Is Mary, the Mother of Jesus at the cross and the tomb in Matthew?

It is sometimes pointed out that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, could be present at the cross, burial, and resurrection in Mark 15.40, 15.47, and 16.1. Although there are significant variants, the relevant character is generally read as

Mark 15.40: Μαρία ἡ Ἰακώβου τοῦ μικροῦ καὶ Ἰωσῆτος μήτηρ (Mary mother of James the younger and of Joses)

Mark 15.47: Μαρία ἡ Ἰωσῆτος (Mary of Joses)

Mark 16.1: Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου (Mary of James)

Most commentators assume that this second Mary in Mark's list is the same woman each time, though it's confusing that Mark varies the way he names her. Some have postulated that this is the same woman as Mary the mother of Jesus, given that Mark tells us that Jesus's brothers included a James and a Joses (Mark 6.3), and Joses was not a particularly common name. This would then align Mark interestingly with John who famously does have "his mother" at the cross (John 19.25).

I think the first time I saw this identification was in Kathleen Corley's work, though I know it has subsequently popped up elsewhere.

In general, Matthew receives much less comment when it comes to this question, but while writing about female disciples in Matthew recently, it occurred to me that Matthew is even more likely than Mark to be depicting the mother of Jesus at the cross, the burial, and the resurrection. 

Matthew has parallels to all three of the Marcan passages above, though he has no Salome, and he has "the mother of the sons of Zebedee" in his parallel to Mark 15.40-41 in Matt. 27.55-56. But the other person in the lists he describes in the following ways:

Matt. 27.56: Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου καὶ Ἰωσὴφ μήτηρ (Mary mother of James and Joseph)

Matt. 27.61: ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία (the other Mary)

Matt. 28.1: ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία (the other Mary)

Matt. 27.56 is pretty similar to Mark 15.40. James is no longer "the small", and "Joses" becomes "Joseph", as in Matt. 13.55, his parallel to Mark 6.3, so the same possibility obtains, that this could be Jesus's mother. With respect to Matt. 27.61 and 28.1, I have always thought that Matthew got a bit impatient with Mark's variations, and so went with the simple, "the other Mary", as if to say, "Whoever that might have been".

But it occurred to me recently that there are probably only two Marys in the whole of Matthew's gospel, Mary Magdalene (Matt. 27.56, 27.61, 28.1) and Mary the mother of Jesus (Matt. 1.16, 1.20, 1.24, 2.11, 13.55). So if we were thinking Matthew-wide of a "Mary Magdalene" and "the other Mary", the latter would clearly be the mother of Jesus. Leaving Matt. 27.56 to one side, she is the only "other Mary" in Matthew's gospel. 

The thing that is so baffling about Mark, and it now seems Matthew too, is why they are so coy about naming Jesus's mother here, all the more as Luke (Acts 1.14) and John (19.25) have no qualms about placing her in Jerusalem either during (John) or after (Acts) the Passion. It could be part of that distancing from Jesus's family that we see especially in Mark (Mark 3.21, 3.31-35, 6.1-6) but also in Matthew (Matt. 12.46-50, 13.53-58). Or could it simply be that Jesus, at this point in the narrative, has died, and so his mother is not defined in relation to him?

I don't think I'd quite realized how potentially simple the Marcan and Matthean pictures are -- only two women named Mary, one named Mary Magdalene, and "the other" the mother of Jesus, James, Joseph / Joses, and the rest. I wonder whether Luke and John, with their additional Marys (Mary and Martha, Mary of Clopas) can cause us to miss this?

Latest NT Pod on the ending of Mark

I've been pleased to get back to a regular schedule of releases again on the NT Pod. I've been meaning to record one for a while on the question of the ending of Mark, and this is the topic of the latest episode:

NT Pod 71: Was the ending of Mark's Gospel lost?

Towards the end of the episode, I couldn't resist chatting about one of my favourite adverts from the 1970s, in which Schubert is unable to complete his unfinished symphony because he is down the pub with his mates.  Sadly, the only version of it that I can find online is a bit grainy and has terrible sound quality, but it's good enough:



If anyone knows of a better version, please let me know.

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  You can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

Performances of Mark's Gospel

I have sometimes heard people talking about amazing one-man (and it usually is a man) shows performing Mark's Gospel.  I am currently working on a presentation about Mark's Gospel in the digital age for the SBL International and I began to wonder if there were any great one-person presentations of Mark's Gospel on Youtube.  And there are a few.  They vary greatly in quality and degree of irritation and some, it has to be said, are a little acTORish, but here are a few that I have found interesting.

