Mark 7:1-23 and the Eschatological Decentralization of Israel

I recently had a paper proposal accepted for the Mark study group at this year's Stone-Campbell Journal conference (April 2010). There is no explicit CR argument involved in this paper, though CR certainly is assumed in the project. The paper will be the core of chapter of my dissertation through the London School of Theology. Here is the abstract:

Purity and the Eschatological Decentralization of Israel in Mark 7:1-23


This study employs a speech act theory based methodology to argue that the purity controversy of Mark 7:1-23 is best understood when viewed as contributing to Mark’s larger decentralizing project. The linguistic model foregrounds the role of language in the shaping of community and brings to light the way in which Mark’s gospel seeks to shape covenant communities within the ideological context of 1st Century apocalyptic Judaism, a context defined by its expectation of the imminent climax of Israel’s history. Mark’s Jesus is portrayed as ushering in that climax and as having authority to decentralize Israel by removing the status-function of several centralizing factors- namely Jerusalem, the Temple and a number of related persons and practices, such as those at stake in Mark 7:1-23 (ritual washing of hands, the practice of “Corban” and eating unclean foods). The passage has ramifications for the whole system of graded holiness centered on the Temple and seeks to shape how early Christian communities lived out the notion of holiness in light of God’s eschatological decentralization of Israel.