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writing must not focus solely upon the king or upon royal interests, as do some of the extra-Israelite texts, texts to which Van Seters denies the designation history on the basis of this criterion. Is this emphasis upon the entire nation, upon all of the people, to be found in the Deuteronomistic History? With regard to the claims made by the Deuteronomistic History the answer is, "Obviously, yes." What other stratum in the Hebrew Bible talks so much about "all Israel," about a single God, about one, central shrine, or about a collection of ordinances which serves to define this people alone? However, as Van Seters himself clearly recognized, these are propagandistic, tendentious claims. They are hardly to be accepted as disinterested descriptions. Moreover, many of these aspects of the Deuteronomistic History are self-evidently in the service of Josiah and his court, and of the Davidic monarchy generally. Many individuals and many groups are excluded from the Deuteronomistic program. It takes little imagination to guess what the priests outside Jerusalem, for example, might think of a description of this program as inclusive, as a program directed to the entire nation and not to special groups within it. And the non-Jerusalemite priesthood is not the only party excluded by the Deuteronomistic History. If the purpose of In Search of History is to establish, once for all, that Dtr is the West's first historian, that this author completed working before the Yahwist or the Court Historian began their works, or that the problem of Hexateuch versus Tetrateuch is solved when one sees that the Yahwist and the Priestly writers wrote their narratives with the completed Deuteronomistic History before them, then Van Seters' volume has not succeeded. How could it? These are just the issues with which biblical criticism in the modern era began and the issues to a reformulation of which every generation has returned. If, however, the purpose of this book is to continue a major, revisionist program for the present generation, a program in our thinking is not just about history writing in antiquity or the Deuteronomistic History but more broadly about the processes by which religious literature develops, then Van Seters has succeeded, and succeeded splendidly.

A LITERARY-CRITICAL APPROACH TO MARK'S CHRISTOLOGY

The Christology of Mark's Gospel, by JACK DEAN KINGSBURY. Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1983. 203 pp. $19.95. Reviewed by DAVID M. RHOADS, professor of New Testament, Carthage College. by Jack Kingsbury represents a major methodological advance in the study of the Gospels. Instead of carving up the text into layers of tradition, Kingsbury employs narrative criticism to pursue the text's integrity. T h e result is a significant reassessment of Mark's Christology and a stunning, new interpretation of the secrecy motif. This splendid scholarly achievement will be of immense value to teachers, ministers, and students who keep abreast of the momentous changes now taking place in biblical studies.
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In the past several decades, many biblical scholars have found the key to Mark's Gospel in a hypothetical reconstruction of the traditions of Mark's community. Kingsbury argues that such an historical approach ends up distorting the text or predetermining its meaning. He wants to liberate literary criticism from its role as handmaiden to tradition criticism. "Suppose," he writes, "one undertakes to read the Gospel of Mark on its own terms apart from the obvious dictates of tradition criticism" (p. 40). For Kingsbury, treating Mark's Gospel as whole cloth on its own terms means analyzing the text as narrativethe world of the story, the development of plot, revelation of character, role of the narrator, and presentation of points of view. By means of this dramatic shift in the methodological paradigm, shared now by other Marcan scholars, Kingsbury reaps a harvest of fresh insights. Kingsbury's work challenges a generation of Marcan scholars who have located the interpretive key outside Mark's Gospel in the traditions of Mark's supposed opponents, who are said to have viewed Jesus as the glorious Son of God (a concept which scholars claim is rooted in the Hellenistic notion of a "divine man"). According to Weeden and others, then, Mark wrote to correct the opponents' view by portraying Jesus as the suffering Son of Manthe title most often found on the lips of the Marcan Jesus. These scholars argue that Mark included the incorrect picture of Jesus as a miracle-working Son of God early in the Gospel only to reject or correct it with a Son of Man Christology in the course of the subsequent narrative. By contrast, Kingsbury interprets the text as a narrative on its own terms, not as the corrective of a hypothetical opponent. Based on his analysis, Kingsbury argues that Mark never presents the title Son of God in a faulty or unfavorable light, and in fact Son of God, not Son of Man, is Mark's dominant christological title! The narrative, Kingsbury says, elaborates the meaning of Son of God; it never supplants or corrects it. In a lucid and extremely fruitful chapter, Kingsbury works carefully through the narrative observing how the titles for Jesus relate to each other and function in the developing plot. He discovers that the normative point of view about Jesus' identity is not that of Jesus (or the narrator) but that of God. God's view of Jesus, expressed in the baptism and the transfiguration, is that he is God's son. T h e points of view of Jesus and the narrator are aligned with God's point of view. The narrative early on introduces "Son of God" as a title expressing not a glorious divine man but the unique filial relation between God and Jesus. T h e subsequent actions and dialogue of the narrative clarify this relation, revealing Jesus' identity as Son of God to be royal and messianic (evident from the fact that, unlike other titles, only Son of God, Messiah, Son of David, and King of Israel appear in formulas of identity: "You are the Messiah." "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed [God]?" "Are you the King of the Jews?"). According to Kingsbury, although Jesus clearly knows himself as Son of God, he nevertheless avoids titles of identity. Instead, Jesus employs the title Son of Man to convey publicly his destiny as "the man*" whose authority is in opposition to Jewish leaders and who will suffer and be vindicated. Thus, Kingsbury understands Mark to be pre-

