Comparing Two Productions: Mark and Lincoln

Several nights before beginning this essay I watched the 2012 television production “Lincoln.” The film was well received in the media world and numerous awards were given to the film and to Daniel Day Lewis, who played Lincoln. Available to the writers, production staff, and actors were many artifacts, histories, photographs, and other video productions from which data could be drawn to develop the production. In fact, the historical events themselves are so well known that the sheer amount of data available no doubt frustrated the creative process of producing the film. The known facts of Mr. Lincoln’s presidency limited what the writers might have included in the script. It is nevertheless a work of creative fiction that is historically accurate—but not in every detail.¹

            Mark’s essay, on the other hand, is also a creative work, whose overall historical accuracy is dubious, but which, in part, is surely historically accurate. Very little was available to Mark from which to develop the narrative that he entitled: “Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ” (1:1). Mark’s story about Jesus narrates how the gospel (euaggellion, euaggelizomai) of the Markan community in the latter half of the first century began. Paul succinctly described the content of the gospel (“good news”) of the apostolic age in First Corinthians 15:1, 3-5. The natural context of “gospel” in Mark seems to be this later apostolic preaching of the church rather than the public career of Jesus.² Its appearance in Mark’s story about the itinerant Galilean, Jesus the Anointed, strikes me as an anachronism. What Mark wishes to echo in the reader’s mind when he places “gospel” on the lips of Jesus is the apostolic message preached by his own community of faith.³

            The anonymous author we call Mark wrote shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE) and he had at his disposal very little historical data about the public career of Jesus the Galilean, who was crucified by the Romans around 30CE, some forty years earlier. Mark lived in a world of Greek language and culture while the subject of his essay lived in Galilee of Judea, as the Romans called it, a world of Aramaic language and culture. Mark had neither material artifacts nor written sources⁴ available to him to inform his narrative. What was available to him were anonymous oral reports, church tradition and beliefs, and liturgy.⁵

            Mark’s literary product, therefore, is a narrative of his own creative imagination and fashioning. Perhaps it is better to say Mark’s Gospel is “fiction” (from the Latin fictio, a making or fashioning). Mark was responsible for imagining the whole and for weaving into his narrative what little information was available to him. He had no known curriculum vitae (course of life) of Jesus that had to be followed. Hence, he had to decide the sequence of things. He strung together independent episodes that he composed and other sub-groupings of material into an overall geographical frame⁶ through the use of summary statements, which were intended to expand the activities of Jesus well beyond the few typical episodic incidents described more fully in the narrative. These statements “summarize new activities over broad general geographic areas and indefinite periods of time.”⁷ It was a technique Mark hoped would overcome the impression of how little information he actually did know.

            As an author, Mark was a child of his day. If one judges by the criterion of literary realism, Mark’s narrative is more akin to modern romance than to historical narrative.⁸ That is, “it is an idealistic tale with supernatural and marvelous features,” more like legends of King Arthur and Harry Potter than Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War.⁹

Mark employs certain techniques of modern narrative fiction. As an author he is omniscient and knows everything that happens even to the extent of knowing what the characters are thinking. Throughout the narrative he provides the reader interior views of characters. That is, he reveals to readers what characters are thinking. “This shift in a reader’s point of view from seeing events from the narrator’s perspective to seeing the situation from within a paper-character’s mind is a primary feature of the rhetoric of fiction by which a flesh-and-blood author develops characters and furthers the plot of a novel.”¹⁰

            What I take away from Mark’s essay is a vague image, a silhouette of a life devoted to the welfare of the faceless multitudes of his people, a life that ended in tragedy. Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed; also from Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from about Tyre and Sidon a great multitude hearing all that he did came to him (Mark 1:7-8). According to Mark, Jesus told his disciples: Whoever would be great among you must be your servant and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:43-45).

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/149664#:~:text=In%20crafting%20Lincoln%2C%20Spielberg%20has,detail%2C%20but%20they%20are%20truthful

²The word “Gospel” appears in every NT book except John, Jude, James, 1-3 John, and 2 Peter.

³See Hedrick, “Parable and Kingdom. A Survey of the Evidence in Mark,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 27.2 (2000), 182.

⁴Dominick Crossan argued that Mark developed his story in part by reliance on the Gospel of Peter. See the brief reference in Paul Mirecki, “Peter Gospel of” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary 5:279-81. From my reading of the evidence it appeared that Crossan’s evidence could cut either way. In other words, the author of the Gospel of Peter could also have borrowed from Mark.

