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

Another fact that must be considered is that ancient Greek texts such as Mark consisted of a string of unbroken capital letters. There were no breaks between words, sentences, or even paragraphs. The Gospel of Mark was originally a continuous collection of capital letters. It was in effect one huge, single word! Letters were separated from one another only when Mark came to the end of individual columns of letters. The separation of words at the end of the column, however, was not due to the desire to separate words but to the lack of space. The easiest way for a reader to decipher such a written text was by sounding out the various syllables in this unbroken collection of letters.22 Thus texts were normally read out loud even in private.

It is my thesis that the NT writers understood their intended audience not so much as individual readers but as a corporate audience of hearers. Even though both Luke and Acts are addressed to Theophilus, the length of these two works indicates that it was intended for a much larger audience than simply one person. Furthermore, the NT writers anticipated that the members of this corporate audience would not have individual copies of their works before them, but that someone would read out loud what they had written for their intended readers. Thus the intended readers of the NT were not readers in the traditional sense at all. They were hearers who would not read this Gospel themselves but rather hear it read to them by others. The main sense involved was not their eyes but their ears, and the experience was not a visual one but an auditory one.

This rather simple insight seems to go unrecognized by most interpreters. Recently a collection of essays appeared entitled Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation.23 It is apparent, however, that "hearing" is understood not in the sense of "hearing something read out loud" but metaphorically for "heeding" or "understanding." This is clear from the introductory article that is entitled "The Challenge of Hearing the New Testament." Virtually nothing in this article, or in the entire volume, is concerned, however, with how one's hermeneutical understanding is affected if the original readers were in fact not reading the text but hearing it read to them. Yet elsewhere Harry Y. Gamble argues, ". . . no ancient text is now read as it was intended to be unless it is also heard, that is, read aloud."24 How does one come to understand what Mozart was seeking to convey in one of his symphonies? Is it by reading a printed score of his work or by hearing the symphony played? For those of you who still remember listening to an old radio drama, let me ask you a question. In order to understand a radio drama, is it better to read a printed script of the program or to listen to it on tape? Or to use a more biblical analogy, is a better scenario for understanding the Gospel of Mark hearing a book-tape of it with one's eyes closed or reading it in your study surrounded by commentaries, lexicons, Bible dictionaries, and Greek grammars?