Study of Mark Part 3: Healer or Teacher?

³⁵ Then Jesus got up early in the morning when it was still very dark, departed, and went out to a deserted place, and there he spent time in prayer. ³⁶ Simon and his companions searched for him. ³⁷ When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” ³⁸ He replied, “Let us go elsewhere, into the surrounding villages, so that I can preach there too. For that is what I came out here to do.” ³⁹ So he went into all of Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

You have probably heard/seen/read a litany of sermons and studies on the importance of setting aside “quiet time” to be alone with God. Jesus does it here, and his time alone with God seems to be a way of recharging the Spirit in him and resting. So I won’t spend a lot of time talking about what has already been covered extensively. Quiet time = good. Instead, we need to keep this section of text within the construct of the overall narrative. Therefore, looking at what came before, Jesus spent a long, probably exhausting night healing people and driving out demons. He withdraws to recharge alone with God, the ultimate source of his power. Soon afterward Simon and the others find him and tell him that everyone is looking for him. Why are they looking for him? Jesus’ response informs us that it is not to hear him preach. If it were, he would have stayed at Capernaum. Most likely, they are coming to him so that he can spend another day healing and driving out demons. His response then is to leave and go to another town, where he can preach. Although we see Jesus show extreme compassion and heal people’s physical ailments, this is not the purpose or focus of his mission. Mark made this clear, even before Jesus appeared on the scene, but now Jesus himself declares it.

Another way to read these verses is that Jesus has already preached what he needed to preach to this town (in the synagogue and possibly while he was healing), so he wants to move to other places rather than stay where he is. But the text is silent about what, if anything, he did teach/preach. Even at the synagogue, Jesus’ teaching is not recorded, only the crowd’s reaction to him, which is quickly overshadowed by the unclean spirit encounter, so we do not know what was said. And the text says nothing about Jesus teaching anyone at Simon’s house, only that he healed and cast out demons. It seems more likely to me that Jesus was not able to preach what he wanted to preach because people were looking for him to heal. Thus he leaves and travels around for a while. He will return to Capernaum in the next chapter, though, and get his chance to preach to them then. It also might be ironic that Jesus can only find rest after the Sabbath is over.

Here we come across an interesting paradox in Mark. Jesus does not want to be seen as a healer-exorcist and yet he spends so much of the early text in the Gospel doing just that. Jesus starts the first day of his official ministry by teaching in the synagogue, and the authority that his teaching carries amazes people. But with the exorcism in the synagogue, and the subsequent night spent healing and casting out demons, Jesus’ teaching/preaching seems to have been all but forgotten by the crowds. We will continue to see this tension between what Jesus wants to give the crowds and what they want from him, as Jesus will begin blending small teachings and anecdotes into his healings and ultimately transition into more of a preaching/teaching ministry, though still an active one.

Mark even seems to acknowledge this tension a bit because although he records that Jesus taught and preached in the synagogues, nothing of his teaching or preaching is recorded. Aside from his statement declaring the Kingdom of God near, Jesus doesn’t get any significant lines of dialogue in which to teach or preach until the next chapter. While I am probably stretching here, it is almost as though Mark is not recording the specifics of anything Jesus taught because he wants to make the point that no one remembered anything he taught, they were so caught up in his ability to heal and exorcise. He obviously was preaching, though, because Mark makes a point to say that he was doing so in “all of Galilee.”

Study of Mark Part 3: Jesus Redefines Expectations

²⁹ Now as soon as they left the synagogue, they entered Simon and Andrew’s house, with James and John. ³⁰ Simon’s mother-in-law was lying down, sick with a fever, so they spoke to Jesus at once about her. ³¹ He came and raised her up by gently taking her hand. Then the fever left her and she began to serve them. ³² When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were sick and demon-possessed. ³³ The whole town gathered by the door. ³⁴ So he healed many who were sick with various diseases and drove out many demons. But he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

Notice several of the Markan themes that surface again in this episode:

·         Immediacy –  “as soon as they left”; “at once”

·         Authority over demons – “drove out many demons”

·         Commanded Silence (formerly Messianic Secret) – “He would not permit the demons to speak”

Jesus further demonstrates authority, now over sickness, which is treated as something different than demon possession (v.34: he healed many who were sick and drove out many demons). Mark is gradually working towards Jesus’ declaration that he has the authority to forgive sins.

If Jesus and company left the synagogue and immediately went to Simon’s house then Jesus would have healed Simon’s mother-in-law on the Sabbath. This miracle, done in private, makes a significant point because it shows that Jesus’ Sabbath healings were not done simply to poke at the Pharisees and make them mad or to make a theological point in public for the onlookers. Instead, Mark is setting a pattern of compassionate behavior in Jesus; one that starts subtly and then progressively becomes more overt, as Jesus will declare that “the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath” in chapter 2:28. The exorcism on the Sabbath is also met with no resistance; possibly due to the fact that Jesus’ ministry has not become popular enough to threaten the power of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law.

Another question also needs to be asked: When the disciples spoke to Jesus “at once” about Simon’s mother-in-law, did they do so with the expectation that he would heal her, or were they just informing him of the situation (and possibly why they would have to serve themselves a Sabbath meal)? In Luke chapter 4 the disciples specifically ask Jesus to help her. In Matthew chapter 8 there are no disciples present. Jesus sees her by himself and acts on his own. In Mark the interaction is more ambiguous. We can’t know for sure, but if they are asking Jesus to intervene, then they are asking Jesus to violate Sabbath Law by healing her. Does this point to a possible reason why Jesus might have picked them as disciples, i.e., they already on some level understood that need, love, and compassion for others supersedes religious ritual (as he will tell the Pharisees in the next chapter)? I don’t know, but it is an interesting idea to mull over.

The way that Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law is also interesting. “He...raised her up by gently taking her hand.” This detail, present in Mark but changed in Matthew (Mt 8:15 – “he touched her hand”) and in Luke (Lk 4:39 – “he rebuked the fever”), indicating that it might have been a secondary violation regarding lifting on the Sabbath, also strongly emphasizes the compassion and humanity of Jesus. In Mark, we see more of Jesus’ humanity and emotional range than in the other Gospel stories. Here we see a very compassionate and gentle way to approach a healing. We will also see Jesus tired, frustrated, angry, sad, and indignant. Mark’s Jesus is fully human.

“She began to serve them” is meant to be an indicator of how much better she had gotten. She had originally been so sick she had to lie down. Had this been a normal progression of sickness, one would expect a period of weakness after the fever left where she had to stay in bed and recover her strength. Jesus removes the fever and she is back to 100% immediately.

The people wait until after sunset because the Sabbath day would have been over. Due to the order of time in Genesis 1 (evening and then morning, day one), the Jewish calendar started each new day at night. Thus the Sabbath begins Friday after sunset and went until Saturday after sunset. The people wait until after sunset to bring their sick to him because it was the absolute earliest they could have possibly done so and still been abiding by Jewish Law. This shows a great eagerness on the part of the crowd to at least have Jesus perform more healings for them. We will see shortly, however, that Jesus actually does not want to be labeled as a healer-exorcist. Instead, he sees himself more as a preacher, prophet, and priest. The healings and exorcisms are part of Jesus’ overall compassion for humanity, but it is not the focus of his mission, and he will actually leave the city in a few verses, when he feels people are coming to him only for him to do healing miracles for them.

Remember also that Mark likes to be hyperbolic with his crowd numbers. It is unlikely that the entire population of the town gathered outside the door (just as “everyone” in Jerusalem probably did not make the trek to see John the Baptist). Rather, we need to read “whole town” as “a lot of people.”

