Mark's Memory Resources and the Controversy Stories (Mark 2:1-3:6)

This book is a study of the New Testament using the insights of modern linguistics. Its principal concern, above all, is to examine how the Gospel of Mark, produced in an oral-aural culture, may be illuminated by frame theory from cognitive linguistics, a linguistic theory in which the meaning of a word, phrase, clause, sentence, paragraph and thematic unit can only be properly understood against the background of a particular body of knowledge and assumptions. The reason this theory is particulary useful for understanding Mark's ancient text is because as an oral-aural narrative it heavily relies on human memory (cognitive) resources; and so the cognitive theory leads us into a better understanding of ways in which the text is communicated in terms of cognitive processing.

"...eine verdienstvolle Arbeit, sowohl im Blick auf die Reihe, die sich vorgenommen hat, Ergebnisse der linguistischen Forschung auf den Originaltext anzuwenden, als auch hinsichtlich der neutestamentlichen Exegese. P. bietet eine theoretische Grundlage für das Verständnis der antiken Oral-Aural Culture, auf der sich weiterarbeiten lässt... Die Studie empfiehlt sich als Anregung zu einer anderen Sicht auf die Texte und deren Komposition." – Wolfgang Weiß, in: Theologische Literaturzeitung 137 (2012)

Yoon-Man Park, Th.D. (2008) in New Testament, University of Toronto, is professor of New Testament at Taeshin Christian University, Daegu, South Korea. He has published in biblical journals in Korea several articles on applying modern linguistics theory into the New Testament text including "What is Context? A Study of the 'Context' of the New Testament 'Text' " (Canon & Culture, 2008).