AIMS
1.
To introduce students to the academic study of the Gospels.
2.
To bring students to an understanding of the importance of Jesus in Mark’s eyes.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After studying the course students should be able to
1.
Place the gospel of Mark in the context of the literature of hellenistic Judaism in the first century of our era.
2.
Discern the importance of the Hebrew Bible and of the Jewish starting-point in the development of Christianity.
3.
Characterise the personal approach, literary style and theological emphases of the author of this first gospel.
4.
Appreciate the importance and place of Jesus for the beginnings of the
Christian movement, and the enduring impact of his personality.
5.
Assess the interplay between history and interpretation in Mark’s presentation of Jesus.
6.
Retain a firm basis for the appreciation of subsequent developments in
Christian theology.
7.
Evaluate ideas and theories claiming to be based on the gospel text.
8.
Articulate clearly and simply principal aspects of gospel study.
TOOLS
1.
A steady and competent translation of the Bible. It will be important to look up and reflect on passages of the Old Testament and of other gospels and the
Pauline writings. It is useful (but not essential) to have a personal working copy of Mark into which notes can be written. The New Jerusalem Bible is one such translation, and also has useful notes. The Study Edition (ISBN 0232
520771) also has a useful Study Guide to the notes. If you don’t want to spoil your own Bible, photocopy Mark onto large pages with plenty of margin.
2.
The Dictionary of the Bible by JL McKenzie (Geoffrey Chapman, 1966) will be invaluable for looking up unfamiliar terms and ideas.
3.
Larger reference works can be useful on difficult points, such as the New
Jerome Biblical Commentary (ed. Raymond Brown, etc, Geoffrey Chapman,
1990), the Oxford Bible Commentary (ed. John Barton & John Muddiman,
Oxford University Press, 2001). They might be useful to have at your side.
4.
Before embarking on the detailed study of this booklet it could well be useful to read through the chapter on Mark in Introduction to the New Testament by
Raymond Brown (Doubleday, 1997) or Four Gospels, One Jesus?
by Richard
Burridge (SPCK, 1994) or both.
5.
Other uncomplicated works on Mark, which may provide fuller or alternative views are A Commentary on the Gospel according to Mark by Morna D.
Hooker (Black’s NT Commentaries, 1991) and
The Theology of the Gospel of
Mark by WR Telford (Cambridge University Press, 1999). The former will provide additional information. The Excursus on particular topics are
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especially informative. It would be useful to read the latter after you have studied this booklet. You may find opinions with which you disagree, or you may find that the opinions you have formed are confirmed and strengthened.
METHODS
1.
Before starting the study, read through the gospel of Mark as though you had never read it before and had never heard of Jesus. If possible read it at one sitting, but only as long as you can retain concentration. Imagine you are an open-minded Hindu or Taoist, wanting to discover why some people reverence Jesus and call themselves ‘Christians’.
2.
Work through the booklet, a chapter at a time. Look up all the references given, reflect on them and assess whether they show what the author claims they do. If not, cross them out in the booklet. If there are too many such cases, throw the booklet away!
3.
When you have finished a chapter, reflect on the topics suggested, do the exercises and answer the questions posed. Ideally write a short piece for yourself on each topic or question suggested. Imagine that you are writing for a sympathetic and like-minded friend who understands you well. This will help you to sort out your ideas and will anchor the material in your mind. Do not scruple to turn back to the discussions in the course of the chapter and to the texts themselves. Make up your own mind and give the references to the passages in Mk which convince you. Your imaginary friend wants to know what you think and why.
4.
If you are doing the work for credit you must write three pieces of 1,500 words each on three topics suggested for assignments.
1.
Begin with a short paragraph on how you see the issues or what you want to prove.
2.
In the main body of the essay set out your arguments. Say why
3. you think another opinion is less satisfactory.
In a short final paragraph state the conclusions you have reached.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
I am grateful to the Benedictine Study and Art Centre of Ealing Abbey for giving me the stimulus to work on this project, and to the first-year students of Holy Trinity
College, Tafara, Zimbabwe, for their perceptive remarks as we worked through it, and to my colleague Dom Luke Beckett for his trenchant comments.
Tafara, February 2006 HENRY WANSBROUGH
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1.
Mark, the Gospel-Writer
Exercises
2.
The Kingship of God in Mark
Assignment One or Personal Work
3. Parables in Mark
Exercises
4. What Sort of Person is This?
Assignment Two or Personal Work
5. The Eschatological Discourse
Exercises
6 The Passion Narrative
Assignment Three or Personal Work
49
50
63
35
44
45
4
11
12
24
25
34
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1. BEFORE THE GOSPELS
A first task is to discover how the gospel came to be written, for it was written neither as a free composition, straight out of Mark’s head or reminiscences of Jesus, nor like a divine communication received at the end of a telephone wire. The actual writing was the fruit of an important pre-history.
Mark, who wrote the earliest Gospel
1
, composed his work within a few years of the
Fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD70
2
, some four decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. In those four decades the stories about Jesus must have circulated in oral form. At that time, when books had to be copied by hand and were consequently rare and expensive, oral tradition was considered at least as reliable as written evidence. Learning by heart was an important part of education, so that memories were highly trained. Particularly in Judaism a religious teacher, rabbi or scribe (=lawyer), was expected to memorize quantities of sayings and decisions of previous rabbis, which would be quoted as precedents. It was precisely Jesus’ failure to use this method of teaching which struck his audience at Capernaum, ‘Here is a teaching that is new, and with authority behind it’ (Mk 1.37).
A. Tradition in Paul
Paul gives us two short pieces which he must have taught his Corinthian converts by heart. He uses the two technical rabbinic terms for this process, ‘received’ and
‘handed on’:
The tradition I handed on to you in the first place, a tradition which I had myself received, was that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that on the third day he was raised to life, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and later to the Twelve, and next he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time.
(1 Cor 15.3-5)
Various terms used in the statement itself are uncharacteristic of Paul. He normally speaks of 'Sin' in the singular, a power almost personified, not the plural as here. He never uses the expression 'the Twelve'. When quoting the scriptures Paul himself says
‘as it is written’, not ‘in accordance with the scriptures’, and so on. This passage is therefore, a basic credal statement, memorized by new converts.
1 This is still occasionally disputed. We will, however, assume that it is correct. At least it is a convenient working hypothesis.
2 The key piece of evidence is discussed in Chapter Four. Scholars are divided on whether the Sack is imminent or recent, see p. 48.
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Similarly about the institution of the eucharist he writes:
For the tradition I received from the Lord and also handed on to you is that on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took some bread, and after he had given thanks, he broke it, and he said, 'This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.' And in the same way, with the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.' (1 Cor 11.23-25)
This version of the institution has minute variations from the account given in Mk, which has ‘This is my blood of the covenant poured out for many’ (a more awkward and more semitic phrase), but lacks the two commands, ‘Do this in remembrance/as a memorial of me’. They are obviously two different but very closely related versions of the same scene.
B. Minor Variations in the Gospel Sayings
Within the gospel tradition, too, there are often two traditions of sayings of Jesus, where it is difficult to establish which is the original. For instance on divorce:
Whoever divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too (Mk 10.11-12).
This cannot be entirely Jesus’ saying, for Jesus was speaking in a Jewish context, where only a husband, not a wife, may initiate divorce proceedings. Mark, writing for gentiles, has added the second sentence, to show that Jesus’ ruling applies equally to husbands and wives. On the other hand Matthew, writing for Christians sprung from Judaism, lacks the reciprocity but inserts the famous exceptive clause (in italics):
Everyone who divorces his wife, except for the case of an illicit marriage , makes her an adulteress; and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Mt 5.32).
Similarly there are slight variations between versions of the saying of John the
Baptist:
Or
I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandal (Jn 1.27).
I am not fit to carry his sandals (Mt 3.11).
Anyone who loses his life saves it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life (Jn 12.25).
Anyone who loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it (Mk 8.35).
In this case the preference probably goes to Mk, for ‘this world’ and ‘eternal life’ are favourite phrases of Jn, seldom or never used in the synoptics, so probably Jn’s own insertions. On the other hand Mk may have introduced ‘and for the sake of the gospel’.
It is possible to argue in either direction
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C. Variations in Gospel Scenes
Mt, Lk and Jn all have a scene of the healing of a gentile official’s boy by Jesus at a distance, but there are considerable variations between them, as may be seen by a study of the three texts together.
Mt 8.5-13 Lk 7.1-10
When he went into Capernaum a centurion came He went into Capernaum. A centurion there had a up and pleaded with him. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘my boy servant,a favourite of his, who was sick and near is lying at home paralysed and in great pain.’ Jesus death. Having heard about Jesus he sent some to him, ‘I will come myself and cure him.’ Jewish elders to him to ask him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus they pleaded earnestly with him saying, ‘He deserves this of you, because he is well disposed towards our people; he built us our synagogue himself.’ So
Jesus went with them, and was not very far from
The centurion replied,
‘Sir, the house when the centurion sent word to him by some friends to say to him, ‘Sir, do not put
I am not worthy to have you under my roof, just give the word and yourself to any trouble because I am not worthy to have you under my roof; and that is why I did and my boy will be cured. not presume to come to you myself; let my boy be
For I am under cured by your giving the word. For I am under authority myself, and have soldiers under me, and
I say to one man, “Go!” and he goes, to another,
“Come here!” and he comes, to my servant, “Do this!” and he does it.’ When Jesus heard this he was astonished and said to those following him, ‘In truth I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found faith as great as this.’
And I tell you that many will come from east and authority myself, and have soldiers under me; and
I say to one man, “Go!” and he goes, to another,
“Come here!” and he comes; to my servant, “Do this!” and he does it.’ When Jesus heard the words he was astonished at him and, turning round, said to the crowd following him, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found faith as great as this.’ west and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob at the feast in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom will be thrown out into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.’ And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go back, then; let this be done for you, as your faith demands.’ And the boy was cured at perfect health.
And when the messengers got back to the house they found the servant in that moment.
John 4.46-53
He went again to Cana in Galilee, where he had changed the water into wine. And there was a court official whose son was ill at Capernaum; hearing that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judaea, he went and asked him to come and cure his son, as he was at the point of death. Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and portents you will not believe!’ ‘Sir,’ answered the official, ‘come down before my child dies.’ ‘Go home!’ said Jesus, ‘your son will live.’ The man believed what Jesus had said and went on his way home; and while he was still on the way his servants met him with the news that his boy was alive. He asked them when the boy had begun to recover. They replied, ‘The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour.’ The father realised that this was exactly the time when Jesus had said, ‘Your son will live’; and he and all his household believed.
1.
In Mt and Lk the official is a centurion; in Jn a ‘royal official’. The latter is more likely, since Capernaum was in the territory of Herod Antipas, where no Roman centurion would be stationed.
2.
In Mt and Jn the sick boy is the official’s son, whereas in Lk he is a favourite servant, though he is once called ‘my boy’ (why? A contamination from Mt? In
Gk, as well as in certain sorts of English ‘boy’ can also mean ‘servant’).
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3.
Mt has a direct confrontation between Jesus and the official. Lk obviously want to keep them apart and has two sets of messengers. It also gives him the chance to stress two of his favourite lessons: generosity with wealth and good relations between Jews and Romans. Jn has the second set of messengers only
4.
Mt and Lk have the lively speech of the centurion about authority, absent from
Jn. Jn has instead Jesus’ complaint about signs and lack of belief (similar to Jn
6.26).
5.
Mt here inserts the saying of Jesus about the heavenly feast, given by Lk at
13.28-30. This must have been a saying of Jesus originally independent.
6.
Mt and Jn have a final comment about faith, only implicit in Lk. Mt often explicitly stresses faith as the cause of a healing (e.g. 9.22; 15.28).
All these differences are perfectly tolerable within an oral tradition. One can imagine the same person telling the story in each of these three ways to emphasize different points to different people. Imagine the same family member of yours telling the same story three times, let alone three family members each recounting the same family incident in a different way or from a different point of view!
2. MARK, THE FIRST EVANGELIST
In order to form a picture of Mk’s theological interests, we need first to try to distinguish passages and phrases where Mk is writing himself from those in which he is merely passing on information received from the tradition. This will involve building up a sort of profile of Markan techniques of writing.
A. Mark’s Techniques of Teaching
On the assumption that Mt is using and editing Mk it is often comparatively easy to discern Mt’s interests and techniques. So, for instance, after the Baptism of Jesus
Mt 4.1 Mk 1.12
Then Jesus was taken up into the desert by the Spirit And at once the Spirit drives him out into the desert
1.
Mk begins very many verses with ‘And’, and in ch. 1 alone has ‘and at once’ nine times; Mt avoids this, and substitutes a favourite words of his own, ‘then’.
2.
Mk repeatedly uses the historic present tense (‘drives’); Mt avoids this and uses the more sophisticated past (‘was’).
3.
Mt frequently inserts the name ‘Jesus’ into Mk’s text, presumably out of devotion.
4.
Mt’s ‘taken up
’ is preparing for the theme of Jesus as the New Moses, taken up onto the high mountain.
However, it is less easy to discern Mk’s techniques, since we have no predecessor against whom we could compare Mk. Nevertheless Mk is sufficiently consistent in his verbal and compositional techniques for us to discern a number of clear characteristics.
These show that Mk was primarily an oral teacher and a story-teller of genius. One can imagine that the community came to Mk and said, ‘Mark, you are such a good storyteller that we choose you to write it all down’. Here is a list of the more prominent
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features of Mk’s writing. They need to be understood and remembered, since they will be widely used in what follows.
1.
The ‘and’ and ‘and at once’ with the historic present gives a breathless speed to the narrative which emphasizes the urgency of Jesus’ message.
2.
Mk repeatedly uses two phrases of similar meaning for emphasis, e.g. 1.32 ‘at evening//when the sun had set’, or 1.42 ‘the leprosy left him//and he was cleansed’, or 2.20 ‘then//on that day’. Particularly frequent are double questions:
4.30: ‘What can we say that the kingdom of heaven is like? What parable can we find for it?’ (or 3.13; 4.40; 6.2). This repetition is a technique of oral teaching.
3.
Mk zooms in, to focus on one memorable material object: 4.38 Jesus was asleep in the stern, his head on the cushion
’, or 5.27 ‘she touched his cloak from behind’, or 6.28 ‘he brought the head on a dish ’.
4.
A delayed explanation with ‘for…’, rationing the information till the reader asks a question, when it could have been logical to explain earlier: 1.16; 2.15; 5.8;
16.1, 8.
5. The sandwich-technique, by which Mk inserts a piece between two halves of another piece in such a way that the outer halves and the central piece illustrate and clarify one another. Thus
2.1-4 Story about physical healing
2.5-11 Story about healing of sin
2.12 Story about physical healing
3.20-21 Jesus’ family fail to understand him
3.22-30 The scribes misunderstand him
3.31-35 Jesus’ family fail to understand him
4.1-9 Parable of the Sower
4.10-12 Jesus’ use of parables
4.13-20 Parable of the Sower explained
11.12-14 The fruitless figtree cursed
11.15-19 The Temple rubbished
11.20-25 The figtree found to be withered
6. The controversy-technique. This occurs in the controversies about divorce, about
Jesus’ authority in the Temple, about paying tax to Caesar and about the yeast of the
Pharisees.
(1) The opponents put a question to Jesus 10.2 11.27 12.14 8.16
(2) Jesus replies with a counter-question 10.3 11.30 12.15 8.17
(3) The opponents give inadequate answer 10.4 11.33a 12.16 8.19
(4) Jesus clinches the matter 10.5 11.33b 12.17 8.21
In each case Jesus’ answer goes more profoundly into the matter than his opponents expected (or wanted!) to hear.
7. Triple repetition for emphasis:
The prophecies of the Passion:
‘Stay awake’
8.31 9.31 10.32
13.33 13.35 13.38
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The failure of the disciples in the Garden 14.37 14.40 14.41
Witness against Jesus
Peter’s denials
Pilate’s questions to the crowds
14.56 14.57 14.63
14.68 14.70 14.71
15.9 15.12 15.14
B. The Overall Pattern of Mk
These seven instances of pattern show that Mk is a real author, receiving his material in an oral and flexible form, and shaping this material consistently according to his own patterns of thought in such a way as to bring out the lessons and emphases which he wishes to underline. For the understanding of Mk as a whole, however, it is important to be aware of the architectonic lines of the whole story:
1.1-13 Introduction
witness of scripture 2-3 witness of Baptist 4-8 witness of Voice 9-11 testing and peace 12-13
1.14-15.47 Diptych
16.1-8 Conclusion
The Diptych: 8.29
8.17 8.31
6.50 9.31
4.40 10.32
Introduction Climax
Adjust lines
The gospel begins with an Introduction, in which the reader/listener is told – still somewhat mysteriously - who Jesus is, namely, that he is ‘son of God’, whatever that may mean (see p. 40-41). First comes the witness of scripture, then the witness of
John the Baptist, then the overwhelming witness of the Voice from heaven. This witness is all the more overpowering because it uses the conventions of apocalyptic
(see p. 45), and alludes especially to Is 42.1 (‘my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased’ is a possible alternative translation to ‘my chosen one in whom my soul delights’). Finally the Testing in the Desert shows Jesus in the messianic peace with the wild animals (as Is 11.6-9) and ministered by angels (Ps 91.11), a return to the peace of the Garden of Eden.
Next begins the first half of the diptych, two panels, hinged in the middle (8.29), one matching the other. The curtain comes down, so to speak, and the actors on stage have no idea who Jesus is – only we, the privileged readers, know that. The actors discover slowly and painfully who Jesus is from a crescendo of incidents in which they are repeatedly bowled over by Jesus’ charismatic authority. They still, however, fail to understand what this means, and three times are rebuked, each time on the Lake of
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Galilee, for their lack of understanding (4.40; 6.50-51; 8.17). This leads up eventually to Peter’s declaration at Caesarea Philippi, which, however, is immediately preceded by the symbolically-placed gift of sight to the blind man of Bethsaida. At Caesarea
Philippi Peter’s eyes are at last opened, and he declares (8.29), ‘You are the Christ’.
This is the turning-point of the gospel.
Peter has reached the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, but he immediately fails to understand what this implies, what sort of Messiah Jesus is. So in the second half of the diptych there follow the three great formal prophecies of the Passion. Each of these is misunderstood, the first by Peter’s rebuke to Jesus (8.32), the second by the squabble about precedence (9.33), the third by the sons of Zebedee asking for the best places (10.35-40). After each of these failures Jesus re-iterates that his followers must share his Cross.
Finally comes the climax at Jerusalem. At they leave Jericho and enter the Wadi Qilt for the final three-hour walk up to Jerusalem (look at a map!), the other cure of the blind man, Bartimaeus, signals that the disciples, too, are about to receive their full sight. The full revelation of who Jesus is occurs in two scenes, first the scene before the High Priest, where Jesus for the first time accepts the three great titles, son of
God, Christ and son of man. The second scene is the acknowledgement of the centurion, the first human being to give Jesus the title, ‘son of God’ (15.39). Whatever the centurion meant by that formula, Mk must read it with Christian eyes. So the declaration of the Voice at the baptism has returned again with the declaration of the centurion. This title therefore functions as a bracket which binds together the whole gospel, showing that the whole gospel is precisely about the revelation of the personality of Jesus as son of God.
There are other balances between the two halves of the diptych, for example the group of controversies with the Jewish leaders in Galilee at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry
(2.1-3.6) and at the end in Jerusalem (12.1-37). Mk has gathered these two groups of controversies together.
