Author: Jonathan Rivett Robinson
Title: Markan Typology: Miracle, Scripture and Christology in Mark 4:35-6:45
Publisher: T&T Clark
Year: 2023
Pages: 256
Price: $103.50 (e-book PDF)
DISCLOSURE: Bloomsbury Publishing was kind enough to provide me with a complimentary electronic copy of Markan Typology for review. This did not in any way influence my review of the volume.
INTRODUCTION
“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks his disciples in Mark 8:27 (NRSV). The response from their lips indicates that the general public doesn’t know what to make of him: “John the Baptist,” they say, “and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” (v. 28). To this, the Markan Jesus asks a more personal and, therefore, poignant question: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter responds: “You are the Messiah” (v. 29). Several chapters later, as he stands before hostile religious authorities, the high priest asks Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” (9:61). “I am,” comes the response (v. 62).
Though these developments appear later in the narrative, readers of the Gospel of Mark know from the outset who Jesus is. He is “Jesus Christ [i.e., the messiah], the Son of God” (1:1). But as the story develops, this messianic son of God does some impressive things: he casts out demons, he heals the sick, he controls wind and wave, and he even raises the dead! Is he a god? Is he the God? How are readers of Mark’s Gospel to understand the nature of Jesus of Nazareth? While a large number of volumes have been written on the subject of Christology, a work published this year by T&T Clark seeks to tackle the subject by looking at the Gospel’s use of typology and what it can tell us about Jesus’s identity in the second canonical Gospel. Markan Typology: Miracle, Scripture and Christology by Jonathan Robinson (PhD, University of Otago), examines four miracle accounts in the Markan text and mines them for typological nuggets that not only illuminate the meaning of the Gospel itself but inform the reader about who the Evangelist thought Jesus was.
OVERVIEW
Chapter one of Robinson’s work functions as the volume’s introduction, covering the various kinds of typology he sees the Evangelist employing (e.g., literary, fulfillment, and “theomorphic”), the reasons Mark would use typology in composing his bios of Jesus, the import of typology with regards to Christology (including a registering of his disagreements with both Richard Bauckham’s “divine identity” thesis as well as J. R. Daniel Kirk’s “idealized human” thesis), and much more. In ch. 2, attention is turned to other ancient literature that readily employs typology before Mark thought to, including the writings of Josephus, various texts from the Jewish scriptures, and even the apostle Paul. Robinson also discusses two topics related to typology: conflation and mimesis. With ch. 3, Robinson zeroes in on “three Christological high points that structure Mark’s Gospel: the baptism, transfiguration, and passion” (p. 51). A common thread our author discovers is the motif of the sacrifice of Isaac, the Akedah, which functions as typological material for the Evangelist. In ch. 4, Jonah typology is front and center, particularly as it is applied to Mark 4:35-41. Robinson remarks not only on various narrative correspondences between the Markan text and that of Jonah but also lexical evidence, thematic “inversions,” and contextual clues that tie the passages together.
Turning to Mark 5:21-43, ch. 5 considers the ways in which the character of Elisha influenced that paradigmatic “sandwich” story. Robinson notes multiple correspondences between the Markan text and that of 2 Kings 4 and then proceeds to test his thesis against Kirk’s idealized human agent hypothesis. Chapter six examines Mark 5:1-20, a story about a demoniac, in light of the story of David and his fight with Goliath. This chapter steps outside so-called canonical texts and incorporates data from extrabiblical accounts like those found in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and more. In ch. 7, our author mines Mark 6:30-44 and 8:1-10 with its various typologies featuring Moses and Elisha as well as the motif of the shepherd. The two narratives – both feeding miracles – draw upon a variety of texts including Numbers, Joshua, and 2 Kings. Robinson notes that whereas Moses typology is strong in 6:30-44, Elisha typology is strong in 8:1-10 and with good reason: the text seems to be including gentiles in the ministry of Jesus. Concluding the book, ch. 8 considers Markan Christology proper with the previous seven chapters serving as the backdrop. In Robinson’s view, the Markan Jesus is not only the typological fulfillment of a host of characters from the pages of the Hebrew Bible, he is also “typologically theomorphic,” that is, he “appears to take on the narrative role of God” (p. 182).
