Book of Mark

Why would we be reviewing the Book of Mark in a blog about the history of political philosophy.

Because it turns out that god-likeness is a central theme of accounts of sovereignty in the Leviathan and elsewhere. 

When we think of godlikeness and the polity and try to go to the earliest accounts we come to Rome, the deification of the returning consul after conquering more territory receives a welcome akin to deification. This is called the triumph.  Romulus goes upward into the sky enveloped in a bright light. 

So, of course we are interested in an account of a deification of a very specific kind in the account of Jesus’ transfiguration the earliest account of which is in the book of Mark. In order to give an account of how the transfiguration differs from the triumphator, then you have to read scholarly books on Mark, and preferably have access to the passage in various languages and translations. 

This exploration of how Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as King of the Jews infuriated Jews, and would have sent Roman heads spinning has to be further explored in Luke. 

Just as there are other accounts of transfiguration.

The study of the transfiguration is also important for political science insofar as revolution is a foci of inquiry. Try to isolate the moment one order collapses and another one begins. 

So then we think, on the individual level of the idea of conversion.  Because we know in articulating that movement we can try to abstract out to what is profound change in the interior about? How can we map that motion. 

Next we have the idea in the poetics that plot involves recognition and reversal. The story is going along motion in certain direction. Then the protagonist, the chorus, whomever recognizes some fact about themselves or the situation they had hitherto not realized, and this realization creates a reversal in the direction of the plot. 

Now Hobbes uses this plot structure in a certain way, and at the apotheosis of the sovereign, the prevailing feeling is fear, and the recognition and reversal ensues with the covenant. 

The plot of Hamlet, as well, which is portrayed as the archetype of the early modern man’s dilemma, features a recognition and reversal. 

So, being a person who values drawing distinctions where possible, I think that there could be some distinctions made between types of recognitions and reversals. 

What are the recognitions and reversals in the story of Jesus. 

Well, the transfiguration is one. 

The conversion stories feature them. 

So, we can see in trying to find the godlikeness of the sovereign we have Greek references to Aristotle’s Poetics and Sophocles Oedipus as a textbook example for him. 

So we have a Greek plot structure, we have a Roman political tradition, and an early modern text that says that the people need to get saved from their own desires which of course makes one think of the King of Jerusalem.  

We can also see that we have three traditions already at play while the fourth emerges. 

Finally, there is the question of life. 

Life comes up in questions of sovereignty because its raison d’etre is to save your life, secure your life, make you live, something about life. 

We know from the Jewish tradition, in Deuteronomy, we are looking to choose life. 

Well, what do we learn about life in the Gospels? 

To complicate matters even worse, I’m finding myself wanting to use the word soteriology. 

I want to use this word because in questioning what it means to save one’s life, there’s life, the living, and then there is what does saving one’s life mean and theologians came up with this word soteriology to talk about it. 

But I’m trying to study the history of political thought so why am I borrowing a term from theology. Is that allowed. 

Why would analyzing myth fit in political philosophy.  Why is myth excluded from philosophy? Is this story a myth or does the text have another status and how. 

How to approach a gospel to recognize its influence in the history of political thought, and how is that different than listening to the Word of God from a pew.