Nathanael Vette is currently the Issachar Fund Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and this monograph is his dissertation completed there under the supervision of Helen Bond. Vette’s primary argument concerns the application of certain compositional practices utilized by authors of Second Temple narrative texts to the Gospel of Mark. Specifically, he suggests that Mark employed language or content from episodes in the Hebrew scriptures in his authorial construction of his own Gospel, which Vette contends would have been a recognizable practice among Jewish writers in antiquity. Given the popularity of Mark as a focus of academic research, it is certainly difficult to propose a different paradigm for reading his Gospel, and with this study Vette makes an interesting move in that direction, which will challenge some assumptions of Markan scholarship and will undoubtedly merit sustained discussion and engagement.Vette’s work is divided quite simply into an introduction, two large chapters presenting his main argument, and a conclusion exploring the possible implications of his findings. The introduction begins with an exploration of how the authors of ancient Jewish texts viewed their work in relation to other literary or scriptural antecedents, focusing on the work of Devorah Dimant in arguing that the Jewish scriptures were not just the objects of exegesis for authors but were also the means of composing new and independent literature, so that the use of scripture by authors in antiquity can be divided into expositional and compositional use. Compositional use entails the unmarked weaving of scriptural elements into a new work, while expositional use presents and/or interprets the scriptural antecedent explicitly. Compositional use (exemplified in a text like Jubilees) entails the reworking of the antecedent text or context to the new text and context. Thus, after a survey of other important works on intertextuality from C. H. Dodd to the present, Vette introduces his proposition: Mark used the Jewish scriptures not only in an expositional way but also in a compositional way. In his words, Mark “features unmarked scriptural language woven seamlessly into the narrative” (4), and “the Jewish Scriptures were not just invoked to interpret the Markan narrative, but also to compose details and episodes in the narrative itself” (5). That is, Vette is arguing that Mark created his text from other texts, not only as a way to explain Mark’s language but also his literary process. To describe this process, he borrows the language of “scripturalization” from Judith Newman and Mark Goodacre.The second chapter is an exploration of five Second Temple texts (Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, Genesis Apocryphon, 1 Maccabees, Judith, and Testament of Abraham), which appear to use the Hebrew scriptures in a compositional manner to establish that this practice was a stylistic feature of Jewish authors in antiquity. Vette systematically examines each text (with more space given to LAB and Genesis Apocryphon), arguing that each contains episodes where one or more scriptural sources are clearly and repeatedly drawn on to supply the language, details, or narrative structure of the new text. As one example, Vette suggests that Pseudo-Philo uses material from Gen 11 and from Dan 3 to create a new narrative about Abram being rescued from the “fiery furnace” for the Chaldeans, showing that Pseudo-Philo’s language and setting is most reminiscent of these antecedent texts. Similarly, in Genesis Apocryphon, Vette argues that the writer uses this practice to associate the Abrahamic covenant with the promise of land to Noah, a feature that he argues is original to the author and cannot be relegated to common tradition. Vette’s examination of 1 Macc (which associates Deuteronomic language with Judas), Judith (which associates Jael and Sisera narratives with Holofernes), and Testament of Abraham (which borrows language and features from Job) yield similar conclusions about the authors’ compositional practices.The third chapter comprises the main thrust of his argument, with an exploration of five episodes in Mark’s Gospel (the wilderness sojourn and call of the disciples in 1:12–20, the two feeding narratives in 6:35–44 and 8:1–9, the death of the Baptist in 6:21–28, and the crucifixion in 15:21–41) as an argument for understanding narrative scripturalization as a Markan compositional practice. After an initial section discussing Mark’s presumed references to Exod 23:20, Mal 3:1, and Isa 40:3 in the initial verses of the first chapter, Vette begins by arguing that Mark utilizes Elijah’s wilderness episode and calling of Elisha as a compositional model for Jesus’s wilderness sojourn and calling of his disciples, weaving in language and details of 1 Kgs 19 into his narrative without explicit reference. Subsequently, in what may be the strongest section of the work, Vette argues that Mark’s two feeding narratives are modeled on the Elisha narrative of 2 Kgs 4:42–44, building on an important 2010 monograph by Adam Winn on this topic. Next, Vette suggests that the episode about the death of John the Baptist is based on the narrative of Esther and Ahasuerus, observing that later traditional expansions of Esther in rabbinic texts have details remarkably similar to Mark’s details (such as dancing at the banquet, or Vashti being beheaded). Lastly, Vette argues that the passion narrative utilizes scripture compositionally in a variety of ways, but especially related to the idea of the righteous sufferer in Isa 53, Zech 13, and several Psalms.In his conclusion, Vette tackles the implications of his approach on the historicity of Mark’s content, arguing for the most part that Mark’s scripturalizations subtract historicity from his narratives, resulting not in a move from historical to scriptural but rather the opposite. Vette’s own perspective here is rather agnostic, as he finds the relation of Mark’s text to history to be “unrecoverable” (201). Vette comments further that scripturalization does not prima facie preclude the textualization of historical memories, but in some cases that conclusion is inevitable, and therefore historical correspondence concerns may create more questions than answers and will be difficult for some readers to accept.Vette’s work provides very interesting paths forward for Gospel scholarship. A strength of the book is its focus on Mark’s Jewish context and its placement of Mark’s text within that compositional and expositional milieu. This is refreshing, given what may be an overfocusing on Mark’s Greco-Roman context, and helps to remind readers of an overlooked aspect of Mark as an author. On a more critical note, some of Vette’s stylistic choices can make his work a bit difficult to read, as in the case of Vette’s insistence on using the nonbinary pronoun “they” in reference to Mark as an author. Presumably out of respect, this leads to some inelegant syntax and is almost certainly unnecessary, since the tiny possibility of the author being female makes the choice of male pronouns probably more an exercise in realism than sexism. Additionally, some rather polemical language toward more conservative interpretations of scripture (such as those who take biblical texts to have historical verisimilitude) is occasionally distracting and unnecessary to his argument. Stylistic quibbles aside, however, Vette’s work is a profoundly useful contribution to the ever-growing discussion of Mark, his Gospel, and compositional practices.