THE FORMATION OF THE DISCIPLES AS AGENTS OF DIVINE POWER AND REVELATION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS ACCORDING TO MARK AND JOHN

Abstract

With the overall task of explaining Christian origins in mind, this dissertation describes, analyzes and compares how the formation of the disciples of Jesus is depicted by the Gospels of Mark and John. It assumes the Gospel genre to be biographical and defines ―formation as the dialectical processes of interactions between Jesus and the disciples as His agents. A model that is based on the depictions of the divine-human interactions in the OT and literature of Second Temple Judaism is first developed for the analyses. This model is then piloted and fine-tuned in the first chapters of Mark and John in order to set the parameters for the study. With the aid of a narrative-theological method, the discipleship characters in both Gospels are identified, and the purposes of their formation, as well as the processes and events involved in their interactions with Jesus are separately analyzed and then compared to establish a number of hypotheses. These hypotheses are then validated by examining how both Evangelists narrate the feeding of the five thousand and the anointing of Jesus. The dissertation identifies that both Gospels characterize the foundational group of disciples as much wider than those explicitly labelled as ―disciple. This foundational group was multiform, and made up of people of different socio-cultural and religious backgrounds, ethnicities, gender and social classes. In both Gospels, the purpose of their formation was to make them into agents of divine power and revelation. Mark emphasizes their formation as agents of divine power, whereas John complements this by emphasizing their formation as agents of divine revelation. Though the key formational activities, events and processes highlighted by either Evangelist differ; they nevertheless complement each other, and thus a global portrait of the formation of the disciples is attained. In both Gospels, hospitality features as a central formational phenomenon, both literally and metaphorically. While Mark emphasizes hospitality as a discipleship ethic, John underlines it as a Christological phenomenon. Several peculiar emphases in John also complement the Markan feature of the frequent failures of the disciples. The Passion and resurrection of Jesus is established as key to the formation of the disciples, but in a proleptic fashion.