Nicholas A. Elder, Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024), 85.
This is Mark’s innovation: the gospel textualizes antecedent oral Jesus traditions and is self-conscious about this from its outset. But why textualize a previously oral tradition? Numerous theories have been offered: the deaths or impending deaths of early gospel tradents or eyewitnesses; persecution and pogroms; the destruction of the Jerusalem temple; the killing of oral traditions; or a combination of two or more of these. Recently [Christ] Keith has argued that, as a manuscript, the Gospel of Mark creates what Jan Assmann calls an “extended situation” (zerdehnte Situation). The extended situation allows cultural memories to be physically co-present with a tradent to experience a discourse. The necessity of interpersonal communication is obliterated. The manuscript can be read by an individual or read to individuals who are miles and centuries removed from the author. For Keith, the visualization of the manuscript itself within the extended situation is formative. The presence of a text at a public reading imbued the gospel tradition with authority by its physicality.
The Amateur Exegete 