Week 8 – Sugirtharajah: Mark and Empire; Moore
What Moore offers here is Mark, as member of the Roman occupied Israel, through some quite thoughtful and colonial readings of his text, a view that Mark desires to see Jesus as one who will perform the roles of King in the same way that Caesar has. This is founded on Jesus missing the true giftedness of the women both before and after his apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13-14. Now, I’m learning good theology. And, I’m quite new to understanding a reading of the Scriptures in a non historio-critical and systematic way. However, I fail to understand how Jesus “didn’t get it”, or how his second coming is affected based on his recognition of an absolute gift he received (based on Derrida’s definition). (:203-4) Unless of course what Moore is saying is that the issue here is around Mark’s story telling of Jesus and a desire for a new eschatological “empire”, as opposed to Jesus actually missing the point of receiving an absolute gift. Of course, the irony in that would be Jesus own giving of himself on the colonial cross, despite that many may never know or receive the gift themselves.
