A Review of The Gospel on the Margins by Michael Kok

    Michael Kok’s book The Gospel on the Margins (Fortress Press, 2015) is the publication of the author’s PhD dissertation from the University of Sheffield. Opening with a consideration of the relative obscurity of the gospel of Mark in the first centuries of Christianity, Kok develops an intriguing thesis of the origin of the patristic tradition: the gospel is not in fact Mark’s collection of the memoirs of Peter but rather an anonymous first-century text whose apostolicity was asserted by the early church fathers in an attempt to claim the text for “centrist Christianity” and nullify its use by more radical Christian groups. The Markan-Petrine connection was fabricated in order to reclaim the text for what would become orthodoxy (though Kok prefers to avoid the term). Exemplifying thorough scholarship and judicious conclusions, Kok’s book is well worth the read for students of the second gospel. However, it does not provide compelling reason to rethink the patristic tradition of the gospel’s authorship by Mark and connection with Peter. I will proceed chapter by chapter through The Gospel on the Margins and highlight the points at which Kok’s argument may be fairly challenged.
    Chapter 1 contains an examination of arguments against the patristic tradition. Kok covers objections from form criticism, redaction and narrative criticism, and historical criticism, finding most of them overstated if not unsuccessful. While Kok’s treatment of the gospel’s alleged geographical and historical blunders is remarkably sympathetic, he emphasizes the negative portrayal of the Twelve as a key reason to doubt the gospel’s alleged connection with Peter. He fleshes this out in the next chapter.
    Chapter 2 is the counterpart of the first, examining the arguments in favor of Markan authorship that have been proposed by recent conservative scholars like Hengel, Gundry, and Bauckham. While Kok’s engagement with their work is thorough and supplies plenty of welcome correctives to overly optimistic conservative arguments—especially Bauckham’s “inclusio of eyewitness testimony”—not every rebuttal is of the same quality. But rather than gripe about Kok’s less compelling takes, I will focus on the negative portrayal of the Twelve. That the gospel goes out of its way to record the disciples’ “extraordinary powers of incomprehension” and “lapses in judgment” is the primary reason Kok gives for doubting the traditional authorship of Mark’s gospel. This is quite important to his thesis, as strong grounds for accepting traditional authorship would render the latter half of the book irrelevant. As Kok himself admits (16), “if there is historical substance behind the Papian tradition, there is no reason whatsoever to pursue a different solution for why the patristic writers consistently attribute the text to Peter.” As such, it is worth examining this objection in more detail.
    A standard reply is suggested by Kok: the negative portrayal of the Twelve is “a testament to apostolic humility” (83). However, the shortcomings of the Twelve in Mark’s gospel go beyond this: “the problem is that Mark does not just document the Twelve’s occasional foibles.” Rather, per Kok, the evangelist’s portrayal is closer to a parody than to what we might reasonably expect from a Petrine gospel. However, Kok has not shown that there is anything historically improbable in Mark’s portrayal of the Twelve, and so it is not clear that Petrine humility is an insufficient explanation for the phenomenon at hand. In fact, one might invoke the criterion of embarrassment and use these observations in support of the historical reliability of Mark’s gospel and the accuracy of Peter’s testimony. By Kok’s own admission, the portrayal of the Twelve is complex and a one-sided reading cannot be sustained. Despite their many misunderstandings, the Twelve left everything to follow Jesus, and the gospel ends with a promise of their opportunity (and Peter’s specifically) to rejoin the Jesus movement.
    One could certainly pursue the arguments and counter-arguments further, but Kok’s primary objection to the traditional view of Mark’s gospel is by no means a slam dunk. Indeed, to me it seems to go beyond what we can justifiably conclude. The portrayal of the Twelve is complex: how are we warranted in saying that Peter would have offered a much different testimony, much less building an entire thesis on such a wobbly foundation? A priori historical judgments are not always fruitless, but we must be very cautious when saying what a particular individual (in this case, Peter) “would have” done. Valuing the direct evidence over counterfactual conjectures should be our favored course of action.
    Having made a positive argument against Markan authorship, Kok briefly criticizes the testimony of Papias, but I will save discussion of this for the next part of my review. He is to be commended for stating his conclusions cautiously and engaging with a wide breadth of scholarship.
    Chapter 3 examines the discussion of Mark in the New Testament and early patristic sources. Beginning with the latter, Kok examines the testimony of Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria. His main takeaway is that the latter three are dependent on Papias. The notion that this more or less nullifies their evidential value in establishing Markan authorship is implicit in his argumentation. He argues further that the testimony of Papias is suspect, given the shadowy nature of Papias’ source (John the elder) and errors in Papias’ treatment of other material (namely a Hebrew text of Matthew and the account of Justin Barsabbas drinking poison and surviving). While Kok argues for the disputed interpretation that Justin Martyr referred to the canonical text of Mark as the “memoirs of Peter”, thus linking the gospel with Petrine authority, he qualifies his optimism with the claim that Justin Martyr was dependent on the “Papian tradition” about Mark. His argument for this is brief and involves pointing to some shared stock vocabulary (e.g. “remembered” and “handed down”). However, there is little positive reason to suppose that Justin’s attestation is entirely dependent on the bishop of Hierapolis. Papias was not a prominent figure in early Christianity, which explains why his books have been lost. Justin nowhere mentions Papias and does not mention Mark, which one might have expected if he was just lifting from Papias. Justin was also writing not long after Papias and in locations geographically removed from Hierapolis, lowering the probability that he was dependent on Papias. It’s not impossible that he was, but Kok’s argument to that effect is lacking. We can establish neither the independence or dependence of Justin Martyr’s attestation of the gospel’s Petrine connection, but in the absence of reasons for the latter and in fact some reasons against it, we ought to incline toward the former.
