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  • From: "Henry Carrigan" <hcarriga AT morehousegroup.com>
  • To: gmark AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
  • Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 10:34:00 -0400


Dear Jeffrey:
Read your post earlier today on Kata Markon about the MacDonald book on the
Homeric epics and the Gospel of Mark.
I received the book when it was first published and have had a chance to
work through about half of it. My overall impression is that MacDonald, like
many rhetorical critics, is introducing us to a new way of thinking about the
literary context in which Mark did his work. If MacDonald's "right" with his
theory of mimesis, the implications for the rest of NT studies--especially
Gospel studies, since people have been doing rhetorical
criticism/mimesis/intertextuality with the Pauline material for awhile--are
fascinating. I'm grateful to MacDonald for raising these issues in a
substantive and in-depth exegetical fashion. Other than his work on the Acts
of Andrew (_Christianizing Homer_), there have been very few attempts to
offer this kind of deep study of the literary interrelationship of Christian
texts in their Hellenistic milieu.
Having expressed some admiration for the book, I do have reservations that
Dennis may be finding influences that are tendentious. I think that's bound
to happen in any book of this kind. The danger is often that the clear
examples get lost in the attempt to cut Mark whole cloth from Homer. I think
that's where the book will most criticized.
Henry Carrigan





  • Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, Henry Carrigan, 07/26/2000

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