My favourite is currently this version in German by Eric Wehrlin.  It's nicely produced and has good live intro-music and outro-credits too:

This one is by Max McLean and I have to say that he sounds terribly like Tom Baker (Doctor Who), so if you want to hear Mark's Gospel performed by the fourth doctor, this is the one for you:





It is indexed on Youtube by chapter, and the above is the playlist linking all sixteen chapters.  The translation appears to be the NIV, but with some of McLean's little edits.  One of the advantages of this version is that it introduces nice maps on screen whenever necessary, and we get the odd sound effect. He introduces some humour into the performance in such a way that surprising pieces end up seeming amusing, which of course is one of the advantages of a live performance.  I must admit that this one is really growing on me.  There is more on its own website, Mark's Gospel on Stage with Max McLean.

There are some interesting issues with live performances that may help us to think through the performance of texts in antiquity.  For one thing, I was struck how in both Wehrlin's and McLean's performances, Mark's broken sentence at Mark 2.10 ("but in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ."), often said by Biblical scholars to be somewhat colloquial, works very well.

Similarly, one has to make a judgement about the ending of Mark.  In both performances, the actors also perform the longer ending.  I suppose the Biblical scholars will all balk at this, so ingrained is it that Mark finishes at 16.8, but actually, the relatively unfamiliarity of Mark 16.9-20 gives each performance a strange freshness.

There are other performances available on Youtube, some much less professional than these two, and there are clips of others.  One that may be of interest is Whitney Shiner, who is an actual Biblical scholar, here filmed performing Mark 7.  This is not a professional video, but it gives an idea of his performance including, once again, the use of humour.




It looks like he is in the classroom, but there is no further information about the performance here.  I once heard Shiner performing pieces of Mark 15 at the SBL Annual Meeting.  I am curious as to whether he has ever done a performance of the whole thing.

Update (12.45pm): More! Thanks to Matthew Montonini for drawing my attention to several clips of Tom Boomershine performing Mark, all the more interesting since he is my respondent at the SBL International Meeting at St Andrews.  Perhaps I could ask him to perform a piece for me at the session!

This piece is an audience recording of his performance of part of Mark's Passion Narrative in Greek as well as in translation.  Boomershine contextualizes the performance with some comments about Mark's composition too, which contrasts somewhat with the less scholarly introduction to Max McLean's show above:




And although there is not yet a complete recitation of Mark's Gospel by Boomershine on Youtube, there are several nicely-produced clips (but don't be put off by Boomershine's quite extraordinary shirt, which you do eventually get used to).  This clip is Mark 15.1-15:




As far as I can see, no one has yet put together a playlist of all the clips. If anyone feels like doing that, and would like to let me know, I'd be really grateful.  The other clips are: Mark 3.31-35, Mark 7.1-23, Mark 13.3-17, Mark 14.3-9, Mark 14.53-65.  There are some clips from a different performance and this time Boomershine is more conventionally dressed:





For these, see also Mark 1.9-15, Mark 2.1-14, Mark 8.13-21 and Mark 10.1-12.

Judging from the number of views these clips have had (in the teens for some of them), very few people know about this resource.  In some ways it is not surprising given the lack of metadata for each video -- you'd have to know to search for Boomershine.  Searches on things like "Mark as story" or "performances of Mark" or "Mark one man show" and so on would not turn these up.  Perhaps this blog post can go some way towards changing that.

Update (1.46pm): Thanks to three minute theologian (comments) who reminded me of Alex McCowen's famous performance of Mark's Gospel.  There are some low-quality mp4s of the performance on Youtube.

Blogging Mark: Input Requested Please

At this year's International SBL, I am participating in the Gospel of Mark section along with Thomas Boomershine, Eve-Marie Becker, Jeremy Punt and Elizabeth Struthers-Malbon.  The theme of the session is "Communication, Pedagogy, and the Gospel of Mark".  My contribution is a discussion of "Blogs, Pods, Websites and Mark: How the Internet Affects the Teaching of Mark's Gospel" and I am working on my paper at the moment.

Since my paper focuses on the roles played by the internet and the blogs in the teaching of Mark, I would love to get some input from the blogging community on this one.  My problem is that I am fine talking about the generalities, and I have a good general sweep through.  However, when it comes down to using good, precise examples, I realize how few actual blog posts I can remember.  I can remember most of my own, but I really don't want this paper to be about me!

