Let the reader understand : reader-response criticism and the Gospel of Mark

294 Pages·2001·10.9 MB·English

by  Fowler

Reader
Lett he
UNDERSTAND
Reader-RespCornistei cainsdtm h eG ospeolfM ark
Robert M. Fowler
TRINITY PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Copyright C 1996 Robert M. Fowler
Trinity Press International paperback edition 2001
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised Standard Version of
the Bible, copyright 0 1946, 1952, and 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the
National Council of Churches.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, 'frinity Press
International.
Trinity Press International, P.O. Box 1321, Harrisburg, PA 17105
Trinity Press International is a division of the Morehouse Group.
Cover image: Saint Mark the Evangelist, manuscript page from Gospels, France, 845-882 C.E.
M.728, F.63V. The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY.
Cover design: Wesley Hoke
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fowler, Robert M.
Let the reader understand : reader-response criticism and the Gospel of Mark I Robert
M.Fowler.
p.cm.
Originally published: Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56338-338-1 (alk. paper)
I. Bible. N.T. Mark--Reader-response criticism. I. Title.
BS2585.52 .F69 2001
226.3'066--dc21 00-062852
01 02 03 04 05 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Wayne and
Jo Anne Fowler

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
The Reading Experience
Narrative Rhetoric
A Bridge-building Effort
Rhetorical Strategies
Part One: Reader-Response Criticism 7
1. Discovering the Reading Experience 9
The Experience of Reading Mark
Observing the Experience
2. The Reader and the Reading Experience 25
Who Is the Reader?
3. A Critical Model of Reading 41
The Temporal Reading Experience
Meaning as Event
Part Two: The Gospel of Mark 59
4. The Storyteller's Craft 61
The Narrator's Stance
5. Explicit Commentary by the Nartraor 81
Commentary on the Discourse
vii
viii
viii
Commentary on the Story
Inside Views
6. Implicit Commentary by the Narrator 127
By Means of Characters
By Means of Plotting
7. The Rhetoric of Indirection 155
Mark's Crucifixion Scene
Family Resemblances
Mark's Indirect Moves
8. Moves of Greater Uncertainty 195
Ambiguity
Opacity
Picturing the Indirect Moves
What Indirection Accomplishes
9. The History of Reading Mark 228
Reading Tangled Gospels
Tools for Analysis
Matthew as a Reading Grid
Reflections on Matthew's Grid
An Ambivalent Narrative? 261
267
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing a book that has taken as long as this one has, an author piles up
a considerable debt to institutions and to friends, colleagues, and family. This
project began with-and would have been impossible without-a year-long
fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Generous gifts
from Robert and Mary Lou Thomson allowed me to participate for five years
in a seminar in the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Generous support
from Baldwin-Wallace College and Robert Brown gave me the time to finish
my manuscript in a sabbatical year.
As I wrote the following pages, I often visualized the faces of my col­
leagues in seminars at the regional level (in the Working Group on Rhetorical
and Narrative Criticism of the Bible of the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical
Society), national level (in the Group on the Literary Aspects of the Gospels
and Acts of the Society of Biblical Literature), and international level (in the
Seminar on the Role of the Reader in the Interpretation of the New Testament
of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas). Early drafts of portions of this
boko were presented to each of these seminars and published in some form
or another in the Proceedings of the EGLBS, the Seminar Papers of the SBL,
and in the journal Semeia. I owe a great debt to my colleagues in all of these
scholarly societies for their comments, suggestions, and encouragement.
Closer to home, I extend my thanks to a host of individuals who assisted
and encouraged me through the years: to Kathy Meneely and others at Ritter
Library, for help with mountains of interlibrary loans; to Chris Sullivan and
Mary Wilson, and other Computer Center staff, for help with wordprocessing;
to Fred Blumer, Hugh Burtner, and Hank Knight, my unfailingly supportive
departmental colleagues; to Lynn Poland and Jim Voelz, for trying out my
manuscript in the classroom and for asking me to speak to their students; to
Fortress Press, for giving this book its first birth, and to Henry Carrigan and the
staff at Trinity Press International, for allowing it to be born again; to Werner
Kelber and David Rhoads, for their asisstance at a crucial time; to countless
ix
ix
X LET THE READER UNDERSTAND
students and church audiences, who allowed me to introduce them to the
experience of reading Mark's Gospel; to my children, Geoff and Amanda, from
whom I stole so many childhood hours, in order to write; to Deborah Gaye, my
soulmate on a grand new adventure; and to my parents, Wayne and Jo Anne
Fowler, who gave me roots and wings.
One index of the reader for whom I writing is that the text of Mark that
am
I read is the Greek text in the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum
TestamentGurame acneot;he r index is that I never cite the Greek text of Mark
without also providing an English translation, usually from the Revised
Standard Version, sometimes from other translations, and frequently from my
own translation.
Excerpt from "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and
John 1:1" by Philip B. Harner from JournaolfB ibliLcailt erat9u2 r{1e97 3),
pp. 7S-87. Reprinted by permission.
Excerpt from SelecEstsayesd b y T. S. Eliot, copyright @ 1950 by Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and renewed 1978 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by
permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber Faber, Ltd.
&
Diagram from Stoaryn dD iscourNsaer:r atSitvreu citnuF riec tainodFn i lm,
by Seymour Chatman. Copyright @ 1978 Cornell University. Used by permis­
sion of the publisher, Cornell University Press.
Diagram from The Mirraonrd t hLaem p:R omantThieco rya ndt hCer itical
Traditibyo Mn., H . Abrams. Copyright@ 1953 Oxford University Press. Used by
permission.
Diagrams from StylienLa nguagede. ,Th omas A. Sebeok. Copyright @ 1960
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Used by permission.
Diagram from CritiIcanlq uiVryol,. 3 , Winter 1976, p. 370. Copyright@
1976 by the University of Chicago. Used by permission.