Artifice is defined as “a sly or artful trick”1 and is regularly found in fiction literature, when an author informs a reader what characters are thinking or feeling:
[A]rtifice is unmistakably present whenever the author tells us what no one in so-called real life could possibly know.2
In life such views are not to be had. The act of providing them in fiction is itself an obtrusion by the author.3
Such obtrusions are especially obvious in narration that purports to be historical. And yet intelligent men were until quite recently able to read ostensibly historical accounts, like the Bible, packed with such illicit entries into private minds with no distress whatever.4
Booth continues by citing several New Testament passages in the canonical gospels where the authors perform the trick of reading Jesus’ mind. Specifically, he mentions two mind-reading tricks in Mark (1:41 and 5:30) and Jesus’ crisis of conscience in Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42). How was it that this prayer came to be recorded in the Gospel of Mark when all of Jesus’ companions were fast asleep (14:37–40)? It turns out, however, that they might have overheard it, since scholars think that in antiquity people prayed out loud and not silently.
Ancient Prayer used to be spoken aloud. Silent or whispered prayer was reserved for offensive, indecent, erotic, or magical uses, but was later adopted as the normal rule in Christian practice.5
Imagine my surprise when I read through Mark looking for interior views in which the narrator told readers what characters were thinking and/or feeling. Mark uses this novelistic deception over 30 times! Here are ten instances in which Mark informs readers what characters are thinking and/or feeling:
Mark 2:8 Jesus perceives in his spirit that they questioned within themselves.
Mark 5:29 She felt in her body that she was healed.
Mark 6:20 Herod feared John; when he heard John, he was perplexed but heard him gladly.
Mark 6:34 Jesus had compassion on them.
Mark 6:51–52 Disciples were utterly astounded and did not understand about the loaves.
Mark 9:6 Peter did not know what to say and the disciples were exceedingly afraid.
Mark 9:15 All the crowd were greatly amazed when they saw Jesus.
Mark 9:32 Disciples did not understand Jesus and were afraid to ask him.
Mark 12:15 Jesus knew their hypocrisy.
Mark 15:10 Pilate perceived that the chief priests delivered Jesus up out of envy.6
Such obtrusions are invented by the flesh and blood author, who attributes thoughts and feelings to the characters in the narrative for the purpose of advancing the narrative plot and developing characters in line with the narrative plot. The technique belongs to the rhetoric of fiction literature rather than the historians’ craft. Even had the flesh and blood author of the Gospel of Mark been present during the events being narrated (which s/he was not) the private thoughts and feelings of people would simply not have been accessible. Even when others tell us what they are thinking and feeling, we only know what they tell us. We can never have direct access to their private thoughts and emotions. Hence, exposing private thoughts and feelings is a deception performed by novelists, charlatans, libelers, and gospel writers. This one literary feature alone is enough to challenge the historical character of Mark’s Gospel.
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University
1Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th ed.). s. v. “artifice.”
2Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 3.
3Both, Rhetoric of Fiction, 17.
4Booth, Rhetoric of Fiction, 17-18, note 10.
5H. S. Versnel, “Prayer,” Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed., 1999), 1243. There were, however, exceptions to praying aloud. See Hannah’s prayer which was clearly silent (1 Sam 1:9–20).
6Here are the other interior views: Mark 2:8; 6:26; 7:27; 8:12; 10:22, 24, 26, 32, 41; 11:18, 32; 12:12,17; 14:4–5, 19, 33, 40; 15:44; 16:6; 16:8.
