I am happy to see that my review of Jan Rüggemeier’s book Poetik der markinischen Christologie: Eine kognitiv-narratologische Exegese has been published by RBL (see here).

For those who do not have access to the full review, let me include several short excerpts from the review here:

As a recipient of the Armin Schmitt Preis für biblische Textforschung (2017) and the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise (2019), Jan Rüggemeier’s Poetik der markinischen Christologie is an outstanding monograph that demonstrates the value of a cognitive-narratological exegesis and advances the study of Markan Christology.

His goal is to integrate historical and philological methods of exegesis and more recent approaches, especially from the realm of literary criticism and narratology, into a common system of viewing the text and, at the same time, to demonstrate the possibilities of such an approach with reference to the Markan image of Jesus, with the ultimate aim of providing a new and maximally nuanced answer to the question of the Christology of Mark (3; also 517).

Because Rüggemeier has already provided a robust presentation of his own integrative model of textual interpretation in chapter 2, he is able to conclude each section with an evaluation and methodological comparison that concisely weighs in on material issues and sheds especially valuable light on the contours of his own approach. Due to the placement, organization, and analytical rigor of this chapter, Rüggemeier achieves the rare and commendable feat of providing a history of research that advances the overall argument with insight and verve.

This section includes a compact summary of Rüggemeier’s interpretation of the disciples’ incomprehension (500–505), the messianic secret (505–7; see 363–73), and the ending of Mark (507–13). According to Rüggemeier, the messianic secret is an expression of Jesus’s subordination to the Father: prior to Easter, Jesus does not speak of himself as the Son or let others speak of him as the Son because the full revelation of Jesus as Son and Lord is reserved for the Father alone (506; see also 372).

Rüggemeier argues that, rather than representing a “sporadic Kyrios Christology” (406, 488, 490, 496), Mark has a “coherent Kyrios Christology” (412) and suggests that “this high christological conception represents the key to understanding the Markan Christology” (490). While I remain hesitant to adopt this thesis in toto, Rüggemeier has persuaded me that my understanding of Mark and Markan Christology must be shaped much more strongly by the Markan Kyrios texts in their relationship to the wider narrative and perhaps also by the possibility that “Mark thematically takes up the early Christian confession to the one God of Israel and the one Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Cor 8:6) and joins it narratively with the episodic narratives of the primitive community” (531; see also 406–8).

For my main criticism of the book, please see the published review!

For a translation of key excerpts from this book, see my “German Scholars” post on Rüggemeier here.

For Rüggemeier’s development of his perspective in critical dialogue with Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, see J. Rüggemeier, “Mark’s Jesus Reviewed: Towards a Cognitive-Narratological Reading of Character Perspectives and Markan Christology,” in Reading the Gospel of Mark in the Twenty-First Century: Method and Meaning, ed. Geert van Oyen, BETL 301 (Leuven: Peeters, 2019), 717-736.

For a German review of Rüggemeier’s work, see Paul-Gerhard Klumbies’ 2019 ThLZ review.

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German Mondays: Thank you for making it to the end of this blog post! I hope to be able to write at least one Monday blog post each month. Best, Wayne