Mk’s practice of gathering incidents together at least raises the question whether Mk’s presentation of the ministry at Jerusalem in a few days is not itself a gathering together of incidents which in fact occurred over a wider time-span. The overall arrangement of Jn differs widely from that of the synoptic gospels, which ultimately stems from Mk. Conventionally preference is given to the synoptic arrangement, in which Jesus makes only one visit to Jerusalem, at the end of his ministry. Jn presents four visits to Jerusalem over the course of Jesus’ ministry, beginning with the
Cleansing of the Temple. Each time Jesus goes up to Jerusalem in Jn the authorities attempt to get rid of Jesus, but they succeed only when Judas gives them the opportunity on the eve of Passover. This offers at least as plausible a scenario as the single short visit to Jerusalem given by Mk. Just as at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry
Mk offers a sample day of his activity (1.21-38), so his careful time-indications serve
Mk to knit together Jerusalem incidents into a tight time-frame: ‘next day’ (11.12),
‘next morning’ (11.20), ‘two days before the Passover’ (14.1), ‘on the first day of
Unleavened Bread’ (14.12). The traditional placing of the messianic entry into
Jerusalem on ‘Palm Sunday’, six days before the Passover, comes, however, from Jn
12.1, and Jn allows a considerably less packed timetable by placing at least some of the incidents in previous visits to Jerusalem.
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C. Who, then, was this Mark?
Marcus is one of the most common names in the Greco-Roman world. It was one of the seven praenomina , like Marcus Tullius Cicero or Gaius Julius Caesar. In the NT are mentioned (i) a John Mark, a young man of Jerusalem (Ac 12.12; 15.38 etc), whom Paul later dismissed from his team, but who is mentioned as a companion by the author of Col
4.10, (ii) a Mark who was a fellow-worker of Paul during his imprisonment (Phm 24),
(iii) a Mark who is with the author of 1 Peter 5.13 in ‘Babylon’, a code-name for Rome.
The association of Mark with the author of 1 Peter has been responsible for the traditional link of the gospel of Mark with Peter, and even the theory that Mark was
Peter’s secretary, taking down the gospel at his dictation. This theory was further fostered by the anxiety somehow to attribute the gospel to an apostle, which both current scholarship and current Church authority see to be unnecessary. Current theories of inspiration see the important factor to be that the gospel material was cherished within the apostolic community at every stage of its transmission, oral and written, not merely that it was written down by an apostle (or in the case of the Petrine theory of Mk, by an apostle’s secretary). The difficulty about the theory is that 1 Peter is now normally accepted as pseudonymous, that is, not really written by Peter, but merely attributed to him by a convention of the time.
No other clear information is available. It seems unlikely that Mark knew the Holy Land.
His knowledge of Jerusalem is distant and sketchy (contrast Jn, who mentions the Sheep
Gate, the Pool of Bethzatha, the Pool of Siloam and other known places in Jerusalem).
He leads Jesus by a very roundabout route from Sidon to the Lake of Galilee via the
Decapolis (7.31). He seems unaware that he gives the unfortunate Gerasene swine a run of 30km from Jerash=Gerasa ‘down the cliff’ to drown themselves in the Lake (5.13).
It is better to abandon any attempt further to pigeon-hole the author, and to identify him only by the work which bears his name.
At the end of each chapter various exercises will be given. The object of these is to offer the reader familiarity with the material, which will be assumed in later chapters. Without such familiarity later chapters may be unintelligible. You are therefore strongly advised to work through the exercises to make sure that you have understood the material. If you get stuck, it will be a good idea to re-read the chapter.
Exercises
1.
Look for and list some features of Markan oral style in the story of the
Gerasene Demoniac (5.1-20):
Mk’s favourite ‘at once’, verses beginning ‘and’, his vivid descriptions, zoom in/zoom out, duality (saying things twice), delayed explanation with ‘For’.
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2.
Write out for yourself the diptych-pattern, filling in the titles of the incidents mentioned.
3.
Can you find the controversy-technique (partly expressed in actions) in the
Cure of 3.1-5? Outline it.
4. Compare Mk’s and Mt’s versions of the Cure of the Gentile Woman’s
Daughter (printed side-by-side below).
1.
In Mk’s version is Jesus rude or just playful? How would you characterise the mother in Mk’s version?
2.
Is she the same in Mt’s version?
3.
How does Mt show (a) his interest in Judaism (b) his more explicit reverence for Jesus (c) his concern to bring in the disciples (d) his emphasis on faith?
4.
Any other significant differences?
5.
Is it fair to call the different versions the same story?
Mt 15 21-28 The Canaanite woman
21 And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon
22 And
Behold a Canaaniote woman from that region came out and cried, ‘Have mercy on me, O
Lord, son of David, my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.’ 23 But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she is crying after us.’ 24 He answer- ed, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the
House of Israel.’ 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying,
‘Lord, help me!’
26 And he answered.
‘It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. 27 She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ 28 Then
Jesus answered her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done to you as you desire.’
And her daughter was healed instantly.
Mk 7 24-30 The SyroPhoenican Woman
24 And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and would not have anyone know it; yet he could not be hid. 25 But immediately a woman whose daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit,
heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth. and she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 And he said to her,
‘Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. 28 But she answered him, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ 29 And he said to her, ‘For this you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.’ 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
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'The kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the gospel' (1.15). With this proclamation Jesus' preaching begins. But the content of this proclamation and the nature of the kingdom envisaged by Jesus have remained hotly disputed. What did Jesus mean by ‘the Kingship of God’?
1. THE PROBLEM - MODERN VIEWS
A. Albert Schweitzer
At the beginning of the twentieth century Albert Schweitzer, the great Swiss theologian, organist, founder of a leper colony and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, propounded a theory which has influenced theology and has been continually discussed ever since. He maintained that Jesus urgently expected a cosmic cataclysm, the break-up of the present structure of the world. He sent out his disciples with no time to lose, expecting that their preaching would usher in the final stage of the world. When they returned without it being fulfilled, Jesus revised his view and took the sufferings of the final cataclysm on himself. He wrongly expected his passion and death to be the last act in the drama of renewal of the cosmos. He thought that with his death the world as people knew it would come to an end, and a new world-order expected by the Jews would begin.
Schweitzer’s viewpoint was encapsulated in one of the most famous theological passages of the century:
Jesus…. in the knowledge that he is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn and he throws himself upon it. Then it does turn and crushes him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, he has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great man, who was strong enough to think of himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind, and to bend history to his purpose, is hanging upon it still (p. 403).
The strength of Schweitzer’s viewpoint was that he recognised the eschatological dimension of Jesus’ message of the Kingdom. Its limitation was that he understood too literally and failed to translate, or to de-code, the apocalyptic language and symbols in which this eschatological vision was expressed. Such a misunderstanding was, perhaps, more easily understandable in an age when the bulk of apocalyptic writings of the first century had only recently begun to be unearthed, when the genre of apocalyptic was still less widely appreciated.
3
Before such nineteenth century
3 A preliminary publication of the Ethiopic text of the Book of Enoch was made in 1838, but the first critical edition appeared only in 1906. The first translation of the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch into a modern language was published in 1896.
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discoveries, this style of writing was known only from the later prophetic books of the
Old Testament, especially Daniel, and from the New Testament Book of Revelation, a slim basis on which to form a rounded concept of the way these apocalyptic symbols work. Inherent in this genre of writing are cosmic disturbances, lurid images of violence, figures moving easily between earth and heaven (in both directions), heraldic and speaking animals, far-reaching symbolism derived from the Old Testament. The basic message of such literature is always reassurance that God will soon intervene to rescue his people from persecution. But prediction of concrete events plays little or no part in its prophetic writings, which seek to interpret history rather than to foretell how it will unfold. Against this background the apocalyptic sayings of the gospels take on a very different feel, and so a very different meaning, and can hardly form a basis for the view that Jesus expected this space-time continuum to cease to exist with his death.
B. Norman Perrin
Half a century after Schweitzer the British/American scholar Norman Perrin held that the kingdom of God in the preaching of Jesus was a mythical formulation which needed to be interpreted as a sort of symbol or cypher for God's power at work in the world.
According to Perrin the Kingdom of God is a personal challenge to every Christian. It is not 'a single identifiable reality which every man experiences at the same time, but something which every man experiences in his own time'
4
.
C. EP Sanders and NT Wright
More recently E.P. Sanders, in a series of works, has seen Jesus' preaching in function of the renewal of Judaism expected in the late biblical and post-biblical writings, a thisworldly rather than an other-worldly phenomenon. Jesus intended to establish a structure and a society, a politico-religious entity, occurring within the present spatio-temporal constitution of the world, rather than as bringing this structure to an end. If Jesus made arrangements for the continuance of the society he had founded, then he did not expect the world as we know it to come to an end at his death.
In a somewhat similar vein, Tom Wright depicts the Kingship of God in terms of the frustrated return from Exile. After the high hopes of the return from Exile in Babylon, the reality turned out to be a major disappointment, as the returned exiles were dominated by one set of foreigners after another, Persians, Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians and finally Romans. They were never able to be themselves or to serve God in peace.
The Kingship of God for which they longed was to do just this, to serve God and obey the divine law as a people free from external domination. This obviously has both a religious and a political dimension, as well as being a longing for peace and freedom.
It is, therefore, obviously necessary to trace the idea of the Kingship or Kingdom of God as it occurs in the Old Testament and in the literature of Jesus’ time. Only aganst the background of this context will it be possible to see how Jesus can have meant the phrase.
4 Journal of Biblical Literature 93 (1974), p. 13.
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2. THE KINGSHIP OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE
INTERTESTAMENTAL PERIOD
A. The term: kingdom or kingship?
The term 'kingdom', which is commonly used, can suggest a territorial entity like the
Kingdom of France or of Spain. This is reinforced by Matthew's expression 'the kingdom of heaven'. This suggests that the kingdom of God is located in heaven. In fact
Matthew uses this expression only out of Jewish reverence. Matthew was only following the Jewish practice, already current in the first century, of avoiding the use of the word
'God' out of reverence. 'Heaven', thought of as the seat of God, was commonly used instead of the word 'God'. Compare Mt 4.17 with Mk 1.15.
The Hebrew word malkuth , which is at the base of the expression, is an abstract noun denoting not a territorial entity but the fact of God being king, or the royal power of God.
If one word is sought, perhaps the 'sovereignty' or 'kingship' of God is best. Whatever the translation, it is important to realise that the stress is not so much on the word
'kingdom/kingship' as on the fact that it is attributing to God the royal authority which is due. The stress is on God. So R.T. France entitled his book on the concept in Mark
' Divine Government '.
B. The Kingship of God in the Old Testament
That God is king of Israel is a basic concept of the Old Testament, which comes to expression at least from the beginning of the monarchical period. Gideon refused to be king when his victorious campaigns against Israel's enemies led him to be offered this post (Jg 8.22-23). Eventually some sort of permanent leadership was forced upon Israel, at the end of the period of the charismatic and temporary Judges, to provide permanent opposition to the incursions of the Philistines.
Saul was anointed king by Samuel in about 1020 B.C., but only under protest from the prophet, who regarded this assimilation to the structure of other nations as casting doubt on the effectiveness of Yahweh's protection of his people. For Samuel, Yahweh alone was king. When the Israelites demand that Samuel should anoint a king for them,
Yahweh says to him, 'It is not you they have rejected but me, not wishing me to reign over them any more' (1 S 8.8). Samuel follows this up with a recital of the evils and abuses to which a human king will subject the nation (1 S 8.10-22).
When David became king - by fair means or foul - he ensured that he was regarded very firmly as the Lord's anointed, punishing the mercy-killer of Saul as the murderer of the
Lord's anointed (2 S 1.16), and making his personal capital the holy city of Yahweh by installing the Ark there (2 S 6). He ruled there as the vice-regent of Yahweh. A very ancient psalm sings of the coronation of a king as his adoption to be son of God (Ps
110.3). A whole series of Psalms sung in the Temple of Jerusalem celebrates the sovereignty of Yahweh:
Great is Yahweh and most worthy of praise in the city of our God.
Mount Zion in the heart of the north, the settlement of the great king (Ps 48.1-2).
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Yahweh is king, robed in majesty, robed is Yahweh and girded with power (Ps 93.1).
Yahweh is king, the peoples tremble; he is enthroned on the winged creatures, the earth shivers.
Yahweh is great in Zion (Ps 99.1; cf. Pss 96, 97, 145, 146).
As time went on, and particularly from the era of the Babylonian exile, Israel became aware that the kingship of Yahweh embraced not just themselves but the whole world.
Until the exile Yahweh had been conceived primarily as the God of Israel, Israel's special protector. The question of the relationship of Yahweh to other nations had not become an important issue. At the Sack of Jerusalem in 597 B.C. one of the shattering blows on Israel was that Yahweh was unable (or unwilling) to protect his people as a king should. Such were the crimes of Israel that Yahweh could no longer underwrite
Israel. It was the king's business to keep his nation secure, and to other nations Yahweh seemed to have failed in this. As Ezekiel puts it, his name had been profaned among the nations, that is, his reputation as king and protector of Israel had been tarnished.
But the exile was a time for new insights, and in exile, confronted with the plethora of gods at Babylon, Israel was forced to ask the question of the relationship of Yahweh to other gods, to the protectors of other nations, and to the deities which the Babylonians claimed to rule various aspects of the world and of daily life. Israel reacted by asserting strongly for the first time that Yahweh is the creator and ruler of the whole universe, and this was expressed in terms of Yahweh's kingship. This is especially a theme of the prophet of the Exile, Deutero-Isaiah:
Thus says Yahweh, Israel's king,
Yahweh Sabaoth, his redeemer:
I am the first, I am the last, there is no God except me. (Is 44.6, cf. 43.15; 52.7)
Finally, at the end of the Old Testament period, comes the expectation of a final, victorious coming of God as King. This is a combination of the ancient theme of the Day of the Lord, a day of God's visitation of the earth to correct wrongs and rescue his chosen ones, with the theme of kingship. It has taken on universal dimensions, for God deserves worship from all the nations of the world, and failure to worship him will bring them punishment:
When that Day comes, living waters will issue from Jerusalem, half towards the eastern sea, half towards the western sea; they will flow summer and winter. Then Yahweh will become king of the whole world. ... After this, all the survivors of all the nations which have attacked Jerusalem will come up year after year to worship the King, Yahweh Sabaoth, and to keep the feast of
Shelters. Should one of the races of the world fail to come up to Jerusalem to worship the King,
Yahweh Sabaoth, there will be no rain for that one. (Zc 14.8-9, 16-17)
C. The Kingship of God in First Century Palestine
In the century before Christ there was a lively expectation of some decisive event by which God would break into world history. There were many different schools of thought within Judaism (it is commonly held that one should speak not of ‘Judaism’ but of ‘Judaism s
’ at this period). This expectation is to be found in all the many different circles of Judaism.
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
The Psalms of Solomon were written in the Pharisaic tradition during the latter part of the first century before Christ. Psalm 17 concentrates on a Davidic king, a representative of the Lord, who will purge Jerusalem of the foreigners who oppress it. He will gather together and lead a holy people, who will hope in the
Lord and form a centre for all the peoples of the earth.
Raise up unto them their king, the son of David,...that he may shatter unrighteous rulers and purge Jerusalem from nations that trample her down. ...And he shall gather together a holy people whom he shall lead in righteousness. ...He shall judge nations in the wisdom of his righteousness, and he shall have the heathen nations to serve him under his yoke. ...The Lord himself is his king, the hope of him that is mighty through his hope in God.

The Assumption of Moses , a contemporary apocalyptic work, contains the same combination of themes, associating the kingdom with an end to evil and the punishment of foreigners:
And then his kingdom shall appear throughout his creation, and Satan shall be no more, and sorrow shall depart with him... and he will appear to punish the gentiles ( Ass. Mos.
10)

In the Scrolls of Qumran one of the most important is the War Scroll, which describes a war between the sons of Light and the sons of Darkness, to take place at the end of time, for the triumph of the faithful and the destruction of the wicked. It is a constant refrain that this war is to the kingly glory of God:
You are a terrible God in your kingly glory...
For Adonai is holy and the king of glory is with us, accompanied by the saints.
The powers of the hosts of angels are among our men, and the valiant in battle is our congregation (1QM 12.7-8, Vermes, p. 137).
These are quotations from very different milieux. The first is from Pharisaic circles at the centre of Jewish orthodoxy, the last from the sectaries of Qumran, who had precisely fled from such attitudes. They all share these same themes. So Jesus' time was marked by a lively expectation that a decisive liberation was about to take place. The sectaries who formed a community at Qumran, in revolt against official Jerusalem Judaism, withdrew into the desert area near the Dead Sea in order to await the Messiah, and laid a place for the Messiah at their daily ritual meal in anticipation of his arrival.
An element which was particularly important in the Qumran community, and is not without relevance to Jesus’ behaviour, is the hope of a new Jerusalem of the last times.
This is already voiced in the prophets:
Look, I shall lay your stones on agates
And your foundations on sapphires.
I shall make your battlements rubies,
Your gateways firestone
And your entire wall precious stones. (Is 54.11-12).
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Its fullest expression is in Ezekiel’s vision of the renewed Temple, described in detail in
Ezk 40-43, to which Yahweh would return. Again, the new Jerusalem is celebrated in the Book of Tobit (13.16-18):
The gates of Jerusalem will be built of sapphire and of emerald,
And all your walls of precious stone.
The towers of Jerusalem will be built of gold,
And their battlements of pure gold.
The streets of Jerusalem will be paved
With ruby and with stones from Ophir.
The gates of Jerusalem will resound with songs of exaltation.
Cf. Jub 1.15-17; Ps-Sal 17.32; 1 QM 7.4-10; 4Q Flor 1.6-7; 4 QpPs 37 3.11; 11
QTemple 29.8-10; Rv 21.22).
For the sectaries at Qumran this new sanctuary is not the Temple of Jerusalem, which they rejected as unclean, but is the community itself:
He has commanded that a sanctuary of men be built for himself, that there they may send up, like the smoke of incense, the works of the Law (4 Q 174, Vermes, p. 293).
The expectation was fomented by, and in turn boiled over into, the series of messianic revolts against the Roman rule. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing to explain to the
Romans the run-up to the Jewish War, is interested chiefly in the political aspects. From him we know that at least petty revolts were frequent. One of these was led by Judas the
Galilean at about the turn of the eras. Judas objected to the payment of taxes to Rome, on the grounds that it infringed the sovereignty of God (Josephus Antiquities , 18.1.1).
Another rebellion was by the messianic claimant known only as 'the Egyptian'. These both promised messianic miracles, such as leading their army dry-shod across the River
Jordan. They were, however, swiftly crushed by the Roman military power. Later, after the time of Jesus, the full-scale revolt of 66 A.D. led to the siege and sacking of
Jerusalem by the Romans. Josephus also tells of an incident in Jerusalem, when some young men were brutally executed for hacking down a statue of the Roman eagle which they claimed was an affront to the sovereignty of God over the Holy City ( Antiquities ,
17.6.3). In the following century another major abortive messianic revolt broke out in
132 A.D., led by Simon ben Kosiba (or Bar Kochba). His name means ‘Son of the Star’
(a reference to Balaam’s messianic prophecy in Nb 24.17). He was recognised as
Messiah even by the great Rabbi Aqiba. At the time of Jesus there was therefore great excitement and unrest about the Kingship of God.
