Published by Eerdmans on April 21, 2026
Genres: Academic
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A paradigm-shifting study of parenting in the New Testament
Challenging popular attempts to mold the Bible into a single fixed model for parenting, New Testament scholars Sung Uk Lim and Amy Lindeman Allen explore the fascinating range of parent-child relationships depicted in the Gospel of Mark. By examining the multifaceted roles of parents in the biblical text while also attending to the agency of children, Lim and Allen illuminate approaches to parenting that have rarely been discussed in biblical studies: collaborative parenting, politicized parenting, borderless parenting, and vulnerable parenting. Their findings reveal biblical parenting to be surprisingly diverse, adaptive, and flexible, with parents in the Markan narrative deftly navigating boundaries of gender, class, ethnicity, and dis/ability.
While much has already been written about women and children in the New Testament, Lim and Allen’s book fills a significant scholarly gap regarding relationships between mothers and children, fathers and children, and mothers and fathers. The book also stands out for its engagement with childist, feminist, and womanist biblical scholarship, and its in-depth analysis of parenting power dynamics. For biblical scholars, seminarians, and anyone seeking a fresh perspective on family and household dynamics in early Christianity, Parenting Beyond Boundaries in Mark’s Gospel is an innovative study that is sure to generate lively discussion and renewed insights.
This is an incredibly niche book about an incredibly wide topic. There are, and this may be only a slight exaggeration, millions of parenting books. There are, and I am sure this is no exaggeration, millions of biblical studies books. And there are a good number of books that overlap and discuss Christian parenting methodologies. (And not all of these are good!) But what this book is may just be one-of-a-kind. Parenting Beyond Boundaries in Mark’s Gospel explores instances of parenting in the first and shortest gospel. Written by two professors of New Testament—Dr. Sung Uk Lim and Dr. Amy Lindeman Allen—the book offers insights into first-century parenting and draws out themes that can be applied in contemporary context.
First, it should be noted that this is a thoroughly academic work. This isn’t an exhortative type book that uses the biblical narrative as a jumping off point into modern application. That is, when the book talks about Jairus’s parenting, the narrative doesn’t go from here to a discussion of parenting a sick child or dealing with child loss. Instead, it stays ensconced within the Markan narrative as an academic study. Its actual focus ends up being on how Jairus and his family might have subverted gender roles in caring for their child. It presents parenting as a collaboration between both partners and how concern for one’s children can supplant cultural expectations. Lim and Allen don’t bring the Markan text into modern application; they draw modern application out of the Markan text. Parenting Beyond Boundaries in Mark’s Gospel isn’t a parenting handbook. It’s an academic overview of parenting as presented in one part of the Bible.
The other narratives that Lim and Allen consider are the power dynamics in Herod’s household, focusing on Herodias’s daughter being forced to dance for Herod, the Syrophoenician woman’s care for her daughter and what this can share with us about single-parent parenting, and the father who brings his son to Jesus for healing in Mark 9. This is obviously a limited yet pretty much exhaustive exploration of parenting in Mark. I do think Parenting Beyond Boundaries in Mark’s Gospel missed out on the opportunity to include a chapter about Jesus’s relationship with his Father as explored in Mark and a discussion of Jesus’s relationship with his mother (Mark 3:31-35 especially).
Each of these chapters holds value—I found the chapters on Jairus’s daughter and Herodias’s daughter to be the most engaging—and readers can find connections and applications to modern parenting. Parenting Beyond Boundaries in Mark’s Gospel ends with a chapter that brings that whole work into context of modern parenting. And it’s here that the authors are a bit noncommittal, writing that the multiple contexts of parenting in Mark lead us to the idea that “Parenting must be diverse, elastic, adaptive, and flexible, moving through and beyond constructed dichotomies to meet the evolving needs of children across the world—past, present, and future.”
This sort of broad and vague statement while true could also exist independently of anything said about parenting in the Gospel of Mark. It’s academically fine but I’m not sure what it does practically. I think more could have been done to actually draw conclusions and make their work practical and applicable to the reader. Maybe the focus of an academic overview is only to observe, but I think it leaves the book missing something. Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and its insights. It’s a great addition to Markan scholarship.