Mark's title (1.1)

Although it is not the place to argue the point, it is most likely that Mark 1.1 functions as a title for the whole narrative. Since τὸ εʾυαγγέλιον would be familiar to Mark's readers as the basic (oral) message by which the Christian movement sought to persuade others, Mark's work promises to show the foundation of gospel proclamation by anchoring the message – and the movement spawned by it – in the events to be narrated.

The title promises to make its impact upon the readers through engaging them in a narrative about ‘Jesus Christ, [the Son of God]’. Although the key words of Mark's title are firmly anchored in expectations generated by the OT, the Graeco-Roman readers would recognise this language from its usage in connection with the Caesars. The Augustan phraseology, whose currency continued across the first century, proclaimed him to be Son of God, and his birthday was proclaimed throughout the provinces in the calendar inscriptions set up by city officials as ‘the beginning of good news through him for the world’ (ἦρξεν δὲ τῶι κόσμωι τῶν διʾ αʾυτὸν εʾυανγελί[ων, OGIS458 = EJ 98 = Braund 122 (9 bc)). This notion evolved into the ruler's being viewed as ‘the source of all good things’ ([ʾαρ]χῂ ὤν | πάντων | ʾαγαθῶν, P.Oxy 1021.5–13 (17 Nov. 54, on Nero's accession)), a claim reinforced by the important social role played by the imperial cult.

This book attempts to understand the potential impact of Mark's Gospel upon its early Graeco-Roman readers.

It focuses upon the role of the healing/exorcism accounts in this communicative process. These scenes forge a link with Mark's flesh-and-blood readers by:

1. strongly aligning the ‘implied readers’ with the suppliants in the scenes;

2. enabling the ‘flesh-and-blood’ readers to recognise their own world in the circumstances of the suppliants and to ‘become’ the implied readers;

3. thus drawing the flesh-and-blood readers into the story-world which seeks to move them by its message about Jesus and the coming kingdom.

To appreciate the impact of these stories on early readers, the book attempts to recover relevant aspects of the pre-understanding which Graeco-Roman readers could be expected to bring to their reading of Mark. This requires a special focus on ancient perceptions of sickness and death, as well as due attention to magic, which could be either cause or cure of the afflictions.

When read from this reconstructed perspective, the healing/exorcism scenes show Jesus dealing with death.

These scenes are read within Mark's wider framework of the expectation of the kingdom of God, to be inaugurated by the resurrection of the dead.

Portrayed as a king who brings life to those under the shadow of death, Jesus would be seen as an alternative to the deified rulers familiar to the Roman world. He had no apotheosis which removed him from death, but he truly died.

‘Master of land and sea’

Text to reader

The second main section of Mark's narrative is broadly structured around three sea journeys (4.35ff. 6.45ff.; 8.10ff.). Each occasion in the boat is a significant moment towards the unfolding of Jesus' identity. Since the readers are privileged to share these moments of revelation, they develop a greater bond with Jesus and also a degree of sympathy with the disciples, even though the negative evaluation of the disciples also introduces some distance.

Since this section contains six of the thirteen suppliant passages, it plays a crucial role in making contact with Mark's readers.

Reader to text

The sea

Mark's use of θάλασσα in connection with lake Gennesaret has evoked surprise from early days. Porphyry's criticism of this feature (Mac. Mag. Apoc. 3.6, cf. 4) finds good precedent in Luke's more exact use of λίμνη in both his special material (Luke 5.1) and material drawn from Mark (8.22, 23, 33). Like Josephus (who always uses λίμνη for Palestine's inland waters, including Gennesaret; e.g., BJ 2.573; 3.463), 1 Maccabees (in which Gennesaret is τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ Γ εννησάρ, 11.67), and the secular Greek writers (e.g., Homer, Herodotus), Luke appears to reserve θάλασσα for the Mediterranean.

There is little point in correcting Mark's usage, which may be explained in terms of its Semitic background, or of local practice. Whatever the background, it remains true that the use of θάλασσα would more naturally evoke in the Graeco-Roman readers something larger than an inland lake.

Since the story has already erected the interpretative framework for the events of the passion narrative, they now simply need to unfold.

Preparation for Jesus' death (14.1–31)

The plot and the anointing (14.1–11)

Each of the three scenes in the initial ‘sandwich’ (14.1–11) prepares for Jesus' death: the first negatively, when the leaders reissue the plot to kill Jesus (vv.1f.; cf. 3.6; 8.31; 9.13; 9.31; 10.31; 12.13) after it had come to a standstill with the ‘defeat’ of the scribe (12.28–34); the second positively, as the woman anoints Jesus in preparation for his burial (vv.3–9); and the third negatively, as Judas provides the high priests with the vehicle by which their plot can become a reality (vv.10f.; cf. 3.19).

It is now clear that Jesus' predictions of his death will be fulfilled. This therefore heightens the expectation that his predictions about the coming resurrection and the kingdom will also be fulfilled, since his death was all that had to occur before the arrival of these major events.

Passover predictions (14.12–31)

During the celebration of the Passover Jesus continues to prepare the disciples for his death and the narrative reinforces the readers' expectations by providing predictions and fulfilments. The preparations unfold as announced (vv.12–16). Jesus tells the disciples of the betrayal of which the readers had learned in the initial scenes (vv.17–21). Their reaction underlines the horrific nature of Jesus' betrayal by one of them.

To what extent if at all did maritime traders share a common policy or a sense of unity? And, if any cohesion did exist, of what sort was it – political, economic, religious, national, or a combination of some of these?

Any sort of political cohesion is very unlikely. Chapter 3 is devoted to showing that those trading at Athens were largely non-citizens and therefore without access to the political machinery.