3. THE KINGSHIP OF GOD IN MARK
This section is intended to investigate the meaning of the concept 'kingship of God' in
Mark's gospel, rather than in Jesus' own thought. Written as it was some decades after
Jesus' own preaching, and in different circumstances, Mark's gospel does not necessarily reflect exactly the same emphases as Jesus' original message. The evangelists were theologians, mediating the message of Jesus to Christians in their own time. Rather than simply recording what Jesus had said and done, they interpreted the message of Jesus to their contemporaries. It is a different question (perhaps unanswerable) to ask how Jesus
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himself understood the kingship of God, though there must be continuity between the two concepts.
It is striking that the expression 'the kingship of God' occurs much more seldom in Mark than one would expect. In Matthew it is a concept which appears everywhere, occurring some 52 times. In Mark, however, it comes no more than 15 times. It is important, therefore, to avoid confusing the way the term is used in Mark with the more diffused usage of Matthew. Quite possibly the concept of the kingdom current in Matthew, perhaps reflecting the tensions and interests of the Christian community around him, is quite different from that which is to be found in Mark.
The importance of the concept of the kingship to Mark is clear from the beginning. After the introductory verses the first proclamation of Jesus, which sets the tone for the whole, is that the kingship of God 'has drawn near'. Acceptance of this seems to imply repentance and belief in the gospel (1.15), which is mentioned just before and just after the kingship. The gospel and the kingship are, then, inextricably linked. What this implies is not yet clear.
Two of the questions often posed about the concept are whether the kingship is something which needs to be voluntarily accepted or something which bursts upon the world (or both). Does Mark view the kingship as a spontaneous acceptance of God's will by human beings or as a new state of things apocalyptically superimposed by God. A second question is whether the kingship is conceived as present or future (or both). For the New Testament in general Norman Perrin has collected texts which argue about the timing of the kingship in both directions: in one sense it is already present, in another it is still to come; is the same true for Mark alone? On both these matters it seems to me that there is a tension between the two points of view. The tension must remain, for on both questions each points of view is present in the gospel.
A. The Moral Demands of the Kingdom
One aspect of the concept of the kingship of God is indeed a moral one. So much is clear from the initial announcement of the kingship of God. It involves repentance, a change of life (1.14). Furthermore, the kingdom is something which demands certain qualities and to which other qualities tend to be a bar. If one's eye leads one astray morally, it is better to do without the eye and enter the kingdom one-eyed (9.47). Those who wish to enter must be like children (10.14,15). Riches make entry difficult (10.23, 24, 25). The lawyer who recognises the importance of the two commandments of love is 'not far from the kingdom of God' (12.34). There is no hint here of any long delay, or of any need for an explosive event from God to make entry possible. Incidentally, all these sayings smack of the clarity and the black-and-white quality, the absolute demands, or indeed even what seems to us the exaggeration, of Jesus' own teaching.
This aspect is echoed also in the writings of Paul. Overwhelmingly Paul also uses the term 'kingdom' with moral connotations. You must live a life worthy of the kingdom (1
Thess 2.12). The kingdom does not consist in food and drink (Rm 14.17), will not be the inheritance of the unjust (1 Cor 6.9). In Paul, therefore, just as in Mark, the meaning of kingdom may in one way be understood as a moral response to the message of the gospel.
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B. The Wonders
Another aspect of the kingship of God brought by Jesus is, however, the breaking-in of
God's presence and action in the world through the wonders by which he shows the triumph over evil, the purification of Israel, the removal of sorrow, distress, alienation, and especially of sin. Here the kingship of God has arrived and triumphs over evil. One way in which this comes to view in Jesus' ministry is in his conflict with and triumph over evil spirits. This is a sign of the triumph over evil associated with the arrival of the kingship of God. Jesus does not, of course, remove all evil and distress, but his wonders are a sign that the grip of evil and distress on the world is at an end.
1. Unclean spirits
Jesus' triumph over evil spirits is a recurrent theme of the gospel. It is important not only to show Jesus' power in these individual cases, but it must be seen also as evidence of
Jesus' power over the evil which ruled the world. The expulsion of an unclean spirit is the first wonder worked by Jesus (1.21-28). The way the expulsion is sandwiched between passages on teaching suggests that Mark himself placed the incident in this significant position. In the summary passages about Jesus' activity healings and the expulsion of evil spirits feature together (1.32-34; 6.13). The expulsion of the evil spirit from the Gerasene demoniac again is a highly Markan story (5.1-20). Most significant is the passage where the scribes attempt to explain away his expulsions, thereby implicitly granting that he does in fact perform them (3.22-30, again sandwiched between the two passages on the kinsfolk of Jesus). Here, in his rebuttal, Jesus alludes to the kingdom: 'If a kingdom is divided against itself that kingdom cannot stand.'
2. Cures
Other illnesses, too, are viewed in the Markan stories as cases of possession. In 1.40-45
Jesus cures a leper.
The leprosy of the gospels is not what is today called leprosy ( mycobacterium leprae ). In the Bible the term covers many afflictions and skin-complaints. The legislation about 'leprosy' given in Leviticus 13-14 shows that the term includes at least any contagious or virulent skin-disease.
The narrative suggests that this too is regarded as possession by an evil spirit, for 1.43 should be translated literally, 'And being angry with him/it, Jesus immediately threw him out.' It makes no sense that Jesus should have been angry with the sufferer, or thrown him out, especially after, in v. 41, he has been 'feeling sorry for him'. It makes much better sense if the anger and expulsion are directed at the disease or an evil spirit who is considered responsible for it.
Other wonderful cures by Jesus, bringing an end to the evil of sickness and disease, should also be regarded as signs of the coming of God's kingship:
The healing of Simon's mother-in-law (1.29-31), of the paralytic at Capernaum (2.1-12), of the man with a withered hand (3.1-6), of the woman with a haemorrhage and of Jairus' daughter (5.21-43), of the Syro-Phoenician's daughter (7.24-30), of the deaf man (7.31-37),
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In the popular imagination of the unscientific age illness was frequently attributed to possession by evil spirits. This is easily understandable at a time when the physical or psychological causes of illness were hardly considered scientifically. Especially in the case of mental illness, it is still only one step from saying that someone is 'not himself/herself' to saying that he/she seems to be in the grip of an evil or deranged spirit.

of the blind man at Bethsaida (8.22-26), of the epileptic demoniac (9.14-29), of Bartimaeus at Jericho (10.46-52).
Particularly significant among them is the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum, where the physical cure is specifically linked to the forgiveness of sin. It is also significant that
Jesus shows no fear of the contagion of uncleanness, and has no hesitation about touching or being touched by the leper or the woman with a haemorrhage. Part of the horror of these two sicknesses is, of course, the alienation they impose: since they are unclean sicknesses, sufferers must keep apart from the rest of society and life in isolation. Jesus’ touch puts an end to that alienation.
By these healings Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies of messianic peace and healing in e.g.
Is 11.6-9; 35.5-7; 61.1-3. They are signs of the advent of the messianic kingdom or the kingship of God.
3. The eschatological context of the exorcisms and cures
Not all miraculous cures need necessarily be regarded as signs of the coming of God's kingship. Numerous miraculous cures are recorded at the healing shrine of Aesculapius in Greece, in the Greek magical papyri, and in the story of Apollonius of Tyana
5
. About the same time other cures by those attractive figures, the charismatic Galilean rabbis, are attested in Jewish literature, and carry no such significance
6
. But in the case of Jesus the whole context is different, and points only to this.
When the Baptist appeared, he already proclaimed the approach of the final times. He put himself forward as the final messenger of God by bearing and wearing the signs of
Elijah, the garment of camel-skin (1.6, as Elijah had done, 2 K 1.8). Elijah was prophesied to precede the final coming: 'Look, I shall send you the prophet Elijah before the great and awesome Day of Yahweh comes' (Mal 3.23). So Jesus' wonders must be seen quite specifically in the context of his proclamation of the kingship of God.
This same interpretation is given, only more explicitly, by the passage in Mt 11.2-6, and its parallel in Lk, where the messengers come from the imprisoned John the Baptist to ask whether Jesus is 'the one who is to come'; he replies by citing the evidence of his miracles of healing in terms of the prophecy of Isaiah (Mt 11.2-6). The miracles are therefore the fulfilment of these promises in the last times.
C. Controversies with the Pharisees
For the Pharisees the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth consists in the perfection of obedience to the will of God, that is, the perfect accomplishment of the
Law. For the Pharisees, therefore, the Reign of God consists in fulfilment of moral demands. In Mt this dimension of the coming of the kingdom is particularly clear, for from the beginning of his ministry Jesus stresses that he has come ‘to fulfil all justice’, when he joins with John at his Baptism, Mt 3.15. The first of the great discourses, the
Sermon on the Mount, is dominated by the same idea: Jesus has come to complete the
Law, Mt 5.17, and entry to the Kingdom demands that the ‘justice’ of the followers of
5 see Documents for the Study of the Gospels , by David R. Cartlidge and David L. Dungan (Fortress Press,
1980), p. 151-159.
6 See G. Vermes , Jesus the Jew (SCM, 1973).
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Jesus should exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. This fulfilment is then illustrated by the six ‘antitheses’ (5.21-48), in which Jesus constrasts the traditional interpretation of the Law with the perfection demanded for the Kingdom.
This is also the meaning of Jesus’ controversies with the Pharisees in Mk over legal observance. These do not necessarily show fierce hostility between Jesus and the
Pharisees. The hostility between the Pharisees and the Jesus-movement certainly intensified at the end of the century when, after the Fall of Jerusalem, Pharisaic Judaism became the dominant, if not the only surviving, tendency within Judaism. It is from this period rather than from the lifetime of Jesus that the hostility dates which is visible in the gospels. Jesus has considerable affinity with the Pharisees, and it is notable that they have no part at all in his passion and death; there is no mention of the Pharisees after Mk
12.13. Jesus’ method of argument with the Pharisees approximates to their own. His solutions to legal problems show a consistently different tendency to theirs, but they are reached and supported by the same methods. So in the controversy about picking corn on the Sabbath (2.23-28) Jesus quotes a legal precedent from David to establish his contention. Similarly, in the following controversy about healing on the Sabbath (3.1-5),
Jesus appeals to the purpose of the Sabbath to justify his action.
It is notable, however, that Mt, who is himself a legal expert (Mt 13.52), is not satisfied with these rulings as given by Mk, and in each case improves the argument. In the former case he finds the precedent of David insufficiently close and adds a precedent about breaking the Sabbath (Mt 12.5). In the latter case he sharpens the general principle by quoting the parallel of rescuing an ox from a pit on the Sabbath, adding the recognised Pharisaic argument a minori ad maius ,
‘from the lesser to the greater’ (Mt 12.11-12).
In further controversies the same method is used. About Corban Jesus appeals over the oral Law, the unwritten Law of tradition, to the written Law of the Pentateuch, to establish his ruling (7.10). On divorce (10.1-12) he appeals to Genesis 1.27 against Dt
24.1 and its current interpretations, all of which is good Pharisaic practice.
D. Jesus in the Temple
Perhaps most significant of all in understanding what is meant by the kingship of God is the popular cry at the Entry into Jerusalem, hailing 'the coming kingship of our father
David' (11.10). This must imply that the kingship of David, the messianic kingship, is in some way being fulfilled, brought into being, at Jesus' entry into the holy city for the final phase of his ministry. The great celebration, whose scriptural allusions are all instinct with messianic overtones, provides a patch of joyful light before the sombre events which follow. Does 'the coming kingship' refer to the immediate event, the entry itself and Jesus' activity in the Temple, or to the climax of that short week, the
Resurrection?
The meaning of Jesus' action in the Temple has been disputed. It is often seen as a mere cleansing of offensive practices, money-changing and the sale of sacrificial victims.
However, there is no indication that these activities were real abuses. Rates charged for changing the money for the coinage required in the Temple do not seem to have been excessive, and the sacrificial victims were needed for the Temple-worship itself.
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It cannot be overstressed that here we are considering only Mark's view of the kingdom, not yet Jesus' own view. It is quite possible that these are genuine sayings of Jesus which Mark has put in these contexts, and by so doing has given them a specific application. It will be argued later that in fact the scene of the interrogation before the high priest is a scene composed by the evangelist. It is not therefore evidence for Jesus' own view.

Furthermore, if Jesus had meant merely to cleanse abuses in the Temple practice, the most effective sign would have been water.
There is no doubt that this action of Jesus was the cause of the violent reaction of the
Jerusalem authorities against Jesus, and their determination to do away with him. The
Temple and its rites were the glory of Jerusalem.
According to the Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder, it was the Temple which made
Jerusalem 'by far the most distinguished city of the East'. The disciples were right to wonder at the great stones, 'Master, look at the size of these stones' (Mk 13.1). The largest of them still remaining is 12m long, 3m by 4m in cross-section and weighs 400 tons. In general the dimensions of it were staggering. The retaining wall of the esplanade on which it was built rose 30m above the street-level. The Royal Portico on the south of the great esplanade was one and a half times the length of Salisbury Cathedral (186m compared to 137m). The ten great pairs of gilded gates were each 13m by 6.6m
(Josephus, Bellum Judaicum , 5). Its wealth was fabulous: the Roman general Crassus stole from it 2,000 talents in cash, and there were gold vessels worth 8,000 talents
(Josephus, Antiquities , 14.72 and 105-109). Above all, it was the goal of pilgrimage for
Jews all over the mediterranean area, the religious and cultural centre of the nation, served by some 20,000 priests.
Jesus' action in the Temple must be seen in connection with the accusation at his trial and the mockery on the Cross. He was accused of saying, 'I am going to destroy this
Temple and in three days build another, not made by human hands' (14.58). This saying is preserved also in a slightly different form in Jn 2.20. The Jewish leaders who mocked him on the Cross also referred to this claim, 'Aha! So you would destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days!' (Mk 15.29). Jesus' action in the Temple was construed, then, as his attempt to destroy the Temple, a symbolic act of destruction, as part of his claim to build a new Temple.
The building of a new Temple was part of the hope of Israel for the last times. Ezekiel
40-44 is a complete blueprint for this renewed Temple, but the renewal of the Temple is also a constant theme in other Jewish writings:
My soul blesses the Lord, the great King, because Jerusalem will be built anew, and his house for ever and ever (Tob 13.15-16)
An early witness to this hope comes in the Book of Henoch 90.28-29 (a section dated to the early second century BC):
I went on looking till the Lord of the sheep brought about a new house, greater and loftier than the first one, and set it up in the first location which had been covered up. All its pillars were new, the columns new and the ornaments new as well as greater than those of the first, the old house which was gone. All the sheep were within it.
The same hope is strongly attested at Qumran, a quite different section of the contemporary tradition: 4Q174, commenting on 2 Sm 7.10: ‘This is the house which [he will build for them] in the last days… This is the house into which [the unclean shall] never enter… [Its glory shall endure] for ever; it shall appear above it perpetually.’ (Vermes, p. 293. cf. 4 Q
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522; 1 QS 8.5-9). The renewal of the Temple is, then, a part of Jesus’ teaching on the
Kingship of God which would strike an immediate chord with his contemporaries.
The complete meaning of this action in the Temple, then, can be seen only in the context of the final renewal of Israel and Jerusalem. Mk stresses this by sandwiching the account of the demonstration in the Temple between the two halves of the Barren Fig-Tree; this little acted parable is symbolic of the barrenness of Israel and of the withering of the old order (11.12-14 + 20-21). This gives the meaning of what Jesus was bringing about by his demonstration in the Temple. This was what the authorities were determined to prevent. They challenged his authority so to act, but received no reply beyond the hint that his authority was the same as that of John the Baptist, which popular acclaim pronounced to be divine authority (11.27-33). There was, then, no other way to keep their power secure than to liquidate Jesus.
Assignment 1 or Personal Study
1. Write a 1,500-word essay, using only the Markan material, either 'In what sense does
Jesus make present the Kingship of God?' or discuss the statement, 'In Mark the Good
News is the Kingship of God'.
Be sure to present Jesus’ teaching against the background of the Old Testament conception and the evidence contemporary with Jesus. You may find helpful
McKenzie’s
Dictionary of the Bible
. Use the index of other books under ‘Kingdom of
God’. Notes in New Jerusalem Bible 2 S 7.1-17; Ezk 34.1
a ; Mi 4.14
l ; Zc 9.9
h ; Mt 4.17
f .
2. Consider also the question, as a Christian, how would you reply to the frequent Jewish objection that Jesus could not have been the Messiah because the Kingdom has not yet come? Is it based on a misunderstanding of the concept ‘Kingdom’ or ‘Messiah’ or something else?
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1. PARABLES IN GENERAL
Mk has two general statements about parables: ‘To you is granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything comes in parable’ (4.11), and ‘He would not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything to his disciples when they were by themselves’ (4.34). Clearly, then, parables play an important part in Jesus’ teaching in Mk. Is it really true that he would not speak to them, the crowds, except in parables?
A. Mashal – plural Meshalim
The gospels were written in Greek, but the thinking behind them is often Semitic, that is, either Hebrew or Aramaic. Jesus, of course, spoke principally Aramaic; these are the concepts we must examine in order to seize his meaning.The Hebrew concept of mashal is wider than that of parable. The Greek word parabole means ‘comparison’, whereas mashal includes any imaged saying or proverb. The initial obscurity of such sayings also leads to the inclusion of ‘riddle’ or ‘dark saying’ among its meanings; meshalim need thought to yield their meanings! The Book of Proverbs is called meshalim in Hebrew, and is composed of short, pithy sayings, aphorisms, many of them using imagery, but few of them comparisons.
A few examples give the feel of the genre:
Idler, go to the ant, ponder her ways and grow wise (6.6)
A wink of the eye brings trouble,
A bold rebuke brings peace. (10.10)
A golden ring in the snout of a pig
Is a lovely woman who lacks discretion (11.22)
A wise child is a father’s joy
Only a brute despises his mother (15.20).
Like the roaring of a lion, the anger of a king,
But like dew on the grass his favour (19.12)
There are, however, also longer meshalim in the Old Testament, stories which point a lesson by a comparison. Among the most striking of these are the delightful parable of
Jotham (Jg 9), the parable of Nathan (2 S 12.1-4) and Ezekiel’s powerful parable of the Foundling Girl (Ezk 16). Another, amusingly unsuccessful because David saw
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through it, is the Wise Woman’s parable, seeking to gain the rehabilitation of
Absalom (2 S 14.6-11).
B. Jesus’ Meshalim in Mk
If Jesus’ meshalim are divided into storymeshalim and aphoristic meshalim it immediately becomes obvious that the form of very many of his teachings is the aphoristic mashal . They are balanced, rhythmical, challenging, often imaged, and therefore memorable. A collection of aphoristic meshalim in the early chapters of Mk shows that virtually all Jesus’ teaching is, as Mk claims, couched in this form.
Come after me, and I will make you fishers of people (1.17)
It is not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick;
I come to call not the upright but sinners (2.17)
The bridegroom’s attendants cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them (2.19)
No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak (2.21)
New wine into fresh skins! (2.22)
The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (2.27)
Anyone who does the will of God
Is my brother and sister and mother (3.35)
Besides these aphoristic meshalim Mk gives five narrative meshalim . Most are gathered into the collection of ch. 4: The Sower, The Seed Growing by Itself, The
Mustard-Seed (also The Lamp on a Lampstand and The Measure, which are more aphoristic than narrative). Besides these Mk contains also two others, The Wicked
Vine-dressers (12.1-8) and the double parable of The Fig-tree and The Doorkeeper
(13.28, 34).
