Word of Warning – this is one of those posts where I am thinking aloud for an assingment so this may not make sense to you, but if you would like to comment which could well help me in my essay writing,please do!

This morning I have been catching up on some reading for an assignment entitled:

 ‘How far does a liberationist reading of the biblical text clarify or confuse the meaning of that text? How far is such an academic tool useful in the mission and ministry of the church? Discuss with reference to the gospel of Mark’.

confuse or clarify … mmm that’s an interesting ask?! Essay titles are becoming ore ‘interesting’ is this final year!

My reading this morning has challenged me to re-think how I have been reading the gospels but Mark’s gospel in particular. In our western society, it would seem, we have imposed our ideals on interpretation of this text i.e. we have assumed that people could read, that books were plentiful, and so read the text as if it were written as a book.

Now we all know, when we sit down and think, that most ancient societies were pretty illiterate and some studies put the literacy level of 1st century Palestine at around 3%. We also know that most stuff was passed down orally until it was written. What I had not really focussed on was that even after being written down, the  majority of people would still have passed on the ‘text’ orally. Mark is an oral derived text and so our relationship with the text, how we read it, says Horsley needs to seriously alter.

There is also a lot of evidence to suggest that Mark was not just read out in synagogues and meeting places, but that it was actually performed. In this case the text may have been written as an ‘aide memoir’ to those performing who had already memorised their interpretation. If we want to hear what the audience would have herd we need somehow to get into considering their context which was living under the oppression of the mighty, and cruel, Roman army.

Some gems I am mulling over at the moment cause me to think that this is more than just a religious text – take the scene from Mark 5 with the possessed man whom Jesus heals, with he spirits going into the pigs and them all running into the sea and drowning. If we consider the context of being oppressed by Romans and hear of an evil spirit called Legion (clear Roman military link) entering pigs (mmm) and running into the Mediterranean Sea (which is how the Romans arrived) what would those people have actually heard? I believe we can make a good guess that their minds were taken to their state of oppression and that sometime they would be forced to leave by the way they came.

The people listening would have been hearing more than Jesus stories, they were hearing a reminder to their covenantal promise of liberation. I think its important that we bear this in mind when we look to understand what is happening in this text. If this was performed to a crowd then we need to get our minds into thinking that way otherwise trying to interpret it as a mere  book, even scripture, means we will lose most of the beauty and depth that is there: a bit like reading something of Mozarts without ever listening.