The Long Road Home and Other Short Stories from the Silences in the Gospel of Mark

Borrowing from the ancient rabbinic use of midrash as a means of opening Scripture to students, James Lowry has chosen six texts from among those in which he believes Mark deliberately left silences. The author is convinced Mark hoped his readers would be encouraged to raise a variety of possibilities as to what the evangelist left unsaid. Beginning with Mark choosing not to name the temptations of Jesus (Mark 1:12-13) and concluding with Mark choosing to conclude his narrative with the women leaving the tomb of Jesus in stunned silence (Mark 16:8), Lowry spins short stories that suggest several alternative ideas as to how the biblical narrative might have played. In half of the tales, Lowry enters the text and adds fictitious material to Mark's narrative. In the other half, his stories are set in the small textile town of Great Falls, South Carolina, where the author grew up in the 1950s. The hope is these stories will encourage readers of Mark and groups of his readers to raise other possibilities.