2. THE THRUST OF JESUS’ MESHALIM
In order to determine the thrust and purpose of Jesus’ meshalim it is necessary first to make a decision about parable and allegory. In 1899 Adolf Jülicher published his influential Die Gleichnisreden Jesu , in which he claimed that Jesus could not have used allegory. An allegory is a parable in which every element of the story has an equivalent, whereas a simple parable is a story where there is only one point of comparison. Thus for an allegory a ‘key’ can be given to the code, as in the case of
Mt’s parable of the Wheat and the Darnel, for which the ‘key’ is given in Mt 13.36-
42, explaining the meaning of each element in the story. Jülicher claimed that allegory was a Greek habit of mind, much used by the classical Greeks in the attempt to give edifying sense to the disreputable behaviour of the Greek gods in their legends, and
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descending from there into the early Church. Already Irenaeus ( Adversus haereses ,
4.36.7) interprets the five groups of workers in the parable of The Labourers in the
Vineyard (Mt 20.1-16) as those summoned in the five periods of history from Adam, and even that great exegete Origen follows the same method. By the time of the
Reformation such allegorical interpretation had run riot. Jülicher pointed out that none of the Old Testament parables has more than one point of comparison. Jülicher assumed this to be the case of Jesus’ parables, though Mt, writing a mere half-century after Jesus’ original proclamation, provides incontrovertible evidence that allegory crept in very soon afterwards. This may be correct, but it would be a mistake to be too dogmatic about this.
Another important step towards understanding the parables was taken soon afterwards by two other important scholars, Dodd and Jeremias. CH Dodd, in Parables of the
Kingdom (1936), took the important step of looking for the original context of the parables Jesus spoke about the Kingdom, and Joachim Jeremias, in The Parables of
Jesus (1954), extended this work to all the narrative parables. The two works remain fundamental to all study of the parables. The thesis is that in order to understand
Jesus’ message it is essential to abstract from the application of the parables which was later made by the early Church or the evangelists, who applied the lesson to their own situation. The paradigm example is The Sower: the interpretation of the parable of The Sower in Mk 4.13-20 is an application to the later situation of the community in the second generation, and should not be used towards understanding Jesus’ meaning in telling the story.
A. The Sower
The fact that the interpretation is later becomes manifest first from its vocabulary, which contains many expressions not used elsewhere in the gospels, but which are typically Pauline. So ‘the word’ as the message comes nowhere else in the gospels, but as the message preached and received with joy in 1 Th 1.6; ‘sowing the word’ as a metaphor for preaching in 1 Co 9.11; the words for ‘wealth’, ‘deception’, ‘fruitless’ all only in the Epistles, especially Pauline. The temptations are in fact also those of a later generation and longer-term than Jesus’ ministry. Secondly, one may suspect that
Mk has been at work both from the sandwich-form (story, vv. 1-9; reason for parables, vv. 10-13; interpretation, vv. 14-20) and from the triple failure through
Satan, persecution and cares of the world. To this one might add the notorious carelessness of Mk over tenses: ‘sown’ is expressed once in the perfect (v. 15), once in the present (v. 18), and once in the aorist (v. 20), each time with the same meaning.
This finding has two important consequences. Firstly, it opens the way to reading the parable of The Sower without its interpretation. Taken on its own the parable may easily be fitted into Jesus’ ministry as his own reflexion on the failure of his proclamation to all but the small group of disciples, and his optimism with them
(whence the crescendo of 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold in v. 20). The three separate failures of his efforts need not each have a separate point, but simply represent repeated fruitless attempts.
Secondly, the splitting up of the unit 4.1-20 lays open the possibility that that the enigmatic section on the purpose of the meshalim , vv. 10-13, does not either basically
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belong to this context, but was inserted here by Mk. Taken at its face-value these verses seem to say that Jesus’ purpose in using meshalim was deliberately to obscure his meaning from the crowds, outsiders: ‘in order that, however hard they look, they may not see, and however hard they listen, they may not understand and be converted and forgiven’ (v. 13). The possibility that this is not really the sense is confirmed by further factors:
1.
This same passage of Isaiah is used twice more to explain the failure of the
Jews to accept the message, once at the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry in Jn
12.40 and once at the conclusion of Paul’s mission in Ac 28.26. This triple usage suggests that the quotation was used as a stock scriptural explanation of the puzzling fact of Jewish failure.
2.
The Markan passage fits the parables ill. ‘The mystery/secret of the kingdom’
(v. 11, in the singular) is an expression used by Paul of the whole of the ultimate revelation reserved for the end of time (Rm 16.25, cf. 1 Co 2.1; 4.1, cf. Ep 1.9; 3.5; Col 1.27). Mt and Lk, in their parallel passages, in fact both adjust the phrase to make it fit the context better, turning the noun into the plural, ‘myster ies /secret s
’, so that it does apply to the parable s .
3.
There is a strong case that vv. 11-12 are a very ancient Palestinian tradition, for the quotation of Isaiah is in several respects closer to the Palestinian
Targum tradition than it is to either the standard Hebrew or the LXX text.
Furthermore, the triple theological passive (use of the passive to avoid using the name of God, in ‘is granted’, ‘comes’ [literally ‘is done’], and ‘being healed’) is typical of early Palestinian tradition. It may well be a saying of
Jesus preserved, without its original context, from the earliest times.
This removes the uncomfortable paradox that Jesus’ chief teaching method was designed to obscure his message. Rather these verses are an early Christian reflection on the failure of the Jews to accept the message, somewhat clumsily inserted here by
Mk.
B. Harvest Parables
One of the chief images used in the parables of the gospels is the harvest: the coming of the Kingship of God is the harvest-time. This was already used by John the Baptist, for whom it was a potent image of judgement and of the imminent arrival of the new era. The Baptist used the image of fruit-harvest as much as wheat-harvest:
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance…. Even now the axe is being laid to the root of the trees, so that any tree failing to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire…
His winnowing –fan is in his hand; he will clear his threshing-floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn in a fire that will never go out’ (Mt 3.8-12)
This is an image of divine judgement classically used in the prophets:
Look, I am making you into a threshing-sledge,
New, with double teeth.
You will thresh and beat the mountains to dust
And reduce the hills to straw.
You will winnow them and the wind will carry them off,
The gale will scatter them
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Whereas you will rejoice in Yahweh,
Will glory in the Holy One of Israel (Is 41.15-16).
Ply the sickle for the harvest is ripe.
Come and press, for the winepress is full.
The vats are overflowing, so great is their wickedness (Joel 4.13).
John’s message was primarily one of disaster, punishment and need of repentance. It was Jesus’ failure to set fire to the chaff and cut down the rotten trees which led John to send his messengers to ask whether Jesus really was ‘the one who was to come’
(Mt 11.2). Jesus replied that he was fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecies of healing, intimating that his concept of messiaship was not quite the same as John’s. It is the property of images to be polyvalent, and the harvest is not necessarily an image of disaster, and – for those who are ready – can also be an image of overflowing joy:
You have increased the nation’s joy.
They rejoice before you as people rejoice at harvest time (Is 9.2)
Those who sow in tears will sing when they reap,
He went off, went off weeping, carrying the seed.
He comes back, comes back singing, bringing in his sheaves (Ps 126.5).
So Jesus’ parables too are full of this harvest-imagery. Not only the Sower, but also the parable of the Seed Growing by Itself is in fact a harvest-parable, ending with the sickle: ‘when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come’
(Mk 4.29). It is a parable of the patient waiting of God coming to an end.
The prime example of harvest-parable in Mk is The Wicked Tenants (Mk 12.1-9).
Built on Isaiah’s image of the vineyard (Is 5.1-8) it depicts the Owner sending for his rent, normally at harvest-time. In Mk it has especial prominence, the only storyparable in the second half, balancing the long story-parable of the first half, The
Sower. As it stands in Mk it may or may not have the allegorical feature of Jesus as the son. In Mt it certainly has this, for Mt reverses the order to echo the historical facts. Instead of ‘they seized him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard’
(Mk 12.8), Mt 21.39 gives ‘they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him’. Jesus was crucified outside the city. Whether this allegorical element is already intended in Mk’s version need not be examined at the moment (but see p. 42).
The parable makes sense without it, merely stressing that the Lord of the vineyard of
Israel has vainly made every possible move to persuade the custodians of Israel to face their responsibilities.
Parables of Mt extend this to a fishing-harvest, so that Mt has not only The Wheat and the Darnel (Mt 13.24-30), but its pair, The Dragnet (Mt 13.47-50), each harvest full of good and bad together, which are finally to be sorted out.
C. The Wedding-Feast
Another centre of imagery is the wedding-feast. This too is a classical figure from the
Old Testament, richly used since the bridal imagery of Hosea, for the final blissful healing of the infidelity of Israel:
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I shall betroth you to myself for ever,
I shall betroth you in uprightness and justice
And faithful love and tenderness (Ho 2.21).
Yahweh says this:
I remember your faithful love, the affection of your bridal days,
When you followed me through the desert, through a land unsown,
Israel was sacred to Yahweh, the first-fruits of his harvest (Jr 2.2-3).
Before the gospels, the imagery is used by Paul of his apostolic work, ‘I gave you all in marriage to a single husband, a virgin pure for presentation to Christ’ (2 Co 11.2).
There already Christ is the bridegroom, but this allegorical element is not a necessary part of the figure. The wedding-feast makes sense on its own, without the introduction of Jesus as bridegroom. The image is used overwhelmingly in the teaching of Jesus.
First it comes in Mk 2.19, ‘Surely the bridegroom’s attendants cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them?’ Jeremias wisely insists (p. 50, footnote 12) that the allegorisation of the bridegroom as Jesus must be a later addition, and comes only in the following verse. The idea of a bridegroom being taken away from a wedding is so paradoxical that it would have been unintelligible before the Passion (certainly at the early stage of the ministry in which Mk places it). The phrase ‘while the bridegroom is with them’ simply means ‘during the actual wedding’. Furthermore, in the Old
Testament it is Yahweh who is the bridegroom. Such also is still the understanding of the marriage-imagery in Song of Songs by the early second-century Rabbis who included it among the sacred writings for that very reason. It is an important development in Mk’s Christology that the bridegroom has now become Jesus himself.
Similarly the parable of The Wedding-Banquet (Mt 22.1-14), although in its present form it includes allegorical features of Jesus as the Son and Bridegroom, does not need these details, which are indeed absent from the version in Lk 14.16-24. The point is the failure of the guests originally invited to respond. The Matthean parable of the Ten Wedding-Attendants (Mt 25.1-12) is a further example of the wedding imagery, though now Christologically allegorised.
D. Suddenness and Novelty
Apart from the joyful aspect of harvest and wedding-feast, the principal thrust of
Jesus’ meshalim is the newness of the Kingdom and its sudden, unexpected arrival.
Unpreparedness enters into all the parables of both harvest and wedding-feast.
Perhaps its strongest expression in Mk is The Doorkeeper (Mk 13.34b-35). In its present context the image of the Doorkeeper who should be ready for his Master’s return from a dinner-party has been interwoven with the image of servants who have been given a task to do while their Master is absent on a journey (Mk 13.34a). This suggests a distinctly longer period of absence than a mere prolonged night out.
Newness is the subject of the meshalim of the New Patch on Old Cloth and New Wine in New Wineskins (Mk 2.21-22). There is no point in trying to combine new and old: a whole-hearted choice is necessary. It is Jesus’ attempt to persuade his hearers that a firm and uncompromising decision is needed.
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3. JESUS’ MESHALIM VIEWED IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CHURCH IN
THE NEXT GENERATIONS
The situation changes drastically when the meshalim are applied to the Second
Coming. When the world did not come to an end at the Resurrection, a new interpretation of the meshalim , in continuity with Jesus’ meaning but in a wholly new key, comes into being. The fulfilment of the Sovereignty of God is not completed in
Jesus’ lifetime, and this creates the tension between the two aspects of ‘already’ and
‘not yet’. The crisis is no longer, as it was in Jesus’ proclamation, a demand for an instant decision with the arrival of Jesus, but of preparation for the coming of Jesus at the end of time. This is perhaps most evident in Mt, with its stress on eschatological rewards and punishments, and its repeated warnings to be prepared beforehand by good works. So to the parable of the Wedding Banquet, Mt subjoins the parable of the
Wedding Garment, for a garment is a recognised symbol of good works (Mt 22.11-
14): in order to prepare for the banquet you must clothe yourself with the garment of good works. In Mt the importance of the final reckoning is underlined by the illustration and elaboration of each element of Mk’s conclusion to ch. 13 into one of the four contrast parables stressing the rewards and punishments of the end, The
Burglar, The Conscientious Steward, the Ten Wedding Attendants and The Talents, before the whole is topped off with The Sheep and the Goats (Mt 24.42-25.46). By contrast, the short-term parable of The Doorkeeper has disappeared.
Already in Mk, however, the re-interpretation has come into effect. The Doorkeeper has become a warning to stay awake for the Second Coming (the triple ‘Stay awake!’ in 13.33-37), and the servants have opportunity to perform their various tasks while the Master is abroad (13.34). Before the Son of Man comes to gather his elect for a final reckoning, the period of the Church must intervene, with its mission and its persecutions (13.9-12). The Wedding Banquet is not the final moment of time, but there will be a time for fasting when the Wedding Banquet is over and the
Bridegroom taken away (Mk 2.19-20). The Mustard-Seed has time to grow into a shrub large enough to have big branches ‘so that the birds of the air can shelter in its shade’ (Mk 4.32). It is, admittedly, not yet a ‘tree’ as in Mt and Lk, but the birds sheltering in its branches represent the gentiles, as in the Book of Daniel 4.9, 18 (so interpreted in Ethiopian Enoch 90), so presuppose a mission to the gentiles.
4. STORY-PARABLES IN MATTHEW AND LUKE
It would be disproportionate to embark on a full discussion of the parables in the other synoptics, but a brief outline of their treatment in Mt and Lk will help by contrast to illustrate Mk’s parables. Both Mt and Lk draw largely on Mk, using his three principal parables, The Sower, The Mustard-Seed and The Wicked Vine-Dressers.
Not, however, The Doorkeeper, which is too immediate for their sense of the delayed
Second Coming of Christ. They also share with each other a large number of parables, which would conventionally be called the Q-Parables, such as The Playing Children,
The Leaven, The Lost Sheep, The Great Feast, The Talents/Pounds. In addition, each has his own long parables. Both content and treatment, however, vary considerably from Mk.
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Mk’s story-parables are all drawn from the imagery of the countryside and village life, and are all descriptive of the advent of the Kingship of God; they describe the situation as it is, leaving the appropriate action to be understood by the listener. They are not too rich in imagery, but describe the countryside with loving care (for example, one can watch each stage in the growth of the Seed: ‘the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear’).
Mt’s parables are much richer and more varied in imagery. They still describe the
Kingship/Kingdom, but are all concerned with people, and with contrasting people, for Mt favours black-and-white contrasts without intermediate shades of grey. So the
Two Builders, who build respectively on sand and rock (Mt 7.24-27), the Playing
Children, unwilling either to dance or to mourn (Mt 11.16-17), the Wheat and the
Tares (Mt 13.24-30, good and bad corn, paired by the Dragnet with its good and bad fish, Mt 13.47-50), the Forgiven but Unforgiving Servant (Mt 18.21-35), the
Labourers in the Vineyard (Mt 20.1-16), the Two Sons (21.28-32), the Wedding Feast and the Wedding Garment (Mt 22.1-14), the Ten Wedding Attendants (25.1-13), the
Talents (Mt 25.14-30), and finally and most obviously the Sheep and the Goats (Mt
25.31-46). In all of these the interest is on the eschatological rewards and punishments which will result at the last times. All lead up to the final five parables in Mt 24.42-
25.46.
Lk’s story-parables are far more varied and more subtle. Instead of characters who are either thoroughly good or thoroughly bad, Lk’s characters are mixed, often doing the right thing for the wrong reason: the Friend at Midnight, eventually giving bread out of sheer shame (Lk 11.5-10), the Wedding-Guest, taking a low seat to avoid embarrassment (14.7-11), the Prodigal Son, going home simply because he is hungry
(Lk 15.11-32), the Crafty Steward, cutting off the excessive interest to feather his own nest (Lk 16.1-13), the Unjust Judge, giving the widow her due to save his skin (Lk
18.1-8). Luke’s heroes – or rather, anti-heroes, for he has no real heroes – enjoy making a little speech to themselves, often questioning what they should do: so the
Rich Fool (Lk 12.13-21), the Invited Guests (Lk 14.15-24), the Prodigal Son (15.11-
32), the Crafty Steward, The Unjust Judge, the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector (Lk
18.9-14). Other parables show the related, well-known Lukan enjoyment of direct speech, e.g. the Closed Door (Lk 13.23-30), the Great Feast (Lk 14.15-24).
The major difference, however, from Mk and Mt is that the centre of interest of Lk’s parables is no longer descriptive and no longer focussed on the Kingdom. The parables are hortatory rather than descriptive, giving examples of virtuous behaviour in spheres which Lk considers particularly important, such as perseverance in prayer
(the Friend at Midnight, the Unjust Judge), or generosity with possessions (the Good
Samaritan, 10.25-37; the Rich Man and Lazarus, 16.19-31), or repentance and forgiveness (the Two Debtors, 7.41-42; the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin and Prodigal Son,
15.1-32).
5. ORIGIN OF THE PARABLES
The parables in each gospel have, then, a different and clearly-marked character,
Mark’s parables one character, Matthew’s another, and Luke’s a third. A question is bound to arise about the origin of the parables. Are these three sets of parables all
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from Jesus? The question arises first about the parables of Mt and Lk. Each set of parables is so characteristic of the two evangelists, both in style and in theological interest that one may wonder whether the evangelist invented them personally. In the case of Lk it is certainly possible to see the origin of a number of them elsewhere in the scripture. Michael Goulder repeatedly insists
7
that Lk never invents but only elaborates existing material. A table may be constructed to suggest an origin of many of Lk’s parables:
Reference Title
6.46-49
7.31-35
7.36-50
The Two Builders
The Playing Children
The Two Debtors
8.4-15
10.25-37
12.13-21
12.35-38
The Sower
The Good Samaritan
The Rich Fool
The Watchful Servants
Origin
Mt 7.24-27=Q
8
Mt 11.16-19=Q
The Unmerciful Servant, Mt 18.21-35
Mk
?2 Chr 28.15
Si 11.18
The 10 Wedding Attendants, Mt 25.1-13
12.39-40
13.6-9
13.18-19
13.20-21
14.7-11
14.15-24
The Burglar
The Barren Fig-Tree
The Mustard-Seed
The Leaven
The Wedding-Guests
The Great Feast
Mt 24.42-44=Q
Mk 11.12-25
Mk
Mt 13.33=Q
Pr 25.6
Mt 22.1-10=Q
15.1-7
15.8-10
15.11-32
18.1-8
19.11-27
20.9-19
The Lost Sheep
The Lost Coin
The Prodigal Son
The Unjust Judge
The Pounds
The Wicked Tenants
Mt 18.10-14=Q
A pair (female/male) to The Lost Sheep
The Two Sons, Mt 21.28-32
Si 35.12
Mt 25.14-30=Q
Mk
For the other Matthean and Lukan parables it is less easy to suggest a source. Are they elaborations of Jesus’ teaching made by the evangelists themselves, stories invented to illustrate the points? Matthew himself says at the end of his parable-chapter that the scribe in the Kingdom of Heaven ‘is like a householder who brings out from his storeroom new things as well as old’ (Mt 13.52). As a first conclusion, therefore, it might be suggested that Mt and Lk have both elaborated Mk’s parables in their own strikingly individual ways, and that the parables of Jesus are to be found only in Mk, which are both homogeneous and strikingly different from those of Mt and Lk. But then a second question arises, whether this homogeneity is to be attributed to Jesus rather than to Mk’s own inventiveness. If Mt and Lk both illustrated Jesus’ teaching by their own parables, drawn from other sources than Jesus’ teaching, did Mk do the same? No incontrovertible answer is possible, but Mk’s homogeneous story-parables drawn from the imagery of agricultural life in the Galilaean countryside fit what we know of Jesus the best of all three evangelists.