We also see Jesus again not allowing demons to speak. I think we need to examine another possible reason that he is silencing demons: it is part of his attempt to redefine the meaning of Messiah for the people. If people begin to associate terms like Holy One of God with miracle working or exorcism, then they will miss the point of Jesus’ true ministry and mission as the suffering servant-redeemer. Multiple times the crowds and the disciples will misunderstand something Jesus does or says because they are stuck in their old framework. Jesus is trying to break that framework and redefine their expectations, so he does not want there to be a hindrance to their new understanding.

Study of Mark Part 3: Jesus' Authority

This post will cover the remainder of Mark Chapter 1. Just as before, I encourage you to read the entire section of text, possibly from multiple translations so as not to lose the “flow” when I interrupt to comment on specifics within the text. When we last left Jesus, he had picked out his first four disciples: Peter, Andrew, James, and John.

²¹ Then they went to Capernaum. When the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. ²² The people there were amazed by his teaching, because he taught them like one who had authority, not like the experts in the law.

Last post, we saw how Jesus had the authority and presence to speak to fishermen and get them to (at least temporarily) put their professions on hold and follow him. Here he demonstrates authority in teaching. As an Old Testament allusion, this episode could place Jesus as a figure after the Moses archetype. Just as Moses brought a new teaching with authority, so does Jesus. Jesus surpasses John the Baptist in the prophet mold. Now he surpasses the experts in his teaching of the Law.

This episode also sets up what will become the major conflict within the narrative, the opposition by the religious authorities, what I will frequently call “religion vs. faith.” Mark goes out of his way to say that Jesus was not like the experts in the law, who apparently did not teach with authority, even though they supposedly were “experts.” Throughout Mark, we will see Jesus, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, contrasted with the civic religion and those who represent it. Here, the expertise of the religious teachers carries no authority, where the teaching of Jesus carries true authority. It is also important to note that the people inside the narrative notice this difference. In other words, they recognize the failures and corruption of the religious system. This is also why they were going out to John the Baptist: they were tired of the traditional system (be that the Jewish Temple or the Roman puppet government represented by Herod) and they were ready for something new, and something with authority.

²³ Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ²⁴ “Leave us alone, Jesus the Nazarene! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” ²⁵ But Jesus rebuked him: “Silence! Come out of him!” ²⁶ After throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. ²⁷ They were all amazed so that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He even commands the unclean spirits and they obey him.” ²⁸ So the news about him spread quickly throughout all the region around Galilee.

Hopefully by now you are noticing the themes of Immediacy and Authority as they occur. “Just then” in the synagogue something new happens, and it is action-oriented. Mark doesn’t want to get bogged down in slow moving teaching texts yet, because we are in Act 1, where action is key. Jesus now demonstrates authority over unclean spirits. And the unclean spirit also declares that Jesus has the power to destroy him/them. It is interesting that the text says the man had an unclean spirit (singular), but the spirit speaks in plural (“Leave us alone”; “have you come to destroy us”). The spirit seems to be speaking for the entire community of unclean spirits, and not just for himself. It is another interesting detail that Mark includes the demon throwing the man into convulsions before he leaves. From a literary standpoint, details like these serve to make the scene come to life more vividly for the audience. It is easier to imagine the encounter in the synagogue when you have details to picture in your mind. Also, this detail could serve to represent the spirit’s unwillingness to leave, but ultimate powerlessness in staying, since no resistance it offers can match the power that Jesus commands.

Another motif we will encounter multiple times throughout Mark is Recognition. Frequently, the people who “should” recognize Jesus’ identity and understand his teachings (e.g. the religious leaders, the disciples) fail to do so. Instead, those who declare Jesus’ identity are those whom we would not expect (e.g. a Roman centurion).  Notice that it is an unclean spirit that first recognizes Jesus for who he is within the narrative. Although the omniscient narrator of the story has given a declaration of Jesus’ identity, the narrator is not actually part of the action within the universe of the story, but rather a voice imposed over top of the narrative for the audience. Also recall that the voice at the baptism spoke only to Jesus and not to John or the crowd. Therefore, we know who Jesus is, Jesus knows who he is, but nobody within the story has actually heard any declaration about Jesus’ identity until now.

Coupled with this idea is a theme that scholars have termed the Messianic Secret. Several times in Mark, Jesus tells demons and people he has recently healed -- and the disciples in one case -- to be silent or say nothing about him to other people. On the surface, Jesus (or Mark writing Jesus) doesn’t seem to want anyone to know who he is. This term has become almost universally accepted as part of explaining the Gospel of Mark, and the vast majority of commentators and critical scholarship take this theme as a given. The two main explanations used to deal with this unique aspect of the Gospel are:

1.      That Mark writes this into the story as a literary or dramatic technique to heighten the contrast between the audience, who knows the truth about Jesus’ identity, and those inside the story, who don’t know who he is. In other words, because Jesus maintains silence about who he is within the story, we can laugh at the blindness of the Pharisees and the cluelessness of the disciples because we have the special inside knowledge of who Jesus is from the beginning, where the characters within the narrative are kept on the “outside” of the special revelation.

2.      That Jesus, when he was alive and teaching during his actual ministry, really didn’t want people to know who he was; that Mark, being the earliest written of the Gospels, most closely represents this true historical reality; and that the later Gospel writers changed the episodes to make Jesus more open with his identity.

While this will put me in the extreme minority in scholarship and commentary (I have only read one or two others who think this way), I don’t necessarily think there is a “Messianic Secret” in Mark. I think that Jesus (or Mark writing Jesus) does not want his identity to remain a secret, either as a dramatic device or within the universe of the narrative (or the historical Jesus, though the only proof I would have of that is from the Gospels themselves). Although I have argued that at this point nobody in the story actually knows who Jesus is yet except the audience, Jesus does not keep them in the dark. In fact, one of his first actions is to recruit four people to whom he will reveal inside information. If everyone inside the narrative were intentionally being kept in the dark about Jesus solely for dramatic contrast, then Jesus’ actions with the disciples such as revealing the interpretation of parables to them, bringing a few to witness the transfiguration, etc. make little sense. In fact, in Chapter 4, Jesus tells them that the secret of the Kingdom of God (i.e. his identity, his mission, and the fact that he has brought it near) has been revealed to them. They are not kept on the outside. Their cluelessness is less a factor of not being given the knowledge as it is their being stuck in a “traditional” mindset, and their lacking the perspective given by the resurrection and the Spirit to help them reinterpret his teachings.

Additionally, while Jesus does frequently tell others to say nothing about him, he does not do this in every instance. Most notably, to the man healed of the Legion of demons in chapter 5:19, Jesus instructs to go tell everyone at his home what the Lord did for him. This, interestingly, is the first time that Jesus tells someone to go preach on their own (although he does appoint the Twelve as apostles before Legion, he will not send them out alone until chapter 6). If Jesus were trying to keep his identity and mission a secret throughout, then why does he only call for silence in select instances but tell certain other people to speak? When we actually get to the episode of the Legion demoniac in chapter 5, I will argue that the man’s preaching is critical to propelling Jesus’ mission forward within the Decapolis region. So, if Jesus instructs a man to speak within the story when it will serve to forward his mission, it is not a large leap to posit that he would instruct silence when speaking would sidetrack or hinder his mission.

So if there is no overarching Messianic Secret theme, then we need to deal with each of the examples on a situational basis, looking at how each instance might hinder or sidetrack Jesus’ true mission and why Jesus might command silence in each individual scene. Thus, I think we need to recast the unclean spirit’s actions (here and the other demon confrontations) in terms of what it would have meant to someone hearing the story in the ancient world.