⁵For example, with respect to the Passover meal, compare Mark 14:22-24, 1 Cor 11:23-25, and Didache 9:1-5 for the similar format.

⁶Hedrick, “What is a Gospel? Geography, Time, and Narrative Structure,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 10.3 (1983), 255-68.

⁷Hedrick, “The Role of ‘Summary Statements’ in the composition of the Gospel of Mark: A Dialogue with Karl Schmidt and Norman Perrin,” Novum Testamentum 26 (1984), 289-311.

⁸Hedrick, “Realism in Western Narrative and the Gospel of Mark: A Prolegomenon,” Journal of Biblical Literature 126.2 (2007), 345-59.

⁹Hedrick, “Realism,” 353; for a description of the supernatural and marvelous features see 358.

¹⁰Hedrick, “The Problem of History in Mark,” pp. 140-42 in Unmasking Biblical Faiths.

Does the Bible Dissemble?

I begin with two definitions:

Euphemism: “The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend.”

Dissemble: “To put on a false appearance: conceal facts, intentions, or feelings under some pretense.”

Thus a euphemism is an attempt to disguise the true nature of a concept by using an expression that might give less offense—sugarcoating it as it were. On the other hand when one dissembles one does not address a thing forthrightly, but attempts to conceal or mask the true character of a thing or situation. Speaking euphemistically and dissembling are essentially attempts to mislead and deceive for whatever reason.

Judging by these two definitions some biblical writers do just that—they dissemble by using euphemisms. The best known instance of this practice is the use of the word “Heaven” as a circumlocution for “God” by the writer we dub Matthew. Matthew uses this euphemism likely for reasons of personal piety (Matt 8:11=Luke 13:29; Matt 10:7=Luke 9:2; Matt 11:11=Luke 7:28; Matt 11:12=Luke 16:16; Matt 13:11=Luke 8:11=Mark 4:11).

Another well know instance of dissembling is the use by certain writers of the word “feet” as a euphemism for genitalia and activities involving the genitals probably for reasons related to modesty (compare Paul’s declining to name the less presentable parts of the human body, 1 Cor 12:22-24). Some of these euphemisms are so clear that Bible translators apparently feel comfortable simply de-euphemizing the euphemism and unmasking the “real” meaning in their translations, albeit it modestly. The King James (KJV) translation of 1611 regularly translates “feet” literally as “feet,” while more modern translations (the Revised Standard Version, RSV) de-euphemize certain passages in which the word feet appears.

Judges 3:24:

KJV: “surely he covers his feet in the summer chamber”

RSV: “He is only relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber”

1 Samuel 24:3:

KJV: “where was a cave, and Saul went in to cover his feet”

RSV: “there was a cave; and Saul went in to relieve himself.”

Ezek 16:25:

KJV: “you have opened your feet to everyone that passed by and multiplied your whoredoms”

RSV: “offering yourself to any passer-by and multiplied your harlotry

In other instances modern translators are apparently uncomfortable de-euphemizing the euphemism (if that is what it is). The RSV translates David’s order to Uriah “Go down to your house and wash your feet” (2 Sam 11:8), which Uriah understands as a directive to enjoy the privileges of being a husband and “lying with his wife” (2 Sam 11:11). Here are several others where the RSV hesitates: Isa 7:20 (shaving the hair of the feet; likely meaning pubic hair); Exod 4:25 (Zipporah cuts the foreskin of her son “and touched Moses’ feet with it”).

What should we now think about Ruth 3:4 where Naomi tells her daughter-in-law, Ruth, to observe where Boaz lies down “then, go and uncover his feet and lie down and he will tell you what to do.” Ruth does as she was instructed “Then she came softly, and uncovered his feet and lay down” (Ruth 3:7).

            Of course an ancient Hebrew would likely have known when “feet” was used euphemistically. But sometimes a foot is just a foot and not a euphemism for something else (for example, John 11:2; 12:1-2; Luke 7:38-39); and even we moderns in our own culture sometimes stumble over euphemisms—so perhaps they may not have known in every case after all. So perhaps some of the other uses of “feet” should be considered a euphemism. Recognizing “feet” as a sometimes euphemism for genitalia does leave me wondering just exactly what was the nature of the disease that King Asa of Judah developed in his old age (1 Kgs 15:23 and 2 Chron 16:12).

More importantly euphemisms in the Bible raise the broader issue of hermeneutics—the methodological principles of interpreting the Bible. The uncertainties of our knowledge of the ancient past should caution us to respect the tentative nature of our knowledge in how we craft historical reconstructions of the ancient past. The better practice is let the text say what it will and put explanations in notes appended to the text.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Why did Jesus tell Parables?