7 Luke – A New Paradigm (Sheffield Academic Press, 1991?), passim .
8 If Q existed; otherwise all parables so marked are derived directly from Mt.
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Exercises
1.
Find and list the meshalim in the teaching of Jesus in Mk 10.
2.
Construct imaginatively a context in which Jesus might have replied to the disciples with the parable of the Mustard-Seed (4.31-32) or the Light (4.21).
3.
Construct imaginatively a context in which members of Mk’s community might have told Jesus’ mashal of the Unshrunken Cloth (2.21).
4.
Can you construct a different context in the life of Jesus for the mashal of the
Sewer (7.18-19) which has nothing to do with food?
5.
Do you think that the parables of Mt stem from Jesus or not? Give reasons for your decision!
6.
Ditto Lk.
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1. DOES MARK PRESENT JESUS AS GOD?
The understanding of the full dignity of Jesus took time. Starting from the strong
Jewish appreciation of the unrivalled monotheism of Yahweh, it would seem absurd or meaningless to call any human being ‘God’. A meaning and a context must be given to such a claim, Indeed, the meaning and implications of such a statement still provoke disagreements among theologians. In fact Jesus is called ‘God’ only three times in the New Testament, Jn 1.1; 20.28 and Hebrews 1.8, with the possible addition of Romans 9.5. Although he probably never calls Jesus ‘God’, Paul makes about Jesus statements which can be made only about God, without explicitly drawing conclusions. In the same way, a reader of Jn 5.19-30 may well conclude that the evangelist is struggling to express the dynamic equality of Father and Son, just as ‘the
Jews’ formed the same conclusion from Jn 8.58 and wanted to stone Jesus. It is, therefore, from the way Jesus is treated, from reactions to him by those who witnessed him, as much as from his own or the evangelist’s explicit claims that the person and status of Jesus must be discovered.
We have already seen (p . 5
) that the shape of Mk’s gospel is significant, and particularly that the beginning (1.1, 11) and ending (14.61; 15.39) provide the clue to the identity of Jesus as ‘son of God’. In the introduction the witness of scripture already shows that Jesus is a wonderful, eschatological figure foretold in scripture.
The witness of John the Baptist, clothed in the prophetic garb of Elijah, the prophet expected to usher in the last times ‘before the great and awesome Day of Yahweh comes’ (Ml 3.23), confirms this. The Voice from heaven is, according to a wellattested Jewish convention, the divine authorisation of an authentic teacher, again with the allusion to ‘my son’. In addition, the phrase ‘my favour rests on you’ is an allusion to Is 42.1, attesting that Jesus is the Servant of the Lord. After this portentous beginning the wonder of Jesus grows ever greater. First the disciples respond to the call of this unknown but curiously authoritative person who passes by (1.16-20). Then the worshippers in the synagogue are staggered by his authoritative teaching (1.27).
As impressive as the cures narrated individually are the summary statements of the acclaim which Jesus receives everywhere, and the confidence with which crowds approach him, putting their trust in his power to heal, a trust which is rewarded (1.32-
34). Next a physical healing confirms his power to forgive sins, which only God can do (2.7). Equally striking is the authority with which Jesus interprets the Law, diverging confidently from the interpretations held by the Pharisees, the most respected and influential religious practitioners of the oral Law, in matters of purity
(2.17), fasting (2.18-22) and Sabbath observance (2.27-28; 3.4). Then he commands the elements themselves with seemingly divine power (4.41).
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At various times in the course of Jesus’ activity of bringing the peace and healing of
God to those in need, spirits cry out ‘I know who you are: the Holy One of God’
(1.24) or ‘You are the son of God!’ (3.11), or ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God?’ (5.7). Curiously, the bystanders do not seem to react to these acknowledgements, which suggests that they are more the evangelist’s interpretations of the inarticulate shrieks of acknowledgement of Jesus’ power by those who are being cured than any literally-spoken words.
2. PROPHET OR MESSIAH?
Despite the remarkable obtuseness of the disciples, all this eventually brings Peter to the realisation that Jesus is the Messiah (8.29). This is in fact a curious title for Peter to use as the outcome of what he has seen. Might not the title ‘Holy One of God’, blurted out by the evil spirits, be more appropriate as a reaction to Jesus’ activity?
This would certainly have been nearer to the Isaian image suggested by Jesus in Mt
11.2-6. The context of the discussion at this point is prophetic, for the other identifications suggested for Jesus are prophets: ‘And they told him, “John the
Baptist, others Elijah, others again, one of the prophets”’ (8.28). John the Baptist was revered as a prophet: ‘everyone held that John had been a real prophet’ (11.32). Elijah was the prophet expected for the end-time (Ml 3.23), and Jeremiah (whom Mt 16.14 throws in for good measure) similarly; he had already appeared once in time of national need (2 Mc 15.13-18).
In accordance with the promise to Moses (Dt 18.15-
18) of a successor like himself, the Qumran literature looked forward to the arrival of a final prophet (1 QS 9.11), echoing the expectation of the late biblical tradition expressed in 1 Mc 4.46; 14.40, ‘pending the advent of a genuine prophet’. Jesus’ authority and teaching had been prophetic enough. Already in Mk the Feeding of the
Five Thousand is carefully and deliberately represented as a repetiton of the miraculous feeding by Elisha in 2 K 4.42-44. Later tradition, especially in Lk, will focus on the prophetic quality of Jesus’ activity (Lk 4.24; 7.16; 13.33; 24.19). By contrast the title ‘Messiah’ comes right out of the blue.
It is striking that Jesus himself never uses the title of himself. On the contrary, on this occasion Jesus immediately binds Peter to silence (8.30). On another occasion Jesus actually seems to suggest that there are difficulties about the concept: ‘How can the scribes maintain that the Christ is the son of David?’ (12.35). The difficulty he outlines is that the Christ is too exalted to be son of David. On a third occasion, before the High Priest, Jesus does accept the title, but immediately substitutes for it the expression ‘son of man’ (14.61-62). We are left with the impression that it is not a role which Jesus favours for himself. How can this be?
‘Messiah’ properly means ‘Anointed’, and is used biblically of the anointed king of the line of David, or of an anointed priest – the only two anointings which occur in
Judaism. Psalm 109 (110), using the ancient imagery of the priest-king of Jebusite
Jerusalem, combines the two. At the time of Jesus the coming of the Messiah was vividly awaited, as is shown by the Psalms of Solomon 17.
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Raise up unto them their king, the son of David,...that he may shatter unrighteous rulers and purge
Jerusalem from nations that trample her down. ...And he shall gather together a holy people whom he shall lead in righteousness. ...He shall judge nations in the wisdom of his righteousness, and he shall have the heathen nations to serve him under his yoke. ...The Lord himself is his king, the hope of him that is mighty through his hope in God.
At Qumran a warlike figure, the ‘Prince of the Congregation’, the ‘Branch of David’ or the ‘Messiah of Israel’ occurs frequently; he would lead his people to victory against the sons of darkness. There is, however, also a ‘Messiah of Aaron’. As a priestly figure, this personality takes precedence over the Messiah of Israel in the assembly and at the messianic banquet (1 QSa II.20ff, Vermes, p. 102).
One can only speculate about the reason for Jesus’ caution with regard to this title.
Josephus (who is, of course, in any case highly politically-minded) leaves no doubt that ‘Messiah’ is a title favoured by political insurgents attempting to shake off the
Roman yoke, and he describes several of their attempts to do so ( Antiquities , 17.6). It was particularly a title favoured by personalities arising in the generations after Jesus, as Mk 13.21-22 makes clear. It may have been the political, anti-Roman connotations of the title which guided Jesus away from it. The concept of a suffering Messiah was always difficult to grasp, if not downright inconceivable, in Judaism. Perhaps also the kingly connotations ruled it out for Jesus, perhaps too much an establishment-figure, perhaps a possible rival to the divine kingship. Jesus was, after all, intent on establishing the Kingdom of his Father:
Blessed is he who is coming in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of David our father! (Mk 11.9)
The acclamations have no suggestion of Jesus as king-messiah. Acts 11.26 tells us that it was first at Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’. It was perhaps at this stage that such nomenclature entered the vocabulary of those who
‘called on the name of Jesus’. It is worth bearing in mind that in a different country
(Antioch was in Syria) and in a different language (Greek, instead of Hebrew or
Aramaic) ‘Christ’ would have quite different resonances from ‘Messiah’: it would not suggest political revolution or attempts to expel the Romans.
It is, therefore, even tempting to ask whether the formula used by Peter in this climactic Markan confession may not be expressed in Markan rather than Petrine words. This confession by Peter is, as we have seen, a watershed in Mk’s contruction of the gospel, and may well be couched in his own terms. ‘Christ’ comes elsewhere in
Mk only in a missionary context, at 9.41, as an expansion of a saying of Jesus. When
Jesus has said, ‘No one who works a miracle in my name could soon afterwards speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us’, the text continues, ‘If anyone gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, then in truth I tell you, he will most certainly not lose his reward’. The transition from ‘me’ to the impersonal
‘Christ’ is striking, and the same saying occurs at the conclusion of Mt’s missionary discourse, the instructions for the missionary activity of the disciples (Mt 10.42).
Apart from this it occurs only as part of the mockery of Jesus on the cross, Mk 15.32.
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3. SON OF MAN?
It is important, therefore, to distinguish a name given to Jesus from a name used by him. The favourite way in which Jesus refers to himself is ‘son of man’. The expression occurs 14 times in Mk, and always on Jesus’ lips. It was, therefore, felt to be a turn of phrase peculiar to Jesus. The situation is, however, complicated here by the allusiveness of the phrase.
In itself the expression ‘son of’ would be expected to mean a member of a group, as
‘the sons of the prophets’ form a prophetic group, not necessarily fathered by prophets in the literal sense, but part of their company, loyal and obedient to them (2 K 2.3). In the same way a ‘son of man’ denotes a (male) member of the human race, with the focus not so much on his paternity as on his present condition. So the prophet Ezekiel is addressed frequently in the words of the message which he receives, ‘Son of man, get to your feet; I will speak to you’ (Ezk 2.1, 3; 3.1, 4, etc). The focus is not on his paternity, but on his condition as passive recipient of the divine revelation.
This usage leads on an Aramaic usage amply attested in rabbinic stories about secondcentury rabbis (though it must be admitted that influential scholars have dismissed this evidence because the stories were written down considerably later, and the usage is therefore claimed to be a later one), in which ‘son of man’ is used as a selfdeprecating and generalising self-reference, rather like the English use of ‘one’, the
French of ‘ on ’ as in ‘ on trouve ’, the German ‘ man ’as in ‘ man findet …’. That is, it is a circumlocution used to soften a claim made by the speaker which might otherwise seems boastful, brash or shocking: ‘one soon gets bored of flying one’s own plane’;
‘the constant company of royalty makes one appreciate fish ’n’ chips’; ‘one easily gets over a quadruple heart-bypass operation’.
A couple of illustrations of this usage are necessary, one a story about Judah the
Prince, another about Simeon ben Yohai, both second-century rabbis:
It is related that Rabbi (Judah the Prince) was buried wrapped in a single sheet, for he said, ‘It is not as the son of man goes that he will come again.’
Rabbi Simeon hid from the romans for thirteen years after the Second Jewish Revolt
(AD132-135), at the end of which he decided to come out of hiding:
He sat down at the entrance to the cave. There he saw a fowler trying to catch birds by spreading the net. He heard a voice saying, ‘Let go,’ and the bird escaped. He then said ‘Not even a bird perishes without the will of heaven. How much less the son of man’
(G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, p. 165, 167 adapted)
In such statements it is sometimes difficult to discern whether the claim really is a generalisation or whether it is peculiar to the speaker. Logically there is a distinction between the sense and the reference. In the saying of R. Simeon the sense is a generalised comparison of sparrows and human beings, but the reference is clearly to
R. Simeon himself. This is exactly the situation of two sayings of Jesus when he asserts his own extraordinary authority:
The son of man has authority to forgive sins on earth (Mk 2.10)
The son of man is master even of the Sabbath (2.28)
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In the second case, especially, it could seem that the claim is simply a repetition of the previous statement, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’.
The majority of cases in Mk concern the Passion, where Jesus is warning the disciples of his coming suffering. Chief among these are the three great formal prophecies of the Passion, whose wording and detailed prediction may be a subsequent clarification
(8.31; 9.31; 10.33). Others are related to these (9.9, 12; 14.21, 41), though there is also one highly significant isolated saying, ‘The son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (10.45). Mk therefore clearly reflects the memory that Jesus spoke of his future suffering in terms of the ‘son of man’.
There remains an important group of sayings where the expression ‘son of man’ has clear reference to the exalted son of man in the prophecy of Daniel. Controversy continues among scholars over whether these sayings are genuine sayings of Jesus or whether they are subsequent formulations by the early community. This unresolved question makes a vastly significant difference, for if they are authentic sayings of
Jesus, this allusion must colour all the other uses of the expression, showing that Jesus understood himself specifically as the Danielic son of man. We may approach the subject in three stages:
1.
The Son of man in Daniel 7.
The Son of man is here a triumphant figure, representing the people of Israel (Dn 7.27), emerging triumphant from persecution by the four great beasts, that is, the four great empires of the
Orient which have oppressed Israel. The Son of man, a human being, so vastly superior to the rapacious, mindless beasts representing the four empires, comes to the One of Great Age (clearly the Lord God) and receives all power on earth (7.13-14).
2.
The Controversy.
In the apocalyptic literature of the first-century AD this figure of the Son of man, with clear reference to Daniel, occurs plentifully in
The Similitudes of Henoch , part of the First Book of Henoch . The First Book of
Henoch is a composite text, some of it dating from the second century BC, some of it later. It seems impossible to establish when The Similitudes were written and inserted, but one significant factor is that no fragments of this part of Henoch occur among the many fragments of Henoch found at Qumran
(which must be early first-century, since the settlement at Qumran was destroyed in 66AD). Is this mere chance, or is it because the work was not yet part of Henoch ? If the Danielic reference of the expression ‘Son of man’ was already firmly established in Jesus’ lifetime, his use of the expression would mean that he saw himself as this Son of man. If it was not yet in existence, however, the mere use of the expression – used also by others – is insufficient to establish this exalted claim.
3.
The three sayings.
All three sayings are, for one reason or another, suspect of being later compositions by the community or by Mk, rather than authentic sayings of Jesus. If this is the case, they could have been composed with the later, more exalted usage of ‘Son of man’ in mind, and reflect not the mind of
Jesus on this concept, but the later theology. In any case they are important for
Mk’s view of Jesus. The sayings to be discussed are:
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8.38 For if anyone in this sinful and adulterous generation is ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
This is an eschatological saying, reflecting the emphasis on the Second Coming which we have seen is characteristic of the time of the Church after Jesus, rather than of Jesus’ own immediate message. Jesus is not sufficiently self-regarding to speak of his coming in the glory of his Father, and nowhere in his message does he ascribe angels to himself.
13.26 And then they will see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
And then he will send the angels to gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the world to the ends of the sky.
The same holds for this saying (which includes a direct quotation from Dn 7.13).
In addition it is part of the eschatological discourse of Mk 13, which, though it contains sayings of Jesus, in its present form is a single lengthy speech quite unlike the succinct and pithy teachings of Jesus elsewhere recorded (see p. 46).
14.62 You will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven .
This part of the trial scene is not a historical report, but rather a Markan composition (see p. 57). The italicised words are a mixed quotation of Dn 7.13 and Ps 110 (109).1, the psalm most widely used in the New Testament to express and explain the heavenly exaltation of Christ.
None of these sayings, then, reflect the authentic speech of Jesus. They are, however, of vital importance for Mk’s view of Jesus. For Mk Jesus is the Danielic Son of man, the glorious figure representing the whole People of God, and emerging from suffering and persecution to be granted power over the whole world. According to one tradition of the text of Dn 7.13, the Son of man is greater still: by the change of one letter the text reads not ‘He came to the One most venerable’, but ‘He came like the
One most venerable’ (in Greek not e`wj heos but w`j hos ), which would suggest even a divine exaltation, like the One seated on the throne.
4. SON OF GOD
For Mk’s own view of Jesus the key title is definitely ‘Son of God’, although this is evident from Mk’s own composition and Mk’s own stress, rather than from the historical account. Before embarking on an examination of its use in Mk it is important to see what this title means in the Bible. It should not be confused with the
Johannine use, where the relationship of Son and Father is one of the ways in which
Jn shows the parity of Father and Son. In Jn the clue is given by ‘The Word was made flesh, and we saw his glory’, where the ‘Word of God’ and ‘glory’ are already divine terms.
(a) Before the Gospels
In the Bible the term ‘son of God’ is used quite widely to denote a bond of affection, nurture, and loving service. This is most movingly declared in Ho 11.1-4, where Israel is described as God’s son:
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When Israel was a child I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt,
I myself taught Ephraim to walk, I myself took them by the arm,
But they did not know that I was the one caring for them,
That I was leading them with human ties, with the leading-strings of love,
That, with them, I was like someone lifting an infant to his cheek
And that I bent down to feed them (Ho 11.1-4, cf. Dt 7.6; Ps 29.1).
Similarly the angels are called ‘sons of God’, the heavenly court, as they gather round the throne of God (Satan included) to serve God and do the divine bidding:
On day, when the sons of God came to attend on Yahweh, among them came Satan. So
Yahweh said to Satan… (Job 1.6)
And so the drama of Job begins (cf. Job 2.1; Dt 32.8). Repeatedly the Davidic king is called ‘God’s son’, after the promise of the prophet Nathan to David has guaranteed that
I shall appoint your heir, your own son, to succeed you..I shall make his royal throne secure for ever. I shall be a father to him and he a son to me (2 Sm 7.12-13).
Finally this promise is broadened to include all the faithful of Israel. In the mockery of the Upright, ‘the godless’ taunt the Upright (in words made their own by the mockers of Jesus on the Cross, in Mt 27.43)
He proclaims the final end of the upright as blessed,
And boasts of having God for his father,.
Let us see if what he says is true,
And test him to see what sort of end he will have,
For if the upright man is God’s son, God will help him
And rescue him from the clutches of his enemies (Ws 2.16-18; cf. 5.5)
These last two are echoed in the Scrolls of Qumran: The text of 2 Sm 7 is quoted and applied to the Messiah as follows:
He is the Branch of David who shall arise with the Interpreter of the Law in
Zion at the end of time. As it is written, I will raise up the tent of David that is fallen. That is to say, the fallen tent of David is he who shall arise to save
Israel.
