Monday, March 31, 2008

Book Review: Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark


I recently finished reading Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark by Rikki Watts, now a professor at Regent College in Vancouver, BC.  Anyone who has the technical ability to wade through the Greek and Hebrew references will glean pure gold from this work! It has opened my eyes to understanding the Gospels as well as the ministry of Jesus in a Biblical-Theological framework.  I'm including my review which I wrote for my Exegesis of Mark class.  Hopefully this can whet your appetite for more to come!



Introduction:
Given the rise of literary criticism as a sub-discipline of Biblical Studies and the resurgence of interest in theological interpretation, there has been a greatly renewed interest in the Gospels in their final, canonical form. With regards to the Gospel of Mark, this new scholarly climate has resulted in greater attention and debate as to Mark’s overall literary organization and the bearing that it has for Mark’s Biblical Theology. It is into this milieu that Rikki Watts has presented Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark. His central thrust is that Mark has structured his gospel account in order to demonstrate that Jesus, in His life, ministry, death and resurrection, fulfilled the long standing Jewish hope of a New Exodus and consequent end to exile that had been promised in the Prophet Isaiah. Thus, Jesus both stands in continuity with and yet redefines the hopes that Israel had been carrying with her for centuries.

Argument of the Book:
Watts begins his studying with an examination of the major literary-theological works on the Gospel of Mark in the past 50 years. He is careful in each instance to note the important contributions and insights that each author has into Mark but also demonstrates that each author comes up short when trying to see a unified way in which Mark structures his gospel and draws on Old Testament imagery. One constant motif that emerges again and again in the surveyed literature is the theme of Exodus and the noted use of Exodus imagery in the Gospel. Watts notes that these authors are successful in demonstrating a link to the Exodus at individual points in the Gospel but are less compelling when they attempt to see an overarching Exodus structure. Although he hints as his solution to this difficulty, namely that Mark makes use of the Exodus motif in as much as it was reinterpreted in Isaiah 40-66, he saves this assertion for a later point in his work.  

From his survey of previous works on Mark, he proceeds to articulate a hermeneutic that he argues Mark has made use of in bringing the OT to bear on his narrative. Through a detailed analysis of Ideology as expressed in the discipline of Sociology, he explains that a community will maintain its identity and self-understanding based on continuous reference to what he calls its unique founding moment. Based on this unique founding moment, an author may make textual allusions that are designed to make the reader recall a whole historical, sociological grid. He writes, “I suggest that his (Mark’s) ‘grand piano’ is a schematized interpretive ‘map’ of Israel’s ‘history’ and that his OT part-citations or allusions may function as ‘grid references’ to that map which gives expression and order to Israel’s interpretation of her history, namely the OT.” In light of this understanding and the often observed influence of Isaiah 40-55 on Mark, Watts proceeds to examine the gospel to see how Mark’s use of OT citations, allusions and imagery may shed light on the structure of Mark’s gospel.  

