William Lane - The Gospel of Mark

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL COMMENTARY ON THE NEW TESTAMENT

General Editors

NED B. STONEHOUSE (1946-1962)

F. F. BRUCE (1962-1990)

GORDON D. FEE (1990)

MARK

THE ENGLISH TEXT

WITH INTRODUCTION, EXPOSITION, AND NOTES

WILLIAM L. LANE

This is the third volume on the Gospels in the New International Commentary on the New Testament. The volume on the Gospel of L ike, by the late Norval Geldenhuys, was published as long ago as 1950 - it was in fact the first volume to appear in the series as a whole - and then we had to wait for over twenty years for the next Gospel commentary, Dr. Leon Morris's comprehensive exposition of the Gospel of John. Hard on its heels comes the present volume, and Professor Herman Ridderbos is currently at work on the exposition of Matthew's Gospel, which will complete the quartet.

The late General Editor of the series, Dr. N. B. Stonehouse, invited Dr. Lane to undertake the commentary on the Gospel of Mark shortly before his death in 1961. How sound Dr. Stonehouse's judgment was in extending this invitation the reader of the commentary may judge for himself.

Dr. Lane is known in scholarly circles as a member of the international Society for New Testament Studies and as a contributor to its journal, New Testament Studies. At a less specialist level he is known as jointauthor (along with two of his colleagues at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) of the volume The New Testament Speaks (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). But the writing of this commentary has provided him with an opportunity to deploy his scholarly and exegetical power to its full extent. In his Author's Preface he tells us, in greater detail than most of the contributors to this series, something of the scope and character of the commentary as he at first envisaged it and then carried it towards its conclusion. It is unnecessary for me to repeat what he has said, but much of the success of his enterprise is due to his early realizing that a commentator's primary task is "to listen to the text". Only if he has learned this lesson will a commentator effectively expound the text to others.

Mark did something which no one had done before: he wrote a Gospel. He was, in Laurence Housman's words,

The saint who first found grace to pen The life which was the Life of men.

Dr. Lane (rightly, as I think) inclines to the view that the situation which called forth the writing of his Gospel was the crisis which broke upon the Christians of Rome in the reign of Nero, and repeatedly he shows how aptly the Gospel reflects its life-setting and speaks to the condition of its first readers. Jesus' warning that those who would follow him could do so only by denying themselves and taking up the cross must have come home with power to those first readers. The fiery ordeal which had come upon them was no "strange thing"; it was consistent with their Master's words, and as they underwent it they were drinking his cup and sharing his baptism. "Truly", said the centurion at the cross, "this man was the Son of God"; but it was the death of the cross that made this truth plain to men. As we see from the Caesarea Philippi incident and its sequel, the verbal recognition of our Lord's identity is meaningless unless it is given content by the declaration that "the Son of Man must suffer".

We are sometimes asked why, at this time of day, we persist in using the American Standard Version of 1901 as the basic text for the New International Commentary. The principal reason for our persistence is that its excessively literal style of translation, however unsuitable it may be for other purposes, is admirably suited to serve as the basis of a commentary which endeavors to pay careful attention to the details of the text.

The invitation to prepare a full-length commentary on the Gospel of Mark came from Dr. Ned B. Stonehouse in the fall of 1961. At that time I had not yet completed my doctoral studies and I felt very inadequate to the task. I was encouraged to accept this responsibility only by the prospect of working closely with Dr. Stonehouse, who had been my mentor. He felt certain that in preparing his volume on Matthew he would encounter many of the problems which surface in a detailed study of Mark, and that we could meet periodically for an exchange of thoughts concerning the commentary. But before our first scheduled meeting it pleased the Lord to call his servant to himself. Since then, more than ten years have elapsed, during which I and the commentary have gradually matured together.

My conviction from the beginning has been that the kind of commentary which is needed is one which will reflect the wealth of contemporary scholarship and insight found in journal articles and monographs. Frequently aspects of the Marcan text that have been explored in depth have been lost for practical purposes with the binding and shelving of the volumes in which they were published. I have tried to review this vast reservoir of critical opinion and to make the best material accessible to the man who is not a specialist. My indebtedness to those who have labored in Gospel research, Roman law, Rabbinics and Marcan studies is evident on every page. Without the assistance offered by a multitude of men and women who became my teachers through their articles the present commentary could not have been prepared.

My research and writing of the commentary has been controlled by several goals. (1) In the interpretation of the Gospel I have sought for a new and primary faithfulness to the biblical text. My desire was to allow Mark to speak as a distinctive witness to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. It was imperative that his voice not be drowned out by a concern for the harmonization of Mark's record with the other Synoptic Gospels. In the commentary there is a narrow concentration upon Mark's distinctive point of view, and only rarely is attention drawn to the Matthean or Lucan witness. This critical decision reflects the conviction that Mark is the oldest written Gospel. Since there was a formative period in which it was the only Gospel in circulation, it is imperative that the work as a whole and its several sections be seen in Marcan perspective. This approach has made possible a contribution to the interpretation of certain aspects of the mission and message of Jesus as well as an advance upon the historical and theological interpretation of Mark. (2) In attempting to reconstruct the life situation which called forth the Gospel and to fill in the gaps which make it intelligible, I have sought to indicate how the text was heard by Mark's contemporaries. Two impressions emerge: the material of the Gospel frequently presupposes the supportive activity of a charismatic teacher; and Mark's pastoral concern for his readers in Rome seems to account for the particular emphases and arrangement of the Gospel. (3) It has been important to place the study of Mark within the frame of reference offered by contemporary Gospel research. I have especially used the notes to interact with this research, as well as to advance the material support for a given position. I regard the notes to the commentary as an essential component in the total presentation of Mark's distinctive witness.