Interpreting “the most difficult verse in Mark”

I turned in an interpretation of Mark 9:49-50 for Hermeneutics class today. This is the second project I’ve had like this where I was given a difficult, short passage of Scripture (Mark 9:49-50) to interpret. Using the rules of biblical interpretation I learned in class, I was to supposed to explain the meaning of each phrase/detail of the passage.

Disclaimer

Before I continue with a description of my experience working on the project, I suppose I should include a disclaimer. Anyone who has this assignment in the future students needs to realize that:

1. My interpretation here is guaranteed to be cloudy enough that it won’t help you much.
   • Indeed, even if I were to revise the paper in light of my professor’s comments, I am still highly likely guaranteed to be wrong in key interpretational questions anyway.
2. The wealth of commentaries in the library collection should be more than sufficient to help you understand this passage. “Hardest verse in Mark” or not, this is a class project because it is attainable. More on that below.

Observations from the project

Interpretational doability

Although many commentators term Mark 9:49 “the most difficult verse” in the book, on the most demanding questions most of the commentators have a fairly uniform approach. The difficulty with this passage comes from grappling with the passage itself and exposing yourself to all the possible interpretations.

In many ways, perhaps the key difficulty for “secondary interpreters” (those who have the benefit of the commentator’s labour) is to be able to affirm the accuracy of the commentator’s interpretations. No commentator will claim a licensed interpretation of the passage, but the insights of each commentator combined with the others yields a helpful and likely accurate approach.

Text criticism and interpretation

One part of this project that drove me crazy was the insistence on interpreting Mark 9:49 in light of its textual variants. The phrase καί πᾶσα θυσία ἁλὶ ἁλισθήσεται (translated “and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt” in the KJV) is contested on the basis of textual criticism, yet factors heavily into the interpretations offered by many commentators. Many commentators believe that it was an allusion to Lev. 2:13 added by a copyist in a manuscript margin, and thus not part of the original passage in Mark. Over time, the phrase was incorporated into the actual text of manuscripts based on this alleged addition.

Almost all the commentators based their interpretation on this contested phrase, noting that the connection with Leviticus throws light on an otherwise confusing statement. It seemed ludicrous to me that a copyist’s allusion which was (allegedly) added inappropriately to certain text families should sway every commentator’s interpretation.

If the allusion truly was a portion of the original passage in Mark, its interpretational value is indispensable. If (as most critical text proponents and several commentators agree) the allusion truly isn’t part of the autograph then it doesn’t necessarily require an interpretation which links to the Old Testament passage in question.

Now before people go off on textual criticism and miss the point, note that I say all this without enunciating any position on the originality/marginality of the variant itself.

This was very frustrating to me, and I wrestled with the passage for some time trying to find a workable interpretation independent of the alleged Leviticus allusion.

Finally, I realized that most of the commentators interpret the passage in light of this allusion because it provides what may be the only workable interpretation of the verse known. I ultimately caved in to this approach too, but I still can’t shake nagging doubts that this entire interpretation may be based on a faulty connection to an Old Testament passage. Since the connection goes all the way back to a very early scribe, perhaps it is likely, but interpreting a passage in light of textual variants still gives me the creeps.

Now before people go off on controversies of textual criticism and miss the point, note that I say all this without enunciating any position on the originality/marginality of the variant itself. I believe that proponents of a Critical Text approach, Majority Text, or whatever other text position must be willing to charitably evaluate variants as they occur in Scripture and in the rare instances when they do appear to colour an interpretation.

The paper

Anyway, without further ado, here’s what I turned in for class: Mark 9:49-50 project. Comments and critiques are welcome!

[Edit 4/16/08: Corrected typo in original paper.]