Roland Meynet, Il vangelo di Marco, seconda edizione, RBSem 14, Peeters, Leuven 2018 (597 p.)
Several authors had focused on the composition of the second gospel: especially Jean Radermakers, Benoît Standaert and Bastiaan van Iersel. Their pioneering work deserved to be taken up again, with a more rigorous methodology, now well established: Semitic rhetorical analysis.
Marco’s composition reveals a marvelous regularity, in detail as well as in overall architecture. Two large sections comprise seven sequences focused on one major discourse of Jesus: the beginning discourse in chapter 4 and the fulfillment discourse in chapter 13. Between these two sections, a third section, set outside the borders of Israel, is composed around Jesus’ discourse on discipleship. At the heart of this central discourse – and thus at the heart of the entire gospel – resonates the twofold question, “What good would it do a man to gain the whole world and ruin his life? What could a man give in exchange for his life?” (8,36-37).
Remarkably, then, Mark’s gospel is focused directly not on Jesus, but on his disciple. This is what the author of the long ending that closes the book has well intuited: Jesus totally leaves the place to his disciples for the proclamation of the Gospel of God.