And Ps 2, ‘Why do the nations rise up against the Lord and his anointed?’ is applied, not, as the previous text, to the royal son of God, the royal Messiah who is to come, but to the Elect of Israel (4 Q 174, Vermes, p. 294), that is, the just have taken the place of the king as son of God.
To sum up, the title ‘Son of God’ can, of course, never mean physically son of God in the sense of procreation, for God is not physical and is incapable of procreation.
Rather it expresses a special mutual closeness, harmony, devotion, attachment, understanding - the irreplaceable ideal relationship which the perfect father and son feel for each other.
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(b) In Mark
As we have seen (p. 6
), the title ‘Son of God’ brackets the gospel, marking the beginning in Mk 1.1 and again in 1.11, the climax of the Introduction, and again in the mouth of the centurion (15.39) at the end (see p. 62). By the bracket at beginning and end we are shown the content and message of the whole gospel. This is done supremely fittingly, for at the beginning the Voice from heaven authorizes Jesus for his mission, and at the end the centurion unwittingly recognises in the death of Jesus that he has shown himself the perfect son by totally fulfilling his Father’s will in the most testing conceivable circumstances. At the Baptism, however, the Voice is addressed to Jesus alone (‘
You are my beloved son, in you
…’). As the second half begins, after Peter’s declaration, the Transfiguration gives a new impetus with the public declaration, ‘ This is my beloved son. Listen to him!’ (9.7).
On two other occasions (p. 42), the demons which Jesus expels acclaim him with the title ‘son of God’. The extraordinary thing about these acclamations is that they seem to make no difference to the bystanders, and not to advance the understanding even of the disciples. This makes it hard to believe that the actual words were spoken, and makes the conclusion attractive that Mk is putting into words for the reader an inarticulate shriek – as though the demon has all the breath knocked out of it by the encounter with the power of Jesus, or as an athlete releasing all his pent-up power in a throwing-event.
Two further occasions have been endlessly debated. In the parable of the Wicked
Vine-Dressers (12.1-8) it has been endlessly debated whether ‘the son’ is an allegorical element referring to Jesus, or whether, without allegory, the son simply represents the final tireless effort of the Owner to bring the tenants to pay their due.
Some hold that Jesus did not use – or even could not have used – allegory. However, even if Jesus did not speak this as an allegory, ‘the son’ may still refer to Jesus in
Mk’s writing. Similarly 13.32, ‘As for the day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, no one but the Father’. The authenticity of this Jesussaying has been hotly debated. On the one hand there is the dubious authenticity of the whole chapter (see p. 46), and the strongly Johannine ‘feel’ of the expression of the relationship of Father and Son, unique in Mk. Furthermore, it is held that the saying reflects an awareness, which would be unique for Jesus, of the delay of the
Second Coming, which begins to be voiced by Paul in 1 Thes 5.1, and remains a constant conern in the New Testament thereafter. On the other hand it is difficult to claim that the early Church would have invented a saying which attributes ignorance to Jesus. Again, whether these are authentic sayings of Jesus or not, they are certainly evidence for Mk’s view of the importance of the title, ‘son of God’, and of the closeness of the relationship which this expresses.
5. CONCLUSION
1. In a way the climactic moment of the revelation of the personality of Jesus is the scene of the hearing before the High Priest. Here at last Jesus is solemnly challenged to accept the description of Messiah and ‘son of the Blessed One’. It has been described by Hans Conzelmann as ‘a compendium of Markan Christology’. Jesus
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does accept them, but immediately diverts to his own preferred phrase, ‘son of man’:
‘You will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven’ (14.62), a joint allusion to Dn 7.13 (the son of man on the clouds of heaven) and Ps 110.1 (seated at the right hand of God). The combination produces a further factor: the combination of ‘seated’ and ‘coming’ gives the paradox of stationary and mobile at the same time. How can he be at once ‘seated’ and
‘coming’? This builds the assertion into a claim to be sharing the mobile chariotthrone of God, described with such awe and splendour in Ezk 1, and a centre of awed devotion also at Qumran, where the chariot-throne was already an important part of their mystical theology:
The cherubim bless the image of the throne-chariot above the firmament, and they praise the majesty of the luminous firmament beneath his seat of glory. Then the wheels advance, angels of holiness come and go. From between his glorious wheels there is, as it were, a fiery vision of most holy spirits. Above them the appearance of rivulets of fire in the likeness of gleaming brass, and a work of radiance in many-coloured glory, marvellous pigments, clearly mingled.
The spirits of the living gods move perpetually with the glory of the marvellous chariot. The whispered voice of blessing accompanies the roar of their advance, and they praise the Holy
One on their way of return (4 Q 405.20-22, Vermes, p. 46).
The high priest’s protest of blasphemy at Jesus’ horrendous claim to share the chariotthrone of God is no dramatic exaggeration. This claim expresses the fullness of what
Mk sees Jesus to be. It is uncannily echoed in the final triumph of the Book of
Revelation, when in the new Jerusalem the Lamb shares the throne of God, and ‘his servants worship him’ (Rv 22.3 – ‘his’, ‘him’ being God and the Lamb in one). Mk does not call Jesus ‘God’, but these claims are tantamount to such a description.
2. A climax should, however, be at the end, and it is certainly arguable that the climax is in fact at the end of Mk 9 . This is a surprisingly open-ended scene, concluding with the tense ‘for they were afraid’. There is no apologetic angle, for the women make no attempt to check that the Tomb is empty. They entirely take the angel’s word for it.
All the accent is on two factors, the message of the angel and the reaction of the women. The message of the angel is that the story is not ended, but is to continue in
Galilee – with no hint of what will come next, no limit of the potential. The reaction of the women is instinct with fear, fright, amazement, terror. Four different words are used, and are left vibrating. Why such terror? Because belief in the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time was widespread and accepted in Judaism
(except among the Sadducees). A single resurrection, however, was unheard of. The reaction of the women is a properly eschatological terror that the end of the world, the
Day of the Lord expected by the prophets, is upon them, and with it the general resurrection. The only reaction is to get away from the place, to flee from the terrifying Day of the Lord as one might flee from a tsunami.
9 The final scene of Mk is Mk 16.1-8. The subsequent verses 9-20, though part of the canonical gospel, are not part of Mk’s work. They are of a totally different vocabulary to Mk’s writing and a totally different style to his succinct little story-incidents. They are palpably a resumé of passages from the other gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Scholars have held that there once was an authentic longer ending of Mk which somehow got lost. It seems much more probable that the present ending(s) came to be added because, once the other gospels had accounts of meetings with the Risen Lord, it was felt that a gospel was incomplete without some such accounts. The typically Markan ending at 16.8
(delayed explanation with ‘for’, see p. 8) makes, however, perfect sense.
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In other words, God has intervened to vindicate Jesus. The incident is the dramatic expression of the ancient Christian confession incorporated by Paul into the opening of the Letter to the Romans, ‘designated Son of God in power by the Spirit of holiness at the Resurrection from the dead’ (Rm 1.4). This is the meaning of the presentation of the Day of the Lord and of the absence of Jesus from the tomb.
Assignment Two or Personal Study
1.
Familiarize yourself with the Old Testament background to the principal titles of Jesus: Christ, Son of man, Son of God. Look up and evaluate the passages given above. Read the entries in McKenzie’s Dictionary of the Bible , use the index of Raymond Brown’s
Introduction to the New Testament . Work through the New Jerusalem Bible notes Is 7.14
f
; 11.6
e
; Mk 1.34
m
.
2.
Write a 1,500-word essay: Although Mark does not call Jesus ‘God’ does he in fact present Jesus as a divine figure, or is it sufficient to say that he shows God at work in Jesus?
Examine the question from the point of view of the story told by Mk as well as from the point of view of the principal titles used of Jesus in Mk, Christ, son of man, son of God. Present your own arguments (hopefully livened by your reading), not the views of scholars, and substantiate them carefully with textual references.
3. Which of the titles is most important to you personally? Why?
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No study of Mk would begin to be complete without a consideration of Mk 13, and this for several reasons. Firstly, it employs the important contemporary genre of apocalyptic writing, which otherwise appears in the gospels only momentarily.
Secondly, this chapter is unique in Mk, in that it is one continuous discourse carefully composed and woven together, quite unlike the short, pithy incidents which are otherwise related. Thirdly, it is the one outlook on the future which clearly looks towards the future of the community. It is therefore of central importance for understanding the view put forward by Mk for the future mission of the Church.
1. APOCALYPTIC WRITING
In the final centuries before Christ a Day of the Lord was awaited when the Lord would set everything to rights by punishing the guilty and rewarding the faithful. This is first mentioned in Amos 5.18-20, where it is a Day when the rich will be punished for their oppression of the poor. Already in Amos 8.9-10 it is described in lurid terms of cosmic upheaval, the sun going down at noon and the earth plunged into darkness.
Such writing comes to be called ‘apocalyptic’, that is, ‘revelatory’; it reveals the future, but always uses certain conventions. Starting from the basis of Amos, its terms become more and more dramatic, especially in the latest chapters of Isaiah:
A cracking, the earth cracks open,
A jolting, the earth gives a jolt,
A lurching, the earth lurches backwards and forwards.
The earth will rell to and fro like a drunkard,
It will be shaken like a shanty, so heavy will be its sin on it.
(Isaiah 24.19-20, cf. Zephaniah 1.14-18; Zechariah 14)
Such writing reaches its fullest biblical development in the Book of Daniel, where it has a number of features which are regularly present. These may be illustrated from the vision of Dn 7:
1.
It is pseudonymous (that is, attributed to an authoritative writer who is not the real author). Pseudonymity was a frequent phenomenon at this time: the biblical Books of Wisdom and Ecclesiastes are both pseudonymously attributed to Solomon; the Books of Henoch are attributed to Henoch of Gn
5.24. The Book of Daniel is attributed to a Daniel who was active in the
Babylonian Exile. The stories of Dn 1-6 are a mish-mash of various perods and kings of Babylon, and Daniel himself is modelled on an ancient sage named Danel, mentioned in Ezk 14.14.
2.
It is conveyed by dreams (Dn 7.1), decoded by a heavenly interpreter (7.16).
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3.
It is full of bizarre imagery (7.6-7), and especially of symbolic numbers (7.7).
4.
There is easy access between earth and heaven in both directions (7.13).
5.
The message is divine vindication, the release of God’s People from pressing persecution (the four beasts stand for the empires which have oppressed
Judaism, and the ‘son of man’, 7.13, 27, stands for the people of Israel who will eventually be vindicated from the oppression of Antiochus Epiphanes, who attempted to suppress Judaism in 167BC).
Such writing became extremely widespread in first century Judaism, as the people yearned more and more longingly for release from the Roman domination. Extrabiblical examples are the Book of Henoch, the Qumran Testament of Amram (4 Q
Amram, Vermes p.262-3), Second Esdras, etc. In the New Testament traces of the same style of writing occur, for example, in Paul’s description of the last trumpet and
Christ’s triumphal procession (1 Thess 4.16-17), Paul’s rapture into the third heaven
(2 Cor 12.2-4), the earthquake and the entry of the dead into the Holy City at the death of Jesus (Mt 26.51-53), and of course at length in the Book of Revelation. Not all the five features mentioned above are necessarily present in shorter episodes, but in the climax of Mk 13.24-26 the last three are most clearly seen, bizarre cosmic imagery, transition between earth and heaven, and the promise of vindication after persecution.
2. THE STRUCTURE OF MK 13
The careful structure of the discourse, given on the following page, must be carefully analysed:

After the introduction, each of the three sections is ruled by a biblical quotation, from Daniel in vv. 14, 26, from Isaiah in v. 30.

The first and third sections are each in the form of a chiasmus, that is, each is symmetrically shaped, with the climax in the centre. Thus vv. 5-6 balance vv.
21-22 (false prophets); v. 7 balances v. 14 (‘when you hear’, ‘when you see’) and the climax is the persecution of vv. 9-13. Similarly vv. 28-29 balance vv.
33-34 (parables); v. 30 balances v. 32 (solemn prophecy), and the climax is the certainty of v. 31.
 The whole is wrapped by ‘Be on your guard’ in vv. 5 and 33, repeated in vv. 9 and 23. The conclusion is wrapped by the insistent ‘Stay awake’, vv. 35 and
37, linked to vv. 33 and 34.
 The language is unlike the rest of Mk. Predictions and imperatives are rare in
Mk, whereas here they are constant. Count the number of occurrences of ‘will’ and of commands! By contrast, the tedious ‘And’, at the beginning of almost every verse in Mk (35 times in the 45 verses of Mk 1), has almost disappeared
(10 times in vv. 5-37). The question has been raised whether Mk wrote this chapter. It has been suggested that Mk built upon a previous document and made it his own.
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Introduction
1 As he was leaving the Temple one of his disciples said to him, `Master, look at the size of those stones! Look at the size of those buildings!' 2 And Jesus said to him, `You see these great buildings? Not a single stone will be left on another; everything will be pulled down.' 3 And while he was sitting on the
Mount of Olives, facing the Temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew questioned him when they were by themselves, 4 `Tell us, when is this going to happen, and what sign will there be that it is all about to take place?'
The beginning of sorrows
5 Then Jesus began to tell them, `Be on your guard that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come using my name and saying, "I am he," and they will deceive many.
7 When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this is something that must happen, but the end will not be yet. 8 For nation will fight against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is the beginning of the birth-pangs.
9 `Be on your guard: you will be handed over to sanhedrins; you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as evidence to them, 10 since the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. 11 `And when you are taken to be handed over, do not worry beforehand about what to say; no, say whatever is given to you when the time comes, because it is not you who will be speaking; it is the Holy Spirit. 12 Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will come forward against their parents and have them put to death. 13 You will be universally hated on account of my name; but anyone who stands firm to the end will be saved.
14 `When you see the appalling abomination set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judaea must escape to the mountains; 15 if a man is on the housetop, he must not come down or go inside to collect anything from his house; 16 if a man is in the fields, he must not turn back to fetch his cloak. 17 Alas for those with child, or with babies at the breast, when those days come! 18 Pray that this may not be in winter. 19 For in those days there will be great distress, unparalleled since God created the world, and such as will never be again. 20 And if the Lord had not shortened that time, no human being would have survived; but he did shorten the time, for the sake of the elect he chose.
21 `And if anyone says to you then, "Look, here is the Christ" or, "Look, he is there," do not credit it;
22 for false Christs and false prophets will arise and produce signs and portents to deceive the elect, if that were possible. 23 You, therefore, must be on your guard. I have given you warning.
The coming of the Son of man
24 `But in those days, after that time of distress, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, 25 the stars will come falling out of the sky and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26 And then they will see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send the angels to gather his elect, from the ends of the world to the ends of the sky.
The time of this coming
28 `Take the fig tree as a parable: as soon as its twigs grow supple and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 29 So with you when you see these things happening: know that he is near, right at the gates.
30 In truth I tell you, before this generation has passed away all these things will take place.
31 Sky and earth will pass away , but my words will not pass away.
32 `But as for that day or hour, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son; no one but the Father.
33 `Be on your guard, stay awake, because you never know when the time will come.
34 It is like a man travelling abroad: he has gone from his home, and left his servants in charge, each with his own work to do; and he has told the doorkeeper to stay awake.
Conclusion 35 So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow or dawn; 36 if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. 37 And what I am saying to you I say to all: Stay awake!'
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3. MESSAGE: THE PERSECUTION AND RESCUE OF THE DISCIPLES
1.
A farewell-speech to a great man’s followers is a convention of ancient literature.
One of the most famous is Socrates’ farewell-speech before he commits suicide, the Apologia . Biblical examples are the Last Supper Discourses in Jn 14-17 and
Paul’s discourse to the elders of Ephesus (Acts 20.17-35). Such a speech normally warns of perils and dangers to come and assures the followers of help and eventual success. Mk 13 is just such a speech, warning the disciples of persecution and defections to come, and assuring them of eventual release and vindication. It makes use of the conventions of apocalyptic especially in vv. 24-27.
2.
The clue to the interpretation is the ‘ appalling abomination ’ in v. 14. This quotation of Daniel is an allusion (and the apocalyptic genre works by biblical allusions) to the idolatrous altar set up in the Temple by Antiochus Epiphanes during his persecution of Jews in 167BC. Now, however, it refers to the desecration of the Temple by the Romans in AD70. The turmoil of wars and rumours of wars, nation fighting against nation, false Messiahs and false prophets is the upheavals leading up to the Sack of Jerusalem. The formal, prophetic and allusive language is so much a part of the idiom of apocalyptic that it is impossible to tell whether the Sack has already taken place or is simply seen as inevitable. It is, however, seen as the birth-pangs (v.8), and the Sack of Jerusalem as somehow marking a significant stage in the coming of the Kingdom. This indeed it did, for the demise of Jerusalem marked the moment of liberation of Christianity from
Judaism.
3.
The timing of the coming remained a worry and a puzzle. There are three decisive sayings of Jesus in Mark which suggest that the realisation of the kingship of God is not to be long delayed: a. Before the Transfiguration Jesus declares,
There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingship of God come with power (9.1).
This is 'one of the most discussed verses in the whole of Mk's gospel'
10
.
Firstly a distinction must be made between the original meaning in Jesus' mouth and the meaning which the verse takes in Mk. In Mk the striking position surely indicates that Mk is pointing it towards the
Transfiguration itself, and regards the Transfiguration as at least partly fulfilling it. Was this the original sense, or has Mk given the saying a different sense by inserting it in this context? b. At the Last Supper Jesus says,
I shall never drink wine any more until the day I drink the new wine in the kingdom of God (14.25).
This saying is not part of the original tradition of the institution of the eucharist; it has no inherent connection with this event. The saying must be an independent saying garnered by Mk and deliberately placed here.
Mk therefore placed it here with the intention that the reader should see its fulfilment in the immediately-following Passion and Resurrection account. c. Similarly, before the high priest Jesus replies,
You will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven (14.62).
10 Morna Hooker, The Gospel of Mark , p. 211
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Here it is the 'you will see...' that is remarkable. Mk must have considered that in some sense the Coming would happen within their lifetime. This can only have been the Resurrection itself or the events foretold in Mk
13; the similarity of language points to the latter.
The fulfilment of the Kingship must therefore be seen as occurring in stages. There was no one utterly decisive moment. Included must be: (the conception of Jesus, the birth of Jesus – not in Mk), the preparatory message of the Baptist, the proclamation of Jesus, the death-&-resurrection of Jesus, the liberation from Judaism, the final coming of Christ. About the timing of this last Mk 13 gives no indication beyond the urgent and repeated ‘Stay awake’ and the parables of 13.28-34. If Mk was written before the imminent Sack of Jerusalem, the question must be asked whether he foresaw this event as the occasion of the final Coming. This would coincide with
Paul’s pressing expectation of the End in 1 Thess 4.15-5.3 and 1 Cor 7.29-31 and the early Christians prayer Maranatha (1 Cor 16.22).
Exercises
1.
Highlight on the copy of Mk 13 given above (using plenty of different colours) the keywords mentioned in the bullet-points. This will help to show the shape.
2.
Check the features of apocalyptic listed above for Dn 7, then list similar features in ch. 4 of the Book of Revelation.
3.
