the “Secret Gospel of Mark” and the text of the Gospel, including its longer endings. She situates the Gospel, with its enigmatic portrait of the misunderstood Messiah, in the context of Jewish and Greco-Roman literature of the first century. Her comments draw on her profound knowledge of apocalyptic literature as well as on the traditions of popular biography in the Greco-Roman world to illuminate the overall literary form of the Gospel.

The commentary also introduces an impressive store of data on the language and style of Mark, illustrated from papyrological and epigraphical sources. Collins is in constructive dialogue with the wide range of scholarship on Mark that has been produced in the twentieth century. Her work will be foundational for Markan scholarship in the first half of the twenty-first century.

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Key Features

• Provides a full treatment of controversial issues associated with the first Gospel
• Situates the Gospel in the context of Jewish and Greco-Roman literature
• Illuminates the overall literary form of the Gospel of Mark

Contents

Top Highlights

“The problem with this line of argumentation, however, is the assumption that anyone living near a region would be precisely informed about its geography. Such an assumption is dubious. Modern New Testament exegetes with scholarly maps and atlases are better informed about the geography of the ancient world than many of its inhabitants were. Lack of knowledge of even relatively nearby regions would be likely if the author had not actually visited them in person. Even modern Americans are ignorant of parts of our country, including some that are quite nearby!” (Page 8)

“In Jesus’ comments about the parables in 4:11–12* and in the narrator’s comments in 4:34*, a dichotomy is drawn between insiders, to whom the mystery of the kingdom of God is given and for whom the parables are interpreted, and outsiders, to whom everything happens in parables and who are prevented from perceiving and comprehending them. The innovation of 6:52* is the idea that the disciples are outsiders too; or at least, if they are insiders, they are not significantly different from the outsiders.” (Page 336)

“Although this is a literary device, it has the effect of presenting John the Baptist and Jesus as prophets, or at least as having the predictive powers of prophets.” (Page 51)

“The teaching of Jesus in Mark, therefore, is not part of the chain of tradition that goes back to Moses and Sinai, but is a new, authoritative teaching based on his eschatological role.” (Page 77)

“As noted above, 4Q521 cites Ps 146:8*, ‘the Lord opens the eyes of the blind,’ and implies that this prophecy will be fulfilled through the activity of the eschatological prophet. The same text expands Isa 61:1*, so that this prophet will not only proclaim good news to the poor but also raise the dead. Jesus’ healing of the two blind men and his raising of Jairus’s daughter from the dead would thus imply for members of the audience of Mark familiar with these traditions that he is the eschatological prophet.” (Page 50)

Product Details

• Title: Mark: A Commentary on the Gospel of Mark
• Author: Adela Yarbro Collins
• Series: Hermeneia
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Print Publication Date: 2007
• Logos Release Date: 2009
• Pages: 930
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Bible. N.T. Mark › Commentaries; Bible › Commentaries--Collected works
• ISBNs: 9780800660789, 0800660781
• Resource ID: LLS:HRMNEIA62MK
• Resource Type: Bible Commentary
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-24T16:25:33Z

About Adela Yarbro Collins

Professor Yarbro Collins joined the Yale Divinity School in 2000 after teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School for nine years. Prior to that, she was a professor in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She was a member of the executive committee of the Society of New Testament Studies from 2002 to 2003. She was president of the New England Region of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2004-2005. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in theology by the University of Oslo, Norway, in 1994 and a Fellowship for University Teachers by the National Endowment for the Humanities for 1995-96. Her most recent book is a commentary on the Gospel of Mark for the Hermeneia commentary series. Among her other publications are Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism; The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context; Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse; The Apocalypse (New Testament Message series); and The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation. She served as the editor of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Monograph Series from 1985 to 1990. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and the Catholic Biblical Quarterly.