Family Relations in the Gospel of Mark

"The social values of honor and shame, which have attracted much research from cultural anthropology and New Testament studies for the past five decades, is the main focus of the book. This book proposes the need to combine major contributions of narrative, rhetorical, and cultural anthropological approaches to trace the development of the twofold honor-shame concept throughout the Marcan narrative-with special attention to family relations. Though adequate social-scientific and socio-rhetorical stu-dies in Mark's Gospel (even in relation to honor and shame) have been conducted, there are still few scholarly monographs that trace the honor-shame motifs from the start to the end of the narrative through the use of helpful insights from literary methods and heuristic models (e.g., challenge-riposte; patron-client relation). Thus, this book seeks to undertake this kind of research. If argues further that Mark intends to reverse the content of the honor-shame value system of his audience by means of narrative reversal and family relativization. Such dramatic redefinition basically turns this value system upside-down, especially in relation to the natural family and the new fictive fami