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57 Chapter  Projected Christology: What Others Say Traditionally, examinations of Markan Christology have focused on the “titles” applied to Jesus by others in the narrative, especially “Christ” and “Son of God,” although “Son of Man” (or, more literally translated, “Son of Humanity”), used only by Jesus in Mark, and Jesus’ actions have not been ignored. My work on narrative christology decenters this way of abstracting “titles” from the narrative and discussing their meaning outside of their narrative contexts, whether in a history of religions context or in a theological-philosophical context. It would be impossible, of course, to ignore the “titles” altogether because they are an integral part of the narrative, or to ignore their potential meanings in their broader cultural contexts for the Markan implied audience. What others in the narrative say to and about Jesus is naturally of great importance to a Markan narrative christology, but it is not to be given priority or dominance. Projected christology, that is, the view of Jesus that is projected onto him by the narrator and the characters internal to the story, is one of several aspects of narrative christology. Care is taken to note who says what to or about Jesus and under what circumstances in the narrative. An important distinction is 1. Narrative critic David Rhoads speaks not of “titles” but of “epithets,” referring to the way in which they depict traits or relationships or functions rather than focusing on status and identity; see David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 98–115, on the character Jesus. 58 MARK’S JESUS between what the narrator says and what the characters say, because the implied author of Mark does give the narrator a privileged position. Do the comments of characters presented in direct discourse fit with or exist in tension with the narrator’s generalizations? Do different categories of characters make similar or differing comments to or about Jesus? How is the implied audience encouraged to relate to the different character groups and their comments? These are the questions under investigation here. We begin with a look at what the narrator says about Jesus, followed by examinations of what various character groups say to or about Jesus—to the extent possible, in their chronological order of introduction into the story. What the Narrator Says about Jesus Because there is much to say—and much that has been said—about what the narrator says about Jesus in Mark 1:1, we will focus on this allusive and elusive opening line in one subsection and explore what the narrator says in his more usual way in the rest of Mark’s Gospel in a second subsection. What the Narrator Says about Jesus in Mark : The tremendous amount of attention given to Mark 1:1, not only in investigations of Markan christology but in Markan commentary in general, is not misplaced ; the opening verse is both complicated and crucial in a number of ways: “The beginning of the good news [Gk euangelion, gospel] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” First, there is a textual problem: the phrase “Son of God” is lacking in some ancient manuscripts. As a literary critic of the New Testament and not a textual scholar, I defer to the comments of Bruce Metzger on this issue: The absence of huiou theou [Son of God] in . . . [Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Koridethianus , 28c , and other ancient manuscripts] may be due to an oversight in copying , occasioned by the similarity of the endings of the nomina sacra [sacred name; that is, the ending of Christou, Christ, resembles the ending of huiou theou, Son of God, and may have led a copyist to think he had finished with theou when he had only copied Christou]. On the other hand, however, there was always a temptation (to which copyists often succumbed) to expand titles and quasi-titles of books. Since the combination of B D W al [Codex Vaticanus, Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis , Codex Freerianus, and other ancient manuscripts] in support of huiou theou is strong, it was not thought advisable to omit the words altogether, yet because of the antiquity of the shorter reading and the possibility of scribal expansion, it was decided to enclose the words within square brackets. 2. Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (United Bible Societies, 1971), 73. As Henry Barclay Swete put it years ago: “The...

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