Adam Winn, Reading Mark’s Christology under Caesar. Jesus the Messiah and Roman Imperial Ideology. Downers Grove IL, Inter Varsity Press, 2018, 15,2 × 22,8 cm, 263 p., ISBN 978-0-8308-5211-6

The present book is a parting-of-the-ways between a professor and his pupil. Adam Winn, who wrote his doctoral dissertation at Fuller Theological Seminary, published as The Purpose of Mark’s Gospel. An Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda (WUNT/2, 245; Mohr Siebeck, 2008), decided to separate from R. Grundy who was the Director of his PhD: “Gundry’s work is important [… However] I can no longer follow Gundry as far as I did in my previous work, but I do remain influenced by his important contributions to the understanding of Mark’s Christology.” In Reading Mark’s Christology under Caesar. Jesus the Messiah and Roman Imperial Ideology, Winn makes a Markan Christology in trying to intertwine a “narratival” presentation of Mark’s Gospel (from now MkG) and its historical setting. In the Introduction (pp. 1-27), Winn presents a Status Quaestionis of Mark’s Christology using the category of ‘pieces’ to make reference to various different and opposing Christological threads found in Mark’s Gospel. Winn points out four sets of pieces (the Christological titles’s set, the set of power pieces, the set of suffering pieces and the Markan secrecy motif) and shows us how these pieces have been assembled from Form Criticism up to Narrative Criticism by Markan scholars. In the last part of the introduction, the author offers his proposal to sew up the Christological pieces with what he calls a historical-narratival method (p. 24). After presenting his purpose and plan, Winn reconstructs Mark’s historical setting in Chapter I (Reconstructing Mark’s Historical Setting, pp. 29-49) through the study of the date and provenance of MkG. In the first part of this chapter (pp. 29-39), Winn proposes the traditional Roman provenance of MkG after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (post-70). Afterwards, the author identifies an anti-temple Markan motif (Mk 11-13) used as a tool to disarm Flavian propaganda which was made after the destruction of the Temple. In the second part of chapter I (pp. 39-49) a reconstruction is offered of the historical context in Rome in the years immediately after Rome’s victory over Jerusalem, commenting above all on the impact of the new Flavian dynasty and its propaganda about Rome and particularly on the Christians living in Rome. Once the historical setting has been settled, we move on to Chapter II (Mark’s Christological Titles, pp. 51-68) to read the Markan narrative from a particular point of view: the Christological titles. From the beginning of the book, and especially in this chapter, are found two of Winn’s axioms. On the one hand, Mark’s Christology cannot be reduced to an assessment of MkG’s use of titles because it is a narrative Christology; and on the other hand, the meaning and the significance of Mark’s Christological titles must consider the historical understanding of the first-century readers. Based on what it has just been said, each Markan Christological title (Christ/Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David and Lord) is presented; the author proposes how the first-century readers could have understood each title and then he narrows the possible meanings in light of Mark’s text. In the last page of the chapter, Winn states what the Markan Jesus’s Identity is (each title conveys Jesus’s identity as God’s final eschatological agent and ruler, p. 68) and concludes that just two of all the titles might be understood in the Roman imperial context of Flavian propaganda: Messiah and Son of God. From Chapter III to Chapter VII Winn’s assessment of Mark’s Christology with his historical-narratival method is applied. Each chapter is structured in two parts. Firstly, the Markan narrative itself …