Socio-Rhetorical Examples
Examples include when the power of God will bring the fullest form of its benefits when it causes the sun and moon to become dark, the stars and powers in the heavens to lose their powers, and the Son of man to gather the elect "from the four winds, from the extremity of the earth to the extremity of heaven" (Mark 13:24-27). Then heaven and earth will pass away (Mark 13:31). The discourse presents no vision of a new creation. Rather, it simply speaks of the Son of man gathering the elect and the implication is that this is an action by which he takes them into "eternal life" in an "age to come" (10:30; cf. Wilde 1978: 59-61).
Revolutionist statements in other parts of the narrative establish a context in which Jesus' death and resurrection in Mark 15-16 are part of God's destruction of the powers of the created order and creation of a new order. Only the coming of the Son of man in the future, however, will be the time when the revolution fully occurs. The span of time between the death of Jesus and the coming of the Son of man creates temporal space for less dominant modes of discourse in the narrative to guide people's lives. It should not be surprising that the scribe who composed the longer ending of Mark allowed thaumaturgical discourse to dominate in it (16:9, 12, 14, 17-20). Emphasis on belief in the longer ending (16:11, 13, 14, 16-17), creates a space for emphasis on either a conversionist or a gnostic-manipulationist mode of life in the world until the return of the Son of man.
From V. K. Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts, (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), p. 74, 75.
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