LOY Excursus: Mark’s Editorial Style

This LOY Excursus is a compendium of observations regarding the redactional changes the author of Mark typically made to his sources. It also discusses the image of Jesus the author of Mark wanted to portray in his Gospel.

How to cite this article:
David N. Bivin, “LOY Excursus: Mark’s Editorial Style,” The Life of Yeshua: A Suggested Reconstruction (Jerusalem Perspective, 2014) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/12312/].

Dedicated to the memory of Professor Eduard Yechezkel Kutscher (1909-1971).

Updated: 28 July 2024^[1]

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Mark’s Freedom and Creativity

2a. Grammar

2b. Vocabulary

2c. Literary Techniques

3. A Jewish Model for Mark’s Editorial Style?

4. Mark’s Portrait of Jesus

5. Appreciation for Mark

The writing style of the author of the Gospel of Mark has long been regarded as idiosyncratic.^[2]Mark’s pervasive use of the “historical present”^[3]and its bizarre proliferation of the word εὐθύς are two well-known examples.^[4]Despite its awkwardness, and indeed sometimes because of it, Mark’s Gospel has been regarded as the most primitive of the Synoptic Gospels and one of the sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Robert Lindsey challenged this scholarly consensus of Markan Priority when he discovered the more Hebraic quality of Luke vis-à-vis Mark and vis-à-vis Matthew wherever Matthew was dependent on Mark. Lindsey concluded that Luke was the first of the Synoptic Gospels, that Mark reworked Luke, and that Matthew is based on Mark and one of the sources upon which Luke is based.^[5]

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^[1] Revised with the assistance of Joshua N. Tilton and Lauren S. Asperschlager. ↩
^[2] For abbreviations and bibliographical references, see “Introduction to ‘The Life of Yeshua: A Suggested Reconstruction.’” ↩
^[3] See Hawkins, 143-149; Taylor, 46-47; Randall Buth, “Mark’s Use of the Historical Present,” Notes On Translation 65 (1977): 13-28. ↩
^[4] In Mark εὐθύς (evthūs, “immediately”) occurs 41xx, compared to 7xx in Matthew, and 1x in Luke. ↩
^[5] See “Introduction to ‘The Life of Yeshua: A Suggested Reconstruction.’” ↩