Markan Sandwiches
Day 2
UNIQUE FEATURES OF MARK’S GOSPEL
The gospel according to Mark is my favorite gospel for two reasons. First, it was through Mark’s gospel that I first saw the power of the use of literary technique in the New Testament to communicate the Word. Second, I have a passion for discipleship and Mark addressed with his sandwich technique what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, challenging many modern-day conceptions.
Most scholars today believe Mark was the first gospel written. While there were older collections of Jesus’ sayings that predate Mark, he was the pioneer, the innovator who first put those sayings into narrative form to tell a story about the life of Jesus. There are still some scholars who advocate for “Matthean priority,” i.e., the belief that Matthew was the first gospel written. However, these scholars are today in the minority. As an aside, one of the preeminent proponents of Matthean priority was Dr. William R. Farmer, a professor at the Perkins School of Theology at SMU while I was a student there. As a first-year student, I once asked Dr. Farmer what difference it made which gospel came first. About a half hour later, Dr. Farmer was still passionately responding to my question. I still didn’t know what difference it made, but I learned it made a lot of difference to him!
Besides being the shortest gospel, a quick read of Mark’s gospel reveals some very unusual features which distinguish it from the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John.
First, Mark apparently did not write an account of the resurrection of Jesus. To verify this somewhat surprising claim, look in your own Bible at Mark 16:8. You will see a footnote there or notation of some kind. For example, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) has a note at that verse which reads:
“Some of the most ancient authorities [i.e., manuscripts] bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8. One authority concludes the book with the shorter ending; others include the shorter ending and then continue with verses 9-20. In most authorities verses 9-20 follow immediately after verse 8, though in some of these authorities the passage is marked as being doubtful.”
The New International Version (NIV) adds the following insert right in the main text following v. 8:
“The most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.”
Thus, the gospel as Mark wrote it ends with the women exiting the empty tomb in fear. You will then see, depending upon the Bible edition you are using, something called “The Shorter Ending,” which doesn’t even have a verse number assigned, followed by “The Longer Ending” in the form of verses 9-20. Or your Bible may simply print verses 9-20 and skip “The Shorter Ending.” If you read these ending verses after having read the rest of the gospel, you don’t even have to be a Bible scholar to sense that the writing style and tone are different. Someone other than Mark wrote these endings. (Most likely a later scribe when he was copying the text for distribution added “The Longer Ending.” Being familiar by then with the gospels written by Matthew, Luke, and/or John, and knowing of the resurrection, this scribe added verses 9-20. A similar story probably stands behind “The Shorter Ending.”)
So, what Mark wrote apparently comes to an end in v. 8. We’ll address the significance of that later.
The second unique feature of Mark’s gospel is what is often called “the Messianic secret” motif. After many of his deeds of power, especially his healings, Jesus instructed people NOT to tell anyone what they had just experienced.
A good example is when Peter, James, and John were with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration in chapter 9. Talk about having a “mountaintop experience!” The disciples witnessed Jesus transfigured – shining in glory -- before their eyes. And suddenly standing with Jesus were Moses and Elijah. Then they heard the voice of God from a cloud say, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” You can imagine how badly the disciples wanted to tell the other disciples what they had just experienced. But as they were coming down the mountain:
“(Jesus) ordered them to TELL NO ONE about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” (Mark 9:9, NRSV)
Again, this motif is often referred to as “the Messianic secret.” It features prominently in Mark. Something amazing happens, something you can’t wait to tell others about, and then Jesus says, “Don’t tell anyone.” Wait! What? I thought that was the point, to tell others about Jesus! What’s going on here?
But perhaps Mark’s most interesting unique feature is his use of a particular writing technique called the “Markan sandwich.”
Markan sandwiches are a literary technique Mark deploys for a theological purpose. The theological purpose covers all the major motifs in Mark -- the meaning of faith, discipleship, bearing witness, and the dangers of apostasy. While Matthew and Luke will sometimes tell two stories in the same sandwiched order as Mark, they don’t seem to make those stories carry the same theological freight as Mark does when he uses the technique. This is one piece of evidence that Matthew and Luke knew of Mark’s gospel when they wrote theirs and thus came after Mark.
