Markus, Macht und Krise: Abhängigkeitstheoretische Beobachtungen zur ältesten Jesuserzählung

As a narrator, Mark is a powerful authority. With his Gospel, he offers crisis management to his community in the existential crisis of the 70s and employs a narrative- historiographical approach. The offering of this crisis management is accompanied by the formation of authority and strong asymmetrical dependencies. The essay at hand traces these extremely complex processes and concretises the Markan “exercise of power” in two examples, namely the picture of Jesus’ relatives and the fleeing young man in 14:51–52. My impression is as follows: the narrator depicts various uncompleted positions towards Jesus without rashly marking “red lines”. He deliberately uses his authority of interpretation to grant “broken existences in the discipleship” a firm place within his community. Thus, he seeks to constructively respond to the acute crisis and consolidate this community.