The Role of the Disciples in Mark

Abstract

While traditional Christian thought has honoured the disciples, they have since Wrede been increasingly regarded as bearing the brunt of Mark's animus. This paper is a new examination of the role they play in Mark's thought. It is not inappropriate to present it at a meeting of the Society in the U.S.A., where so much original and fascinating work on the place of Mark as author has been advanced in recent years. It may be that Mark did not conceive of the disciples as playing any particular role. In the tradition their lives were too closely intertwined with that of Jesus for Mark to have been able to omit them from his account. Given their necessary presence he might have regarded them purely as background, an ineradicable part of the scenery but of no importance in themselves and having no essential function in what he wrote. We will not dispute this now, but all that is argued later about the disciples indicates that they were not mere scenery; Mark gave them a definite role in his book. But what role? This is a legitimate question and needs to be asked once we abandon the view that Mark is writing pure biography.