Reddit reviews Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark

> That obviously would make no sense, since there would be no way for the author to know the story.

I highly recommend a book called Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark by Robert Fowler. He shows again and again how the omniscient narrator of Mark has "impossible" knowledge of events that occur when no witness is around and knows the inner thoughts of Jesus, his antagonists, and other characters in the story. Mark manipulates the reader at the discourse level, putting his own words into the mouth of Jesus and other characters and constructing scenes rife with irony and misdirection. The dialogue is often self-referential, alluding to future events the reader knows about, but not the characters ostensibly being addressed in the story. Everything is meant to have a specific effect on the reader, including the astonishing fact that Jesus' bodily resurrection is not revealed to the disciples. This is all deliberate on the author's part.

Fowler's analysis is intended to show that by focusing on the plausibility of the narrative level and ignoring the discourse level, most readers (even most scholars) miss out on the meaning and rhetorical strategies of Mark. It is a rare eye-opener.

How does the author of Mark know there was an empty tomb and a young man in a white robe even though the only witnesses told no one? He knows the same way any novelist knows what his characters see, think and do in secret.

I'm really curious to see what the scholars have to say on this, but until then, I'll add some resources that I didn't see mentioned in your other thread — it's a really interesting question, and I've done a bit of searching myself.

Larry Perkins wrote a paper (PDF warning) that drew on Robert Fowler's book Let the Reader Understand, as well as more recent scholarship. (I'm not sure how much the original book focuses on the parenthetical, so I would suggest previewing a PDF before paying $40 for a paperback, feel free to pm me if you're having trouble finding one.)

Also, a post on the earlychristianwritings.com forum summarizes the argument from the (unfortunately untranslated) German book, Der Weg Jesu. Here's an introduction to the post from Neil Godfrey, who I will note is not a scholar, but as someone unfamiliar with this particular area of scholarship, I found his explanation helpful.