Yes, likewise, Evan, I enjoy the conversation. (I'm a Classics professor, so yes, I've spent some time in this kind of thing.)

I don't know Robyn Faith Walsh's work, but I read the Gospels differently. They are "literature," to be sure, and directed to a literate audience, but not to a very educated audience. For me, that it a significant part of their value: they represent that rarest of relics from the ancient world, a text composed by non-elites for non-elites. Apart from papyrus scraps, inscriptions, graffiti, wooden tablets from Vindolanda, etc. we have little evidence for the lives, experiences, and thought of the "common people," and the Gospels are written by such authors for such readers.

You probably know the letters we have between Pliny and Trajan from 111 CE about Christianity, when Pliny encountered Christians in Bithynia and wasn't sure whether and how much to prosecute them for their faith. In his letter to Trajan (10.96) he seems to discovering what Christianity is and sharing that with Trajan. But Paul had written a letter to the church in Rome almost 60 years earlier. Why wouldn't Pliny and Trajan know about Christianity unless it was a faith of slaves, freedmen, the poor--those well below the highest political class of Pliny and Trajan? That's my sense of the intended audience for the Gospels.

I agree that most residents of the Mediterranean had Homeric myths floating around in their heads: every temple, cup, wall, vase probably offered visual reminders, too. I don't doubt that stories of sailing or of deadly wounds might have drawn Mark to images and language of Odysseus and Hector. But personally, I'd stop there and not extend those few and brief touchpoints to Mark's authorial intention, or to his hoped for audience's reception. A text can be sophisticated in different ways, and that kind of allusive depth does not ring true, to me, for Mark's work.

All best, my friend, and thanks for making me think more!