Reading Mark: Engaging the Gospel.

Reading Mark: Engaging the Gospel. By David Rhoads. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004. xviii and 270 pages. Paper. $20.00.

This collection of essays offers readers the rich fruits of more than three decades of Rhoads's fascination with the Gospel of Mark. In the preface he chronicles his journey from an early focus on the historical context of Mark to his shift toward literary and narrative criticism, followed by forays into cultural anthropology, performance criticism, and, finally, the ethics of reading. All but the final essay have been previously published.

Unlike many collections of previously published essays, this one has little repetition, as Rhoads explores distinct terrain in each. The first two chapters, "Narrative Criticism and the Gospel of Mark" and "Narrative Criticism: Practices and Prospects," offer an excellent introduction to the method and terminology of the various aspects of narrative criticism. Rhoads describes the early insights of narrative criticism and then sketches the developments that have sharpened and broadened the method along the lines of reader response, rhetorical, reception, genre, orality, and performance criticism. He shows how speech-act theory, attention to social location, social science criticism, ideological criticism, and performance criticism further shed light on the discipline. These two chapters offer one of the clearest and most comprehensive explanations of narrative method I have found.

In the subsequent chapters Rhoads puts the method to work on select topics: "Losing Life for Others in the Face of Death: Mark's Standards of Judgment," "Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman," "Network for Mission: The Social System of the Jesus Movement in Mark," and "Crossing Boundaries: Purity and Defilement in Mark." Each offers rich insights for both biblical interpretation and pastoral praxis.

In chapter 7, "Performing the Gospel of Mark," Rhoads describes his method and experience in having memorized and performed this Gospel for more than two hundred audiences in the past twenty-five years. I have had the privilege of experiencing some of Rhoads's performances and can attest to the powerful way in which performance interprets and transforms.

In the final chapter, "The Ethics of Reading Mark as Narrative," Rhoads urges readers to be aware that all interpretations are "relative, value-bearing, and particular in nature" (p. 203) and that the interpreter has an obligation to read responsibly, with a view toward proclaiming the text "in ways that bring life, and not death to the world" (p. 219). Toward this end, he rightly advocates reading with others, particularly from races, cultures, and genders other than one's own. In sum, this collection is a splendid entree both to narrative methods and to engagement with the Gospel of Mark.

Barbara E. Reid

Catholic Theological Union 

Chicago, Illinois