THE GOSPEL OF MARK AS EPISODICAL NARRATIVE: REFLECTIONS ON THE 'COMPOSITION' OF THE SECOND GOSPEL

Abstract

The gospel of Mark as ‘episodical narrative’? The second gospel has remained controversial since Johann Gottfried Herder had classified it as a narrative. Although most interpreters have come to realize that the gospel of Mark is a narrative text, this realization has not always been precipitated in the determination of genre or the method of interpretation. However, if the gospel of Mark is a narrative, it ought to be scrutinized and classified as a narrative text. Yet it is not our intention once again to classify the gospel of Mark in terms of literary history. We are interested in something else, namely, to prove that the gospel of Mark is in fact a narrative text, and to attempt an evaluation of the narrative qualities of this text with regard to the ‘composition’ of the gospel. Even if the question of genre is left open for the time being (see below1), it is quite possible to evaluate the fact that the gospel of Mark is essentially a narrative text, for an analysis of its composition.