<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18812">
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><I>
<P><FONT size=4>Journal for the Study of the New Testament </FONT></I><FONT
size=4>80 (2000) </FONT></P><I>
<P align=left><FONT size=4>[JSNT </FONT></I><FONT
face="WFVUH C+ Times,Times"><FONT face="WFVUH C+ Times,Times"><FONT size=4>80
(2000) 44-65] </FONT></P>
<P align=left><FONT size=4>'SALTED WITH FIRE' (MARK 9.42-50): STYLE, ORACLES AND
(SOCIO)RHETORICAL GOSPEL CRITICISM </FONT></P>
<P align=left><FONT size=4>Ian H. Henderson </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=4>McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2A7
</FONT></P></FONT></FONT>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4><></FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>Excerpt from Pages 62-64</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>I am not quite saying that Mk 9 42-50 is
form-critically a curse text Our passage has no distinctive formulae of cursing,
nor does the immediate Markan narrative context impose the designation Elsewhere
Mark directly ascribes the rhetoric of cursing to Jesus, moreover, Mark implies
an analogy between Jesus' verbal act of cursing and his prophetic gesture in the
old Temple In Mark 11 (vv 12-14, 20-25) the cursing of the fig tree with
fruitlessness frames the dramatic and portentous cleansing of the Temple I want
to say that Mk 9 42-50 behaves rhetorically as a text in a similar way, inviting
the question, Ts this law, or a curse</FONT><SUP><FONT size=4>7' and, if it is a
curse, 'By what sacrifice, or by what ordeal may the spell be broken7'
</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>Formally, the text does invite special processing
of some kind by its marked stylistic difference from the surrounding narrative
and chreia materials Even apart from the catchwords 'stumbling', 'fire', and
'salt', the passage is marked as something like verse by the sheer density of
syntactical and lexical repetition,^ a statistical stylometnc analysis would
show Mk 9 42-50 to be one of the most self-involved speeches in early Christian
literature </FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>In particular we should note the repetition of
'gehenna', a word which, as I said, Mark has to gloss as 'unquenchable fire
"where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" ' (Isa 66 24)
Code-switching into non-Greek, especially in Mark, is often motivated by a
semi-magical sense of the evocative and performative power of Jesus' </FONT></P>
<P align=left><FONT size=4>Press 1996) Κ A Morland <I>The Rhetoric of Curse in
Galatians </I>(Emory Studies in Early Christianity Atlanta Scholars Press 1995)
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=4>33 IH Henderson Gnomic Quatrains in the Synoptics An Experiment
in Genre Definition <I>NTS </I>37 (1991) pp 481 98 (487 90) see Fleddermann
Discipleship Discourse pp 67 73 </FONT></P></SUP>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>speech.</FONT><SUP><FONT size=4>34 Something,
moreover, of the same aura of supernatural authority attaches to the unmarked
echo of Isaiah's last oracle. These poetic effects have therefore a rhetorical
function, that of emphasizing the ceremonial and authoritative qualities of
Jesus' words. They derive their persuasive force, such as it is, from the fact
that they are Jesus' incantation, rather than from their evident rationale.
</FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>I want to say, then, that the Gospel writer
expected, a bit optimistically, that his audience would hear 9.42-50 as an
oracular curse on leaders-in-waiting, binding them by magic as well as by
arguments to a sacrificial model of ministry. Jesus' last mortal words in
Galilee, addressed to his closest disciples, might be expected to have the
ritual force of a blessing or its opposite. In rather the same way Gen. 49.5-7
has Jacob curse his violent son Levi to landlessness, a curse which also implies
the blessing of Levi's ordination to the priesthood (cf. Num. 18.6-7, 20; Deut.
33; Exod. 32.25-29). Like Jacob in Genesis 49, Jesus in Mark 9 is on the
threshold of his own death, the archetypal liminal moment for blessing and
cursing and oracular speech. Also like Jacob, Jesus is effectively ordaining
those whom he curses with leadership in the covenant community. </FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>To read Mk 9.42-50 as a puzzlingly incoherent
piece of instruction or argumentation is a reductive misperception, a
misperception which Matthew and Luke, Mark's best- and earliest-known readers,
shared. The reception history of Mark's Gospel, and of this passage
particularly, is best explained by the assumption that Mark made unrealistic
demands on the rhetorical competence of his book's projected audience.
Specifically, the Gospel writer expected Jesus' argumentation at this important
juncture to work rhetorically against destructive church leadership, a central
pragmatic concern of his whole book. He expected Jesus' gruesome speech to work
not because it made sense, though there is sense in it. He expected the text to
work because in it Jesus was placing the ambitious among Mark's readers under a
special threat of punitive fire or penitential mutilation. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=4>Let us go back to the rabbinic question, whether mutilation is a
legal sentence or a curse. There is a strong presumption against regarding
self-sacrificial mutilation in Mark—or in early Christianity—as only a
metaphorical demand or as a universal ethical demand. On the other hand, hanging
millstones around unfortunate necks and chopping off </FONT></P>
<P align=justify></SUP><FONT size=4>offensive limbs is not unambiguously treated
in Mark 9 as legal prescription, as obligatory sentences to be carried out
casuistically by the community. In fact, normative ambiguity is an essential
factor in the rhetorical force of Mk 9.42-50: the vivid indeterminacy of the
threat makes it persuasive. </FONT></P>
<P align=justify><FONT size=4>Read communally, the remedy of amputation does
have a legal character; it sentences impenitent and divisive leaders to
excommunication. Read personally, however, the passage anticipates that leaders
like Mark's Satanic Peter (8.34) or John and his brother (10.35-45) may by
self-sacrifice avoid 'gehenna', even after stumbling. Mark's readers hear Jesus
tell his chosen disciples 'you will all be caused to stumble' (14.27), but
Mark's readers also know that, beyond the story, some at least will be
rehabilitated by post-Easter vision (16.7) and finally validated by post-Easter
self-sacrifice (10.35-40). In the world of Mark's readers, Peter in particular
literally exemplified both ways, punitive and sacrificial, of being salted with
fire: dysfunctional in Mark's story, controversial in at least Paul's
post-Easter eyes, finally triumphant in martyrdom. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=4>I understand Mk 9.42-50 as specifically directed to potential
leaders of the 'little believers'. In it Mark's Jesus adjures these potential
leaders by placing them under a curse of office, that they maintain peace with
one another for the sake of those under their influence and authority.
</FONT></P>
<P><FONT size=4><></FONT></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>