A Greco-Roman audience (and a Jewish one for that matter) would have been well familiar with the concept of personal names being used in curses and other magical incantations. If one knew the name of a person, special information about that person, or even the true (usually secret) name of a supernatural being/deity, then including that name in a magical spell would grant them power over that individual/being. This is present in Greco-Roman writings, but echoes of it also occur in the Old Testament, specifically when Moses asks to know God’s name at the burning bush (Exodus 3:13-14) and when the people on the boat with Jonah demand to know what god he serves and then when they find out, cry out to him, using his name twice within the prayer (Jonah 1:9, 14). Thus, by declaring Jesus’ name and identity, the unclean spirit is trying to gain power over him. This would be a serious attempt to try to hinder Jesus’ mission. Notice though, that the attempt is useless, and that Jesus does not need a name or identity to command the demon. He commands, the demon obeys; again, an emphasis on the authority that Jesus possesses.

An understated part of the subtext that needs attention here is that the demoniac is sitting in the synagogue on the Sabbath. A demon-possessed man is in church and the religious authorities have not recognized it, or if they have, they have done nothing about it! Mark calls no special attention to this, but it speaks volumes of confirmation to the people’s statement that the teachers and “experts” have no authority.

Study of Mark Part 2 (continued): The Calling of the First Disciples

¹⁶ As he went along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishermen). ¹⁷ Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of people.” ¹⁸ They left their nets immediately and followed him.

The majority of Jesus’ ministry in Mark occurs around the Sea of Galilee, about 65 miles north of the Dead Sea area. After the onset of his ministry, the first thing that Jesus does is to call disciples. The first two he chooses are the brothers Simon and Andrew, and Mark inserts a parenthetical clarification to let us know that fishing was their career. I think this would be another place to possibly ask why Mark, as concise as he has been thus far, spends words clarifying this detail rather than letting the audience assume that casting nets meant they were fishermen. I will suggest an answer to that question shortly. For now, think about how you would explain why Mark inserts this parenthetical clarification.

I have heard sermons and read analyses that downplay the force of Jesus’ call in these verses and seem uncomfortable with the idea that these men would act “irresponsibly” by abandoning their jobs and families in response to Jesus’ call, stating:

1.      That Jesus was not asking for a lifetime commitment from Simon and Andrew (or James and John in the next verses). Instead, his request was something closer to “follow me [to your house, where we will eat dinner and chat];” and after spending a couple days with Jesus, these men then decided to go around the local area with him temporarily, and ultimately grew in their commitment to his cause.

2.      That the disciples already knew who Jesus was as a follower of John the Baptist.

3.      Because Jesus stepped in to fill John’s ministry, and since these men had respect for John’s mission and recognized Jesus as the continuation of that mission, they would have been ready to support and follow him

I do not agree with these interpretations.

#2 and #3: While I have no issue with Jesus being seen as the successor to John the Baptist, and I have argued that Mark paints him in this light, I also claimed that these allusions were for the audience to understand as part of the narrator’s omniscience, and not something that the people inside the story would have been aware of. There is no indication in Mark that Jesus spent any time with John as his disciple, did any preaching before John was arrested, or did anything at all beyond get baptized by John that would have placed him on the people’s radar as Elisha to John’s Elijah. Additionally, Mark 8:28 states that people believed Jesus was John the Baptist. If Jesus were well-known as a follower and successor of John the Baptist before his own ministry began, then it seems strange that people would say that Jesus is John the Baptist. If, however, Jesus was a completely unknown figure until after John’s imprisonment, then people might be more likely to see him as John reborn.

Additionally, although Mark does state that people from the whole Judean countryside came out to be baptized by John, Galilee is not in Judea. When I earlier discussed possible locations for John’s ministry of baptism, I mentioned that the traditional site is near the very southern portion of the Jordan River. If this area is the right region, Galilee is much farther north than anywhere John was baptizing, and it is unlikely that the fishermen around the sea of Galilee would have been in John’s company enough to have identified Jesus as a successor of John’s (if Jesus actually was the successor and they had even met John at all). The alternate location in the Decapolis would make it more likely that the Galilean region would have been familiar with John, but much more difficult for all Jerusalem and the whole Judean countryside to come to him for baptism.

#1: While I have no problem agreeing that the disciples did not irresponsibly abandon their livelihoods or families permanently, like people in a mid-life crisis, never again to return to them (we know from 1 Corinthians 9:5 that Peter’s wife accompanied him in his ministry, at least after his time with Jesus), we do have to deal with the fact that, during Jesus’ ministry, these men were no longer fishing for a living. The call, “Follow me,” carries more weight than simply “come with me to a physical location,” especially paired with the declaration that Jesus will make them into “fishers of people.” And the force of this call is why I think Mark takes time to clarify that Simon and Andrew were fishers by trade. Jesus’ statement that they will become fishers of people implies that they will no longer be in their old profession, but that he will be training them for a new job, using the skills they developed in their old one. It can also be that Mark clarifies that fishing was their profession because of the nature of the job. We think of fishing as casting a lure on a fishing rod, but the fishing referred to here have used a cumbersome net weighted around the edges. This net would have been tossed into the water and the pulled back up by hand, a physically grueling task, especially if the net is full. It is not a coincidence that Jesus calls their new profession fishing as well. It will require hard work, long hours, dedication, and frequently fail to produce results.

Additionally, I happen to think that these men were not familiar with Jesus in any capacity before his call, although I also believe that it doesn’t really matter to the overall narrative if they were. Certainly Jesus’ call carries more weight and authority if Jesus were a stranger to them. Think about the presence and the power of Spirit Jesus must have had, when a single sentence to some strangers can cause them to immediately leave behind their livelihood for an indefinite period of time (and also the problems and controversy this might have caused). However, I think this is part of Mark’s message about the cost of discipleship, and I will talk more about this idea in the next verse with the call of James and John.

Even if the fishermen did know Jesus, though, it would have been as a tekton – a carpenter/woodworker/handyman (Mark is, in fact, the only Gospel that names Jesus as such). But Jesus’ profession actually serves as stumbling block in his hometown when he arrives there as a prophet/rabbi (in Mark 6). If, for example, Jesus had spent significant time as a woodworker around the Galilee/Capernaum area and had worked on the local fishermen’s boats, and the soon-to-be disciples knew Jesus and his profession, why was his carpentry not a stumbling block to them?

Because this account starts a series of episodes that illustrate Jesus’ divine authority over different spheres of influence, I think it is much more likely that this narrative is constructed by the author as a declaration of Jesus’ authority to speak into people’s lives. Here, Jesus speaks with authority and people follow; next, Jesus will demonstrate authority in teaching, authority over demons and over disease, the authority to forgive sins, authority to call sinners, authority over the Sabbath; authority over nature; and ultimately, authority over death. You can see that Jesus has some type of charisma, power, or presence, as Simon and Andrew’s reaction to his statement is to immediately drop what they are doing and follow him.

This power can also been seen as a way that Jesus again surpasses John the Baptist. John speaks and people come to be baptized and then return to their lives. The first people Jesus speaks to immediately follow him.

¹⁹ Going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother in their boat mending nets. ²⁰ Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

This episode parallels the previous calling of Simon and Andrew, where Jesus calls two brothers and they immediately follow him. But there are more consequences attached to this decision than there are in the first pair. First of all, it is implied that these men and their father own a fairly prosperous fishing business, as they own a boat and can hire men to work for them. Thus, their leaving means they are (at least temporarily) turning their back on a career in which they will not have to worry about providing for their families.

Secondly, this episode reinforces another theme related to the cost of discipleship: Family Division. Throughout Mark, following Jesus causes strife within families. Though it can’t be proved for certain, I believe this theme reflects an experience in the Markan community; that people’s families were being divided because some were becoming Christians while others were remaining loyal to the Roman civic religion. Family strife is more prevalent in Mark than in the other Gospels, and this theme will resurface, even impacting Jesus’ relationship with his own family. Mark gives us no insight into what Zebedee’s reaction to Jesus is, and Zebedee is given no thoughts or words in response to what his sons do, but think for a minute about the possible repercussions of this scene. The three of them and the hired workers are mending the fishing nets, performing repairs that are necessary for their continued business success and prosperity, when they immediately drop what they are doing and leave their father in the boat! To a Jewish audience, without Zebedee’s permission this action could be seen as breaking one of the foundational Commandments of the Mosaic Law (honor your father...). To a Roman audience, the pater familias (father of the family) held ultimate authority over the household for as long as he was alive, no matter how old his children were. Whether from a Jewish or Gentile perspective, this episode could have been a huge shock to the reader. However, Mark makes this declaration as quickly and as matter-of-factly as if he does every other part of the narrative we have read thus far.

