In a sufficiently responsible discursive atmosphere, the expression 'imperialist faith' might be used for the gentile church ... a few centuries after Mark. But all of the expressions: 'faith' 'non-imperalist faith' 'imperialist faith' etc, are an imposition on the unity of Jewish people, irrespective of relation to their ancestral law, in any period. The word is however the key category of Paul's letters and the mode of entry of gentiles into an optional relation to the god of the law of the Jews. Martin H's remarks seem merely to project 21st c problems and categories onto first c data, complete with a good jew/bad jew distinction and blood libels upon the latter.
The explanatory asides in Mark need not have been written by Mark - the book has after all two endings, and is thus flat-out known to have under gone redaction. It has many versions, especially as we must count Matthew and Luke among them. Many of the asides are flatly wrong and obviously not original and many things left unexplained were left so because they were /too/ unintelligible for later redactors, but not too unintelligible for Mark to write.
Appeal to the 'choice' of Greek over Aramaic' is very strange as, of course, it would not have survived in Aramaic. The supposed Roman audience is a very strange way of speaking of an eastern Hellenistic Greek audience. Such people are under Roman empire in the period, but have a completely independent origin. One might as well attempt to draw inferences from the 'choice' of the Mark-writer not to have written in Latin.
In a sufficiently responsible discursive atmosphere, the expression 'imperialist faith' might be used for the gentile church ... a few centuries after Mark. But all of the expressions: 'faith' 'non-imperalist faith' 'imperialist faith' etc, are an imposition on the unity of Jewish people, irrespective of relation to their ancestral law, in any period. The word is however the key category of Paul's letters and the mode of entry of gentiles into an optional relation to the god of the law of the Jews. Martin H's remarks seem merely to project 21st c problems and categories onto first c data, complete with a good jew/bad jew distinction and blood libels upon the latter.
The explanatory asides in Mark need not have been written by Mark - the book has after all two endings, and is thus flat-out known to have under gone redaction. It has many versions, especially as we must count Matthew and Luke among them. Many of the asides are flatly wrong and obviously not original and many things left unexplained were left so because they were /too/ unintelligible for later redactors, but not too unintelligible for Mark to write.
Appeal to the 'choice' of Greek over Aramaic' is very strange as, of course, it would not have survived in Aramaic. The supposed Roman audience is a very strange way of speaking of an eastern Hellenistic Greek audience. Such people are under Roman empire in the period, but have a completely independent origin. One might as well attempt to draw inferences from the 'choice' of the Mark-writer not to have written in Latin.