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Conflicting Mythologies: Mythical Narrative in the Gospel of Mark

Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ

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.

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