So I would like to ask my fellow bloggers if they have any ideas on this topic and, in particular, if they have any specific blog posts and series of posts that they think impact on this topic of teaching, researching and communicating Mark via the internet.  Many thanks in advance.  If you blog about this, please could you add a comment below too so that I don't miss anything good?  Thanks.

Here's my abstract so that you can get an idea of the lines along which my project is moving:

Teaching Mark's Gospel in the internet age presents multiple challenges and opportunities. The difficulty for most instructors is that they are digital immigrants, trained to access Mark in linear fashion in printed Greek New Testaments, Synopses of the Gospels and Biblical Translations, while their students are all digital natives, whose first access to the text may be via phone, tablet and laptop, with many navigational possibilities and different layers. So too with so-called secondary literature, the contemporary student is as likely to access Youtube, iTunes U and the blogosphere as they are the dusty articles and dated monographs that we love.

But to embrace the new opportunities provided by the internet encourages instructors to rethink their approach to Mark in several ways: (1) The informal, often colloquial nature of blog posts can make the scholarship far more accessible to students, as well as encouraging them to try their hand at blogging about Mark themselves; (2) Podcasts make access to scholarship for blind and visually impaired students more straightforward and they enable all students to study away from the desk; (3) Websites that use dynamic ways of representing the Gospels and Gospel scholarship open up new avenues for both instructors and their students. Examples (good and bad) of the these phenomena in the teaching of Mark illustrate how to get the best out of digital Mark and digital Marcan scholarship.

The Orthodox Redaction of Mark and the Question of Jesus' Father

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!, James McGrath responds to the first element in my post on The Orthodox Redaction of Mark (and we both get a nice thumbs-up from Doug Chaplin) to the following effect:

It seems to me that, on the one hand, to suggest that Mark's readers would have thought he did not have a human father is to make too much of silences. As a rule, we assume that people have fathers, even when we don't mention them, and it seems to me that an exception to that rule would have required an explicit claim rather than silence. And while it is common for commentators to suggest that "son of Mary" reflected rumors that Jesus was illegitimate and his father unknown, that too seems to be reading too much into Mark's language, which is not followed by any defence of Jesus' legitimacy.

Well, James may be right, but the difficulty is that the Gospel itself does not provide the necessary clues, and this is where Matthew's (and several scribes') "orthdox redaction" comes in.  I am not suggesting that the author of Mark's Gospel thought that Jesus had no earthly father.  I don't know what the author of Mark thought because he does not tell us.  That is the difficulty with "silences".  The absence of key information invites the reader to speculate.  And in the case of Mark's Gospel, the person that I called "the unwary reader" might well assume that Jesus had no earthly father.  He is not named in key contexts when one would expect him to be named, like when Jesus is first introduced in Mark 1, or when his family is first mentioned in Mark 3.21 and 3.31-34, or when Jesus returns to his patris in Mark 6.1-6, and members of his family are named.  And, moreover, there are repeated references to another father, Abba Father, who addresses Jesus as his son, and who addresses others about his son.

So the way that I look at it is that the invitation is there to read Mark in a certain way.  And Matthew, Mark's first reader, is a careful reader and is attentive to possible mis-readings (as he sees them) and he makes sure that they are corrected.  And the genius of Matthew's Gospel is that he was largely successful in this project.

Nevertheless, James is right to draw attention to the oddity of Matthew's own answer to the question of Jesus' parenting.  He affirms the genealogy through Joseph right at the outset of the Gospel (Matt. 1.1-18), something he affirms elsewhere too (Matt. 13.55), but then he sticks right next to it a story that is usually read as affirming a virginal conception (Matt. 1.18-25).  The addition of the latter only serves to underline the point, however, about Matthew's "orthodox redaction of Mark".  It is this story, and the tension it throws up between simultaneously affirming Jesus' human parents and his divine origin that finds its way into Christian orthodoxy.  And in this Luke too, following Matthew's lead, plays a key part.

The Orthodox Redaction of Mark

I have spoken on previous occasions about Matthew's redaction of Mark as something that shows a rich understanding of what is happening in Mark, and which sometimes attempts to take Mark's interesting ideas a little further (e.g. my articles on Simon Peter and John the Baptist [PDFs]). It occurred to me recently that a lot of what is happening in Matthew might be seen as a kind of  "orthodox redaction" of Mark, an attempt to fix some of the potentially troubling ideas and implications in Mark.

