| From the etiological motive for delivering a special message to his community situated in a particular life setting, Mark adopted the alpha i nuosigma motif from the ancient Near Eastern world. Having been already discovered in the preceding bronze-age Mesopotamian and Egyptian myths, it began to appear as a form of expression with the peculiar literary function in the Hebraic and Greco-Roman traditions. In Greek Tragedy, this motif was united with a mualpharhotau i&d12; alpha (to misidentify a dear one) and its primary meaning (the hero's unknown identity) extended to misidentification of a dear one, with the result that the alpha i nuosigma motif developed into a semantic form in which the misidentification by the heroic enigma drove the hero into a tragic death.; In his Gospel, Mark designed the surface structure to show Jesus as the Jewish Messiah; the deep structure, Jesus as a tragic hero; and the secret structure, how two irreconcilable images, the Jewish traditional Messiah and Greco-Roman tragic hero, are united in the historical figure of Jesus. Through the dramatic irony of the secret structure, Mark makes Jesus' opponents proclaim Mark's own Christology by the implications in their hostile speeches and actions: Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament, coming into this world under the disguise of the Greco-Roman tragic hero.; By showing a correlation between the hero's tragic death and Jesus' crucifixion and the martyrdom of the Christians, Mark (1) protected his community from a heretical theology that bypassed the theology of the cross and highlighted that of glory, (2) answered a criticism---why the promised Messiah had to die a violent death, how the most ignominious cross could be the symbol of Christianity and how a crucified criminal could be the object of faith worshiped by the Christians---, (3) provided theodicy for those who were intimidated by a painful death, beyond that which a human being could endure, only because of their faith in Jesus, and (4) tried to correct erroneous Christology and wrong discipleship by accentuating that Jesus' followers must deny themselves, take up their crosses, and not be served, but serve. |