It is not stated that James and John ever return to Zebedee, and he does not make another appearance in the Gospel. How important were the brothers to the fishing? Were they temporarily helping or had they been poised to take over the family business? Was Zebedee angry with them? Disappointed in them? Did he give them permission to go? Was Zebedee left alone and abandoned while his sons chased after some strange itinerant preacher? Was he proud that his sons were learning under a rabbi? None of these questions are given any answers in Mark, and we are left to wonder about the man left in the boat.

Jewish tradition holds that the “Great Assembly” from the generation of Ezra established the synagogue system in order to instruct the people about God’s Law. Rabbis grew out of this system, as teachers who had been given the authoritative role to interpret Scripture and teach on living a righteous life. It was common that young Jewish men attach themselves as disciples to a rabbi, requiring complete submission in following all aspects of the rabbi’s teaching in your life. As challenging and uncomfortable as it may seem to us, I think that Mark wants us to see that leaving Zebedee is part of the cost of discipleship to Jesus.

Study of Mark Part 2 (continued):The Beginning of Jesus' Ministry

¹² The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. ¹³ He was in the wilderness forty days, enduring temptations from Satan. He was with wild animals, and angels were ministering to his needs.

Notice the theme of immediacy again. The pace is picking up, and there will be very few breaks in the narrative from here on. Also notice how briefly all of the information has been presented thus far. John’s entire ministry is dealt with in 5 verses; Jesus’ baptism takes only 3. The wilderness temptation gets 2. Mark is not dwelling very long on any one topic. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke have greatly expanded their accounts regarding the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, but we must remember that we are viewing Mark as standing on its own (as it would have for probably a decade before either Matthew or Luke were penned).

The importance of Mark’s (very brief) account of Jesus in the wilderness is to emphasize his servant nature, and to begin to paint a picture of how Jesus surpasses John the Baptist. Remember that Mark’s Gospel redefines the Christ figure as the suffering servant of God. This episode demonstrates immediately the servant nature of Jesus, as well as placing Jesus in his first circumstance of suffering. The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness forcefully, as though he has submitted himself so fully to the Spirit that he is no longer in command of his own body. The same Greek word (ekballei) used of the Spirit driving Jesus to the wilderness is used in Mark 1:39 in reference to Jesus casting out demons, and in 1:43 when Jesus sends a recently-healed leprous man to present himself to the priest and make offerings. The degree to which Jesus submitted himself to the power of the Holy Spirit is as much power as Jesus will demonstrate in his ministry.

The presence of the Spirit in Jesus, driving his actions and (we will see in greater detail shortly) giving him authority and power, is also a way in which Jesus surpasses John the Baptist, who only declared a coming ministry with power and baptized with water. Furthermore, when Jesus is in the wilderness, he endures temptations from Satan and he is taken care of by angels, indicating a connection to the spiritual world that surpasses that of John, who only lived and preached in the wilderness.

Forty days could be a symbolic connection to the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness for 40 years (Joshua 5:6), or a reference to Moses’ experience (Exodus 34:28 – “So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread, and he did not drink water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments), or that of Elijah (1 Kings 19:8 – “...That meal gave him the strength to travel forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God”). This episode could also be seen as a message for followers of Jesus, that there is no such thing as a servant of God who is not tempted, even the Son of God.

Mark also frames this narrative in a way that would have had meaning to a Gentile reader as well. In Greco-Roman myths and epics, the heroes frequently undergo challenges and face temptation from various divine beings. The Aeneid, the Roman national epic, written by Vergil and published after his death in 19BC, was composed (in part) to celebrate the reign of the Emperor Augustus and present all of Roman history as driving ultimately towards his rule. Aeneas, the hero of the epic, will frequently serve as our example of a Roman “divine man” in this study, because the Aeneid was one of the most influential works of all of Roman literature. Although published in the BC’s, the work was still regarded with such prominence and authority in Roman literature during the time that Mark was being written that the next greatest Roman epic, Lucan’s Pharsalia (written from 61-65 AD, during the reign of Nero and roughly contemporaneous to our timeline for Mark), cannot be read as anything but a reaction to Vergil’s work. I will refer to this epic again in the study because there are parallels to be found between Aeneas and Jesus; as well as motifs from the Aeneid that have parallels in the Gospel of Mark.

Aeneas was the son of a god, the result of the union between the goddess Venus and a mortal man, Anchises. The beginning of his mission as the ultimate progenitor of the Roman people can be found in Book 2 of the Aeneid. In this book, Aeneas is living in Troy at the end of the Trojan War. The Trojans (by means of a famous wooden horse) begin to sack the city. The ghost of Aeneas’ dead comrade, Hector, appears in a dream to Aeneas and gives him his divinely appointed mission: Hector entrusts Aeneas with the task of taking the Trojan household gods and the survivors of Troy to a new country. However, Aeneas immediately faces many temptations to neglect his new calling. Without delay he rushes into Troy in an attempt to defend the city or die trying. Then he witnesses the king of Troy murdered with his wife and sons. When Aeneas realizes everyone around him has already died, he starts making his way back to his family. But then he has an opportunity to get vengeance on Helen, the woman whose beauty started the war. His divine mother appears to him and reminds him of his fate, and promises to protect him until he is safely away from the city. Aeneas’ mission is further confirmed by a heavenly omen when his son, Ascanius is “anointed” by the gods with flames that surround his head and lick his hair, but do not burn him. Then, as Anchises prays, a star shoots across the sky and hits a nearby mountain. Aeneas begins to take his family out from the city; but as he makes it out, he realizes that his wife has been separated from him somewhere inside Troy. He rushes back into the city and spends the night searching for her, risking death all over again in a desperate attempt to find her. Her ghost ultimately appears to him and tells him to leave.

While the specifics of this story are not paralleled in the Gospel of Mark, some of the overarching themes are similar: the Son of God/a son of a god who has a specific mission given to him by God/the gods; a period of time in which there is temptation and danger to reject the calling; loneliness and solitude; divine protection; an anointing of the mission through heavenly omens. These epic motifs are present in both stories and would have been recognizable to a Roman audience reading the Gospel.

From a general literary perspective, Mark could be viewed as working inside of a literary framework used from ancient mythology to epics to modern movies:

The Hero (Jesus/Aeneas/Frodo) is called to accept a quest/mission (bring the kingdom of God to the world and suffer and die/found a new city in a strange country/destroy the One Ring). He brings with him one or more Companions (Simon, Andrew, James, John, the other disciples/Achates, Ascanius, Pallas, the Trojan remnant/Sam, Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn, the rest of the Fellowship). These people leave the normal life they have known behind them and go on a journey. This journey challenges them and involves dangers from nature (storm on the sea of Galilee/storm in the Mediterranean Sea/snowstorm in the Pass of Caradhras), other people (Pharisees/Rutulians/Orcs and men), and, sometimes, opposition from spiritual forces (Satan and demons/Juno and Allecto/Sauron and Ringwraiths). There are sometimes moments where the Hero faces doubt or loses his way (Gethsemane/Carthage/Mount Doom). Sometimes the Companions die or betray the Hero (Judas/Pallas/Boromir). And over the course of the journey, the Hero grows in his power/realizes his true identity/accepts his calling, ultimately fulfilling his mission.   

¹⁴ Now after John was imprisoned, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the gospel of God. ¹⁵ He said, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!”

