Leader's Reading of Mark 10:41-45

AN OVERVIEW OF THE SERVANT-LEADERSHIP CONCEPT OF MARK 10:41-45 IN ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT^*

David Thangsan^*
Pastor, Sungan International English Ministry
201 Phungsan-dong, Hanam City, Seoul 461-170
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Introduction

With an assumption of every word has its own context and story behind,¹ this article brings its major proposal. In fact, this article will be a history-reflected-exegetical study on the servant-leadership motif of Mark 10:41-45. However, a perfect historical trace for the background of the Gospel and this specific passage, for sure, would be very complicated [and be far-reaching]. Among many, major problem to encounter first, if doing so, would be the bi-literary-context of the passage as being the ‘later repetition of someone’ of the ‘original statement of the other one’.

Stated this, as Richard B. Hays correctly points out when he makes separate reading on each distinct theological-ethical teaching of the Gospels in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament,² special care should be given to the two apparent contexts of certain passages especially when dealing with the Gospels. Since either one is not more or less important than the other in their own socio-historical setting—to be articulated first in certain context and later to be referred it back for another situation—this article will simply assume that both is equally important to mention in the article of this kind.

Therefore, the passage, Mark 10:41-45, and its servant motif will be treated first in the historical context of the Jesus movement within the inner Judeo-Palestine boundary in the early first century AD. Then, the passage and the motif, being a later-narrated literary segment as seen in its present lexical-syntactical form,³ will be appropriately set in the historical context of the later narrator as he referred back to the story with a clear intention and purpose. Furthermore, when say historical context, specific attention will be given to the sociological and political situation of the context immediately concerned, and will not go further than that in order to restrict the article on the other hand.⁴

Accordingly, the article will be classified into three parts. The first part will introduce socio-political climate of the inner Judeo-Palestinian region with a special attention given to the Herodian dynasty, during which historical period the Jesus Movement was broken out and this servant-leadership motif was first articulated by Jesus Christ himself. The second part will then mainly deal with the wider Greco-Roman political environment. To defense the logical internal coherence of the article, even though the socio-political wave of the wider Greco-Roman world is generally seen as the historical setting of the later narrator, this wider context had more or less still affected the socio-political current of the Palestine of Jesus’ time also.⁵ In fact, second part will have some overlapping information between part one and the upcoming part three.

The third part will purely be historical studies on the particular socio-cultural setting of Markan Gospel and the passage (Mark 10:40-45), from which background the exegetico-theological studies on the passage will be reflectively made. At the end of part three, the servant-leadership concept of Mark 10:40-45 will be intensified in light of all related socio-political situations that cry for leaders of such motif and the crucial role of the servant motif of the passage in the whole Markan gospel in light of Jesus’ atoning death will be introduced.⁶

(For full article, please, contact Rev. Mung)