The Gospel Between Emperor And Temple In The Gospel Of Mark

The earliest of the four Gospels, the book portrays Jesus as an enigmatic figure, struggling with enemies, his inner and external demons, and with his devoted but disconcerted disciples. Unlike other gospels, his parables are obscure, to be explained secretly to his followers. With an introduction by Nick Cave

This book interprets Mark's gospel in light of the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 CE. Locating the authorship of Mark's gospel in rural Galilee or southern Syria after the fall of Jerusalem and the temple, and after Vespasian's enthronement as the new emperor, Kimondo argues that Mark's first hearers--people who lived through and had knowledge of the important events of the war--may have evaluated Mark's story of Jesus as a contrast to Roman imperial values. He makes an intriguing case that Jesus' proclamation as the Messiah in the villages of Caesarea Philippi set up a deliberate contrast between Jesus's teaching and Vespasian's proclamation of himself as the world's divine ruler. He suggests that Mark's hearers may have interpreted Jesus' liberative campaign in Galilee as a deliberate contrast to Vespasian's destructive military campaigns in the area. Jesus's teachings about wealth, power, and status while on the way to Jerusalem may have been heard as contrasts to Roman imperial values; hence, the entire story of Jesus may have been interpreted an anti-imperial narrative.

This book proposes that Mark's Gospel was written in late 71 for the traumatised Christians of Rome, who feared further arrests after Titus' return from Jerusalem, to help them face their fears and forgive those who had already failed.

What if the story of Jesus was meant not just to be told but retold, molded, and shaped into something new, something present by the Evangelist to face each new crisis? The Evangelists were not recording a historical report, but writing to effect a change in their community. Mark was faced with the imminent destruction of his tiny community--a community leaderless without Paul and Peter and who witnessed the destruction of the Temple; now, another messianic figure was claiming the worship rightly due to Jesus. The author of the Gospel of Mark takes his stylus in hand and begins to rewrite the story of Jesus--to unwrite the present, rewrite the past, to change the future. Joel L. Watts moves the Gospel of Mark to just after the destruction of the Temple, sets it within Roman educational models, and begins to read the ancient work afresh. Watts builds upon the historical criticisms of the past, but brings out a new way of reading the ancient stories of Jesus, and attempts to establish the literary sources of the Evangelist.

This work analyzes one of the most striking elements of Mark's story: the vital role the temple plays from Jesus's entry into Jerusalem to the moment of his death. Gray's narrative approach detects implications that redaction criticism missed. Using echoes of Old Testament prophets to present Jesus's "way" as the eschatological return of the Lord to his temple, Mark sees Jesus's cleansing of the temple as a pointer to its imminent destruction. It has failed in its appointed mission to serve as the focus for the restoration of Israel and the ingathering of the Gentiles, and that function will now be assumed by its replacement: the community gathered around Jesus. Originally published by Mohr Siebeck, this book is now available as an affordable North American paperback edition.

The Gospel of Mark has been studied from multiple angles using many methods. But often there remains a sense that something is wanting, that the full picture of Mark's Gospel lacks some background circuitry that would light up the whole. Adam Winn finds a clue in the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. For Jews and Christians it was an apocalyptic moment. The gods of Rome seemed to have conquered the God of the Jews. Could it be that Mark wrote his Gospel in response to Roman imperial propaganda surrounding this event? Could a messiah crucified by Rome really be God’s Son appointed to rule the world? Winn considers how Mark might have been read by Christians in Rome in the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem. He introduces us to the propaganda of the Flavian emperors and excavates the Markan text for themes that address the Roman imperial setting. We discover an intriguing first-century response to the question “Christ or Caesar?"