With his brief mentioning here of John’s imprisonment, the author gives the audience another example of what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus. John, even though he did not know specifically who the person of power would be, declared this person’s arrival, his service to this person, and the gospel message (repentance and forgiveness of sins) all the way to prison and death. For Mark, suffering will frequently precede glory for those who choose the path of the Christ. To a community facing persecution, this message would have been one of encouragement and hope.

The brief mention of imprisonment also serves another point: to highlight that Jesus’ ministry does not actually begin until after John’s ministry finishes. And just as Elisha received a double portion of the Spirit after Elijah departs (2 Kings 2:9), so Jesus surpasses John after John departs. Jesus (in the model of Elisha) takes up John the Baptist’s mantle and proclaims a similar “gospel” message (repent), but takes the message further to include the kingdom of God, and thanks to the omniscient perspective of the narrator, we get inside this information about Jesus before anyone in the narrative is aware of it. We do not yet know what the “kingdom of God” means in Mark (although Jesus will explain it later), but we can make a couple of observations. First, Jesus is speaking of an action completed, not something that will come in the future. The Greek statement is made in the perfect tense, which denotes an action that is completed by the present reality in the narrative – as in, “By the time you are reading this statement (now) you have read the verses (already completed).

The Greek reads “...the time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near”

In other words, by the time Jesus says these words inside the story, the actions he declares have been done. Secondly, as we have seen multiple times already, everything about Jesus’ ministry surpasses that of John. Where John the Baptist presents a time and person to come in the future, Jesus’ arrival marks the fulfillment of that time, and thus his identity as the person of whom John spoke, and the onset of his ministry is that which ushers in the arrival of the kingdom of God.

A Study of Mark: Jesus' Baptism (Part 2 continued)

⁷ He proclaimed, “One more powerful than I am is coming after me; I am not worthy to bend down and untie the strap of his sandals. ⁸ I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John’s message is one of a coming man who will have power; one to whom John has already declared himself a servant (by his unworthiness to untie his sandals); a man whose ministry will surpass his own in every way. Where John is only able to ritually cleanse with water, this person will bring a spiritual cleansing. John’s message of baptism by the Holy Spirit is also a foreshadowing beyond the scope of the Gospel narrative. The Holy Spirit doesn’t make many appearances in Mark. The few times where it is mentioned after this point are in connection with Jesus and the power or authority that he possesses. The baptism of other people with the Holy Spirit is an event that will take place after the resurrection, and is not recorded in this Gospel.

The audience, as believers, would have been familiar with the concept of the Holy Spirit. This is an aspect of theology that was developed by the time Paul was writing his letters (roughly a decade before Mark was written down), and Christian communities all over the Mediterranean, even in Rome, would have understood what was meant when the term Holy Spirit is used in a Gospel. For example:

·        Romans 8:14-16 explains adoption as children of God through the Holy Spirit

·        Romans 8:26-27 discusses the Spirit interceding on behalf of the saints

·        Romans 9:1 indicates that the Holy Spirit can assure one’s conscience of the truth

⁹ Now in those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan River. ¹⁰ And immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. ¹¹ And a voice came from heaven: “You are my one dear Son; in you I take great delight.”

We have already been told that Jesus is the Christ and Son of God, so he needs no further introduction. The “prologue,” as it were, is over, and Mark launches directly into the narrative of Jesus’ ministry. The Gospel of Mark is roughly divided into a 3-Act structure, much like an ancient drama. Act 1 (1:9-8:26) is Jesus’ Galilean ministry – it is very action-oriented, it demonstrates Jesus’ authority and identity, and it puts his message at odds with the religious authorities (the scribes, teachers of the Law, and Pharisees). Act 2 (8:27-13:37) transitions to Jerusalem and Jesus’ last week. Here the focus shifts to Jesus teaching his disciples, preparing them for his absence, and forcing them (and the audience) to confront and answer the question, “Who do you say that I am?” Act 3 (14:1-16:8) is the climax of the story, the point that the narrative has been relentlessly pushing toward, the culmination of Jesus’ ministry through his suffering and death, and the ending.

Verse 10 introduces us to one of the first recurring themes we will encounter in Mark: Immediacy. The Greek word meaning “immediately” is used over 40 times in the Gospel. The action in Mark (especially Act 1) is fast paced, constantly driving the audience forward to the climax of the story. There are very few “rest breaks.” Another literary motif presented in these verses is that of Patterns of Three. In Mark, things frequently happen in threes: here, Jesus sees heavens opened, he sees the Spirit descending, and he hears a voice.

Examining the narrative itself, the vision at the baptism is written as a personal experience intended for Jesus alone, and not in any way a demonstration to the crowd. He sees the heavens splitting open. The voice speaks to him and not to the crowd: “You are my son... in you...” No mention is made of anyone else beyond Jesus hearing the voice or seeing the Spirit descend. There is also no indication in the text that John recognized Jesus as the one he had been prophesying about, or that he saw or heard the vision.

The internal narrator of the Gospel, however, allows the audience to take part in an omniscient perspective. Frequently, we are given glimpses into information of which the characters inside the narrative are unaware. This is one such example. We get to experience the vision of the Spirit and voice along with Jesus, and by doing so, we know that Jesus is the one of whom John was speaking. The Spirit descends on Jesus because the audience has been told that he will ultimately baptize with it. And just as the OT quotations in v.2-3 were immediately followed with their embodiment in John the Baptist, John’s declaration of the coming person of power is immediately followed by its fulfillment in Jesus.

Additionally, Mark’s baptism episode contains hints of proto-adoptionist theology. Rather than the belief that Jesus was fully divine from birth or before, Adoptionism believed that Jesus was “adopted” by God at his baptism due to his devotion to God, and that he was given divine status and the Holy Spirit because of this adoption, but that he is not equal to God the Father. This doctrine was declared to be a heresy by the 1^st Council of Nicaea (325 AD), but some ideas in parts of Mark and Paul’s letters can be seen as precursors to this doctrine. Other Gospel writers may have noticed this potential theological issue present in Mark, and dealt with it in different ways. For example, Matthew has the voice at the baptism address the crowd (“This is my son”), rather than Jesus, changing the purpose of the event to a public declaration and indicating that Jesus already knew his identity. Luke includes the account of 12-year-old Jesus declaring God to be his father, years before his baptism. Both Matthew and Luke include birth narratives in which a divine messenger informs Jesus’ parents that he is God’s son by miraculous pregnancy, and thus divine from his birth. John’s prologue places Jesus as the Word, preexistent and coeternal with God.

Mark does not include any of this clarifying information, making his theology a little more uncertain. Does the voice speak because Jesus was not aware of his identity before the baptism? Was Jesus a regular man until God declared his adoption as the Son of God and sent the Spirit into Jesus? Is God simply declaring his approval at Jesus’ submission to God through baptism? Is the voice intended to inform Jesus that it was time to begin his ministry? Is the voice a literary construct intended for the reader and not for anyone inside the narrative, including Jesus? Reading Mark independently, I don’t know that you can fully answer these questions, but try to keep them in mind as we read through the rest of the Gospel to see whether anything can be resolved or clarified.

Another question that may have arisen in your mind is why the Son of God would need to be baptized? Wasn’t John’s baptism one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? Does this indicate that Jesus had sins that needed forgiveness?  2 Corinthians 5:21 states:  ^“God made the one who did not know sin [Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.” Paul wrote this letter most likely between 55-57 AD, which means that this is the earliest point at which we can declare for certain that the doctrine of a sinless Jesus existed in early Christian theology. If we accept the date of Mark as written in the late 60’s then the theological belief of Jesus as sinless would have existed for a decade or more, enough time for the doctrine (even if it was not present everywhere), to be circulated and adopted by the communities around the Mediterranean.  