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senting a uniform portrait of Jesus as Son of God who fulfills his human destiny as the crucified one. Integrating these insights with the secrecy motif in Mark's plot, Kingsbury argues that the term "Messianic secret" is a misnomer. It is not primarily Jesus' identity as Messiah, but his identity as Son of God, which is made known to the reader but hidden from characters in the story until the crucifixion. Kingsbury disagrees with tradition critics who contend that there are inconsistencies, or "breaks," in Mark's secrecy motif. He uses literary categories to distinguish what the reader knows from what is yet hidden to characters in the story; while the readers know who Jesus is, the characters in the story either do not understand or do not accept what is said. Kingsbury observes that the reader is given information by the narrator which is withheld from the characters (1:1); the reader knows that some characters hold a particular view privately which is unknown publicly to other characters (5:2-13); the reader knows that some characters have the correct words but still lack sufficient understanding (8:29); the reader knows what is revealed to characters publicly but rejected by them (14:62); and the reader, unlike the characters, knows what is revealed indirectly through parable (12:112), prophetic speech (13:32), and irony (15:2). Based on such literary observations, Kingsbury shows that the secrecy motif contains no inconsistencies or breaks. He argues that although the readers know from the opening line that Jesus is messianic Son of God, nevertheless in the narrative world this is revealed to characters only by a slow process that occurs in three stages: Jesus as Messiah (Peter), Jesus as Son of David (Bartimaeus), and finally Jesus as Son of God (centurion). Thus, the narrative leads the reader to think about Jesus from God's point of view and so at the end to confess with the centurion that Jesus is surely Son of God. "The motif of secrecy is," according to Kingsbury, "a device for showing [the reader] how 'human thinking' about Jesus is, under God's direction, brought into alignment with 'divine thinking' " (p. 141). This study is a superb model for reading the text on its own terms. T h e focus on titles is, by Kingsbury's own admission, somewhat limiting, but by treating the titles in the context of plot, the study reveals the theocentric nature of the text, the predominance of the Son of God title, the portrait of a human Jesus anointed by the empowering Spirit (rather than one changed into a divine man at baptism), and much more. One may take issue with particular points; for example, in the text itself, "Son of God" and "Messiah" while never faulty or incorrect are nevertheless, by virtue of their initial vagueness, misleading to the reader and certain characters (e.g., Peter) until sufficiently elaborated. However, as a result of Kingsbury's work, one must now demonstrate such points by using narrative criticism. Further study of this problem will doubtless follow Kingsbury's lead: a tracing of what the reader knows and is led to think about these titles at each successive point in the narrative. Kingsbury's illuminating literary analysis of the secrecy motif resolves many conundra and helpfully distinguishes the public Son of Man title from the hidden titles of identity. And by treating the text as whole cloth, Kingsbury discerns 301

hitherto unnoticed connections within the narrative; for example, that the High Priest's question at Jesus' trial does not come out of the blue but originates from hearing Jesus' cryptic teaching (to the high priests) about the son who inherits the vineyard. In addition, Kingsbury's approach opens up new avenues to explore even further the secrecy motif: Why in the first place does Jesus not tell anyone his identity, even his disciples? How does Jesus' use of the title Son of Man protect the secret of Jesus' identity as Son of God? How does Jesus' secrecy relate to the threat posed by his opponents' efforts to get charges against him? The answers to such questions will obviously build upon Kingsbury's perceptive analysis of this suspenseful story. By studying the titles in relation to the rhetoric of secrecy in Mark, Kingsbury has further shifted ground in traditional Christology by asking not only who Jesus is, but also who he is "for us." T o agree that Jesus is Son of God leads us to take seriously Jesus' command to be least, to be servants, and to lose our lives for him and the good news. "Theologically," Kingsbury writes, "the purpose of this (secrecy) motif is to invite readers . . . to the realization that Jesus of Nazareth is of decisive importance as far as their relationship with God is concerned . . . (which) opens for them the possibility of entering upon, or being confirmed in, a life that is 'in alignment' with the life of Jesus himself (p. 141). On this point, a good companion volume to Kingsbury's work is Schubert Ogden's The Point of Christology (Harper and Row: San Francisco, 1982). Kingsbury's special contribution, the integration of Christology and secrecy in Mark's story, attests to the continuing allure of this ancient mystery story. For even when the secret is disclosed, the mystery of this man Jesus remains to be contemplated, revealing Christology to be, as Joseph Sittler has said, "reflection over and over and over again upon Jesus as the decisive manifestation of God for our lives." Kingsbury's fascinating work is one such fresh reflection which significantly advances our understanding of the dynamics of that mystery as tendered by Mark's Gospel.

A CHRISTOLOGY OF LIBERATION
The Point of Christology, by SCHUBERT M. OGDEN. Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1982. 191 pp. $14.50. Reviewed by PETER C. HODGSON, professor of theology, Divinity School, Vanderbilt University. the Sarum Lectures delivered by the author at Oxford University in 1980-1981, and represents a "filling out" of the christological outline projected over two decades ago in Ogden's first book, based on the theology of Rudolf Bultmann, Christ without Myth. What strikes this reviewer is how little Ogden has shifted from his original theological, philosophical, and methodological convictions, except at the point of appropriating certain insights and emphases of recent liberation theologies. Demythologizing criticism and existentialist interpretation still have a powerful grip on his mind and serve as the filters through
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