Prophetic Script and Dramatic Enactment in Mark’s Prologue

Abstract

Abstract The opening of Mark’s Gospel has received substantial scholarly attention over the past century. While initial debates largely centered on nailing down its precise ending, narrative criticism and increased attention to intertextuality have attuned scholars to the ways in which the prologue establishes a set of narrative and theological agendas for the rest of the Gospel. This study builds on many of these previous contributions by drawing attention to the function of Mark’s opening citation (Mark 1:2–3). Specifically, I argue that the composite citation functions as a prophetic script and that the remainder of the prologue functions as its dramatic enactment. Reading the prologue in this way suggests that God is, in fact, the central actor of the prologue, the one who summons and commissions the dramatis personae to enact his will. The script thus discloses that at the heart of the good news about Jesus Christ stands the revelation that Christ is the “you" who both takes up Israel’s vocation as the covenant people (cf. Exod 23:20) and enacts the glorious manifestation of Israel’s Kyrios (cf. Mal 3:1; Isa 40:3).