The other Gospel writers also seem to have noticed this as an issue in need of explanation in the baptism narrative. Matthew 3:14-15 includes an interaction between John and Jesus, in which John tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized and states that Jesus needs to baptize him instead, but Jesus convinces him that it needs to happen “to fulfill all righteousness.” Luke 3:21-23 alters the structure of the events slightly, making the baptism happen after everyone else present was also baptized (v.21 “it happened that, when all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized”); having the vision happen as Jesus prays, rather than as he exits the water, thus taking the emphasis off of the baptism itself (v.21 “and while he was praying, the heavens opened...”); and using the event as a symbolic action marking the beginning of his ministry (v.22-23 “‘...in you I take great delight;’ and so Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years old.”). The Gospel of John does not even record Jesus being baptized.

A common explanation attempting to answer the “why baptism” question is that Mark, who greatly emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, has Jesus undergo a baptism in order to declare himself a full member of humanity. A second explanation paints Jesus’ baptism as a symbolic action announcing his willingness to accept the sinfulness of mankind on his shoulders as part of his ultimate mission to suffer and die as Son of God and Christ. Another explanation highlights one of the main purposes of the Gospel of Mark as teaching what it means to be a true follower of Jesus, frequently using Jesus to model the behaviors expected of his followers. Thus, Jesus undergoes a baptism as a model for what future disciples would be expected to do when following in his footsteps. A final explanation (though not in any way the last) views this narrative as another combination of OT quotations, constructed for the audience and declaring the identity of Jesus to the reader just as the OT quotations in v.2-3 declared who John the Baptist was.

·        Psalm 2:7 -- I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

      He said to me, “You are my son;
      today I have become your father.

·        Isaiah 42:1 -- “Here is my servant whom I support,
my chosen one in whom I take pleasure.
I have placed my spirit on him;
he will make just decrees for the nations.

The placing of the Spirit on Jesus immediately afterward would also serve as a fulfillment of the Isaiah verse for the reader, just as John immediately shows up in the story after Malachi and Isaiah are quoted, and Jesus arrives immediately after John predicts the man of power. Ultimately, whether you think any (or none) of these explanations holds water, I leave it up to you to decide why you think Jesus was baptized.

Study of Mark's Gospel Part 2 (continued): More on John the Baptist

⁵ People from the whole Judean countryside and all of Jerusalem were going out to him, and he was baptizing them in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins.

There is definite hyperbole (exaggeration for literary effect) in these verses, as it is highly unlikely that every single person in Jerusalem and the Judean countryside came to see John. The purpose of the hyperbole is not so much to point out that John’s ministry was popular, as is it is to show that countless people were ready for repentance and forgiveness. In other words, by telling us that huge crowds were accepting John’s baptism, the author indicates that John was doing his job (as stated in the quotation in verses 2 and 3); namely, preparing the way for the forgiveness of sins that would come through Jesus by getting people ready to hear the message.

I want you to keep this verse in the back of your mind because I will revisit it later as one of the ways that the author will show how Jesus surpasses John the Baptist (another being the actual ability to forgive sins, rather than just preaching repentance).

It is not known exactly where Mark has John baptizing. It had to be a wilderness place on the Jordan River accessible to people from Judea and Jerusalem, but the Jordan River stretches for more than 60 miles between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. The “traditional” site of Jesus’ baptism is east of Jericho and north of the Dead Sea, within a short travel distance of Jerusalem and in the region of Judea. However, if this is even close to the location Mark had in mind, there will be repercussions for Jesus’ decision to focus his ministry in Galilee (as we will see at the end of this study). Another possible site places John’s ministry in the region of the Decapolis, significantly closer to Galilee but much farther from Jerusalem and Judea. It would still be feasible that people would travel from Judea to be baptized by John, but they would have to travel through Samaria to get there. Another possible explanation is that John moved his ministry, baptizing up and down the Jordan River, and Mark, in his brevity, simply used a city and region that his audience would have known without need for explanation.

⁶ John wore a garment made of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

Hopefully as you read through this study, you will also be learning ways in which to critically examine a Gospel narrative. Recall in the introductory post my assumption that the Gospels are intentional. Because of this assumption, I work from the idea that the details inside the Gospels were included for a reason. As a general rule, then, any time you see a specific detail mentioned in a Gospel that seems strange or out of place to you, stop for a moment and ask “why?” Mark makes his statement about John’s dress and diet so briefly and changes gears so quickly that we can be tempted to pass by this sentence without giving it any thought. He does not take time to explain what, if any, significance there is to John’s clothing or eating habits. However, he does mention it, and it is a strange detail if you think about it, so we are left to pause and wonder, “Why does it matter (to the author or the audience) what John wore? Of all the foods John could have eaten, why are those two mentioned? Why does the author give no explanation at all about these details?”

I emphasized in the introductory post that Mark was most likely written to a primarily Roman Gentile audience. This doesn’t mean that there was no Jewish presence in his church community. The Jewishness of Jesus (and the characters surrounding him) is not downplayed in the Gospel. In fact, Mark does an excellent job of presenting his message in a way that appeals to both a Jewish and Gentile perspective. Jesus can be viewed in both the light of a Jewish Messiah (but redefined as the “suffering servant” who dies for mankind) and a Greco-Roman “divine man” (but surpassing any of them because of his suffering and death). As can John the Baptist:

In a Jewish context, the details about John’s clothing would have placed him as a prophet in the mold of Elijah. Elijah was described in 2 Kings 1:8 as a “hairy man” with a leather belt tied around his waist (The NIV translates the phrase as “a garment of hair”). Elijah’s “mantle” (his outer -- possibly “hairy”-- cloak), passed on to Elisha after Elijah was taken to heaven, became symbolic of a prophet’s ministry. Zechariah 13:4 states: “...on that day each prophet... will no longer wear the hairy garment of a prophet...” Mark clearly has John the Baptist working within this tradition, wearing a hairy garment and leather belt and preaching repentance, an image that would have immediately resonated with a Jewish audience as following the Elijah archetype.

John’s food choice, however, has no connections with Elijah at all; so why the locusts and honey?  Since Mark gives no clarification at all as to why John eats what he eats, this is an example of not being able to know what the author had in mind when he was structuring this part of the narrative. There is an explanation, but it involves a lot of conjecture and speculation about authorial intent. This explanation has John working within the tradition of OT prophets who delivered God’s messages with symbolic actions rather than words (e.g. cooking over a dung fire, marrying a prostitute, walking around barefoot and naked, shooting an arrow, tearing a garment, breaking a pot). As such, locusts could be symbolic of either God’s judgment (Deuteronomy 28:38), or the Gentile enemies of Israel (described as locusts in Judges and Jeremiah). Honey brings to mind the Promised Land (flowing with honey) or God’s promise of provision (Psalm 81:16), or possibly Ezekiel’s scroll (that tasted as sweet as honey and contained God’s words to his people). Thus the locusts and honey could be symbolic of God either covering his judgment with provision and promise, or God’s inclusion of the Gentile nations in his provision and promise. But again, this is pure speculation, because there are absolutely no clues inside of the Gospel text explaining the reason for John’s diet. It could also have been something as straightforward as John decrying the material wealth and extravagance of the religious authorities by rejecting comfortable clothes, living in the desert, and eating only food he could find in the wilderness (i.e. by God’s provision).

In a Greco-Roman context, John’s actions could have placed him in the mold of the ascetic Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, who were known for their eccentric behaviors and dress, their rejection of material goods and wealth, and their criticisms of society. To give a few examples, Socrates is said to have worn the same clothes every day, no matter the season, and to have stood still, lost in thought, for days on end, neither eating, drinking, or sleeping. Diogenes (the founder of Cynicism) lived in a barrel, regularly wore no clothes, and is said to have walked around Athens in broad daylight holding a lantern, searching for “a genuine man.” Zeno (the founder of Stoicism) was known for eating food that didn’t require cooking, drinking only water, and wearing thin clothes despite the season. All three of these philosophers were also extremely vocal critics of the societal customs and morals of their day, calling for people to change their ways.