Well actually he told stories, or if I must use the technical literary term for stories, his characteristic way of speaking was in narrative. Narratives (stories) have as a minimum a beginning, middle, and end, and consist of a series of related events that develop and continue through the narrative to the end. In other words it is a story, and not just a statement. Calling a story a "parable" is a reading strategy describing how one intends to read the story. In other words a parable is not a distinct literary form; it is simply a brief narrative read in a particular way.

 

            In the early Christian gospels parables are generally viewed as brief stories intended to make a comparison, draw an analogy, or illustrate a moral or religious principle. Some of the parables are regarded as example stories that provide an example of proper human conduct. Some scholars theorize that parables are stories making a single comparison between an unstated reality and the situation in the story. The single point where the unstated reality and the situation in the story come together is best rendered as a broad single moral point. The stories of Jesus have also been described as metaphors: a narrative description of one thing under the guise of another unlike thing. On this reading strategy parables are described as stories intended to bring the kingdom of God into expression in vivid memorable language—all the above theories take their place among other reading strategies for the parables of the early Christian gospels.

 

            Basic to all these strategies, however, is the story, i.e., the narrative. In my view the stories Jesus told are freely invented secular fictions, which are subjected to various reading strategies by the writers of the gospels and subsequently by modern critics. A parable works when readers put themselves into the story and identify with one of the characters; they are then positioned to make discoveries about themselves.

 

            Why would Jesus tell what are principally secular stories that have been so confusing to understand? The earliest recorded answer to that question is found in the Gospel of Mark around 70 CE—we have no idea what Jesus thought of his stories; all we have to go on are the stories themselves to investigate the earliest period of Christian origins. Some forty to fifty years after the death of Jesus Mark thought the stories were allegories, which is another reading strategy for the stories. A narrative read as an allegory assumes that it is comprised of a series of figures, or metaphors: See Mark 4:3-8, a story about farming in the first century and Mark's reading of it (Mark 4:14-20) as a series of individual figures, which understands it as an allegory about the results of early Christian preaching.*

 

            Why did Mark think Jesus told figurative stories? Mark said that parables are for those outside the circle of the inner group of associates of Jesus. Parables were designed to keep "those outside" in the dark so that they would not learn the "secret" of the kingdom of God and turn and be forgiven (Mark 4:11-12). Matthew, on the other hand, blames the crowds to whom Jesus addressed his parables for deliberately hardening their hearts (Matt 13:10-15)—but omits Mark's strange phrase "lest they turn again and be forgiven" (Mark 4:12). Luke says that the parables concealed the secrets of the kingdom, which were only meant for disciples. Luke left it open that the crowds might still understand other things Jesus spoke about in parables (Luke 8:9-10), and like Matthew he also omits Mark's offensive phrase "lest they (the crowds) turn again and be forgiven" (Mark 4:12).

 

            When I was teaching classes in the parables of Jesus at Missouri State, students delighted in telling me that Jesus used parables because it was a good teaching technique, and made things clearer to the audience—like good examples do. The difficulty is that not even the evangelists agree among themselves on what a parable is and what it was about.  For example, Matthew and Luke come to opposite interpretations of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and even disagree on what the parable says (Matt 18:10-14/Luke 15:3-7).

 

            I have never found anyone to agree with Mark that Jesus used parables in order to keep people from understanding "lest they turn again and be forgiven."

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

*See the discussion of Mark's theory of parables in Hedrick, Many Things in Parables. Jesus and his Modern Critics (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2004), 27-35.

The Obsolescence of Poetry in Early Christian Writings

By poetry I mean, in part, an elevated language arranged in verse having a measured rhythm.  Obsolescence in this case means that poetic language is not generally used by writers of early Christian texts. This circumstance is not unusual. Everything, including writing styles, naturally falls into disuse. For example, Plutarch (1st/2nd century), a priest of Apollo at Delphi, one of the most famous religious sanctuaries of the ancient Greek world, complained in his day that oracles (statements of the gods uttered by inspired prophets and prophetesses) were no longer being given in verse, and he noted further that even the numbers of prophets and prophetesses were declining.¹

 

            It is well known that poetic form is extensively used in Hebrew Bible, and employed in a variety of ways.² By using a modern translation, such as the New Revised Standard Version, it is easy to confirm the use of poetic language, since poetic form is generally arranged in verse in the translation.  For example, compare Isaiah 38:9-20.

