A Preface to Mark

Notes on the Gospel in Its Literary and Cultural Settings

By: Christopher Bryan

Write A Review

eText | 27 February 1997

At a Glance

Format
PDF

eText

$109.98

or 4 interest-free payments of $27.50 with

Instant online reading in your Booktopia eTextbook Library *

Why choose an eTextbook?

Instant Access *

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

* eTextbooks are not downloadable to your eReader or an app and can be accessed via web browsers only. You must be connected to the internet and have no technical issues with your device or browser that could prevent the eTextbook from operating.

A Preface to Mark is a literary study which, from the standpoint of the newer critical methodologies, explores two questions. First, Bryan attempts to determine what kind of text Mark would have been seen to be, both by its author and by others who encountered it near the time of its writing. He examines whether Mark should be seen as an example of any particular literary type, and if so which. He concludes that a comparison of Mark with other texts of the period leads inevitably to the conclusion that Mark's contemporaries would broadly have characterized his work as a "life." Second, Bryan looks at the evidence that exists to indicate whether Mark, like so much else of its period, was written to be read aloud. He points out ways in which Mark's narrative would have worked particularly well as rhetoric. The first examination of Mark as a whole in the light of contemporary studies of orality and oral transmission, A Preface to Mark not only shows us Mark in its original setting, but also suggests ways in which our own encounter with Mark's text may be significantly enriched. Its accessible style will serve as a good introduction to the Gospel for students as well as the general reader.