Mark as Recovery Story

Download or read book Mark as Recovery Story written by John C. Mellon and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark as Recovery Story interprets the Gospel of Mark in terms of alcoholism and Twelve-Step recovery. Identifying numerous previously unrecognized ambiguities in the gospel's Greek text, John Mellon portrays Mark's mysterious "insider" audience as a fellowship of ex-inebriates turned waterdrinkers, alcoholics whose spirituality of powerlessness resembled that of Alcoholics Anonymous today. Mellon discovers in Mark, the most enigmatic of the Jesus narratives, genre features of the former drunkard's sobriety story, and he reconstructs the first-person story Jesus would have told on his return to Galilee, culminating in his Last Supper words about wine and his Gethsemane prayer for removal of the cup.