Intertextual production of the Gospel of Mark

It is commonly maintained that the Gospel of Mark was originally written in Koine Greek, and that the final text represents a rather lengthy history of growth.

[1] Dodd justified this model of how the stories evolved before becoming part of a written Gospel by pointing to passages in the Acts of the Apostles.

[4][1] The intertextuality of the Gospel of Mark has been recognized by scholars such as Thomas L. Brodie,[5] Willem S. Vorster,[6] Dennis R. MacDonald,[7] and Bartosz Adamczewski.

[8] It is normally argued that the followers of Jesus transmitted his words and deeds by telling and retelling things he did and said, in view of the folkloric nature of many of the stories of and about Jesus, the aphoristic character of many of his sayings, the many parables he apparently told his followers, and the role of oral communication in that period.

[9] Karl Ludwig Schmidt asserted that the accounts of the New Testament were to be regarded as fixed written versions of oral Gospel tradition.

[10] Using form criticism, Schmidt showed that an editor had assembled the narrative out of individual scenes that did not originally have a chronological order.

[13]There is no reason to doubt that the written Gospel of Mark echoes many different precursor texts and intertextual relationships.

They are so embedded into the story that, if it were not for the references in the margins and a knowledge of the Old Testament, the reader would not have noticed that Mark uses an allusion or a quotation (see Mk 15:24).

The point is, however, that the allusions and 'quotations' form such an integral part of the passion narrative that it is impossible for the naïve reader to realize that the text is enriched by its intertextual relationships concerning the suffering of the Just.

[14] One possible inference from the use of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark is that the author created a new story with the aid of intertextual codes that helped him to communicate his own point of view.

[1] A justification for the comparison of the Gospel of Mark with Jewish apocrypha and pseudepigrapha is given by Nathanael Vette,[25] following Devorah Dimant [de]'s work "Use and Interpretation of Mikra":[26] that these writings have in common the imitation of the styles and forms of the Old Testament (OT) biblical literature and can be read as if they are attempting to imitate that biblical world.

Scripture is not primarily addressed directly in order to be explicitly interpreted in these writings but acts as an underlay that helps shape narrative episodes.

[27] John Dominic Crossan and Howard Clark Kee argue that Mark's citation of scripture is not representative of ignorance or editorial sloppiness, but rather represents combinations and alterations of scripture texts that cohere with Mark's intent to create a new story to communicate his own point of view.