Is our reading the bible the same as the original audience's hearing it? A case study in the gospel of Mark

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 2003 by Stein, Robert H

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In a previous paper read at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled "The Benefits of an Author-Oriented Approach to Hermeneutics"1 I sought to demonstrate the importance of maintaining that it is the author who determines the meaning of a text. I want to build on some of the implications of an author-oriented approach to hermeneutics and have chosen as the topic of this paper, "Is Our Reading the Bible the Same as the Original Audience's Hearing It?" The address is divided into two parts. The first is entitled "The Intended Readers of Mark" and the second is entitled "Consequences" or if we want a more detailed, Germanic-like title "Consequences in the Goal of Interpretation as a Result of Understanding Mark's Readers."

I. THE INTENDED READERS OF MARK

In trying to understand the meaning of a text it is important to know something about the readers addressed by the author, that is, the intended readers.2 The more that we know about these readers the more likely it is that we shall be able to understand the willed meaning of the author. Since I have been working a great deal on the Gospel of Mark, permit me to deal specifically with this book of the Bible. I believe, however, that what is true with respect to Mark is also true with respect to other biblical books as well, although some of the OT books raise additional issues and problems. To whom did Mark write his Gospel? Whom did he envision as his intended audience? Since Mark wanted his readers to understand what he was writing, he used a shared set of words or symbols and a shared grammatical syntax. If we therefore learn the meaning of these symbols and the grammatical syntax the author shared with his intended readers, we can then understand how his readers would have understood his Gospel. (To be more accurate, let me reword this last sentence as follows: "If we therefore learn the meaning of these symbols and the grammatical syntax, we can then understand how Mark's readers should have understood his Gospel.")3

Ascertaining the intended audience of Mark, as I understand it, does not involve some hypothetical sociological model or reconstruction of the time and situation in which and for which Mark wrote.4 Rather it involves what the Gospel itself reveals with respect to the make-up of Mark's intended readership. We are thus not seeking to build upon a hypothetical reconstruction of the situation of Mark but rather to understand what the text that Mark has given us reveals concerning his intended audience. The following characteristics may be inferred regarding Mark's intended audience.

1. A Greek-speaking audience. We can even be more specific-Mark's audience was a koine first-century Greek-speaking audience. This is not a profound insight, since the Gospel was written in Greek, but it is nevertheless important. This understanding indicates right away that basing arguments on the root meanings of English words is ludicrous. To ask, "What did Mark, who wrote many centuries before there ever was an English language, mean by a particular English word?" is anachronistic, to say the least. Yet even people who should know better still base various arguments on the root meanings of the English words used to translate the biblical texts.

To "hear" the Gospel of Mark one must understand the Greek language used by the Evangelist. To understand what Mark means by the Greek terms and grammatical syntax he uses requires us to know the language used by Mark. This is why we require and teach Greek (and Hebrew) to those who would be ministers of the gospel. Readers of the NIV, NASB, NLT, RSV, NRSV, etc. are not really seeking to understand what Mark meant as they read his Gospel in these translations. They are rather seeking to understand what the translators mean. This is evident by the fact that it makes no sense at all to ask such questions as, "What does Mark mean by this English word or by this English grammatical construction?" The person using a translation of Mark, rather than the Greek text, will always be one step removed from the meaning of the evangelist. This may not pose a problem for a reader-oriented hermeneutic, but it does for an author-oriented one. If we want to have direct access to the meaning of the biblical writers, we must know the biblical languages. In a generation that likes fast food and overnight short-cuts to weight loss, the discipline of learning the biblical languages does not come easily. But would you want to study French literature from someone who could not read French? Do we want our people to hear the sacred Scriptures taught each Sunday by those who know the Scriptures only through translation? In Hebrews 11 the suffering of God's people involves such things as: mocking, scourging, torture, stoning, being sawn in two, imprisonment, chains, and death. If the only suffering ministers of the gospel will have to experience is that of learning the biblical languages, our suffering will be remarkably light.5