Conflicting Mythologies: Mythical Narrative in the Gospel of Mark

Abstract

New Testament scholarship needs to think of mythical narratives like the Gospels as giving expression to sharply contrasting cosmological views. Such a view of mythical narratives is developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and supported by the presence of two very contrasting views of the origins of evil and its overcoming in Jewish literature of the turn of the era: one cosmological, the other forensic. Markan scholarship of the last 50 years has tended to construe Mark’s cosmology in terms of one or other of these basic views: either Mark portrays Jesus as locked in cosmic struggle with Satan and his forces or, having bound Satan, as engaged in a battle for the hearts and wills of men and women. Mark, I argue, is concerned to give expression to both these different views of the world and to attempt to mediate between them.