Find the apocalyptic features used to give the meaning of the death of Jesus in
Mt 27.45-53.
4.
Write a short paragraph for yourself about what Mk 13 tells you about the history of the Church.
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1. ‘A PASSION NARRATIVE WITH EXTENDED INTRODUCTION’
As long ago as 1892 Martin Kähler described Mk as ‘a passion narrative with extended introduction’. The Passion comes as no surprise, but has been prepared for throughout the gospel; it is the summit without which the gospel would make no sense. The expectation of the Passion has been woven into all the preceding narrative. The reader senses and knows right from the beginning that Jesus is the Christ who is destined to suffer and to die. Expectation of the Passion permeates the gospel particularly on three levels.
Firstly, the reader is prepared for the Passion by the frequent allusions or ‘flashforwards’ which occur. The clue to the gospel is given in the Voice from heaven at the baptism. Already in the Voice from heaven there is a hint of the Passion. The words of the Voice, ‘You are my son, the beloved; in you I am well pleased’ already form an allusion to the opening of the Servant Songs in Isaiah 42.1. The Servant of the Lord in
Isaiah is to suffer and be humiliated, achieving vindication and the glory of God only through suffering. If Jesus is being called to be the Servant, then the ‘favour’ of God includes suffering and rejection. Such is the destiny already appointed to Jesus at his baptism.
Next, in the controversies with the Pharisees in 2.1-3.6, a similar hint occurs at crucial points. The controversies are skilfully arranged in a chiasmus
11
, highlighting the
Passion at the two key spots, the centre and the end. In the centre comes the hint, ‘The time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them’ (2.20) 12
. Similarly at the end the outcome of the controversies is a warning of persecution to come: ‘The
Pharisees went out and began at once to plot with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him’ (3.6). The rest of the chapter is devoted to the deepening opposition to Jesus, even from his own family, presented in a typically Markan
‘sandwich’: family – scribes – family (3.13-35). This represents a crescendo of opposition, to which Jesus finally reacts with the Parable of the Sower, a summative comment on his inability to attract a widespread and loyal following: most of the seed goes to waste, and only a small proportion of it produces an increasingly encouraging yield, thirtyfold , sixtyfold , a hundredfold. Very soon, the fate of the Baptist at the hands
11 The first member balances the last, the second balances the penultimate, the third balances the propenultimate, focussing the accent on the central core: a. Cure of a Paralytic – controversy within a healing-story b. Food controversy, ending with a proverb c. Double-saying about fasting
*The Bridegroom taken away c’ Double-saying about novelty b’ Food controversy, ending with proverb a’ Cure of the Withered Hand – controversy within a healing-story
12 see p. 12 .
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of Herod will itself be warning enough for those who have heard the similarity of
Jesus’ preaching to that of John. It is further stressed by the ominous, ‘they came and took his corpse and laid it in a tomb’ (6.29), the same phrase, with the same rough word for ‘corpse/body’ as occurs of Jesus’ burial in 15.45-46.
A second indication of the inevitability of the Passion is provided by the consistent emphasis on the certainty of persecution for the disciples. Mk frequently indicates emphasis by triple repetition, and nowhere in a more pronounced fashion than in the events of the Passion. So the Passion is formally prophesied by Jesus three times. Each of these great formal prophecies of the Passion (8.31; 9.31; 10.32-34) is followed by a misunderstanding by the disciples and a re-iteration by Jesus that sharing his sufferings is a pre-requisite for being a disciple: ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (8.34); ‘if anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all’ (9.35). Finally, to the sons of Zebedee who ask for seats at his right and left Jesus can promise only, ‘The cup that
I shall drink, you shall drink’ (10.39). The company with Jesus, on his right and left, will be the company kept by the two criminals crucified with him, a grim Markan irony! Most strongly of all, the accent of Mk 13 is all on the inevitability of persecution to be undergone by his disciples, from which they will eventually be delivered: ‘You will be handed over to sanhedrins; you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake’ (13.9).
Thirdly, and perhaps most significantly of all, the disciples cannot understand their
Master until they have seen and realised in experience that Jesus can reach his destiny only through the Passion. Immediately after the Transfiguration they are warned that they should ‘tell no one what they had seen until after the Son of man had risen from the dead’ (9.9). It is at the moment of Jesus’ death that the climax occurs. The first human being to acknowledge Jesus as son of God
13
is the centurion at the foot of the cross. This is a clear signal that Jesus’ true quality of divine sonship is revealed only in his suffering and death (see p. 62). No wonder the disciples were forbidden to proclaim the message when they had been able to understand only a preliminary part of it, still needing to be completed by an understanding of the centrality of the Passion to a full comprehension of Jesus’ person and significance.
THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN (10.32-42)
1.The Tradition
The tradition of the Passion forms part of the very primitive piece of tradition which
Paul quotes as learnt by heart in 1 Cor 15.3-5 (see p.4). However, in the Passion
Narrative as we have it in Mk the traits of Mk’s personal style are unmistakable. Most noticeable of all is the triple repetition which is such a feature especially of the
Passion Narrative (triple prophecy of the Passion; three questions to Jesus at the
Jewish investigation; Peter’s three denials; Pilate’s three assertions of Jesus’ innocence; the threefold division of time on Good Friday). Linguistically the passage
13 The Roman centurion of course meant his statement in terms of his own, presumably polytheistic, religious experience and language. But he is saying more than he realises, and the Christian reader understands his words on a quite different level.
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is so full of Markan characteristics at every level that only the sketchiest of oral sources, or rather suggestions, can lie behind Mk’s final composition.
This does not, of course, mean that Mk is composing freely or inventing out of nothing. The Markan account of the Agony is closely related to two other New
Testament texts. There was a tradition in early Christianity about Jesus’ agonized prayer at the prospect of his passion. This tradition took various forms. A similar saying occurs in Jn 12.27-28,
Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. A voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it and will again glorify it’.
The similarities are manifest: distress at the coming Passion, prayer to the Father, mention of the ‘hour’, acceptance of the Father’s will. But the mode is thoroughly
Johannine. Jn portrays the Passion of Jesus not as the moment of Jesus’ humiliation but as the Hour of his exaltation and glorification. Jn’s Jesus is nevertheless fully human, so that his soul is troubled by the approaching trial (12:27a). However, it is the moment of his glorification and that of his Father (12:28), to which he has looked forward (2:4; 7:30; 8:20) and will look forward (13:1; 16:32). Accordingly, he thrusts aside the thought of praying to be delivered from it. The image of the cup of suffering seen in the synoptic accounts of the prayer in the garden will also be present at Jesus’ arrest in the garden (18:11). There again Jesus accepts the cup in an atmosphere of triumph, for it comes at the conclusion of the arrest-scene, where his divinity has shone through by his use of the mysterious divine 'I am he' (18:5, 6, 8) and the awestruck reaction of the arresting-party in falling to the ground.
There are further echoes of the tradition in the Letter to the Hebrews 5.7-8:
During his life on earth he offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and with tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and, winning a hearing by his reverence, he learnt obedience, son though he was, by his sufferings.
The details of this tradition about Jesus’ prayer are almost entirely different from those of the synoptic scene, though again it is centred on the same motifs of prayer in distress and acceptance in obedience to the divine will. It has been judged to have its origin in an early Christian hymn (compare Philippians 2.6-11). This would account for the poetic pleonasms (prayers and supplication, cries and tears – none of these words occurs elsewhere in Hebrews), and the echoes of the prayers of the persecuted just man in the psalms, especially Psalm 116.1-8. In the ‘winning a hearing by his reverence’ there may be also a link to the voice from heaven in Jn 12.28b and perhaps even to the angel in Lk 22.43. It is a valuable testimony to the vigour and variety of early Christian reflection on the Passion.
The integration of Mark’s narrative into the earlier part of the gospel is also strong.
Not only is the same little group of three disciples chosen to be alone with Jesus as at the Transfiguration, but just as at the Transfiguration Peter ‘did not know what to answer’ (9.6), so now – and in the same words (slightly ineptly, since no ‘answer’ was required!) – ‘they did not know what to answer’ (14.40). The understanding of events is also strikingly increased if the story is read in the context of the eschatological discourse of Mk 13. There, as here, the theme of the impending approach of the
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eschatological ‘hour’ of testing and the need to keep awake is heavily underscored.
The moment of testing persecution is described in 13.11 as ‘that hour’, a pregnant phrase recalling the threatening biblical Day of the Lord. The finale of the chapter stresses that no one can tell when it will arrive (13.32), whence the need to keep awake (13.33, 34, 35, 37). This forms the obvious background for the contrast between Jesus, who sees himself confronting the ‘hour’ (14.35), and the disciples whose persistent inability to keep awake is the hallmark of their failure. A final eschatological note is sounded by Jesus’ ‘has drawn near’(14.42), a reminiscence of the same word, expressing the arrival of the eschatological Reign of God at the opening of his ministry, ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near’ (1.15).
2. The Failure of the Disciples
The failure of the disciples, so prominent throughout the gospel, comes to a head in the Passion Narrative. In this scene it is perhaps more central than even Jesus’ prayer.
As possibly with Peter’s denials (see below), the contrast between the intensity of the first prayer of Jesus and the flatness of the other two prayers (in 14.39 Mark is content to say ‘he prayed saying the same word’, and on the third occasion no prayer is given at all) suggests that Mark had sufficient material only for one prayer, and himself spun it out into three for emphasis. On the other hand, Jesus’ triple return to the disciples and his reproaches to them are richly described. One important feature may be that, having spoken in the singular to Peter, he then speaks in the plural to all the disciples (14. 37, 38). Is he speaking just to the group present in the garden, or to all disciples undergoing temptation?
The importance of the theme of the failing disciples is so great in Mark that the evangelist must intend it to bear on some contemporary situation of his own community. In the first stage of the gospel the presentation of the disciples is reasonably positive: the first four are called and respond immediately and without question (1.16-20). They are called to be with Jesus and to go out and proclaim, with power to expel evil spirits (3.13-15). They are the privileged recipients of the mystery of the Kingship (4.11). They are sent out on their mission, which they fulfill (6.12-13) and receive Jesus' congratulations on returning (6.30-31). Yet even at this early stage all is not well. In direct contrast to his previous contrast between insiders who understand the mystery and outsiders who do not, Jesus is seen to be disappointed that they do not understand the parable of the Sower and will therefore be incapable of understanding the parables (4.13). In the storm on the lake there is a sharp exchange, the disciples treating Jesus to sarcasm and Jesus replying with the accusation of cowardice (4.38-40). At the first multiplication of loaves they fail to appreciate Jesus' power to solve the difficulty, and douse him with sarcasm, 'Are we supposed to go off and buy...?' (6.37) Their failure to understand about the multiplication of loaves is pointed by Mk using typically Markan double negatives and double question. After the dispute over the tradition of the elders their lack of comprehension is again underlined by the Markan dual phrase, 'Are even you so lacking in understanding? Do you not realise that...?' (7.18). Finally in the discussion after the second bread-miracle they still totally fail to understand the situation, again eliciting a Markan double question, 'Do you still not realise nor understand?' (8.17)
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After the symbolic healing of the blind man Peter does reach the turning-point of acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ (8.29), but both he and the other disciples fail to understand what this means. So, after each of the three great prophecies of the passion, the disciples show misunderstanding, and need the lesson of their sharing in their Master's suffering to be reinforced. In 8.32 Peter remonstrates with Jesus, is rebuked as 'Satan', and provokes Jesus's teaching to the disciples about self-denial. In
9.32 the second prophecy is immediately followed by the quarrel about precedence, which Jesus corrects with his teaching on the primacy of service. In 10.35 the third prophecy is followed by the ambitious and self-seeking request of James and John, to which Jesus opposes the same teaching on the primacy of service.
Once the passion sequence starts, the situation worsens dramatically. First one of the disciples betrays Jesus, immediately after the highest symbol of friendship, sharing the same dish. Then the inner group of disciples falls asleep in the garden three times.
The bitterness of this occasion is underlined by the special involvement of precisely those three disciples who had been favoured with special revelation at the
Transfiguration (the link is stressed: again in their abashed confusion they 'knew not what to answer'). James and John had also stoutly protested that they could share
Jesus' cup (Mk 10:39). Soon they will abandon him at the arrest and flee, despite their promises (14.31 and 50). The height of irony will be reached in the naked flight of the young man: as at the beginning they forsook all to follow Jesus, now one of them forsakes all to get away! Finally comes Peter’s denial in the high priest’s hall, despite his assertion of fidelity till death (14.31).
3. The Prayer
On the one hand, there is a firm tradition, expressed both here and in Jn 12.27-28 amd
Hebrews 5.7-8, that Jesus struggled in prayer with the prospect of the tortured death that he faced. (How much did he already know? Did he know that Judas had already set the arrest in motion? Did he realise the depths of the hostility of the Temple authorities? Did he know that the Romans were involved?) On the other, there is no reason to suppose that the words which the evangelist gives us were heard or passed down from Jesus himself. The prayer as we have it is built from three elements.
1. The Psalms
From the earliest times Christians attempted to make sense of the stunning events of the Passion by seeing what happened as the fulfilment of scripture. So the earliest tradition, taken up and quoted by Paul, asserts that Christ ‘died for our sins according to the scriptures’ (1 Cor 15.3). In the twenty-first century the view that the rejection of
Jesus was the fulfilment of scripture would be shown with broader brush-strokes. It was the climax of human disobedience and blindness to the divine will, as seen from
Adam onwards, but more especially in the story of Israel’s infidelities down the ages.
Jesus’ own acceptance of his role is the climactic expression in human form of the love of God revealed throughout the scriptures in the loving forgiveness of God for his people. By contrast, in the first century the way the Passion fulfilled the scriptures was shown in factual correspondence of details of the events to individual passages of scripture. This same approach is seen in the many quotations of the Old Testament in the New, where little details are fulfilled in the life of Jesus, e.g. Mt 2.5-6, 15; 1 cor
10.4. It is also typical of the use of scripture in the Scrolls from Qumran. A rough list of the more obvious scriptural allusions would include:
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Zc 13.7 I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.
Am 2.16 Even the bravest of warriors will run away naked
Ps 41.6 I am deeply grieved, even to death.
Ps 35.11 False witnesses come forward against me.
Is 53.7 Like a sheep dumb before its shearers.
Is 50.6 I have not turned my face away from insults and spitting.
Ps 22.18 They divide my garments among them, cast lots for my clothes
Ps 22.7 They jeer at me and wag their heads
Ps 22.1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Ps 38.11 Even the dearest of my friends keep their distance.
Is 53.12 He was numbered among evil-doers
Am 5.18 Darkness at noon
Hence the detail in the Gethsemane narrative, ‘going on a little further’ (14.35) may be a reminiscence of the same phrase in Gn 22.5, intimating that Jesus’ sacrifice is a fulfilment of Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac. Accordingly, the prayers of Jesus during his Passion are shown to be those of the persecuted Just Man in the psalms:
Psalm 41.6 in Mk 14.34; further examples at Mk 15.34; Lk 23.46.
2. The image of the Cup .
This image is used variously in the Bible, sometimes of the cup of divine wrath which the guilty must drink (e.g. Is 51.17; Jr 25.15-16), but also more generally, and frequently in the inter-testamental literature, of the painful cup of death. The usage here should accord with the two earlier uses by Jesus in the gospel, first when he asks the sons of Zebedee whether they are willing to share his cup and to be plunged into the baptism into which he must be plunged (10.38-39). Secondly, it is surely to be understood in continuity with the cup of the new covenant which Jesus shared at the
Supper (14.23-24), indicating Jesus’ continuing awareness of this dimension of his coming Passion.
3. ‘Abba, Father’
For the prayer itself Mark is using or imitating the formulae of early Christian prayer, with the Aramaic Abba immediately followed by its Greek translation (o` path,r). This double formula of a particular Aramaic word, regarded almost as a talisman, occurs elsewhere in the New Testament (1 Cor 16:22; Rev 1:7, maranatha , meaning either
‘Come, Lord!’ or ‘The Lord is coming’). Jesus' consciousness that God was his Father was treasured by the early community (e.g. Ga 4.6), and this usage, stemming from
Jesus himself, but rare in the synoptic gospels, was greatly extended, especially in Jn.
The unadorned use of Abba for God was held by that great scholar Joachim Jeremias to be unique to Jesus. He held that Jesus’ contemporaries would use it only in combination with other, more reverent and distant titles (e.g. ‘O Lord, father and ruler of my life’, Sira 23.1; also now 1 QH 9.35-36). He also held that it is the affectionate child’s way of addressing a father, indicating the warmth and intimacy of that relationship, so ‘Daddy’. However, Fitzmyer’s detailed study of Aramaic of the period
14
shows that only after 200 AD did this become current, and at the time of
14 Fitzmyer rejects as valid evidence for the first century the charming fifth century version of the story about the first century Rabbi Honi: During a drought school children were sent to him to say, ‘Father,
Father, give us rain’, whereupon Honi prayed, ‘Master of the Universe, do it for the sake of these who are unable to distinguish between the father who gives rain and the father who does not.’ However, the novelty of this address by Jesus in prayer to his Father still remains. Fitzmyer concludes, ‘There is no
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Jesus ‘Abba’ was more formal usage, and young children called their father
Abi rather than Abba
. By its use of ‘Abba’ and by the focus on obedient submission to God’s will, Jesus’ prayer recalls the atmosphere of early Christian prayer seen in The Lord’s
Prayer. As elsewhere, Mk uses the triple repetition to emphasize the intensity of Jesus' prayer.
THE ARREST (14.43-52)
Consonant with his consistent emphasis on the failure of the disciples, in Mark all is centred on the betrayal by Judas and the flight of the disciples. This is another instance of Mark’s sandwich-technique for contrast: he frames the account of Jesus’ fidelity with that of the infidelity of his followers.
The scene has been prepared firstly by the introduction to the Last Supper (14.17-21). Mk concentrates not on the identity of the traitor so much as on the depths of treachery shown by one who has shared a meal, ‘he who eats with me’ (Mk 14.18, omitted by Mt). The scene ends, ‘Better for that man if he had never been born’. A second preparation has been given by Mk on the way to Gethsemane, in the form of the scriptural quotation predicting the flight of all the disciples, ‘I shall strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered’ (Zc
13.7), completed by the prophecy of Peter’s desertion and his blustering protestations of loyalty. The Gethsemane scene then ends with the betrayal of Judas and the flight of the disciples, leaving Peter’s desertion still in the future.
Betrayal continues as the accent of Mk’s description. As soon as Judas appears his desertion is underlined by ‘one of the Twelve’, an expression used three times of Judas, and of him alone (14.10, 20, 43). The contrast is marked in the next verse: he betrays Jesus but had shown his solidarity with his captors by working out an ‘agreed sign’ with the armed mob.
The agreed sign was to be a kiss, but Judas does not stop at this. He respectfully calls Jesus
‘Rabbi’ and gives him an affectionate kiss, which expresses especial warmth, often a caress
– and the trap is sprung.
Then follows the first curious episode, one of the bystanders drawing his sword and cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Who are these two, assailant and victim? Mk gives no hint, and nowhere else are the disciples described as ‘the bystanders’. It is odd that any of them should be armed. It is curious that the victim is called ‘ the servant of the high priest’, and it has been suggested that he is the Servant of the high priest in an honoured sense of ‘right-hand man’ or vizir. The removal of his ear would then disqualify him from sacred office, according to Lv 21.18 LXX, and the incident can be read as a reflection on the whole Temple cult. The incident is the more curious, in that it seems without consequence, for Jesus’ next statement disregards it and refers back over it to the unjustified aggressiveness of his captors, when they could have arrested him as he taught in the
Temple.
