Several scholars have suggested that Mark was written for baptizandi, that is, for people about to be inducted into the Christian community. This article assumes that such is the case, and, borrowing from symbolic anthropologist Victor Turner, discusses baptism as a ritual of status transformation. The structures of the gospel and the ritual of baptism are compared and found to be parallel. The article concludes with a discussion of the imagery in the sea-cycle (Mark 4:35-5:43) as being strongly baptismal in character.
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