ASSESSMENT
Before we go any further to assess Robinson’s work, I have a confession: I am somewhat allergic to claims about typology. Much of it has to do with how the Jewish scriptures were used from the pulpit in churches I attended in my teens and twenties. A pastor might employ typology when talking about this or that figure from the pages of Genesis or Kings or Job.
For example, the (attempted) sacrifice of Isaac is seen as a foreshadowing of the death of Jesus and thus Isaac is dubbed a “type of Christ.” This sort of typology is then sometimes employed to make prophetic claims intended to validate this or that flavor of Christianity. In his tome An Old Testament Theology, Bruce Waltke writes, “Typology is a unique specie of promise and fulfillment. Whereas prophecy is concerned with prospective words and their fulfillment, typology is concerned with comparative historical events, persons, and institutions in the Bible.”[1]
But this line of reasoning is problematic in two ways. First, it gets the cart before the horse – the stories about Jesus were written long after the stories found in the Hebrew Bible. Any resemblance between them is in all likelihood the product of deliberate shaping by the Evangelists who composed the Gospels.[2] Second, this sort of typology is often in the eye of the beholder. That is, there is a subjective element to it and often the “rules” are as malleable as they are arbitrary. This approach to typology fails to convince anyone but those who are already more than willing to accept it. Thankfully, Robinson’s volume traffics in neither of these problems.
For starters, Robinson is well-aware of how the Evangelists employed the Jewish scriptures and writes that “Mark and other ancient writers used correspondences between characters and events in their narratives and characters and events in earlier scriptural narratives as part of a compositional strategy” (p. 3). Thus, in later chapters when our author considers Markan usage of Jonah or Elijah or Moses, he is well-aware of and indeed explains how the Evangelist crafted his narrative utilizing these characters. This is Markan “typology” in a nutshell: the use of the aforementioned correspondences “in the composition of the Gospel…which can be expected to contain hermeneutical significance” (p. 3).
In addition to this, Robinson’s discussion of typology manages to avoid the looseness and arbitrariness I complained of earlier. He does this by zeroing in on four miracle accounts: Mark 4:35-41, 5:1-20, 5:21-43, and 6:30-45. Why these four? Robinson’s rationale is clear: not only are they “extended narratives” that “provide ample opportunity for typological crafting,” but they also “bear an initial clear resemblance to a scriptural miracle” (i.e., correspondence), build up to Peter’s Christological confession in Mark 8:29, are “representative of all of Jesus’ miracles,” and may have been part of a pre-Markan collection of stories (pp. 8, 9). And since miracles in Mark have a Christological function, Robinson’s decision to use them for his project is without a doubt the best strategy available.
Take, for example, ch. 4 – “Jonah typology in Mark 4:35-41.” Most readers of Mark are well-aware of how the passage corresponds to the Old Testament book of Jonah (though, as Robinson notes, there are disputes about this). For our author, however, “there is sufficient thematic, narrative, and lexical correspondence between Jonah 1 and Mark 4:35-41 to render an authorially intended allusion highly likely” (p. 86). While I will leave it to the reader to consider the evidence Robinson proffers, I think it worthwhile to highlight a section in this chapter wherein he reads the Markan passage with that of Jonah 1. What insights can be gleaned from such an activity?
