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Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. By Joel Marcus. AB 27. New York: Doubleday, 2000, xix + 569 pp., $42.50; Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. By Joel Marcus. Anchor Yale Bible 27a. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, Ix + 573-1182 pp., $55.00.
The long-awaited completion of the Marcus commentary on Mark has been well worth the wait. It provides the serious student of Mark one of the best commentaries available for the study of this Gospel. Although for some the length of the two-volume work may be more than they want, the commentary provides a comprehensive, clear, and well-argued discussion of the key issues involved in the study of Mark. Marcus brings to this study a mastery of the relevant primary and secondary literature. A brief look at the "Index of Scripture" reveals this immediately. There are eleven pages (four columns per page in small type) of Scripture references, and the "Index of Other Ancient Sources" consists of twelve pages of references (also four columns per page in small type) of the pseudepigrapha (the apocrypha are listed at the end of the OT references), Josephus and Philo, Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic and other ancient Hebrew and Aramaic Jewish literature (Mishnah, Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, Midrashic literature, Targums, and miscellaneous), non-canonical Christian literature, other literature (primarily Roman), and papyri that are cited in the commentary. The most important of the cited references are quoted for readers, the majority of whom lack easy access to them. This is a helpful and user-friendly feature of the commentary that its large size makes possible.
The format of each volume is similar. Each begins with a separate preface, a list of features (charts, lists, comparisons, etc., 52 in all), and a list of principal abbreviations. This is followed by a forty-nine-page bibliography in volume 1 and a more compressed (smaller print and spacing) forty-page bibliography of works cited in the second volume. The author's translation of 1:1-8:21 in the first volume precedes a discussion of introductory issues, and his translation of 8:22-16:8 precedes the discussion of the commentary proper in the second. At the end of the commentary in each volume there is a list of appendices (four in the first volume...