    One may also question the relevance of showing that the later patristic sources knew of Papias’ work. I would argue that the testimony of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria provides some additional corroborative evidence for Papias’ claim. It indicates either that the second-century authors were unaware of competing traditions, or that if they were, they had reason to favor the Petrine tradition. This is more to be expected on the supposition that the testimony is correct than on the supposition that it isn’t. Now while we don’t know what sources were available to these ancients, is it possible that other written and oral sources provided additional, corroborating evidence undergirding their confidence in Markan authorship? It certainly seems plausible. It is also worth noting that neither Irenaeus nor Clement explicitly quotes Papias as the source of their tradition, leaving little direct reason to think that they simply lifted their authorial claims from Papias’ work and did no corroborative work of their own. It is true that the testimony of Irenaeus and Clement would supply more evidence if it was completely independent from Papias, but Kok’s dismissal of these later authors’ evidential value is premature.
    Kok dedicates the rest of the third chapter to demonstrating a rather dubious chronology of the gradual association of Mark and Peter. Acknowledging the significance of texts such as 1 Peter 5:13 and Acts 12 in establishing a historical connection between Mark and Peter, Kok dates 1 Peter to the last quarter of the first century and Acts to the beginning of the second, arguing that the latter is dependent on Josephus, the Pauline corpus, and possibly Papias. He is not without arguments for these positions, and indeed devotes considerable ink to establishing them. Rather than embark on a lengthy examination of the matter, I will simply indicate that I found his arguments interesting but uncompelling, often taking the unnecessarily complex conjectures of previous scholars and laying even more speculative strata on top of them. The result is a historical scenario which warrants a credence no higher than “possible”. His response to conservative arguments for an early dating of Acts amounted to just one paragraph. I do not expect every reader to share my personal dissatisfaction, but in my estimation this chapter was the weakest of the book.
    In chapter 4, Kok lays the groundwork for his alternative thesis of the patristic tradition’s origin. He argues that apostolic succession was a doctrinally legitimizing tool, leading to early Christian interest in historical lists of bishops and clashes between various sects over the origins of a particular text. “Centrist Christianity,” as Kok prefers to call that sect of Christianity which would become orthodoxy, vouched for the apostolicity of certain texts to safeguard against their use by more radical groups. This is allegedly what happened with the gospel of John. The ghost of Walter Bauer peeks out quite frequently from between the pages of this chapter, but I will bypass a full discussion in the hope of keeping this review to a reasonable length.
    Chapter 5 attempts to demonstrate that Mark was viewed as the “odd one out” of the gospel narratives. This is seen in patristic comments that simultaneously vouch for the text’s apostolicity but in some way denigrate its literary qualities. Papias affirms a Petrine connection but criticizes the gospel’s arrangement; Irenaeus confirms Mark’s primary source but notes that he wrote after the “demise” (interpreted by Kok as death) of Peter and Paul, and Clement of Alexandria suggests that Peter was not particularly enthusiastic about the gospel’s publication. There is also later evidence for the denigration of Mark, particularly in the designation of its author as κολοβοδάκτυλος—stump-fingered. Kok’s hypothesis is that the apostolic fathers wanted to associate the text with Peter but at the same time supply an intermediary scapegoat, Mark, upon whom to lay the text’s many pitfalls. But why should we prefer this to the much simpler hypothesis that the testimony of the fathers is largely correct? Perhaps Mark did in fact record Peter’s testimony and Papias was not pleased with its order. Further, the conflict between Irenaeus and Clement regarding the timing of Peter’s death in relation to the publication of Mark may indicate their access to independent streams of tradition. Kok is multiplying unnecessary hypotheses to explain some rather unremarkable data.
    Finally, chapter 6 looks at the treatment of Mark’s gospel in the second century, attempting to determine whether non-centrist Christian groups had more favorable views of the gospel than those presented in the last chapter. There is little surviving evidence to work with, but Kok does an admirable job examining what we have. The first patristic source to explicitly mention the co-option of Markan prooftexts by heretics is Irenaeus, who names the Valentinians, Carpocratians, and Basilideans. Clement of Alexandria likewise has to deal with misinterpretations of the Markan pericope of the rich man by ascetics. These are the only direct lines of evidence Kok offers for the prominence of Mark among heterodox interpreters, and one may question whether they are sufficient to bear the weight of the argument. This hesitation is confirmed by the realization that different heretics appropriated other gospels—Marcion with Luke, for example, and the Ebionites with Matthew—and so Mark does not appear any different in this regard. Are two sources naming four groups sufficient to convince that Mark was, in relation to the other gospels, disproportionately appropriated by non-centrist Christianity? The evidence from later redaction of Mark by evangelists and scribes is more promising, but a combination of coincidence and counterexample may be sufficient to explain the examples Kok adduces. It is also worth noting that Mark is the only gospel which was incorporated into another, and thus the only one with an extensive non-scribal redaction history, rendering asymmetrical the comparison of the reception of Markan Christology with the reception of the Matthean and Lukan Christology.
    An appendix examines the authenticity of the controversial secret gospel of Mark. After a thorough review of the evidence, Kok tentatively concludes that Morton Smith was no liar: the secret gospel of Mark may well be genuine. He argues that this offers some supplementary evidence for his thesis, but it is by no means necessary to the argument and may be inconsequentially bypassed by readers who are convinced that Smith was a fraud.
    If I were to distill the thrust of my criticism into a short paragraph, it is that Kok consistently prefers complexity over simplicity (and he is by no means the only scholar working in the field who does this) and has constructed a thesis which relies too much on conjecture to be a compelling rival to the traditional authorship of the Second Gospel. His reasons for doubting Mark’s collaboration with Peter in the production of a gospel are unconvincing.