John's Transformation of Mark brings together a cast of internationally recognised biblical scholars to investigate the relationship between the gospels of Mark and John. In a significant break with the prevailing view that the two gospels represent independent traditions, contributors argue that John both knew of and used the earlier gospel to write his own text.
Drawing on recent analytical categories such as social memory, 'secondary orality,' or 'relecture,' and ancient literary genres such as 'rewritten Bible', historiography and bioi, the central questions that drive this volume focus on how John used Mark, whether we should speak of 'dependence,' 'familiarity with,' or 'reception,' and whether John intended his work to be a supplement to or a replacement of Mark. Together these contributions mount a strong case for a complete reassessment of one of the key tenets of modern biblical criticism, opening up significant new avenues for future research.
A group of world-leading scholars gather to compare the Gospels of Mark and John and unexpectedly find unanimous agreement that John has used and transformed Mark! This excellent collection of their fresh analyses of specific passages, episodes and themes, complemented by methodological studies using intertextuality, social memory and analogies within ancient literature, will prove indispensable for research on the Gospels. It constitutes another major milestone in the shift of the current scholarly consensus to the view that, though not of the same type as the relation among the Synoptic Gospels, there is indeed a literary connection between John and Mark.