Take, for example, the question of Jesus' father.  In Mark's Gospel, Jesus does not have a human father.  He is "the craftsman, the son of Mary" (Mark 6.3); his father is in heaven and addresses Jesus directly as his son (Mark 1.11, 9.7) and Jesus calls him "Abba" (Mark 14.36).  Other supernatural beings know that he is God's son too (3.11).  The unwary reader of Mark might easily assume that Mark's Jesus, who simply appears on the scene as an adult in Mark 1, is some kind of god, perhaps the product of a union between a god and Mary.  Matthew sees the problem.  He gives Jesus a father, named Joseph; indeed, he begins the book with him (Matt. 1).  In redacting the Rejection and Nazareth story, he makes Jesus "the son of the craftsman" (Matt. 13.55) so that there can be no doubt about the matter.

The same phenomenon appears elsewhere.  Mark's Jesus, at his first appearance in the Gospel, goes to a baptism (Mark 1.9-10) which we have just heard characterized as a "baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1.4).  The unwary reader might easily assume that Jesus is going to John to repent and have his sins forgiven, so Matthew makes sure that there is no doubt about the matter and engages in an "orthodox redaction", making clear that this is an unexpected and anomalous event (Matt. 3.13-17).

Other examples include the abrupt ending of Mark, which concludes the story before Jesus has appeared to the disciples (Mark 16.1-8).  Indeed, the last time they were seen, they were fleeing from the scene (14.50).  For all the unwary reader knows, they might never have come back  But Matthew knows traditions like 1 Corinthians 15, and that Jesus appeared to Peter and the twelve and that these traditions were regarded as foundational by the earliest communities (1 Cor. 15.1-3), and he provides what Mark only leaves implicit, and narrates appearances to the disciples (Matt. 28.16-20).

Matthew's orthodox redaction of Mark was so successful that we now find ourselves reading Mark through Matthew's -- and also Luke's -- eyes.  His skill as a redactor with "orthodox" beliefs was that he rescued Mark from the potential to have been read and interpreted quite differently.

Latest Bibledex Videos: Mark

There are lots more Bibledex videos now available from the University of Nottingham. You may remember that this is the project to produce short videos on every book in the Bible. One of the latest is on Mark:

NT Pod 30: The Passion of Jesus in Mark's Gospel

I uploaded the first of this week's four Passion Podcasts on Sunday.  Naturally, we turn to Mark's Gospel first, and NT Pod 30 deals with the Passion Narrative in Mark.  Apologies for the lack of extended programme notes this week, but I want to prioritize getting these episodes out on time.

Passion Week Podcasts

I have an ambitious plan this week to release four back to back episodes of the NT Pod on the Passion Narratives in the Gospels. The idea arose from the fact that I am focusing on the Passion Narratives in the Gospels in my New Testament Introduction class. Instead of putting out the podcasts on these episodes as I teach them, I thought it might be interesting to group them together and release them during Holy Week. I released the first tonight, NT Pod 30, on Mark's Passion Narrative. I turn to Matthew next, and hope to have all four out by Good Friday.

NT Pod 28: The Disciples in Mark

I have just uploaded NT Pod 30 and took a look here on the NT Blog to check that I was up to date with adding notices of episodes here, and it turns out I am a couple behind. So this is a note about NT Pod 28: The Disciples in Mark. I recorded it on the back of a class here at Duke on the topic, part of my NT Introduction. Time prevents me from writing fuller notes here, but since some people access the NT Pod through this blog, I wanted at least to mention it. More anon.

NT Pod 27: The Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel

At the weekend I uploaded the first of three back-to-back episodes of the NT Pod on Mark's Gospel.  The topic is the Messianic Secret in Mark.  I am continuing to run the NT Pod alongside the Introduction to the New Testament course I am teaching at Duke University at the moment.  After having looked at the Synoptic Problem and redaction criticism, we move on to in-depth studies of the Gospels themselves.

Looking at the secrecy theme in Mark is an excellent way to begin one's study of Mark.  It is such a striking redactional theme in Mark.  It is a repeated feature in Mark, it comes in a range of material, including in the narrator's voice, and it occurs at key moments.  In this eleven-or-so-minutes podcast, I introduce these elements of secrecy and then ask how they can be explained, focusing, of course on W. Wrede's Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel.

At the time of writing this blog post, I am about to upload the next podcast in this series, NT Pod 28, on the disciples in Mark.  As always, you can find the details over on the NT Pod website, or you can look for me on Duke's iTunes U.