Paul McKechnie therefore (1989: 197 n.62) misses the point when he emphasizes “the influence of traders and ship captains on getting decrees passed at Athens.” Not only were non-citizen traders unable to exert political influence as an outside “pressure group” – a notion implying institutional arrangements that did not exist; more significantly, they did not need to form a pressure group. In [Lys.] 22.21 an Athenian jury is urged to “court and render more zealous” the (obviously) foreign emporoi. This is not because the emporoi confront Athens as a unified group with a common political or economic policy; Athens' interest in traders can be explained instead by the single, all-sufficient reason Seager (1966: 184) offers: “if nobody brought corn to the Piraeus, Athens would starve.”

INTRODUCTION

In 1983 Paul Cartledge wrote a brief article reaffirming Johannes Hasebroek's basic insights into the place of trade and traders in the world of archaic Greece. Like Hasebroek, Cartledge assumed that, in order to talk sensibly about archaic trade or traders, one had to locate them in a sound socio-economic context. He defended Hasebroek's framework – an overwhelmingly agrarian economy and society, with a ruling class drawing its wealth and prestige from landowning, not commerce, so that the dominance of market relationships or commercial aristocracies were fantasies of those who improperly modernized a world with quite low levels of commercial and manufacturing activity. Cartledge's piece capped a three decade-long effort by substantivist-minded ancient historians, led in Britain by M. I. Finley and G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, to convince their colleagues that this alternate way of looking at Greco-Roman economic activity captured more of the ancient reality.

Were other ancient historians persuaded? Consider recent estimates of archaic market activity. James Redfield speaks of the period 750–700 b.c. as “a time when traders were beginning to transform society …” and concludes that “by the middle of the sixth century this reconstruction was more or less complete…” And Robin Osborne recently wrote, “In this paper I argue that the archaic world was a world of interdependent markets.”

INTRODUCTION

What was the official attitude – legislative, administrative, and political – of classical Greek poleis to those trading with them? Athens' response of necessity occupies center stage because most of our evidence comes from there. The surviving bits of evidence from elsewhere show that other poleis also depended upon imports of vital goods, and like Athens these other poleis did what they could to attract and control maritime traders. I first examine Athens' efforts and in the penultimate section turn to the efforts of other poleis, by concentrating on the fourth century and adding references to the fifth where appropriate. I also deal almost exclusively with Athens' grain trade because we know something about those engaging in it, whereas we glimpse only a single emporos or nauklēros (no. 27) engaging in the vital timber trade with Athens, and even there the circumstances are not typical.

In each prytany the Athenian assembly held a plenary session devoted (among other things) to the grain supply; any aspiring politician furthermore was expected to know enough about it to render expert advice. Such an intense concern follows from Athens' unparalleled dependence on grain (described at 16–19 above), which in turn meant an unparalleled dependence on those bringing it – the emporoi and nauklēroi previously described as “professional” (Chapter 1), foreign (Chapter 3), and (in the case of emporoi as least) relatively poor (Chapter 4).

For the past decade I have worked at an American private liberal arts college whose small size obliges faculty to teach outside their specialties. Until recently, due partly to the press of administrative duties, I taught my specialty (ancient Greek history) only once every two years, yet as the resident economic historian I teach the “History of Capitalism” to M.B.A. candidates every semester, either in the evenings or on the weekends. Then in 1993, when no replacement could be found immediately for a departed social theory instructor, I volunteered to fill in and have been teaching it annually ever since.

One possible effect of teaching such different subjects outside one's own specialty is that in each one manages to learn just enough to be dangerous, yet in fact their effect on my view of the present subject has been chastening in two important respects.

INTRODUCTION

Having come to terms with the words emporos and nauklēros in Chapter 1, I ask in this chapter about the principal items carried by maritime traders and how vital these were to the Greek poleis with which they traded. These queries entail four more particular questions: How much of the inter-regional exchange of goods in the classical period was by commerce as distinct from other means of exchange? What proportion of this long-distance trade was in the hands of those, described in Chapter 1, who made it their primary occupation? Even if quantification remains impossible, can we say anything meaningful about the number of maritime traders? And what was the level of demand for the principal commodities traders transported to Greek poleis? A great need on a large scale for imports of certain items might bear directly on the place of traders in the poleis of classical Greece – the subject of Chapters 3–6 and the heart of this book.

Implicit in that last sentence is an important working assumption: since this is a monograph on traders, not on trade, I take up trade only inasmuch as it illumines the place of traders. No attempt is made here to provide an exhaustive account of the modes and patterns of exchange in classical Greece.

If chapters 1 and 2 were devoted, respectively, to questions of method and of the origin of the trilogy, and chapters 3 and 4 to exploring the role that the wider narrative plays in shaping the reader's response to these parables, then chapters 5 and 6 shift the focus to the trilogy of parables itself. This chapter offers a narrative-critical reading of these parables. In accord with the conclusions drawn in chapter 2, I make a conscious attempt here to read the parables as a trilogy and, in line with the argument developed in chapter 1, I attempt to elucidate the responses that the trilogy seems designed to evoke from the reader. In this regard, I shall be especially interested in the inclusive nature of these parables.

In his 1990 monograph D. Howell suggests that Matthew's narrative is an ‘inclusive’ story in that it invites its readers ‘to appropriate and involve themselves in the story and teaching of the Gospel’. Howell turns from this observation to formulate the questions that set the agenda for his study: ‘Who is “included” in Matthew's story and how are they “included”? Are literary techniques used which help structure a reader's response to the story and its message? If so, how do they function?’ These questions will also occupy my attention. In this chapter I examine the nature of the evangelist's rhetoric and seek to isolate the responses that this rhetoric seems designed to elicit.