The Bartimaeus Pericope: a paradigm for Christian spirituality

Abstract

This thesis examines the Bartimaeus pericope through its transitional status in Mark’s narrative. Mark provides a triptych structure for his gospel, namely 1:1-8:21; 8:22-10:52; 11:1-16:8. His first section concentrates on establishing Jesus for who he is as the Father’s emissary, anointed (1:10-11; 9:7) to inaugurate the arriving of the kingdom of God (1:14-15). The prime focus appears to be on Jesus’ healing miracles, exorcisms and teachings in a personal rhetoric towards freeing his followers to participate in that arriving. Bartimaeus encapsulates the first section’s emerging theology and titular Christology in his personal Jesus-encounter. Mark achieves this through a linguistic competence, which includes visualized details (facilitating a reader’s participation in the text), verbs in the historic present tense (providing an immediacy for Mark’s rhetoric), and a matrix of deliberately linked (“καί”, “and”) lived experiences, so that Bartimaeus pivotally transcends theology and Christology into a spirituality for rescue. Mark allocates his second section, 8:22-10:52, to Jesus’ teaching on discipleship. It opens with the miracle of the gradual healing of a blind man from Bethsaida (not a follower of Jesus). His slow healing could have been the paradigm of all of Jesus’ followers, including the Twelve, and Mark’s readers. Mark’s evidence, however, projects these pre-taught disciples never to arrive at full sight. In fact, their progression culminates in total failure. Only Bartimaeus is the paradigm. Blind, and without being taught (pre-10:46), he sees. Mark thus concludes this central section in a pivotal rescue of discipleship, through (i) Bartimaeus’ exemplary faith, personalized into a lived experience of pursuing the divine in Jesus. (“God’s mercy” constitutes the “divine” in Jesus for Bartimaeus), and (ii) Bartimaeus inaugurating Mark’s new discipleship for his readers3. Bartimaeus as paradigm resonates in Mark’s third section, the Jerusalem experience. This is explained in terms of Mark providing Bartimaeus as the pivotal transition, not only for Mark’s narrative (in terms of a hinge passage), but also within Mark’s narrative (in terms of a spirituality for rescue). Components of that spirituality pivot through Bartimaeus’ Jesus-encounter and are based on the seven semantic networks in the discourse analysis for the pericope’s inner texture. These are ideated into seven metaphorical bridges for a rhetoric towards transition from failure to rescue. Robbins’ five “textures” in his socio-historical analysis, are applied to 10:46-52. These provide evidence for the pivotal role of Bartimaeus in Mark’s embedded discipleship rescue-package. The application of Iser (1978), Waaijman (2002) and Van Der Merwe (2000-2022), (et al), further validate the metaphorical bridges as components for a Christian spirituality of rescue. The “bridges” as “components” thereby constitute the “paradigm” for this thesis.