 

            In New Testament texts, however, there is a virtual eclipse of poetic form.  Here is how Amos Wilder, a New Testament scholar who made the study of New Testament language a special interest, described the situation:

 

The poetic forms of the Old Testament which reappear in the New are also often distinguished under three heads according to the traditions out of which they come: (1) the 'gnome': the aphorism of the wisdom tradition of Israel, often found in highly patterned and pungent form; (2) the 'oracle': inspired rhythmic warning, promise, vision, curse, in the tradition of Old Testament prophecy; (3) the 'psalm': liturgical prayer-poems in the tradition of the Psalter. We find the best examples of the gnome and the oracle [in the New Testament] in the sayings of Jesus. Examples of the Christian use of the psalm, of course, are found in the Canticles of Luke.³

 

New Testament writers sparingly used "hymns" or "odes" (rhythmic units with a liturgical or deliberate theological character), such as Philippians 2:6-11; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 John 2:12-14; Revelation 18:2-3; 18:4-8.  By far the largest numbers of poetic units in the New Testament appear in the Book of Revelation. Revelation has at least sixteen hymns or hymn-like units many of which are antiphonal.⁴ In particular, the dirge against Babylon (Revelation 18:2-8, 10, 14, 16-17, 19-20, 21b-24) should be noted among some of the other poetic units in Revelation.

 

            The heavy use of poetic form in Revelation may be due to the author's situation. The author was a Jewish Christian who "wrote in Greek [but] thought in Hebrew, and frequently translated Hebrew idioms literally into Greek." In other words he expressed himself in Greek in the poetic style of Hebrew idiom.⁵ If this is correct, then the author writes from the vantage point of the verge separating Hebrew linguistic sensitivities from that of an emerging Christian orthodoxy.

 

            "Greek is one of the most fluid and musical of all languages."⁶ And Greek poets have treated all sorts of subjects in poetic form from Homer to George Seferis—including religious subjects. So how should we account for the striking lack of poetic form and the dominance of pedestrian prose in early Christian literature?  Perhaps it is due to a desire to be direct and to communicate in clear language, for an elevated style is often not clear, as Aristotle argued.⁷ Paul seems to recognize the difference, when he claims that he did not proclaim "the mystery of God" in "eloquent words or wisdom" (1 Corinthians 2:1; 1:17). In short, the New Testament writers in general used unimaginative plain prose to communicate information, rather than intensifying religious experience through poetic language.⁸ Perhaps it is not important, but poetry "is regarded by some as something central to existence, something having unique value to the fully realized life, something that we are better off for having and spiritually impoverished without."⁹

 

            From my perspective, one finds a greater spiritual uplift in poetic hymns, which share the intensity of the poets' religious experience, than in the prosaic theological stumping of preaching, which generally views religious experience in a narrow way.

 

Is the New Testament deficient in spiritually uplifting linguistic forms?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹"The Oracles at Delphi" and "The Obsolescence of Oracles."

²Otto Eissfeldt, The Old Testament. An Introduction (Harper and Row, translated from the 3rd German edition, 1965), 57-64.

³The Language of the Gospel. Early Christian Rhetoric (Harper and Row, 1964), 100-101. See Luke 1-2 for the canticles (liturgical songs) of Luke.

⁴David Aune, Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric (Westminster/John Knox, 2003), 403.

⁵Charles, The Revelation of St. John (ICC; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), 1.xxi.

⁶T. F. Higham, "Introduction. Part II," in Higham and Bowra, The Oxford Book of Greek Verse in Translation (Clarendon, 1938), xlvii. 

⁷Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, III.2.1-3.

⁸Arp, and Johnson, Perrine's Literature, Structure, Sound, and Sense (8th ed.; Harcourt, 2002), 717-19.

⁹Perrine, Literature. Structure, Sound, and Sense (4th ed.; Harcourt; 1983), 517.

Parables as Poetic Fictions—Questions from a Reader

I received this set of questions about my view of parables as stated in my book Many Things in Parables from a doctoral candidate in Australia.  My comments in italics follow the questions.

 

[Q] This is not actually a question about one of your blog posts, but rather about one of your books. I have been reading "Many Things in Parables" and am not sure if I quite understand how you conceptualise parables as symbol/poetic fiction.

 

[A] "Parables as symbols" is a suggestion made by the late New Testament scholar Norman Perrin but the idea has never attracted any interest among scholars.  You are correct that I regard parables as poetic fictions.  They are invented stories, creations of Jesus' ingenuity and observations of life around him.  I do not regard parables as symbols; see pages 65-66 of Many Things in Parables.