Only the true Messiah denies his divinity

We discussed the Messianic Secret in my New Testament Introduction class at Duke yesterday, and on this topic I can never help thinking of one of my favourite scenes in Life of Brian. Brian, who is being pursued by a crowd who want to proclaim him the Messiah, makes clear that he is not the Messiah. Some bright spark comes up with the line, "Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!" The exchange is towards the end of this four minute clip. Only two or three people, out of a hundred and thirty in the class, had seen Life of Brian, so this is to whet their appetites too:



Incidentally, this is a fine example of the use of Youtube by official organizations. Since Monty Python put clips like this on Youtube, sales of their DVDs apparently multiplied massively. There is a lesson there for online marketing that is still not understood by very many people.

Hurtado on the ending of Mark

Back at the British New Testament Conference in (I think) September 2005, in the Synoptic Gospels section, Larry Hurtado presented a paper on Mark 16.1-8, which argued for a different view than the one now common in the scholarship, suggesting "(a) that Mark is not a dark, ambiguous text, but instead very upbeat, and (b) that the named women are not failures but to be understood as fulfilling what they were charged to do, functioning thereby as crucial witnesses to the bodily resurrection of Jesus." I am pleased to hear that this interesting paper has now been published. Here's the reference:

Larry W. Hurtado, "The Women, the Tomb, and the Climax of Mark," in Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley (eds.), A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Sean Freyne (Leiden: Brill, 2009): 427-50

NT Pod 5: Simon Peter in Mark: Programme Notes

The latest NT Pod deals with the topic of Simon Peter in Mark's Gospel. Against the background of the famous issue of Mark's negative portrayal of the disciples, I explore a little the interesting thesis of Mary Ann Tolbert that the interpretation to the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4.13-20) reflects programmatically the way that different people respond to Jesus in Mark, with a pun on Peter's name covered in the rocky ground (πετρῶδες). Peter, like those on the rocky ground, receive the word with joy when they hear it but they fall away (σκανδαλίζομαι) when trouble or persecution arise (Mark 4.16-17). This is what I call the "Peter pattern" in Mark, immediate enthusiasm followed by a falling away in the face of the cross, persecution, suffering. It is most clearly encapsulated in the Caesarea Philippi episode, where Peter initially gets things right, having understood and confessed that Jesus is the Christ (Mark 8.27-30), but then gets things horribly wrong, when he rebukes Jesus for talking about the cross and himself receives a rebuke from Jesus, "Get thee behind me, Satan" (Mark 8.31-33).

My own addition to this discussion is to link the portrayal of Peter in Mark with the perception in early Christianity of "Christ crucified" as a "stumbling block" to Jews (1 Cor. 1.23). It is the connection between the Christ and crucifixion that causes Peter to stumble, and Mark repeatedly stresses this using the same language of σκάνδαλον and σκανδαλίζομαι (Mark 4.17, 14.27, 14.29). Mark's narrative makes Peter the character through whom the reader comes to understand (and ideally to overcome) the anxiety in the concept of a crucified Messiah.

The Centurion's Cry Once More (briefly)

Further to my previous posts, The Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39 and More on the Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39, I would like to thank Earl Johnson for letting me know about two articles he has written on Mark 15.39, one of which is accessible free to all online:

Earl S. Johnson, Jr., "Mark 15,39 and the So-Called Confession of the Roman Centurion", Biblica 81 (2000): 406-413

E. S. Johnson, "Is Mark 15:39 the Key to Mark’s Christology?", JSNT 31 (1987): 3-22

I have not had a chance to read the latter yet, but the former makes a good case that we should not read this as a "confession" in the normally accepted sense of that word, though without specifically suggesting that the cry is sarcastic or ironic. See too comments by Neil Godfrey on Vridar, also with a mention of the articles by Johnson.

More on the Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39

I am grateful for all the helpful feedback on my post on The Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39 last week, especially here on the blog, where dozens of comments provided helpful biblioblography and some excellent engagement with the issue.  On Primal Subversion, Sean helpfully gathers together several quotations from commentaries on Mark 15.39 and concludes that the ironic / sarcastic reading is preferable.  Other blog  commenters found support for the interpretation in a variety of places, from Alexander Roberts in 1862 to Stephen Moore in 2008.

