Abstract
Building on research relating the New Testament to Greek and Roman literary culture, the article explores the Gospel of Mark's representation of Jesus as speaker. In focus are dialogues in the Gospel's seventh chapter which take place between Jesus and characters with different social background and in different social spaces. The article argues that, in these dialogues, Jesus speaks as a member of the social and cultural elite, as he has access to social spaces and has the necessary skills in rhetoric to adapt his speech to varying circumstances. This representation of Jesus as speaker can have several functions. One is to familiarise readers of the Gospel across the Roman Empire with a distant province, Judaea, as Jesus conforms to expectations for an elite male in Greek and Roman culture. A second is to contribute to Jesus' literary characterisation as subversive or comic, as he engages in ‘rhetorical battles’ with different people and with varying success.
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