Probably my proudest moment in seminary was when I got a Greek exegesis paper back from my professor with “Astute, but fanciful” written prominently in the margin in bright red ink.

I was reminded of this glorious moment while reading this review of my The Victory According to Mark: An Exposition of the Second Gospel (Publisher / Amazon), which contains the following:

Another key aspect of the commentary is the interest in OT background of the thought in the gospel. The importance and relevance of the OT in Mark is certain. However, I think Horne overplays this quite often. For example, his treatment of the cutting off of the ear of the High Priest’s servant is entitled, “The Circumcised Ear” (178). Horne says this wound “is significant” and suggests this is a sign to Israel, “a sign that the nation needs its ears opened that the people may no longer be servants, but have the status of full sons in the household” (178). This is rooted the piercing of the ear of slaves in the Old Testament. Frankly, without any further evidence, I find this fanciful. To be fair, this may be one of the most far fetched examples but it does illustrate a tendency.

I wish the reviewer had given an example of an OT connection I made that he had found credible and helpful. That might have helped me to develop some sort of argument that would be persuasive to him.

As it stands, I’ll just point out Mark had several options:

• leave out the incident all together
• not mention the victim was a bondservant
• not mention the victim’s relationship to the high priest
• not mention the part of his body that was wounded

Remember that the gospels (and almost all the Biblical histories) are frequently sparse on details. If they decide to include them, we need to ask why they do so.
Of course, asking why, doesn’t mean that we’ll automatically know the correct answer. If someone has another explanation for why we are given this story in the way it is written, I’m open to hearing it. And if there is an argument against my proposal, I’ll hear that too.

A couple of minor comments:

I actually disagree with Wright’s views on how exile works in the Gospels, and thought I had argued for an alternative view. On the other hand, something has to be said about exile when one reads Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah 40. It’s not in Wright but straight out of the text.

When mentioning my influences, and particularly the influences that come to view in my commentary on Mark, don’t forget Austin Farrar. He is at least as important as N. T. Wright.