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.
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