At the risk of making you hungry, think of a sandwich. It has two pieces of bread on the outside and meat on the inside. In a Markan sandwich, the “meat” story nearly always provides the key to unlocking the theological purpose of the sandwich. In other words, the “meat” interprets the “bread,” and often vice versa. Scholars call this an “interpolation” and refer to the structure as A - B - A’. Following James R. Edwards, I call it simply a Markan sandwich with a “bread” - “meat” - “bread” structure.
The significance of Markan sandwiches to communicating his message remained hidden for centuries of interpretation. While interpreters of Mark were aware of his technique of breaking up a story by inserting another, seemingly unrelated story into the middle of another story, only in the 20th century was the significance of this technique identified. Prior to that, interpreters of Mark’s gospel paid little attention to Markan interpolations. Why? One reason has to do with history.
In the 4th century A.D., an early church historian named Eusebius, a contemporary of Emperor Constantine the Great, wrote Ecclesiastical History, a history of the early church to that point. In that work, Eusebius quotes an early church Father named Papias, whose work is dated to 95-110 A.D. For our purposes, Eusebius preserves two excerpts from Papias on the origins of the Gospels, one concerning Mark and the other concerning Matthew. On Mark, Papias cites a man named John the Elder:
“The Elder used to say: ‘Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory -- though not in an ordered form -- of the things either said or done by the Lord. (Mark) … had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently, Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory.’”
It is from this quote that centuries of interpreters came to believe that Mark was a companion of Peter who is the source behind Mark’s gospel. It is also because of this quote “no intention of providing an ordered arrangement” that for centuries interpreters of Mark assumed he just strung stories together from Peter’s memory haphazardly, like “beads on a string.”
My somewhat dated analogy is that if you are old enough to remember photographic slides, imagine you anxiously await the slides of your recent vacation to come from the processing lab. When they arrive, you set up your slide projector and screen and gather the family for the show. Then you dump all the slides on the floor and pick one up randomly at a time for display. You don’t even intend to show your slides in the order that the pictures were taken.
Just as you would never do that, it is unlikely Mark told his story so randomly. But reading Mark, you can understand why Papias would say what he did, and that Eusebius would report it that way. Mark seems to jump from one story to another and back again without “connecting the dots.” The fig tree story in chapter 11 is a good example. Mark starts off describing a hungry Jesus approaching a fig tree looking for figs, then he jumps to Jesus in the temple with the moneychangers, and then he jumps back to Jesus and the fig tree with no apparent intention to connect the dots. According to Edwards’ count, Mark does this a total of nine times. I find two more, for a total of eleven. Other interpreters have found as many as thirteen sandwiches! So, no wonder Mark’s organizing principle long remained hidden, and interpreters called his structural method “putting beads on a string.” “Here’s a pretty bead/good story, now here’s another, here’s another,” and so on. Papias said Mark did not have even the intention of providing an ordered arrangement.
James R. Edwards, in his 1989 article on Markan sandwiches that I referenced in the Introduction, quotes several scholars whose remarks showcase this low regard in which Mark’s gospel has long been held. The 19th century pastor and theologian, Gunther Dehn, said that Mark:
“…was neither a historian nor an author. He assembled his material in the simplest manner thinkable.”
Gunther is reflecting the idea that Mark organized his material by putting “beads on a string.”
The highly influential 20th century theologian and New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, said:
“Mark is not sufficiently master of his material to be able to venture on a systematic construction himself.”
Perhaps the biggest burn came from the 20th century scholar of Christian history and the New Testament, Etienne Trocme, who said:
“The point is settled: the author of Mark was a clumsy writer unworthy of mention in any history of literature.”
Ouch.
It was the development in the 20th century of the scripture study method known as “redaction criticism” as a refinement of the older “form criticism,” and from redaction criticism the further development of a study method called “structuralism,” that finally led to an appreciation of Mark’s use of Markan sandwiches. Interpreters discovered and were now taking seriously Mark’s creative prowess. His organizational genius finally came to light!
So, again, a Markan sandwich is a literary technique by which Mark orders his stories to make theological points. It requires a little work on the part of the reader to discern that theological point, however. One must “eat the sandwich” figuratively speaking.