Thus to both a Gentile and a Jewish audience, John’s actions could have had significance. But Mark does not dwell on John’s appearance. Instead, he mentions it and then pushes forward to the message, indicating that although it is a detail that helps to characterize John in some way for the audience, it is also not where the author wants to focus. The Gospel is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, not John the Baptizer, the voice in the wilderness. In the Gospel of Mark, John is more of a plot device to allow Jesus to enter the narrative than he is a developed character (as he is in the other Gospels):

A Study of Mark Part 2: John the Baptist and the Beginning of Jesus' Ministry (Section One)

The introductory post in this series examined the first sentence from the Gospel of Mark. This post will continue from where we left off, covering Mark 1:2-20. I encourage you to read the entire section of text ahead of time, more than once and from multiple translations, before you read my analysis. If you don’t, you might find it difficult to hold the “flow” of the narrative, because I will be interrupting regularly to discuss or explain, sometimes on a verse-by-verse basis.

Where I do not work from the original Greek text, I will be using the NET Bible translation for most of my verse citations, a version which I think strikes a good balance between literal translation and equivalent meaning, and which also provides ridiculous amounts of footnotes to explain translator decisions, manuscript variants, linguistic features of the text, and exegesis. I would recommend reading the verses in the NIV (for “dynamic equivalency”) and the NASB (for literal rendering from the Greek). The Holman Christian Standard Bible also does a pretty good job of finding a balance between equivalent meaning and literal translation. All these versions are available on the YouVersion Bible app and on BibleGateway.

² As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way,
³ the voice of one shouting in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”

The author starts the narrative by quoting from the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). This quotation is actually blended from a couple of different places. The first half most likely comes from Malachi 3:1 – “‘I am about to send my messenger, who will clear the way before me. Indeed, the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant, whom you long for, is certainly coming,’...”

Only the 2^nd half of the quote comes from Isaiah (verse 40:3) – “A voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight the paths of our God...’” It was very common for Christian writers to take pieces of verses out of context and reframe them or combine them to demonstrate the point they wanted to make (Matthew is best known for this, although it is done in multiple other NT books as well).

As I mentioned in the introductory post, Mark 1:1 could be interpreted as a title in more than one way. Following the “title” with these OT quotations could mean that the author of Mark is stating that the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ can be found in the Old Testament prophets.

⁴ In the wilderness John the baptizer began preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The quote about a voice crying out in the wilderness followed immediately by the statement that John was in the wilderness preaching repentance leaves absolutely no doubt that John is meant to be directly linked to the figure mentioned in the OT quotations. If we interpret Mark 1:1 as a title for the ministry of John the Baptist, then we can read John’s ministry as the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. With this viewpoint the gospel is the message of John the Baptist: repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

It is important to keep in mind that the audience hearing/reading this Gospel would have already been Christians. The main purposes of the Gospel of Mark are related to Christology (the identity of Jesus), discipleship (what it means to be a true follower), and the “gospel” message (the good news of salvation): it provides believers with a depiction of a Son of God who redefines Messiah and surpasses “divine men” by his suffering; it teaches the community about the cost of authentic discipleship; and it strengthens faith and hope in the face of persecution. As believers, the Markan community would have understood that forgiveness for sins would have come through Jesus. The author is not stating that John the Baptist was forgiving sins; rather, he was preaching repentance. This makes John’s preparation work for the Lord a call for people to recognize their need for the forgiveness of sins.

A Study of Mark - Part 1

Introduction

I used to not like the Gospel of Mark. Over the last several years, however, Mark has grown to become my favorite of the four.

John and Matthew are the most frequently read of the Gospels, and have been since antiquity. Both have episodes that quickly come to mind as unique to each Gospel (e.g., Matthew: the birth story with Wise Men, infant slaughter, and flight to Egypt; the Sermon on the Mount; Peter being named the rock and getting the keys to Heaven; finding the coin in the fish’s mouth to pay taxes; posting of guards at Jesus’ tomb and claim that disciples stole his body; John: pretty much all of it).     

Luke is also frequently read because it is (mistakenly) believed to be the most “historical” (i.e. chronological and factually accurate) in its recording of the sequence of events in Jesus’ life. Luke also has a lot of unique and memorable episodes. Luke's birth narrative features the Christmas story, in which Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem for a census, baby Jesus is laid in a manger, and angels announce his birth to shepherds.

Also unique to Luke is John the Baptist's birth story and the story of the 12-year-old Jesus at the Temple. More than a dozen of Jesus’ most memorable parables are unique to Luke, including the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Luke also tells the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

In contrast, try to think of an episode that is unique to the Gospel of Mark...

...

...

...

It’s hard, isn’t it?

Because Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels and over 90% of Mark is included in some form in Matthew, Mark is an oft-neglected Gospel. Until the 19^th Century, Mark was actually considered to be merely a summary of Matthew (which is why it is placed after Matthew in the Bible), and was read less frequently as a result. A little of this stigma still hangs over Mark: think about it – why read the abbreviated version when Matthew has much more detail and depth? As a result, Mark still lags behind the others in how frequently it is read and how much people know about it.

However, this perspective only focuses on the quantity of events recorded within the Gospel. But each Gospel presents a unique picture of Jesus, reflecting a blending of the author’s perspective, the audience the work was written to, the issues being faced by the community at the time the work was written, and the aspects of Jesus’ character the author wished to emphasize. Even events that are present in all four Gospels (e.g. feeding the 5000) give different representations of Jesus when read in context. To neglect Mark simply because nearly all the events are also in Matthew is to ignore a unique portrayal of the character of Jesus, one that is just as theologically deep, as literary, and as artistic as any of the other three Gospels.

So, this is my chance to support the “underdog” of the Gospels. Hopefully by the end of this study, you will have gained a greater appreciation for the Gospel of Mark, just as I did as I learned to let it stand as a work of literature in its own right.

To introduce the study proper, let me give you some background information to the Gospel:

·         Mark is considered by almost all scholars to be the earliest written of the four Gospels. It was probably written after the start of the Jewish War in 66 AD but before the destruction of the Temple in 70, most likely near 68-69 AD.

·         Mark was written to a predominantly Gentile (Greek and Roman) audience, rather than to Jews. Many scholars think Mark was written to Christians in Rome.

·         Mark’s structure and storytelling show influences of Greco-Roman popular biographies, dramas, novels, and epics.

·         The author is never named within the Gospel, and there are up to three different Marks mentioned in ancient Church tradition: John Mark, traveling companion to Paul and Barnabas (mentioned multiple times in Acts), Mark the cousin of Barnabas (mentioned in the closings of Philemon, Colossians, and 2 Timothy), and Mark the Evangelist, not mentioned in the New Testament but associated in patristic tradition with Peter and not with Paul. Whether or not these multiple Marks were one and the same is somewhat unclear.

·         Mark is frequently described as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.” The suffering of Jesus is a central focal point to the Gospel, and fully 1/3 of the Gospel is devoted to Jesus’ last week.

I am assuming that, if you are reading this study, you have at least a passing interest in the historical and cultural context of the New Testament. However, for people who may not find this information as incredibly fascinating as I do, why does any of it matter?

·         Knowing that Mark was most likely written during the Jewish War can help give context to some of the more subversive and apocalyptic language in the Gospel. And if it was written to Christians in Rome, the subtle jabs at the Emperor become that much more forceful.

·         Understanding the background of Mark’s audience can help explain some of the ways Jesus is characterized, as well as the Greco-Roman influences on the structure and style of the narrative.

·         Recognizing that even early Christian fathers weren’t sure about how many Marks there were can redirect us to what matters in our reading of the narrative. Regardless of who the author was, what he has to say is ultimately more important.