What, though, of John Fenton?  Other than my own representation of the John Fenton oral tradition, which dates to the mid 1980s, there is nothing more specific at this point.  But several have been able to help me out with Donald Juel's views.  It is quite clear that he held the same view, apparently independently of Fenton, and it is mentioned in a variety of places, including Messiah and Temple and the Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament (see comments for details).  I picked up a copy of Donald H. Juel, Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), which features the following little footnote (74, n. 7):

I have come to believe that even "Son of God" in 15.39 ought probably be read as a taunt ("Sure, this was God's Son"), in accord with the rest of the taunts in the account of Jesus' trial and death.  The centurion plays a role assigned all Jesus' enemies: They speak the truth in mockery, thus providing for the reader ironic testimony to the truth.

I found a little more of interest in Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Patrick D. Miller (eds.), The Ending of Mark and the Ends of God: Essays in Memory of Donald Harrisville Juel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005).  The essay by Michael Welker, "Baptism as Change of Lordship" (107-14) quotes one of Juel's former students to the following effect:

Like a critic who delights in investigating and revealing the secrets behind magicians' illusions, Don dissected people's biblical exegesis, often wondering aloud why so much knowledge about texts and their histories prevented us from actually reading the texts. Likewise, he eagerly exposed students' hermeneutical assumptions, not necessarily to invalidate them but always to impel us to acknowledge and examine them.  His sarcastic reading of the centurion's 'confession' in Mark 15.39 best illustrates this practice.  While reading the passion narrative aloud, he would voice, 'Sure this was God's son!' with acerbic scorn.  He clearly enjoyed the effects of the reading as much as he believed it a faithful rendering of Mark's account.  His bold interpretation sounded alarms among students, driving us to the text to examine its contours for evidence to support various readings (Quoted from Matthew L. Skinner, "Mark a Life: A Tribute to Don Juel," inSpire 8/1 (2003), 33).

Some remain unconvinced by this reading and prefer to see Mark's centurion as making a true confession of some kind.  Mike Parsons asks about Matthew's apparent misunderstanding of Mark's intent.  My guess on that front is that Matthew is not so much misunderstanding as changing and re-conceptualizing.  One might see Matthew's version of the story, the so-called "Zombie Pericope" (Matt. 27.51-54), as providing the reader with a new and explicit reason for the centurions' (now plural) confession. Matthew often explicates Mark’s mysteries in this way, and here he provides a scene that can genuinely impress the centurion and those with him, a truly apocalyptic breaking up of the earth, as heaven declares the momentous nature of Jesus’ death for the characters within the drama to see.  The crucial difference is on what the centurion(s) witness in the different versions.  Mark's centurion makes his assertion when he "saw how he died", ὅτι οὕτως ἐξέπνευσεν.  Matthew's centurion, and those with him, on the other hand, do not just see how Jesus died. They "saw the earthquake and all that had happened", which leaves the reader in no doubt that this is some kind of awed confession.

This draws attention to the key point in the Marcan narrative, that the centurion makes his remark when he sees how Jesus dies. It is the reader who sees the veil of the temple torn in two. To speak of the temple curtain being visible from Golgotha, whether Mark is implying inner or outer, is wishful thinking. Perhaps we are supposed to surmise that the centurion is impressed by the darkness described earlier, but that is not what the narrator isolates in order to provide the context for the centurion's remark. As far as the narrative is concerned, it is the sight of Jesus' death that causes the centurion to make this remark.

Thanks again to everyone for their informed and interesting comments.

The Centurion's Sarcastic Cry in Mark 15.39

The centurion's cry in Mark 15.39, "Truly this was the son of God", is often described as a "confession". It is the moment in Mark's Gospel when Jesus is finally acknowledged as God's son, by a Gentile centurion, forming a nice inclusio with God's announcement of Jesus as his son in Mark 1.11 (cf. 9.7, 12.6). But are we supposed to read centurion's statement as a positive confession, or is it a sarcastic comment, "Huh, truly this fellow as a son of god!"? I first heard the latter interpretation as a first year student in Oxford in the mid 80s, from Canon John Fenton. I would like to underline the merits of this reading in the current blog post, and then I will conclude by asking where the reading originates.

Since hearing John Fenton expound this reading, I have often taught it myself. Usually people are somewhat shocked at first, but as time goes on the reading becomes more appealing and, ultimately, quite persuasive. If the cry is sarcastic, it makes sense in its narrative context. Take another look:

Mark 15.37: ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἀφεὶς φωνὴν μεγάλην ἐξέπνευσεν. 38. Καὶ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη εἰς δύο ἀπ' ἄνωθεν ἕως κάτω. 39 Ἰδὼν δὲ ὁ κεντυρίων ὁ παρεστηκὼς ἐξ ἐναντίας αὐτοῦ ὅτι οὕτως ἐξέπνευσεν εἶπεν, Ἀληθῶς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος υἱὸς θεοῦ ἦν.