At its simplest, a Mark sandwich is three stories strung together like a sandwich with two pieces of bread and meat in the middle. The “bread” stories are either:
the same story broken up around the “meat” story (e.g., the healing of Jairus’ daughter, the cursing of the fig tree), or
separate stories that are related thematically (e.g., the two feeding of a multitude stories)
In contrast to James Edwards, who defines a Markan sandwich as consisting of only two narratives, i.e., a single “meat” story, I believe the “meat” can be a single story or several stories even several chapters (e.g., the teaching in response to Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah in chapter 8). Mark uses this technique simply to provide for the passage of time, as he does with the sending out of the twelve two by two with the death of John the Baptist inserted in the middle. Or Mark uses this technique to make major theological points such as the gigantic “Markan sub sandwich” in chapters 8-10 in which he describes what kind of Messiah Jesus is and what it means to follow such a Messiah.
With his definition of a Markan sandwich, Edwards identifies NINE Markan sandwiches. They are:
1. Mark 3:20-35
a. “bread” - Jesus’ companions try to seize him, vv. 20-21
b. “meat” - The religious leaders accuse Jesus of being in league with Beelzebub, vv. 22-30
c. “bread” - Jesus’ family seeks him, vv. 31-35
2. Mark 4:1-20
a. “bread” - Parable of the Sower, vv. 1-9
b. “meat” - Purpose of parables, vv. 10-13
c. “bread” - Explanation of the Parable of the Sower, vv. 14-20
3. Mark 5:21-43
a. “bread” - Jairus pleads with Jesus to save his daughter, vv. 21-24
b. “meat” - Woman with a persistent hemorrhage touches Jesus, vv. 25-34
c. “bread” - Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter, vv. 35-43
4. Mark 6:7-30
a. “bread” - Mission of the twelve, vv. 7-13
b. “meat” - Martyrdom of John the Baptist, vv. 14-29
c. “bread” - Return of the twelve, v. 30
5. Mark 11:12-21
a. “bread” - Cursing of the fig tree, vv. 12-14
b. “meat” - Cursing of the temple, vv. 15-19
c. “bread” - Withering of the fig tree, vv. 20-21
6. Mark 14:1-11
a. “bread” - Plot to kill Jesus, vv. 1-2
b. “meat” - Anointing of Jesus at Bethany, vv. 3-9
c. “bread” - Judas’ agreement to betray Jesus, vv. 10-11
7. Mark 14:17-31
a. “bread” - Jesus predicts his betrayal, vv. 17-21
b. “meat” - Institution of the Lord’s Supper, vv. 22-26
c. “bread” - Jesus predicts Peter’s betrayal, vv. 27-31
8. Mark 14:53-72
a. “bread” - Peter follows Jesus to the courtyard of the high priest, vv. 53-54
b. “meat” - Jesus’ inquisition before the Sanhedrin, vv. 55-65
c. “bread” - Peter’s denial of Jesus, vv. 66-72
9. Mark 15:40-16:8
a. “bread” - Women at the cross, vv. 15:40-41
b. “meat” - Joseph of Arimathea requests Jesus’ body, vv. 15:42-46
c. “bread” - Women at the empty tomb, vv. 15:47-16:8
With my allowance for expansion of the “meat” section, I identify TWO more gigantic Markan sandwiches, with multiple stories in their “meat” sections. So, I call these Markan “sub sandwiches”:
1. Mark 6:34-8:10
a. “bread” - Jesus feeds five thousand in Jewish territory, vv. 6:34-44
b. “meat” - Jesus teaches on what makes one unclean and heals in Gentile territory, vv. 7:1-37
c. “bread” - Jesus feeds four thousand in Gentile territory, vv. 8:1-10
2. Mark 8:22-10:52
a. “bread” - Healing of a blind man requiring a second touch, vv. 8:22-26
b. “meat” - Three cycles of teaching on Jesus as Messiah and what it means to follow him in which the disciples reveal they, too, need a second touch, vv. 8:27-10:45
c. “bread” - Healing of blind Bartimaeus, vv. 10:46-52
In the next chapters we’ll examine three of the “simple” sandwiches and the two “sub sandwiches” to mine Mark’s theological message and thereby introduce you to this important technique.