I’ve been listening to ABC Radio National podcasts while on the train to uni, and I’ve just heard an interview on The Religion Report with John Carroll, author of The Existential Jesus. Carroll is a literary criticism of, mainly, Mark’s Gospel, with bits of the other three books thrown in. Now, I’m not really into purely literary criticisms of the Bible for, while I enjoy literary criticisms (having done majors in both biblical studies and literature), I feel unsatisfied by people’s conclusions of biblical works as “a good piece of writing” without getting into how and why people write and read texts as sources of belief.

But Carroll’s interpretation of Mark’s writing of the pivotal conversation between Jesus and Simon Peter is intriguing me (even though I’m not sure if I agree just yet - would love to know what you reckon). Mark sets the two with the other disciples in Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus asks Simon who he is. When Simon answers him, Jesus names him Peter (petros). We have always read this scene as the birthing of the church, where Peter, though later exposed as a failed follower, is exulted as the founder of the religion.

Yet Carroll wonders whether there’s a link with the name Peter (petros) to other references in Mark’s story. Earlier Jesus explains to his audience the meaning behind symbols in his own parable. In there is a note about stony ground (petrodes) onto which seeds are thrown. The seeds begin to bud with delight but their roots cannot find hold and they wither in the sun within a day. Carroll makes another connection to Mark’s rendition of Jesus healing of the withered hand in the synagogue, to highlight that “withering” is an important theme in the narrative.

For Carroll, Mark is not establishing the church in this scene in Caesarea Philipppi; Mark is removing the foundation. Years of stories told of the life and work of both Jesus and Peter that had created the fledgling religious world in which Mark writes, the evangelist recognises that the church is not founded. The discipled life is not strong or enduring or good. It is withered, rejoicing for only a day before the pressure gets too hard and faulters, denies and betrays. This scene is not to be read as the start of something new for the church; it is a sigh of despair.

Carroll sees Mark as the founding tragedy of Jesus, a story where we see a great teacher who ends up, in The Religion Report’s host’s, Steve Crittenden’s words “his only student”. And for Mark, not even the church can survive him. For Mark, the church lives a constant doom, never to endure as a social institution, but forever to live for a day in the sun, only to cower under pressure and wither in the heat.

You can get a copy of the transcript and the audio here.

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