Thesis (M.Th.(N.T.))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-86)

The bitter mention of foreign tyrants in Mark 10:42-43a has long been interpreted as an accurate description of "pagan" life that contrasted with life in ideal Christian community. More recently, it has been read as a piece of rhetoric aimed at imperial Rome. These explanations are too simple, since they do not take into account the fact that contrasting ideal authority with stereotyped foreign tyranny was an established habit within imperial Roman rhetorical culture itself. I argue that the passage is best understood as Jewish participation in this Greco-Roman tradition. This study traces the evolution of the stereotyped image of foreign tyranny in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Greco-Roman Jewish rhetoric, and suggests that the rhetorical strategy of Mark 10:42-43a parallels the selective and strategic use of the image in the Greco-Roman Jewish work of Josephus, and represents a similar simultaneous resistance and accommodation in the face of Roman imperial culture.

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