Abstract
From its incipit, the Gospel of Mark identifies Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, and elucidates his identity by presenting a series of miracles which show Jesus as both the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, and as wielding the same divine power attributed to and exercised by YHWH in the scriptures. In Mark, these miracles serve a dual function: to reveal Jesus’s identity to those with ‘ears to hear’ while simultaneously obscuring Jesus’ identity from others.
In Robinson’s view, Mark accomplishes this goal through use of scriptural typology in the four sequential miraculous accounts in Mark 4:35–6:45. First, Mark used fulfillment typology to connect events and characters in his narrative with similar events and characters from the Old Testament. The resulting comparisons revealed Jesus to be the full fruition of humanity—greater than Jonah, Moses, and David. Robinson does not suggest that Mark sought to use typology as it is generally understood today, but rather that Mark’s use of the Old Testament scriptures was hermeneutical in nature, reflecting his then interpretation of the text. Partly for this reason, Robinson uses the lens of Hellenistic Judaism to evaluate Mark’s typologies and their antitypes as opposed to Greek rhetoric.
Robinson exposes an important limitation of fulfillment typology, which is that it is wholly inadequate to describe the connection between Jesus’ miracles in the Gospel of Mark and YHWH’s miracles in the Old Testament. Instead, a new typological category is needed: theomorphic typology, which arises when Mark narrativally identifies Jesus with YHWH. While emphasizing Jesus’ connection to YHWH, theomorphic typology moves past concepts of ‘divine identity’ or ‘exalted human figures,’ which Robinson correctly observes as abstractions which could prevent fuller understandings of Mark’s Christology.
To substantiate his claims that Mark deliberately used scriptural typology, Robinson analyzes the following miracles performed by Jesus: the stilling of the storm (Mark 4:35–41), the exorcising of a legion of demons (Mark 5:1–20), the healing of both Jairus’ daughter and the woman with excessive blood flow (Mark 5:21–43), and the feeding of the 5,000 (Mark 6:30–45). For each narrative, Robinson articulates Mark’s use of the authority of Old Testament scriptures to position Jesus as greater than God’s prior human representatives, to show Jesus as the realization of God’s salvation history, and to argue that Jesus, by demonstration of YHWH’s divine power, showed himself to be God in human form. Robinson’s analysis is intriguing and his conclusions are thoughtful, though scholars may differ on the degree to which they are willing to accept his determination on Mark’s intentionality.
Overall, Markan Typology provides valuable insights into New Testament typology with particular implications for Christological studies. Scholars interested in typology, intertextuality, Christology, or the Synoptic Gospels will benefit from Robinson’s careful analysis and important theological insights.