WHAT WOULD A PERFORMANCE OF THE GOSPEL OF MARK HAVE BEEN LIKE?

Scholars have long understood that

the texts we now know as the Gospels were read aloud in the Greco-Roman world,

but few have actually envisioned

what a performance of the Gospel of Mark would have been like in the first century

and how it would have shaped the experience of its audience.

Proclaiming the Gospel shows us.

Oral performances in the New Testament world were lively affairs.

In the performance of Greco-Roman theater,

readers lose their voices from the stress of emotional passages.

Audiences cheer for philosophers as if at a rock concert,

and in law courts, they are paid for their responses.

Storytellers compete for attention with jugglers,

and some speakers must fend off hostile crowds.

Congregations at churches and synagogues cheer as if at the theater.

Shiner reveals the ways that

Mark wrote his Gospel to compete in this arena

and how his audiences would have responded:

applause for the miracles of Jesus,

then an altogether different response at the cross.

Proclaiming the Gospel, First Century Performance of Mark. Trinity Press International, Harrisburg,PA.

Whitney T. Shiner, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Undergraduate Coordinator, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA