Andrew McGowan on Substack

Some may have noticed that I “ducked” in “Andrew’s Version” regarding the last few verses of next Sunday’s Gospel, those “salt” sayings. There were two reasons; first, there was just too much material, but second this part was really resistant to my guiding interpretive commitment to reading Mark as though it makes sense as more than a random collection of materials. A lot of this section, including all the “stumbling” statements, seem to be linked by keywords as much as anything else. I have argued though that the context of the Jerusalem journey provides at least an implicit thread through these that is more than just whatever the mnemonic devices (stumbling, fire, salt) did to transmit these sayings together. The salt part is harder, but here is my take. First, salt first appears in the idea of everyone having to be “salted with fire” (9:49) which ancient scribes found opaque enough to attempt various changes, notably by adding a phrase to Lev 2.13 (which specifies that sacrificial offerings must be salted) linking this with sacrifice; based on some of those alternate readings, the KJV reads here “everyone must be salted with fire and every sacrifice must be salted with salt.” Yet the shorter reading is much better attested and should be regarded as original. Even then however, modern commentators often tend to think these scribes were onto something and that a cultic image is in the background. I am not convinced, despite (because?) I do take sacrifice seriously. The link being made in those interpretations seems to be that fire and sacrifice are linked, so salt related to fire must be sacrificial. Yet the actual construction here seems to be metaphorical in a complex way, with salt and fire as two somewhat different elements interpreting each other. Everyone must be “salted,” not with salt, but fire. While “fire” links this material with the sayings about Gehenna and punishment, this is not the point any longer here (although I suspect that the too-ready assumption that “sacrifice” is abut suffering gives momentum to this cultic over-reading). Salt otherwise had and has a wide range of applications, especially in food preservation and cooking. It makes things better and keeps them so. The easier (?) related case in Matthew (5:13) and Luke is of course the identification of the disciples as “salt of the earth.” Both Mt and Lk actually link this with the second part of these Mk salt sayings, the idea that salt which is no longer salty is worthless. I would prefer to take Matthew and Luke’s clarification (i.e., to see the image of wholeness and improvement of a greater whole) than that of the scribes, and so read Mark’s “salting with fire” as a warning that perils and trials will arrive but that they may ultimately prove salutary; this then connects with the main part of the stumbling/mutilation discourse, because the idea is the same; not everything that hurts us ultimately harms us, at least in God’s time. So when Jesus affirms that salt is good but that if it loses saltiness it is useless, the idea is reasonably clear; although as is often pointed out salt doesn’t really cease to be salty, it can however become useless by contamination etc. In any case this is a metaphor - even a parable - and the rules don’t always apply. After all the previous sayings and the disciples’ misguided sense of order and boundaries, the salt sayings can actually make sense, I think. The closing line, the call to have salt in them/ourselves and be at peace, affirms the goodness of salt as something whose effect goes beyond itself, and emphasizes the sense of community and their own practice that the disciples should actually be seeking.