Robinson contends that the Markan passage presents Jesus as one greater than Jonah. “Jesus is one like Jonah,” he writes, “and therefore a prophet, but he also surpasses Jonah in obedience and power” (pp. 91-92). In this way, “Jesus is the antitype of Jonah” (p. 92). Our author then takes aim at the work of J.R. Daniel Kirk and Stephen Young in their 2014 article “’I Will Set His Hand to the Sea’: Psalm 88:26 LXX and Christology in Mark.”[3] Robinson points out the irony of Kirk’s and Young’s lack of discussion of Jonah typology since “[r]ecognizing a Jonah typology in this passage is also to recognize Jesus as an idealised (human) version of Jonah” (p. 92). Despite this, he isn’t keen on such a paradigm and concludes that the Markan Jesus in this text “is portrayed as neither rabbi nor prophet who controls the water in his own power, but something else” (p. 93). Specifically, Robinson thinks there is a theomorphic typology at work such that Jesus is identified with Jonah’s god. This doesn’t dissolve the Jonah typology: Jesus “cannot simply be equated to God. He is noticeably human” (p. 97). Finally, after a brief excursus castigating Richard Hays for failing to appreciate Jonah typology in this text, Robinson notes that the use of Jonah typology offers a Jesus who is sent and therefore subordinate. Yes, he has control over nature. But does this entail he is a member of a triune deity? Not at all. He “may be Lord of creation but he is also the servant of someone even greater, the one who sends him (Mark 9:37; 12:6), just as he himself sends out his disciples (3:14; 6:7) and will one day send the angels (13:27)” (p. 98).
This highlights something that is sometimes overlooked or at least not thoughtfully considered: typology entails distinction. That is, with regards to typology, for something to be a type of one thing, it cannot be that thing. Jesus can be a type of Jonah but he is not Jonah. Jesus can be a type of Israel’s god but he is not Israel’s god. This fact isn’t lost on Robinson who makes it clear that as far as Markan Christology is concerned, “Mark’s Jesus is portrayed as ontologically human throughout” (p. 192, emphasis original). Such a statement should be uncontroversial. From the outset of the Gospel, Jesus is quite clearly a human being who not only has a hometown wherein his mother and siblings live (Mark 6:1ff) but he even undergoes a baptism of repentance (1:9; cf. vv. 4-5) and, most importantly, dies (15:37). Does this sound like the career of Yahweh? Not hardly.
Yet through the category of theomorphic typology, our author insists that “without ontological change from human to divine, [Jesus] appears as Israel’s God – not simply as God’s agent. He does not simply function as God in the miracles, but this is the identity he takes all the way to the cross” (p. 193). How can this be? Simply put, “Jesus is the earthly, human and ultimate instantiation of God’s rule and goodness” in Mark’s Gospel, being not only a type of the prophets sent by God but a type of God himself (p. 194). Apt are these words from Robinson: “For Mark, it is not that Jesus is included in the divine identity (pace Bauckham, Hays), but that he represents God to such an extent that it is as if the God of Israel has gained a human identity, Jesus the Christ the son of God” (p. 194, emphasis original). Though he never does, the Markan Jesus might as well speak the words of the Johannine version: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
CONCLUSION
The Jesus of the Gospel of Mark can be somewhat enigmatic. He is clearly human but there is something else about him and that something has led to many different approaches to the text. Of the various ways to read and understand Mark’s portrait of Jesus, I remain sympathetic to the interpretation offered by J.R. Daniel Kirk in his 2016 tome A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. It is a volume I have recommended time and again. But now I am forced to add to my recommendation another: Jonathan Robinson’s Markan Typology: Miracle, Scripture and Christology in Mark 4:35-6:45. His thorough and thoughtful analysis of the specific texts within the volume’s purview as well as his strong critiques of not only Kirk but also Richard Bauckham and Richard Hays make Markan Typology a valuable contribution to the subject of how the Markan Evangelist understood Jesus of Nazareth and how his readers would have as well.
ENDNOTES
[1] Bruce K. Waltke and Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 136. Cf. Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World (New York: HarperCollins, 2017), 212-219.
[2] Cf. Mark Goodacre, “Prophecy Historicized or Tradition Scripturalized? Reflections on the Origins of the Passion Narratives,” in New Testament and the Church, edited by John Barton and Peter Groves (London: T&T Clark, 2015), 37-51.
[3] J.R. Daniel Kirk and Stephen L. Young, “’I Will Set His Hand to the Sea’: Psalm 88:26 LXX and Christology in Mark,” Journal of Biblical Literature 133 no. 2 (2014), 333-340.
The Amateur Exegete 