This comparative handbook is intended to provide scholars of the New Testament with detailed, systematic and accurate resources concerning the Judaic context of the gospel of Mark. It aims to serve as a powerful tool to assist the reader - and commentator - in understanding and commenting on the gospel of Mark. Introductions are provided to help with issues of dating and the development of the literatures concerned. Possible interpretations are also presented, where suitable.

This Comparative Handbook surveys the Judaic environment of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Analogies are traced with the Pseudepigrapha (together with Philo and Josephus), discoveries related to Qumran, and Rabbinic Literature (inclusive of the Targumim).

This comparative handbook is intended to provide scholars of the New Testament with detailed, systematic and accurate resources concerning the Judaic context of the gospel of Mark. It aims to serve as a powerful tool to assist the reader - and commentator - in understanding and commenting on the gospel of Mark. Introductions are provided to help with issues of dating and the development of the literatures concerned. Possible interpretations are also presented, where suitable.

This volume brings together an international group of scholars on Mark and Paul, respectively, who reopen the question whether Paul was a direct influence on Mark. On the basis of the latest methods in New Testament scholarship, the battle over Yes and No to this question of literary and theological influence is waged within these pages. In the end, no agreement is reached, but the basic issues stand out with much greater clarity than before. How may one relate two rather different literary genres, the apostolic letter and the narrative gospel? How may the theologies of two such different types of writing be compared? Are there sufficient indications that Paul lies directly behind Mark for us to conclude that through Paul himself and Mark the New Testament as a whole reflects specifically Pauline ideas? What would the literary and theological consequences of either assuming or denying a direct influence be for our reconstruction of 1st century Christianity? And what would the consequences be for either understanding Mark or Paul as literary authors and theologians? How far should we give Paul an exalted a position in the literary creativity of the first Christians? Addressing these questions are scholars who have already written seminally on the issue or have marked positions on it, like Joel Marcus, Margaret Mitchell, Gerd Theissen and Oda Wischmeyer, together with a group of up-coming and senior Danish scholars from Aarhus and Copenhagen Universities who have collaborated on the issue for some years. The present volume leads the discussion further that has been taken up in: “Paul and Mark” (ed. by O. Wischmeyer, D. Sim, and I. Elmer), BZNW 191, 2013.

A Theology of Mark’s Gospel is the fourth volume in the BTNT series. This landmark textbook, written by leading New Testament scholar David E. Garland, thoroughly explores the theology of Mark’s Gospel. It both covers major Markan themes and also sets forth the distinctive contribution of Mark to the New Testament and the canon of Scripture, providing readers with an in-depth and holistic grasp of Markan theology in the larger context of the Bible. This substantive, evangelical treatment of Markan theology makes an ideal college- or seminary-level text.

How did the Gospel of Mark come to exist? And how was the memory of Jesus shaped by the experiences of the earliest Christians? For centuries, biblical scholars examined texts as history, literature, theology, or even as story. Curiously absent, however, has been attention to processes of collective memory in the creation of biblical texts. Drawing on modern explorations of social memory, Sandra Huebenthal presents a model for reading biblical texts as collective memories. She demonstrates that the Gospel of Mark is a text evolving from collective narrative memory based on recollections of Jesus’s life and teachings. Huebenthal investigates the principles and structures of how groups remember and how their memory is structured and presented. In the case of Mark’s Gospel, this includes examining which image of Jesus, as well as which authorial self-image, this text as memory constructs. Reading Mark’s Gospel as a Text from Collective Memory serves less as a key to unlock questions about the historical Jesus and more as an examination of memory about him within a particular community, providing a new and important framework for interpreting the earliest canonical gospel in context.

This book investigates stories of Jesus’ exorcisms in the Gospel of Mark. The story of Jesus’ first public ministry in the synagogue (Mark 1:21–28) and the Beelzebul controversy story (3:20–30) are examined to understand the other acts of exorcism that Jesus performed (5:1–20; 7:24–30; 9:14–32). Both Mark 1:21–28 and 3:20–30 highlight Jesus as a teacher and as an eschatological exorcist. The latter stresses Jesus’ own understanding of exorcism and relates his identity with that of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the first two exorcism stories in Mark’s Gospel confirm Jesus as the bearer of the kingdom of God. The motif of discipleship, which is evident in both stories, contributes to delineating Jesus’ christological identity as the Son of God, as indicated by the incipit of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 1:1). Markan exorcism stories in Mark 5:1–20; 7:24–30; and 9:14–29 further develop the presentation of Jesus’ exorcisms and other primary motifs. The motifs of authority, identity, and mission confirm the christological identity of Jesus within gentile territory, and are an important part of his mission to the gentiles. Jesus’ specific mission in Mark 9:14–29 presents the exorcism that Jesus performed in the context of his role in both death and resurrection. In this way, Jesus as the bearer of the kingdom of God defeats the kingdom of Beelzebul.