have worked diligently to help us see and understand the narrative qualities of the text of Mark.¹⁹ Their goal has been to bring its narrative story world into view. Ironically, as they did this, the "world" of Mark, that is, the world in which the Gospel of Mark emerged as a social product and functioned as a social tool, vanished from sight. Suddenly we were asked to believe that the Gospel of Mark was written and read in a "house of language" where people interacted only with their own thoughts, emotions, and beliefs--which looked, incidentally, mostly like current Euro-American thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. As the narrative dimensions of language appeared, the social dimensions of language disappeared.

Meanwhile, a host of other scholars were emphasizing that an incredibly vigorous social-economic-political-military world was "going on" while the Gospel of Mark was being written, read, and copied. The "readers" who had been working so hard to open the story world of Mark insisted that this world was "extrinsic," external to the "real" issues of interpreting the text. But the "social world" people continued their work, and in 1988 and 1989 three books on the Gospel of Mark pushed their way into the conversation.²⁰ Certain interpreters may be "digging in" to protect themselves from the onslaught. But there is a fast growing number of interpreters who wish both sides would come together, talk to one another, and join in the task of reading the narrative in such a manner that it opens the world not only of individualist Euro-Americans but also of other times, places, and peoples. In fact, one of the "readers," namely Norman Petersen, found a way to look out of the "house of reading" into the world in which Paul lived, and he won a Biblical Archaeology Society award for his effort.²¹

The challenge before us is to establish an environment that brings together the narrational and social dimensions of language in texts. Socio-rhetorical criticism has such a goal in view. This method presupposes that language is a social possession and that one of the social functions of language is to tell a story. This means that the task of interpretation is so large that no single person can achieve the insights necessary for interpreting all the aspects of a text. The task requires efforts by teams on various fronts who are willing to bring their insights and information together. Using Mieke Bal's vocabulary, we need an interdisciplinary method grounded in a multidisciplinary approach that uses both transdisciplinary and disciplinary practices in its interpretive strategies.²² The goal of all of this, I would argue, should be to free and embolden the texts to speak in new ways and to free and embolden interpreters to engage new information and new insights.

How can such a multiple team effort come into view? Socio-rhetorical criticism envisions a method grounded in a multidisciplinary approach, that is, an approach which "declares the concepts that constitute the program