Mark and Disability

Abstract

This essay explores the Gospel of Mark through the lens of disability, with attention to understandings of disability in the ancient world, the language of affliction, questions of faith and sin, forms of healing, and the agency of the impaired person. The essay examines the “powers” in the Gospel of Mark as a form of empire and demonstrates how Jesus’s action in casting out demons and unclean spirits is a disruption of the status quo at a cosmic level.