Mapping Mark: Quantitative Study of Clause Thematization as a Means of Illuminating the Gospel Genre

Abstract

This project exhaustively examines the first element (theme) of each clause in Mark and in samples from other roughly contemporaneous Jewish writings. The comparative documents are divided into two categories, referential and non-referential narratives. Then statistical analyses (χ2 and t-test) are used to determine with which category of comparative documents Mark more closely aligns. The raw results of these hypothesis tests were equivocal, but their corresponding effect sizes (Cramer’s Vand Cohen’s d, respectively) clearly demonstrate that Mark more closely resembles referential narrative, although the difference is small.