Mark 15.37: And Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. 38. And the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who was standing facing him, saw how he died, he said, "Truly this was a son of god".

There is nothing that the centurion has seen that suggests that we should read the text as implying his admiration for Jesus. He makes his comment when he saw how Jesus died (ὅτι οὕτως ἐξέπνευσεν εἶπεν), that is, in despair (15.34), apparently unable to call down Elijah to deliver him (15.35-6). The reader, on the other hand, is given some privileged information, that the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. This is classic dramatic irony: the reader knows what the actors in the drama do not know, and the actors do not realize the truth of the words that they are speaking in mockery.

To read the text in this way coheres with the rest of Mark's Passion Narrative, which is commonly regarded as rich in irony. Jesus is repeatedly mocked as a king (15.9, 12, 18, 26, 32) with purple cloak, crown of thorns and mock homage (15.17-20), but the reader knows that he really is a king. He is mocked as a prophet (14.65) while his very prophecies are being enacted all around him (the mockery itself, fulfilling his Passion predictions, and Peter's denial, fulfilling Jesus' Last Supper prophecies). Given this context, it is difficult to think that the centurion's remark can be intended as a "confession" of faith in Jesus. Reading the remark as the crowning element in the dramatic irony of Mark's Passion Narrative makes good narrative sense.

Now, the first time I heard the suggestion that we read the centurion's cry as ironic was from my tutor John Fenton. A friend tells me that he thinks Fenton got this interpretation from Austin Farrer. This is plausible because Fenton was an admirer of Farrer, but I don't remember that from what Fenton himself said -- and he was inclined to attribute ideas that were not original. I have cast around the literature too to see if anyone else has read the text in this way, and I am surprised to be struggling to find examples of this interpretation. I had thought that perhaps Donald Juel mentioned it, but again I can't find it. Fenton himself mentions it in written work once, as far as I am aware, as follows, with some helpful additional context connecting the saying to the Elijah on Horeb narrative:

Elijah had, it was believed, set up an experiment to prove that the Lord was God, not Baal (1 Kings 18). Someone now tries to repeat the experiment on Jesus: he is given the drink, and they say, Let us see if Elijah will come to take him down from the cross. If Elijah comes, Jesus is who he says he is; if Elijah does not come, he is not. Jesus dies, without the intervention of Elijah, thus proving to those who think in this way that he was not the Messiah, the king of Israel. (It is possible that the centurion's words should be taken in this sense: He really was God's son! Of course not! There is a parallel in the Greek between what the people said on Mount Horeb after Elijah's miracle: Truly the Lord is God; and what is said here, Truly this man was the Son of God. There is also the possibility that 'this man' should be translated 'this fellow', disparagingly, as in Acts 6.13.), John Fenton, Finding the Way Through Mark (London: Mowbray, 1995), 111.

If anyone has any more from the literature on this theme, I would be interested to hear it.

The Dating Game VI: Was Mark written after 70?

In the previous post in this series, we concluded by looking briefly at James Crossley’s commendable effort to rethink the dating of Mark. If that attempt is unsuccessful, it is nevertheless worth asking how secure the standard scholarly dating is. One of the values of challenges to the consensus is that they can send us scurrying back to the texts to think again about the issues and to reexamine our reasons for coming to particular views. My own thinking on the subject has been strongly influenced by three recent studies which successfully reinforce the grounds for locating Mark in the aftermath of 70, Brian Incigneri’s The Gospel to the Romans, H. M. Roskam’s The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context and John Kloppenborg’s article “Evocatio Deorum and the Date of Mark”. Although these three disagree with one another on the details (e.g. the precise referent of Mark 13.14), all agree on the significance of the key text:

Mark 13.1-2, Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another which will not be torn down.

For many, so blatant a prediction of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem settles the question of Mark’s date – it is written in full knowledge of the disastrous events of 70. For Kloppenborg,

“The fact that this seems to correspond so precisely to what occurred invites the conclusion that it was formulated (or reformulated) ex eventu” (431).

For Roskam,

“The evangelist could not have presented the prediction of the destruction of the temple as an utterance of Jesus with such firmness unless he was very certain about its fulfilment” (86).

Objections to this view are ably discussed by Incigneri (Chapter 3, "No stone Upon another"), who stresses Mark’s “over-arching concentration on the Temple” (154), the destruction of which is so important in his narrative that it is implausible that it was still standing when Mark wrote.

