Reading Mark's Gospel as a Text from Collective Memory by Sandra Huebenthal

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reading Mark's Gospel as a Text from Collective Memory by Sandra Huebenthal Ritva H. Williams sandra huebenthal, Reading Mark's Gospel as a Text from Collective Memory (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020). Pp. 694. $74.99. This volume is Sandra Huebenthal's translation of her 2014 work Das Markusevangelium als kollectives Gedächtnis (FRLANT 253; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht); this translation includes a "Foreword" by Werner H. Kelber. Huebenthal begins with an "Exegetical Kaleidoscope" of Gospel scholarship in which she argues for orality-scribality, memory-theoretical approaches, and narrative criticism as preferred hermeneutical lenses. Using these methods, H. intends "to read Mark's Gospel as a collective memory text, namely, one that reflects the efforts of a group to draft a group identity based on that group's memories of Jesus" (p. 81; italics original). To advance this goal, H. devotes a chapter to "Social Recollection," bringing together insights from social memory theorists, primarily Maurice Halbwachs and Jan and Aleida Assmann to produce an ideal type model or matrix of social, collective, and cultural memory. Next, she lays out a model for reading Mark as a memory text. This begins with recognizing that the Gospel consists of individual episodes initially narrated orally within social memory. When transferred into the overall narrative structure of Mark's Gospel, these memories are modified and acquire new meanings (p. 185). As a written text, Mark becomes collective memory functioning as an identity-constituting founding story for a community of commemoration. H.'s reading model begins by gaining an overview of the whole text, paying attention to what is and is not narrated, how it is narrated, its guiding perspectives and transparency. Huebenthal reads the whole narrative as explicating "the (correct) perception of the character Jesus" (p. 235) for the purpose of constituting and organizing a community of narration and commemoration. She sees "the experience of crisis and dealing with crises as a continuous subtext" to which the proper response is "usually withdrawal, composure (also in prayer), reconstitution and continuation at a different place" (pp. 248–49). [End Page 139] Huebenthal devotes three chapters to a detailed analysis of Mark 6:7–8:26, in which she explores the text's intertexture to discover the cultural patterns and frames that have shaped the narrative. Possible Worlds Theory (PWT) enables H. to explore the perspectives of different characters in the text, and of the narrative voice. PWT posits four possible worlds for each character: K-world (knowledge, information, skills, doctrines, convictions, and hypotheses about past and future), O-world (obligations, values, norms, internalized duties, conventions, morals, ethics), W-world (wishes, needs, drives), and I-world (intentions, plans). Finally, H. sheds light on the text's transparency for the community of narration by focusing on the "pragmatics of the text." Rather than asking who the author and audience of Mark's Gospel are, she asks "to which form of Christian identity construction Mark's Gospel offers its invitation" (p. 403). She answers this question by engaging in an intratextural reading, connecting characters and narrative voice with the structure of the whole text. Through these three different strategies, H. demonstrates that in Mark 6:7–8:26 memories of Jesus are presented predominantly within the cultural frame of Hellenistic Jewish Scripture (LXX), traditions, rites, and customs, with some pagan patterns and references appearing in the healing and miracle stories. Based on her PWT assessment, H. contends that "two different worlds converge [in the text] that cannot be reconciled" (p. 396). One is the "O-world" of characters like the Pharisees, scribes, and Herod Antipas; the other is the W-world of Jesus. The narrative voice, through the arrangement of episodes and subtle signals, clearly directs the hearer/reader to adopt Jesus's perspective (p. 397). H. posits a community of commemoration open to newcomers who identify with Jesus, who recognize their own fears, doubts, and mistakes in the disciples, and who try not to repeat them (p. 504). Clean/unclean, Jewish/gentile, rich/poor, sick/healthy, inside/outside are no longer relevant. Jews and gentiles have the same experience of Jesus, yet they do not merge into one group. Community members face local conflicts about matters...