Rereading Mark's Gospel: We Are Jewish Differently!

Rereading Mark's Gospel: We are Jewish Differently!

Solomon HF WONG

How would the gospel of Mark be understood? Is it a Christian writing? Or is it a Jewish writing? This paper is an attempt to reread the gospel of Mark as a Jewish writing. To read Mark's gospel as a Jewish writing is to read it against its first-century Mediterranean culture (the embeddedness of Religion and Religion as a part of Ethnicity). In this regard, the conception “Jewishness”, suggested by Shaye JD Cohen, is introduced to serve as a Jewish milieu, in which the concept Factionalism will be further explained. This broader definition of Jewishness allows one to rethink the question as to what was meant by “to be Jewish”. Mark and the Marcan faction, a textual construct from Mark's gospel, belong to and have been located within this Jewishness. Sabbath observance, one of the most important Jewish identity-markers in the Second Temple period, is put to test in this paper to show that Jesus has not abrogated the Sabbath law and the discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees can be understood as a Jewish debate within first-century Jewishness. If this (re)reading is sustained, Mark and the Marcan faction are very Jewish in outlook but, at the same time, because of their faith in Jesus, they are “Jewish differently”!