·         Understanding the central focus helps to explain the author’s decisions about pacing the narrative: namely his speeding up the events in Jesus’ ministry and pushing the action towards Jesus’ Passion Week in Jerusalem.

Finally, before we jump into Mark itself, let me explain a little bit about the standpoint from which I will be writing this study:

I will be looking at Mark from a blending of 3 perspectives:

·         Historical criticism – I will be reading with questioning eyes, treating the text as an intentional document whose purpose is to make the author’s points. The author is writing down what he believes to be the single most important and life-changing message of his age. It is not done haphazardly. He is telling the story to present the message. As such, I will be asking questions about authorial intent (e.g., Why would the author choose to write this episode in this way?). Can we ever completely know what was on “Mark’s” mind when he was writing? Of course not, but we can read between the lines and infer quite a lot about the author’s perspective.

·         Theological – I will be examining the theological message(s) intended for the original audience. Jesus’ teachings were recontextualized as early Christian communities formed their community theologies, dealt with individual struggles, persecutions, disagreements, and splits, and tried to live in a multicultural world. I will not be attempting to determine what the “original” words of Jesus were. This is not a quest for the historical Jesus; this is an examination of how Jesus’ teachings were integrated into the community receiving the Gospel of Mark.

·         Literary – I will be looking at the literary elements of the Gospel; particularly at the characterization of the protagonist, secondary characters, and antagonists, the themes and motifs, the structure, tone and mood, the symbolic and figurative language, and the influences from other literary genres. I will take Mark as standing alone, as much as possible bringing no interpretive clues from outside sermons or theology. I will not “harmonize” (i.e. attempt to reconcile seeming contradictions with other Gospels). I will also do my best to avoid anachronism; that is, the literary interpretation has to make sense in 1^st C. Greco-Roman-Jewish context. In other words, I will not read the Gospel as a 21^st C. American biography.

With that said, we can begin reading the Gospel of Mark:

1:1 The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Despite this being only a single sentence, it is loaded with information. We can learn a lot about the text by unpacking this sentence.

·         We are told this is the “beginning” of something

·         We are told this is a “gospel”

·         We are told that this is a work either about Jesus or recording his message

·         We are told that Jesus has a title, “Christ”

·         We are told that Jesus has another title, “Son of God”

The first verse of Mark appears to function as a title or chapter heading. It is unclear, however, whether this “beginning” refers to the entire Gospel, the ministry of John the Baptist recorded in the next 8 verses, or is intended to make an allusion to Genesis 1:1 (in the context of Jesus’ appearance being a “new beginning”). I think that one of these interpretations is more likely than the other two, but I will come back to this verse and explain my thoughts at the end of the study. For now, you decide which makes more sense to you and go with that.

The word “Gospel” is a translation of the Greek word “evangelion,” meaning “good news.” Mark introduces his book as a “gospel.” It could be enough to say that Mark is recording the “good news” about Jesus. However, Mark does not explain specifically what the message is that would make his book good news (if you have read it, then you know the original ending doesn’t really close on a positive note). This hints at the idea that by the time Mark was written down, the word “Gospel” had evolved into a technical term describing a specific narrative style (as a biography of Jesus’ life, ministry, and death) conveying a specific message (the saving power of God through the death of Jesus), and was something that did not need to be explained to the audience, because they already knew what it was.

The phrase “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ” contains a series of genitive cases (marked by “of” in English). Genitives in Greek can show possession/ownership or can be “objective.” These different meanings lead to two possible interpretations of the phrase:

1) the gospel about Jesus Christ (i.e. Jesus’ life and ministry is the gospel message); or

2) the gospel message that belongs to Jesus (i.e. what Jesus himself taught).

This could be an example of an intentionally ambiguous sentence structure by the author. By using the language the way he does, the author is able to convey both meanings simultaneously: that the message that Jesus taught was the message about himself.

The titles given to Jesus in Mark 1:1 (Christ and Son of God) give us an understanding of the Christology (understanding concerning the person or nature of Christ) of Mark’s community. Mark does not explicitly tell us what the title “Christ” means, so it is up to us to figure out from the text. In Jewish context, Christ, “anointed one,” came to mean a king who would come at the end of time, one who would be far greater than all God's previous messengers to Israel, ruling in justice and glory, or a king who would overthrow the yoke of Roman domination and reestablish Israel’s preeminence as a world power. However, we will see through our study that Mark redefines what the term “Christ” means. The Christ in Mark had to suffer and die, suggesting that, for Mark, Jesus can only be fully understood in that context.

Mark also does not explicitly state what he means by the title “Son of God,” nor when sonship was given to Jesus. The term "Son of God" had a specific range of Jewish meanings. One of the most significant of these was a king at his coronation, adopted by God as his son, legitimizing his rule over Israel. But in Greco-Roman culture, the phrase had a different meaning; it meant a “divine man.” Legendary heroes like Hercules, specific Roman Emperors, or famous philosophers like Plato all had the status of “divine men.” I already stated that Mark was written to a Greek and Roman audience. It makes sense, then, that Mark would use a framework that Gentiles would understand. When Mark calls Jesus “Son of God,” the intention is not to identify him as a Jewish ruler but to place him in the class of Greek and Roman divine men, the “sons of God” who were endowed with divine authority and power to perform healings, exorcisms and other miraculous deeds. However, Mark also redefines the title “Son of God,” pushing the character of Jesus beyond just that of another in a series of Greco-Roman heroes, leaders, and miracle-workers. As we read through Mark, keep in mind the ways in which Mark will redefine expectations about these titles (and the others Jesus receives).

Another interpretation puts a more subversive spin on the sentence. A writing from 9 BC known as the Priene Calendar Inscription declares the birth of the “god” Augustus (Caesar) as the “beginning of the good news for the world” and naming Augustus as “savior.” However, by the late 60’s AD, the “Golden Age” ushered in by Augustus had degenerated into chaos and disorder. Julius Caesar and the Emperor Augustus had been deified after their deaths, but Augustus was the only Roman Emperor to have that status conferred on him (Claudius had his divine status rescinded by the Emperor Nero). Nero was forced to commit suicide in 68 AD, and by that time, the Jewish War had been waging for 2 years, and had been going rather badly for the Romans. After Nero’s suicide, Rome was thrown into a period of civil war and assassination called the “year of four Emperors.” However, even within the period of moral decay, paranoia, instability, and murder, the propaganda of each Emperor’s coronation would have been the same as that of Augustus, a divine herald of a new golden age. If Mark was written around 68-69 AD (which is a very probable date of composition), and written to Christians in Rome (as is thought by many scholars), then this single sentence introducing the Gospel of Mark would have been very powerful and takes on much more significance. Craig A. Evans describes the impact of this sentence very well:

          “the social backdrop [in Rome] would have been one of anxiety and foreboding.   One emperor after another, each seemingly worse and more impotent than his   predecessor, had failed—and each one had been hailed “son of God”! The      emerging cynicism would have been equalled only by the growing fear and alarm.             It was against this setting that the Markan evangelist dared to put forward the           Christian gospel and declare that the true son of God was Jesus, the Messiah of           Israel and “king of the Jews”— not some would-be Roman emperor.”  

Whew! That’s a lot of information contained in one sentence!

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”

(Future postings will cover more verses, I promise.)

At the beginning of this introduction, I had challenged you to think of some episodes unique to the Gospel of Mark. Because you are probably dying to know, here are some examples:

·         The quote, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”

·         Jesus’ family trying to restrain him because they think he is crazy

·         The Parable of the Growing Seed

·         James and John having the name “Boanerges"

·         Jesus using Aramaic in his healing commands

·         The two-stage healing of a blind man

·         The naked young man running away when Jesus is arrested

·         Pilate being surprised that Jesus died so quickly