This book—which appears to be (a version of) Robinson’s 2020 PhD thesis at the University of Otago—argues for a typological reading of four Markan miracle accounts: the calming of the storm (4:35–41); exorcism of Legion (5:1–20); healing of Jairus’s daughter (5:21–43); and feeding of the five thousand (6:30–45). Robinson employs three modes of typology (and contends that all three are present in these Markan accounts): literary typology (Mark’s miracle stories are modeled on those in the Jewish scriptures); fulfilment typology (these stories “situate Jesus of Nazareth as the denouement of salvation history”); and theomorphic typology (Jesus in these miracle account is identified “to an unprecedented extent with God)” (1).
Based on narrative, lexical, and thematic parallels, Robinson argues that each of these four Markan miracle stories is modeled on a miracle in the Jewish scriptures: the calming of the storm on Jonah 1; the healing of Jairus’s daughter and the hemorrhaging woman on “Elisha’s resuscitation miracle in 2 Ks 4:18–37” (101); the exorcism of Legion on David’s deliverance of Saul from an evil spirit and David’s defeat of Goliath (1 Sam 16–18); and the feeding of the five thousand on the feedings by Elisha (2 Kings 4:42–44) and Moses (Num 11). In these four cases, Robinson maintains that Jesus is modeled on—and presented as the antitype of and superior to—Jonah, David, Elisha, and Moses.
The real payoff for Robinson’s typological reading of these miracle accounts is their Christological yield. He finds embedded in Mark’s miracle stories a consistent Christology. Thus, Jesus “corresponds to YHWH in Jonah 1” (94), and Jesus is portrayed as “the God of Jonah” (96). In the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus is placed “in the narrative role of YHWH, further contributing to Mark’s divine Christology” (153). Jesus “steps into the role of YHWH in Ps. 23” (174). In all four miracles, “Mark identifies the messiah Jesus with the scriptural portrayal of Israel’s Lord” (175).
The book’s primary benefit is found in some of the specific lexical parallels that Robinson notes among Mark’s text, these Hebrew Bible accounts, and some other Second Temple Jewish texts. Robinson identifies some helpful and convincing intertextual parallels that suggest these four miracle stories in Mark were constructed in conversation with these Hebrew Bible narratives.
It would have helped if Robinson had supplied criteria for what constitutes a legitimate precursor or parallel Hebrew Bible text (both to buttress his own case and to support his rejection of competing cases offered by scholars of different precursor texts that he discounts). Without such clear criteria, his rejection of competing parallels can be read as somewhat arbitrary.
Robinson spends ample time in most chapters rejecting the Christological views of Richard Bauckham and Richard Hays (which he labels “divine identity”) and Daniel Kirk (“exalted human figure”). He faults all three for failing to take their paradigms from Mark’s text itself. Rather, “We must work to derive out categories from Mark’s own account” (2). And “Jesus in Mark’s Gospel is best understood according to its own categories” (xi). It is thus curious that Robinson’s own main Christological categories seem to derive less from Mark, and more from Nicaea and Chalcedon. Robinson, that is, seems at pains to stress that Jesus is “identified with God himself” (7) and that Jesus is both divine and human. In this way, he appears to bring a Christological reading to Mark that is framed by Nicaean and Chalcedonian lenses. He even speculates (but not does firmly conclude) about whether Mark views Jesus as pre-existent (188–90, 195). Robinson recognizes that debates about Jesus’s “divine or human nature” “use categories which are alien to Mark’s text” (195), but this doesn’t prohibit him from spending significant time on them.
Given that the overall significance of miracles is downplayed in Mark (especially compared to Jesus’s suffering and death), it is unclear why Robinson uses the miracles as his primary means of unpacking and understanding Mark’s Christology. What does Jesus’s death and suffering mean for our understanding of his Christological identity? is the question that the author of Mark seems intent upon asking.
The absence of topic sentences at the start of many/most paragraphs made several parts of the book read more like a collection of initial exegetical notes on Mark rather than a sustained and well-flowing argument.
This book is best suited for doctoral students and professors interested in typological and/or Christological readings of Mark’s Gospel.