Particularly key for Watts’ argument is the function of the opening conflated citation of Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1 in Mk 1:2-3. Isaiah 40 introduces his New Exodus (NE) schema that is developed throughout the remained of the book. He argues that the Malachi 3 portion of the citation functions as a development of Isaiah’s NE expectation that serves to explain why his NE has been delayed. Together, they form a controlling ‘grid reference’ by which the reader is alerted to the interpretive framework that Mark is attempting to develop and argue for through his narrative. Watts writes,
“for Mark the long-awaited coming of Yahweh as King and Warrior has begun, and with it, the inauguration of Israel’s eschatological comfort: her deliverance from the hands of the nations, the journey of her exiles to their home and their eventual arrival at Jerusalem, the place of Yahweh’s presence.”
This editorial citation functions according to the norm of ancient literature in which such a citation establishes the conceptual framework for the remainder of the work.
The bulk of the rest of Watt’s book serves to demonstrate how looking at Mark from the perspective of the fulfillment of an INE schema serves to make better sense of Mark’s structure than previous proposals and ultimately demonstrates that, at least for Mark, Jesus’ ministry was the culmination of the long-awaited hopes of YHWH’s deliverance of Israel although in Jesus both Israel and their hope are drastically redefined. Watts, along with many other commentators, sees two major breaks in the Gospel’s narrative at 8:21-27 and 10:45-11:1 which would divide the book into a three part structure consisting of Jesus’ ministry in which He preaches and performs miracles, Jesus leading His blind and deaf disciples along a ‘way’ and finally an arrival in Jerusalem. According to Watts, this structure
“displays broad parallels with the INE schema of A) Yahweh’s deliverance and healing of his exiled people, B) a journey where ‘blind’ Israel is led along ‘a way they do not know’, and C) arrival in Jerusalem.”
At each point in each of these three major sections, he is careful to demonstrate how the major features of the narrative demonstrate are consistent with a NE hermeneutic and how such a hermeneutic lends a hand in helping solve difficult interpretive questions in the work.
Finally, Watts concludes his study with a chapter in which he recognizes the limitations or temptations of such a study to make all the evidence fit within the desire schema. So, in good critical realist fashion, he sets forth the Theory of Consilience and the criterion of simplicity from the Philosophy of Science in an effort to justify his study. So, while he admits that he may not be completely convincing at every stage of his argument for a controlling NE framework for Mark’s gospel, it “leads to a greater degree of consilience than any other literary theory yet proposed for Mark in that it explains and integrates a large number of previously separate classes of recognized phenomena.”

Evaluation:
Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark is, I believe, a masterful and well argued study of Mark’s Gospel which seems to shed light on its narrative technique as well as the Biblical Theology that it sets forth. Watts displays a great degree of skill in both Greek and Hebrew exegesis and appears to be knowledgeable about nearly every major secondary source on the Gospel of Mark extant at the time of his writing (his bibliography is nearly 45 pages long!). He brings these skills together to weave a convincing picture of what Mark is up to in his gospel.  

It could be argued that at times Watts does cook his evidence to fit into a NE schema. Indeed, when at an exegetical or theological impasse, a reference to Mark’s controlling INE framework seems to be, at least for him, what would tip the scales of interpretation in favor of his hermeneutic. So, in these instances, his arguments can become admittedly circular, a fact which he appears to recognize as he writes his final conclusion to the work. However, it should be noted again that this study does not rise or fall on individual interpretations of events and pericopae. The strength of his argument is that it seems to better fit the evidence than any other scheme that that has yet been proposed. He recognizes that there are other OT themes and motifs at work in the gospel other than a NE one and so he shows appropriate scholarly humility in holding individual interpretations loosely. What is important for him is that the INE motif provides the “conceptual framework” for the narrative.  

One area in which I wish Watts could have been clearer was in his assertion that Jesus’ ministry was, at least for Mark, the fulfillment of the NE hope of Isaiah. However, it never seems to be defined clearly what he means by “fulfillment”. One wonders whether he understands to be Mark attempting to show a partial fulfillment, an inaugurated fulfillment or a final fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. It seems that there are clues in the gospel that would lead one to see the events of Jesus’ ministry in Mark as an initial or “inaugurated” fulfillment and more careful nuancing on Watts’ part would have lead, I think, to an even larger theological payoff for the work in terms of helping to articulate a broader New Testament Theology.

Conclusion:
Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark appears to be a groundbreaking study on Mark’s gospel which sheds much light on what is happening in the work from both a literary and a theological perspective. As I’m sure it already has been, I believe that it will continue to be a resource and base from which many scholars can penetrate further into the gospel in an attempt to mine the riches that are there for the Church. I pray that in this way, it will cause people to more fully appreciate the work that Christ did on Earth in His life, death and resurrection and bring the Church to stand in greater awe and worship of YHWH through His Servant, Jesus.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Why the Prosperity Gospel is not Gospel!

Here's a powerful video showing John Piper explain why the "Prosperity Gospel" is not true gospel at all.




ht: Justin Taylor