The death of Jesus in the Gospel according to Mark The Gospel according to Mark seems to have been composed in the years soon after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. This means that ten to fifteen years separate this gospel from the authentic letters of Paul. Much has happened in the meantime, and some important events (such as the return of Jesus in glory) have not happened. Like Paul, "Mark" (not the real name of the person responsible for this document, but a convenient shorthand for our conversation) thinks the cross of Jesus is central to making sense of it all. Mark tells a story about Jesus, but this no traditional biography. We get no information about his pedigree, his birth, his childhood and upbringing. Significantly for a Christian text, there is no focus on the resurrection. At best it is hinted at, while (deliberately?) kept off-stage. Instead, we find a conspicuous focus on the death of Jesus. As long ago as 1896, Martin Kähler observed that Mark's gospel was really "a passion narrative with an extended introduction." [The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ] This observation has been repeated with approval by generations of NT scholars, and has now become axiomatic, even proverbial. For our purposes, it points to a deep truth about the Gospel according to Mark: making sense of the death of Jesus on the cross lies at the very centre of the story about Jesus that Mark tells. Indeed, as G. W. E. Nickelsburg [Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Ealry Christianity] and Burton L. Mack [A Myth of Innocence] have demonstrated, a strong case can be made for the view that Mark seeks to portray Jesus as the innocent victim of the city authorities in Jerusalem: both Jewish and Roman.
Although written 15-20 years after Paul's death, the Gospel according to Mark offers a surprisingly circumspect theological interpretation of the death of Jesus. The death of Jesus, and specifically his crucifixion, is a major narrative interest in this gospel, but the cross seems to be understood more as the despotic act of the powers that be in Jerusalem, than as an act of God. Jesus dies as an innocent victim, but Mark's interest seems to be more in what means for Jerusalem than what this death means for humanity. The triple predictions One of the major narrative markers of the significance of Jesus' death for Mark is found in the triple set of passion predictions:
The three passion (and resurrection) predictions in Mark read as follows:
The sons of Zebedee Another significant reference to the death of Jesus is found in Mark 10, and comes immediately after the third (and most complete) of the three predictions:
The lack of insight exhibited by James and John in this episode will be demonstrated by all the Twelve as the story unfolds. As Marks tells the tale, only a very small number of people understand the significance of the cross for Jesus. The list of those with eyes to see is very short:
The last supper Bearing in mind that we are exploring the way that the cross functions in Mark's narrative (not reconstructing actual events and sayings from the historical Jesus), the last supper scene is critical to the way that Mark frames the death of Jesus. At this carefully arranged meal in a safe house somewhere inside Jerusalem, Jesus alludes to his own death as he inaugurates the Christian Eucharist (a ritual otherwise known to us only from the Pauline tradition), and connects both his death and the ritual to the coming of God's empire.
Tearing of the Temple veil At the climax of his story of Jesus' death, Mark has three "special effects:" darkness in the middle of the day, Jesus' final shout, and the tearing of the great curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the larger sanctuary in the temple. When preparing his revised edition of Mark, Matthew will add another special effect: an earthquake that opens the graves of the righteous dead so they walk around the holy city and appear to people (see Matt 28:50–53).
Clearly, we are not dealing with reports of actual events. However, we do have the considered commentary of Mark the storyteller just as the story reaches its climax with the death of Jesus. Not only was Jesus the "son of God" and the "anointed one" (both terms are traditional Jewish ways to describe a human being chosen by God to rule over Israel, and do not yet have the christological significance they will carry in later trinitarian theology), but now it is plain that the city authorities (represented by the great Herodian temple) have made themselves liable to divine vengeance. Creation has grieved (with the daytime darkness) and now the Temple is said to be symbolically destroyed. Mark may be invoking the imagery of Ezekiel as he suggests that God is abandoning the temple, leaving it vulnerable to be destroyed by the pagans. Given the likelihood that Mark's story is composed in the years immediately after the destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 CE, this is a prophetic denunciation of city and its temple for the sin of rejecting and killing Jesus. Such an interpretation of Mark's account of Jesus' death coheres with the puzzling saying about destroying and rebuilding the temple:
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