Gospel Formation and the Catalytic Corrective

Burton Mack’s Myth of Innocence delves into the nebulous territory of earliest Christianities with a reformer’s zeal and an academic’s rigour. Confronting a paucity of primary documentation and a scholarly obsession over the historical Jesus, Mack attempts to change the popular and academic vision of Christian origins with what he describes as “a single shift in perspective”: looking at the Gospel of Mark not to study the indelible uniqueness of the Christ Event, but to uncover the social histories of the document and its existence as a social charter.1 Thus, Mack turns to social-historical methodology (and nuanced literary criticism) in order to elucidate the social traditions and interests underpinning the Gospel of Mark,2 and to illustrate how the gospel’s careful craftsmanship informs scholarly and Church traditions of Christianity’s novel origins. Mack argues that Mark’s gospel was a charter document for his community, functioning as an authorizing defence amidst c.70 CE social upheaval, persecution, and perceptions of failure.