This volume brings together an international group of scholars on Mark and Paul respectively
who reopen the question whether Paul was a direct influence on Mark. On the basis of the latest
methods in New Testament scholarship the battle over Yes and No to this question of literary
and theological influence is waged within these pages. In the end no agreement is reached but
the basic issues stand out with much greater clarity than before. How may one relate two rather
different literary genres the apostolic letter and the narrative gospel? How may the
theologies of two such different types of writing be compared? Are there sufficient indications
that Paul lies directly behind Mark for us to conclude that through Paul himself and Mark the
New Testament as a whole reflects specifically Pauline ideas? What would the literary and
theological consequences of either assuming or denying a direct influence be for our
reconstruction of 1st century Christianity? And what would the consequences be for either
understanding Mark or Paul as literary authors and theologians? How far should we give Paul an
exalted a position in the literary creativity of the first Christians? Addressing these
questions are scholars who have already written seminally on the issue or have marked positions
on it like Joel Marcus Margaret Mitchell Gerd Theissen and Oda Wischmeyer together with a
group of up-coming and senior Danish scholars from Aarhus and Copenhagen Universities who have
collaborated on the issue for some years. The present volume leads the discussion further that
has been taken up in: Paul and Mark (ed. by O. Wischmeyer D. Sim and I. Elmer) BZNW 191
2013.