 

[Q] I *think* that what you are saying is something like this: Parables are polyvalent partly because rather than expecting the reader/hearer to stand outside and analyse them, they invite her/him to enter their world and will therefore evoke different responses from different people, depending on what they bring to the parable.

 

[A] The nature of narrative is to engage readers and draw them into its narrative world—as the late Bob Funk put it "to take up roles in the narrative."  Polyvalence/polysemy (the potential for generating multiple meanings) thus is innate to narrative, as the history of parables scholarship clearly shows with its multiple contradictory explanations given to the same story.

 

[Q] Some parables also function as allegories? metaphors? because they are so constructed that they draw the reader/hearer out of the parable in a particular direction – ie, it is obvious to what or whom various elements of the parable refer. If this is the case, then the intention is that the parable has referential qualities. If not, it isn't appropriate to try to analyse it in this way.

 

 [A] Metaphor and allegory, deliberately created as such, use either heightened or unusual language to deliberately refer the mind "away-from-here" to some other specific thing.  Allegory and metaphor are also reading strategies.  In the case of allegory certain language in parables is regarded as heightened or unusual and is thought to serve as code or a cipher for something else.  In the case of metaphor the reading strategy is to regard the entire narrative as a figure describing one thing under the guise of something else—i. e., the narrative is not really about a woman making dough (Matt 13:33), but rather about the kingdom of God.  I argue, however, that those parables of Jesus, which have not been modified by early Christian interpretation (like Mark 12:1-8, par.; but compare the more realistic version in the Gospel of Thomas), on the other hand, are realistic narrative.  Their realism works against their being allegory or metaphor, and serves as a brake to fanciful interpretations.  Those who want to argue that parables are allegory or metaphor must validate their judgment by identifying the language in the parable that deliberately propels the mind outward in the target direction of the interpretation, and must show how such language is a deliberately designed "trigger" to lead the mind out of the story in a specific direction.

 

[Q] Another part of the polyvalence of parables comes from the fact that they are open ended – they have no conclusions that tell readers how they should react, nor do they make moral judgements on characters, so readers make sense of them out of what they bring to it.

 

[A] From my perspective you have stated the situation correctly.

[Q] While there is no one 'correct' interpretation, there is a range of plausible historical readings.

 [A] Yes, that is my view.  Readers of the parables who allow themselves to be guided by the realism of the parable will find a range of plausible readings for the parable that a fair person would likely admit: "yes, I can see how you came up with that reading.  Readers who disregard the realism of the parables will inevitably produce what I regard as implausible readings, such as Mark does with regard to The Sower (4:14-20).  Implausible readings leave one perplexed as to how the interpreter arrived at such a reading of the parable.

[Q] Some people may not respond at all to a particular parable (and that's not a problem), but if they do, the parable will suggest to them different ways of experiencing and living in the world.

[A] Narrative, which a parable is, can raise a reader's awareness of new ways of viewing and acting in the world, but it can also influence a reader to challenge former cherished beliefs and ideas—it is simply in the nature of narrative to do that.  Frank Kermode said that narratives "are ways of finding things out"—nothing mysterious about it.  So narratives that are read carefully can either change a person's life, or at the very least unsettle the old way of life.

[Q] The comparative frames and interpretations are later additions, rather than from Jesus, so we need to look at the parables without them to get the full range of possible meanings.

 [A] Yes!  Precisely so! When the fictional story-world of Jesus stops, readers enter the evangelist's story-world about Jesus.  Interpretations of the parables are from the evangelist's story-world about Jesus.  Only the story originates with Jesus; interpretations come either from the evangelists or early Christian interpretation.  I have argued in a separate essay that Mark is likely responsible for the introductory frame "the kingdom of God is like...." If that is correct, Jesus himself never used his parables as metaphors or symbols for the kingdom.

[Q] Would that be a reasonable summary? Have I misunderstood, or missed out something critical?

 

[A] See pages 83-88 of Many Things in Parables for my brief statement of my own view, its critique by Amos Wilder, and my response to Wilder.  Two essays published on parables since the appearance of Many Things in Parables may or may not add something further to the approach to parables as poetic fictions: "Flawed Heroes and Stories Jesus Told: The One about a Killer," pp. 4.3023-56 in Tom Holmén and Stanley Porter, Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus (2011); and "Survivors of the Crucifixion. Searching for Profiles in the Parables," pp. 165-80 in Ruben Zimmerman and Gabi Kern, eds., Hermeneutik der Gleichnisse Jesu (2008).

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University