The Gospel of Mark as “Progressive Narrative”.

The Trauma of the War, and the Proposal of a New Beginning

Abstract

This paper proposes a reading of the end of Mark’s account (Mark 11–16) in the historical situation in which and for which this Gospel was composed.
After locating the Gospel in the context of the Jewish War and its effects in the Syro-Palestinian region, the category of cultural trauma will allow us to look at the Gospel of Mark as a progressive narrative. The second part of the study proposes a reading of the final chapters of the Gospel, showing that they reveal the situation its audience had gone and was going through (Mark 11–13), as well as the invitation to understand this situation in light of the trauma of Jesus’ passion and death (Mark 14–15) in order to open themselves up to a new beginning that involved returning to Galilee (Mark 16).