Mark the Mystagogue: Ritual Narrative, Identity Formation, and Baptism in the Gospel According to Mark

This dissertation argues that the narration of the Gospel according to Mark addresses the groups primarily reading the Gospel through repeated appeal to the rituals practiced in these reading communities. This discourse presents who Jesus is and Jesus’s call to discipleship in analogy to the baptismal ritual, shown in the Markan narrator’s description of Jesus’s baptism (Mark 1:9–11), figurative reference to baptism (Mark 10:38–39), as well as figural representations of baptism in the narrative structure of the Gospel. Although several studies of the Gospel of Mark have observed the evangelist’s emphasis on baptism, these studies often appeal to reconstructions of the Gospel’s Sitz im Leben that are of questionable critical value. Other studies employ ritual theories that can be helpful in recognizing diachronic commonalities in the rituals of many religions but are of less value in explaining nuances of distinct practices in early Christianity. In contrast to these approaches, the methodology of this dissertation is limited to analysis of the text of the Gospel of Mark and the ritual practices demonstrable prior to the composition of the Gospel in the undisputed Pauline epistles.

This argument involves an analysis of Paul’s references to baptism in Gal 3:26–4:7; Rom 6:3–11; 8:11–17; 1 Cor 1:13–17; 6:11; 10:1–4; 12:13, 2 Cor 1:21–22, in comparison to the baptism of Jesus in Mark 1:9–11. The use of immersive narration and reference to scripture (e.g. Gen 22:2, 12, 16) in Mark 1:9–11 correlates the Markan portrayal of Jesus’s baptism with the baptismal rite known and interpreted by Paul. Jesus’s figurative reference to baptism in Mark 10:38–39 provides impetus for comparing the baptism of Jesus in Mark 1:9–11 with other baptism-like events in the Gospel, including sea crossings (Mark 4:35–41; 6:45–52; 8:13–21) and healings of sense perception (Mark 8:22–26; 9:14–29; 10:46–52), akin to Jesus’s illuminating reception of the Spirit (1:10). The results of this study demonstrate the union between Jesus’s path to death and resurrection as God’s messianic “beloved son”, prefigured in his baptism (Mark 1:9–11), and the call to discipleship as participation in Jesus’s death and resurrection, characterized as a “baptism” (Mark 10:38–39; cf. Mark 8:34–38). The Gospel of Mark should therefore be read as a mystagogical narrative, aiding readers’ identity construction through figurative reference to the identity-forming ritual of baptism practiced at the time of the Gospel’s composition.