Finally the fulfilment of scripture links back to the opening bracket in 14.27 as the disciples flee, a flight which culminates in the burlesque of shameful desertion represented by the young man’s naked flight (see p. 54). Pious tradition identifies the young man as Mark, the evidence in the literature of pre-Christian or first-century Palestinian Judaism that ’abba’ was used in any sense as a personal address for God by an individual – and for Jesus to address God as ’abba’ is therefore something new’.
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author of the gospel, perhaps on the grounds that he alone had the humility to mention it, while Mt and Lk wanted to spare his blushes. To add to the confusion, the author of the gospel is then identified with John Mark, at whose family house the early community met
(Acts 12.12). It is only surprising that the sheet (duly initialled) is, as yet, nowhere presented for veneration. On the author of the gospel all the real data is given on p. 11.
BEFORE THE HIGH PRIEST (14.53-72)
The first question to be faced with regard to this gospel scene is its historical intention. Is
Mk relating what he knows to have happened from historical information, or is he deducing what must have happened, relying on a Christian view of the condemnation and death of
Jesus? The former alternative is the traditional Christian position. It is normally undergirded with the assertion that, unlike the Agony and the Arrest, this was an inherently public scene, to which there would have been many witnesses. ‘Mk, as the trusted representative of the
Christian community, could not simply have spun this story from his perspective of faith.
He would never have got away with it. He would have been howled down if he had invented things. Anyway, it bears the stamp of eye-witness detail’. Nevertheless, the position that Mk is relying exclusively on detailed historical information brings with it certain difficulties:
 ‘The stamp of eye-witness detail’ simply means that the story is well told. It has been granted from the outset that Mk is a brilliant story-teller, which was no doubt part of the reason why he was chosen to put down the first written record of the Good News.

The contention that ‘a story not based on historical knowledge, and not corresponding more or less exactly to known facts, could not have survived the criticism of the
Christian community’ presupposes a modern view of historical writing. If both Mk and his audience shared a different perspective on how history should be written, a record of the message of Jesus less mechanically consonant with known facts could well have been the most acceptable. Comparison with other contemporary historical writers shows that it was felt legitimate for historians to use a good deal of latitude, e.g. in the composition of speeches. Josephus often gives considerably different versions of an event in his two works, The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews
. Luke’s three versions of the Vocation of Paul within the same work (the Acts of the Apostles) show significant variations.

Jn contains no record of an appearance before the high priest and the sanhedrin after
Jesus’ arrest. He earlier mentions a meeting of the high priest, Caiaphas, with his advisors at which the decision is taken to do away with Jesus (11.47-53). After Jesus’ arrest there is only an appearance (18.19-24) before Annas, the former high priest, which has some similarities with the Markan account, especially in the details about
Peter’s denials.

The two judicial appearances, before the high priest and before Pilate, are so similar in structure that they appear to have been modelled on each other, or at least composed by the same hand (see p. 59).

Mk and Mt relate what is basically the same event, but the differences in Lk’s account almost suggest that he is narrating a different event. The most striking difference is that the high priest is absent from his story. Mk’s account is so imbued with his own language and narrative techniques that it is hard to see that he could have been relying on any written source. At most, he is putting an orally-received narrative into his own words. Among the narrative techniques may be mentioned are Mk’s technique of
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‘sandwiching’ and his triple repetition. As in the triple repetition during the Agony, he seems to have enough material for one account (14.66-68 give a lively account in his best eye-witness style), while the second and third are somewhat flat. As for language,
Mk’s own Greek text is peremeated with his characteristic style.
Mk’s account has three special centres of interest, the false accusations about the Temple, the Christological declaration and Peter’s triple denial.
1. The threat to destroy the Temple and in three days to rebuild it provides the context for the teaching about the future of Jesus’ community which he gives overlooking the Temple
(13.2), when he says that not one of those magnificent stones will be left upon another. The threat is symbolically fulfilled by Jesus’ demonstration in the Temple itself, which Mk portrays (through framing it by the story of the cursing of the barren fig-tree, 11.12-21) as a declaration of the sterility of Israel (see p. 24). It is picked up by the mockers at the crucifixion (15.29). It was this attitude towards the Temple, put into practice by Jesus symbolically rubbishing the Temple, which led to his arrest. His persistent re-interpretation of the Law on such matters as Sabbath observance (2.23-28; 3.1-6), purity (7.14-23) and divorce (10.1-12) would no doubt have annoyed the Pharisees. But it does not go beyond the bounds of tolerable disagreement between rabbinic schools. In fact the Pharisees disappear from the scene after 12.13 and take no part in the Passion. However, when he upsets the business of the Temple, the Temple authorities take action. Especially at the
Passover, for which Josephus claims one-and-a-half million pilgrims came to Jerusalem, such a disturbance cannot be risked again. It is the Temple authorities, the chief priests, who take the lead in all the action against Jesus.
Why, then, does Mark attribute the pivotal saying about the Temple to false witnesses, when it is attested also by Jn 2.19 as Jesus’ own, and important for understanding the course of events? Most likely it is put in the mouths of false witnesses to show the fulfilment of prophecy. It is a scriptural allusion to the false witnesses standing up against the Just Man, as in the psalms:
False witnesses have risen against me, and are breathing out violence (Ps 27.12). False witnesses come forward against me, asking me questions I cannot answer (Ps 35.11).
Jesus’ lack of response is also a scriptural allusion. His silence echoes that of the Suffering
Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53.7: ‘Ill-treated and afflicted, he never opened his mouth.
Like a lamb led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep dumb before its shearers, he never opened his mouth’. This theme will recur in the trial before Pilate (15.4).
2. The High Priest’s question follows the two unsuccessful charges. It is important that no progress can be made except by Jesus’ own statement. This third question evokes the full declaration of the personality of Jesus, aptly called ‘a compendium of Markan Christology’
(see p. 42). It is Mk’s statement that the real reason for Jesus’ condemnation was the claims he made.
The mockery which concludes the interchange between Jesus and the high priest and his council is a fulfilment of the Song of the Servant in Isaiah 50.6:
I have offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard.
I have not turned my face away from insult and spitting.
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The humiliation of the spitting and mockery is an unpleasantly suitable response to the accusation of arrogance implied by the High Priest’s charge. It is also a typical instance of
Mk’s irony: they mock Jesus for the prophecy which Mk’s readers know to be true. It is made more ironical by occurring just when Jesus’ prophecy about Peter’s betrayal is at the point of fulfilment.
3. Peter’s triple denial brings to a climax the theme of the inadequacy and failure of the disciples which has been such an important element in Mk, heightened by the contrast between Jesus’ steadfastness and Peter’s cowardice. There is also a witty contrast between the sturdy Peter and the servant-girl. The same word is used of the idiotic servant-girl in Ac
12.13 who shuts out Peter after his miraculous release from prison.
JESUS BEFORE PILATE (15.2-20)
1.The Interrogation by Pilate (15.2-5)
Discovery of the historical facts behind the gospel account faces the same challenges as have already become evident in the discussion of earlier incidents. Were any of the disciples present? Hardly! Could they have heard from an eye-witness information which was eventually passed on to the evangelists? Are the very different accounts in the synoptic gospels and in Jn reconcilable? Mk has composed the scene from two elements, a dialogue between Pilate and Jesus, and the Barabbas incident.
The account is indelibly signed with Mk’s own hand. Firstly, it has plenty of Markan verbal traits. Secondly, it has the same structure as the account of the trial before the High Priest.
Verbally there is a marked similarity:
Before the High Priest Before Pilate
14.53 They led Jesus away to… 15.1 They led Jesus away
14.60 Question 15.2 Question
14.60 Surprise at Jesus’ silence to charges 15.4 Surprise at Jesus’ silence to charges
14.61 ‘Are you the Christ?’ 15.2 ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’
14.64 Jesus’ affirmative answer to presider 15.2 Jesus’ affirmative answer to presider
14.61 Further question 15.3 Further question
14.61 Silence of Jesus 15.4 Silence of Jesus
14.65 Mockery by participants and servants 15.16-20 Mockery by soldiers
Furthermore there is the similarity of multiple ineffective accusations, Jesus’ silence (after the manner of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53), and the fact that in each case progress can be made only through Jesus’ own answer. Each process ends inconclusively, without any sentence or verdict. This little scene could not, however, represent any sort of trial; it lacks any sort of legal logic. There is no explanation why Pilate puts his pivotal first question: who has told him that Jesus is accused of being king of the Jews? Why do the chief priests continue with their ineffectual and unspecified accusations? If Mk had not put first the dialogue between Pilate and Jesus over his royalty (15.2), the progression between the chief priests handing Jesus over to Pilate and their accusing him would have been logical enough.
As it is, the only purposes of 15.3-5 are to parallel the previous trial, to show Jesus fulfilling the scriptural silence and to excite Pilate’s wonder at his dignity. In this interrogation scene we are witnessing rather the expression of Mk’s view of Jesus than a record of a trial.
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2. The Barabbas Scene (15.6-15)
The Barabbas incident is also fully Markan. It continues the Markan scheme of triples
(three passion predictions, three returns to the disciples in Gethsemane, three accusations by the High Priest, three mockeries), and shows several other Markan stylistic features. The most obvious feature, however, is also the most Markan, the ironic structure of the whole piece: it is as King of the Jews that Jesus is condemned.
Mk’s readers accept him as King of the Jews, but it is precisely as king that his own people reject him and prefer Barabbas. The accent of the whole scene is to put the burden on the Jews, who are invited by each of Pilate’s questions to implicate themselves further: first, ‘Do you wish that I should release the King of the Jews?’, then the even more sarcastic, ‘Then what shall I do with him whom you call King of the Jews?’, and finally, ‘What evil has he done?’ In each of these cases Pilate is making the crowd reach a decision which is his responsibility and make a judgement which he himself should have made: the governor should decide on the release of a prisoner, the governor should decide on his right to the title, and the governor should assess what evil he has done.
Mk’s manner of painting the scene does not, of course, affect its basic historicity. It was normal practice in Roman provinces that the local administration had no right to condemn a prisoner to death, whereas the governor could exercise summary jurisdiction on a provincial without any formal trial. No festal amnesty of a prisoner is known anywhere in the Roman world, but Judaea was unique as a territory within the empire, and it would have been a fittingly conciliatory gesture on the festival of the liberation of the Jews from slavery in
Egypt. External historical evidence neither supports nor invalidates this amnesty. Primarily, the scene shows Pilate not as a weakling but as a skilled and wily negotiator, who managed to kill two birds with one stone, solving the problem of both Barabbas and Jesus at one blow, and avoiding any nationalistic trouble by persuading the people that it was their own solution.
THE CRUCIFIXION
There are curious instances of Markan duality about the account, two mentions of drink offered (15.23, 36), two mentions of the actual crucifying (15.24, 25), two loud cries (15.34,
37). The first drink offered out of pity and refused by Jesus is a mild narcotic. The second, the rough, peasant, vinegary wine may be a taunt, for in Psalm 69.21 and the Qumran
Scrolls the offer of vinegar to drink is seen as a taunt by enemies:
‘They [the teachers of lies and seers of falsehood] withhold from the thirsty the drink of knowledge and assuage their thirst with vinegar’ (1QH 4.11).
Of the two cries, the first is important as putting on Jesus’ lips the intonation of the Psalm which gives the meaning of the Passion, while the second seems to lack any theological interpretation; it is simply a last cry of pain.
1. The Crucifixion
Remarkable about this description is as much what it does not say as what it does. There is no dwelling on the horrors of this barbaric method of execution. It was too familiar in the
Roman world, and as long as it remained so, realistic representations of the crucifixion were avoided in favour of a bejewelled Cross. Nor does Mark precise about the location of
Golgotha; the associations of the name are more important that the topographical details.
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Only three features are important to Mark. In accordance with his careful principles of chronological organisation and his interest in numbers, he divides the day into periods of three hours, third, sixth, ninth hour and evening. The principal features are two. Fulfilment of scripture has been a continuous interest: the wine mixed with myrrh is mentioned not because of its supposed narcotic qualities but because it fulfills Psalm 69.21b. The division of Jesus’ clothes is mentioned not to draw attention to the shame of nakedness but because it fulfills Psalm 22.18. The criminals crucified on either side of Jesus are mentioned partly because they fulfill Isaiah 53.12.
Markan irony gives these criminals another sense too: Jesus was handed over to be crucified as king of the Jews; these criminals are now his sole supporters. The reader of Mark’s gospel will surely also remember that, after the third solemn prediction of the Passion, the sons of Zebedee asked for a place at his right and his left ‘in his glory’ (10.37), another
Markan reminder of the failure of the disciples to understand.
2. The Mockeries
The two chief mockeries (that of the criminals is a mere tailpiece, to show what sort of supporters they are), focus on the two accusations of the Jewish hearing, the charge of renewing the Temple and of being the Christ. To these is added again the charge, King of the Jews, brought before Pilate. The irony is intensified by the reader’s knowledge both that
Jesus is taunted for what he really is, and that Jesus could come down from the Cross.
Above all, in both cases the mockery centres on the word ‘save’, which the reader knows has been used so often in the stories of Jesus’ ministry.
3. The Death of Jesus
In Mark the actual death of Jesus is recounted neutrally, but its sense is given beforehand by three scriptural links. First comes the darkness at noon. This must fulfil the foreboding threats of the Day of the Lord in Amos 5.20, ‘Will not the Day of Yahweh be darkness not light, totally dark, without a ray of light?’ and more especially Amos 8.9, ‘On that Day, declares the Lord Yahweh, I shall make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight’. This darkness at the sixth hour therefore announces that the Day of the
Lord is occurring, that great and terrible day when the judgement and restoration of Yahweh are to be manifest. From the time of Amos onwards this Day had been a marker of increasing importance in the Bible. First it was awaited with threatening fear as the Day when Israel’s sins, infidelities and desertions would be avenged. Once this had occurred in the disaster of the Sack of Jerusalem and the Exile, it became seen as the day of Restoration, when the Lord would punish Israel’s tormentors and restore Israel to its own land. This was painted in more and more cosmic terms, terminology originally drawn from Israel’s awesome experience of God on Sinai at the covenant, when God, represented in imagery of cloud, thunder, lightning and earthquake, made Israel a chosen people, bound to him for ever. With Israel’s increasing awareness of universalism, that is, of Israel’s mission to bring salvation to all nations, this language came to be expanded to involve astral and cosmic phenomena:
The earth quakes, the skies tremble, the stars lose their brilliance,
Yahweh’s voice rings out at the head of his troops (Joel 2.10).
I shall cover the skies and darken the stars,
I shall cover the sun with clouds and the moon will not give its light.
I shall dim every luminary in heaven because of you (Ezk 32.7-8).
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The other scriptural key given to the death of Jesus is the intonation of Psalm 22, which has featured so widely in the Passion Narrative. It is not a cry of despair, justifying gruesome theologies of Jesus suffering the pains of the damned, of total separation from God, even of God vengefully exacting from his Son the penalties which were due from all humankind. On the lips of the dying Jesus it is the intonation of the psalm, binding together all the other allusions to the psalm. The thrust of Psalm
22 is the achievement of the glory of God and the vindication of the sufferer only after the psalmist has passed through shame, humiliation and torture. It ends in triumph:
The whole wide world will remember and return to Yahweh,
All the families of nations bow down before him.
Those who are dead, their descendants will serve him,
Will proclaim his name to generations still to come. (Ps 22.27-31)
4. The Veil of the Temple and the Centurion
These two commentaries complete the picture of the event. Neither of them is meant strictly historically. It is hard to believe that Christians continued to go to the Temple in the early days of Acts (Ac 2.46) without any comment on the shredded veil. The symbolic meaning is paramount, signifying that the uniqueness of Judaism had come to an end and that the privileges of Judaism are now open to the world. There is a similar story in Josephus ( War
6.293-6):
The eastern gate of the inner court of the Temple, which was of brass and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by 20 men, and rested upon a base armed with iron , and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one single stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night… The men of learning understood that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord and the the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared that this signal foreshowed the desolation that was coming upon them.
The lesson is reinforced by the Centurion’s acknowledgement. The theme of ‘son of God’ has run through the gospel right from the beginning (see p. 42). It is in the heading, ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, son of God’. The same declaration of how Jesus is to be understood is provided by the Voice from heaven at the Baptism (1.11). The unclean spirits cast out by Jesus have acknowledged him as ‘son of God’, but none of the bystanders seem to react to it. Only now does any human being acknowledge Jesus as son of God.
It is vital to Mk that this acknowledgement comes from a gentile. On the lips of a gentile centurion ‘son of god’ would have a lesser import than to a Christian. ‘Son of the gods’ in gentile discourse would signify the special patronage of and participation with the pagan deities. It was used freely of great men and heroes of the past, and by this time was a regular part of the Roman emperor’s title.
15
Further significance comes from the fact that during his ministry Jesus has only once had contact with a gentile. The story of the Syro-Phoenician
(7.24-30) is enough to show that Jesus was open to the entry of gentiles into his company.
The case remains unique, however, until this moment, when a gentile, rather than a Jew, becomes the first human being to acknowledge Jesus as son of God. Especially in conjunction with the splitting of the Temple veil, Mk shows that with the death of Jesus the mission to the gentiles begins. The gentiles will be more open to the message than the original hearers of the Good News.
15 It might be useful to recall that in 1964 the King of Nepal was declared a god on reaching his 18 th birthday. Being at that time a schoolboy at a British public school, the King was then excused from attending chapel, on the grounds that it was inappropriate for one deity to worship another.
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It is now clear why the disciples have been forbidden to spread the message ‘until the son of man had risen from the dead’ (9.9). To be son of God demanded the full obedience to the will of the Father shown in the acceptance of suffering and death. The cry of the centurion shows also that the Father is not wholly divorced from the suffering of the world. In everyday speech we might say, ‘He really is the son of his father’, when we see a son behaving according to well-known behaviour-patterns of his father, or especially when a son determinedly carries out his father’s plans in the face of major difficulties. For Mk the death of Jesus is the climax of the Incarnation, revealing in human form something of the divine. There remains to come only the vindication of Jesus by his Father at the
Resurrection. The thrust and lessons of that passage have been discussed earlier (see p. 43).
Assignment Three or Personal Work
1.
Trace the fulfilments of the scriptural allusions listed on p. 48/49, write in there the passages in Mk’s Passion Narrative which fulfil them.
2.
Mark up in your work-copy of the gospel:
1.
The triples in the Passion Narrative (‘1 – 2 – 3’, each series in a different colour: 3 times of day, 3 questions at the Jewish hearing, 3 denials by Peter,3 questions by Pilate).
2.
The parallels between the two scenes before the High Priest and the
Governor.
3.
Write a 1,500-word essay on either ‘Why was Jesus crucified?’
(Include several answers to this: why did the Jews want him eliminated? Why did the Romans pass sentence of death? Does Mk think either of these is the fundamental historical reason? The answer is NOT ‘because Jesus offered himself for my sins’) or ‘How would you reply to the historical sceptic who said, “I prefer
Paul’s sober but skeletal account in 1 Cor 15.3 to Mk’s imaginative embroideries”?’
4.
Consider carefully the question on which you have not written, and make some notes on it for yourself.
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