One of the standard arguments against the idea that Mark shows knowledge of the destruction of Jerusalem is the reassertion of the text’s own character here as prediction. To take one example among many, David A. DeSilva, in his Introduction to the New Testament, suggests that

The primary reason many scholars tend to date Mark’s Gospel after 70 CE is the presupposition that Jesus could not foresee the destruction of Jerusalem – an ideological conviction clearly not shared by all (196).

But this kind of appeal, while popular, tends not to take seriously the literary function of predictions in narrative texts like Mark. Successful predictions play a major role in the narrative, reinforcing the authority of the one making the prediction and confirming the accuracy of the text’s theological view. It is like reading Jeremiah. It works because the reader knows that the prophecies of doom turned out to be correct. It is about “when prophecy succeeds”.

The text makes sense as Mark’s attempt to signal, in a post-70 context, that the event familiar to his readers was anticipated by Jesus, in word (13.2, 13.14) and deed (11.12-21) and in the symbolism of his death, when the veil of the temple was torn in two (15.38). The framing of the narrative requires knowledge of the destruction of the temple for its literary impact to be felt. Ken Olson has alerted me (especially in a paper read at the BNTC three years ago) to the importance of Mark 15.29-30 in this context. It is the first of the taunts levelled when Jesus is crucifie:

So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!

For the irony to work, the reader has to understand that the Temple has been destroyed; the mockers look foolish from the privileged perspective of the post-70 reader, who now sees that Jesus’ death is the moment when the temple was proleptically destroyed, the deity departing as the curtain is torn, the event of destruction interpreted through Gospel narrative and prophecy.

The point that is generally missed in the literature, especially that which comes from a fairly conservative perspective, relates to the attempt to understand the literary function of the predictions of destruction in Mark's narrative. John Kloppenborg is one of the few scholars who sees the importance of the literary function of the predictions, noting the role played by the literary motif of "evocation deorum" echoed here in Mark, e.g.

This raises a crucial distinction between omens and rituals that (allegedly) occurred before the events, and their literary and historiographic use in narrative (446).

Discussions about whether the historical Jesus was or was not prescient may be interesting, but in this context they miss the point. The theme of the destruction of the temple is repeated and pervasive in Mark's narrative, and it becomes steadily more intense as the narrative unfolds. Jesus' prophecies in Mark attain their potency because "the reader understands" their reference.

Adela Yarbro Collins on Mark

I am a little late on this one but as I gradually work through the backlog, it's one not to miss:
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Fortress Press Releases Hermeneia Volume on Mark

Minneapolis (November 13, 2007)—In the newly released Hermeneia Volume Mark: A Commentary, Professor Adela Yarbro Collins brings to bear on the text of the first Gospel the latest historical-critical perspectives, providing a full treatment of such controversial issues as the relationship of canonical Mark to the “Secret Gospel of Mark” and the text of the Gospel, including its longer endings.

She situates the Gospel, with its enigmatic portrait of the misunderstood Messiah, in the context of Jewish and Greco-Roman literature of the first century. Her comments draw on her profound knowledge of apocalyptic literature as well as on the traditions of popular biography in the Greco-Roman world to illuminate the overall literary form of the Gospel.

The commentary also introduces an impressive store of data on the language and style of Mark, illustrated from papyrological and epigraphical sources. Collins is in constructive dialogue with the wide range of scholarship on Mark that has been produced in the twentieth century. Her work will be foundational for Markan scholarship in the first half of the twenty-first century.

“Adela Yarbro Collins’s remarkably learned and thorough introduction to and exposition of Mark’s Gospel deserves a prominent place in every serious theological library. It provides us solid information not only about Markan studies but also about the Jewish and Greco-Roman world in which that Gospel took shape. It is a great achievement, the product of many years of dedicated research.”

—Daniel J. Harrington, Weston Jesuit School of Theology

“Adela Collins’s long-awaited commentary on the Gospel of Mark fulfills and even surpasses the highest expectations. It demonstrates the scholarly expertise and sound critical judgment we have come to expect from this expert on Jewish apocalyptic and Greco-Roman literary culture. This book will now be the definitive resource for historical-critical reading of the Gospel of Mark.”

—Karen L. King, Harvard Divinity School

Author:

Adela Yarbro Collins is Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. She has written numerous books on ancient Judaism and Christianity.

Editor:

Harold W. Attridge is Dean of Yale Divinity School and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament. His books include Hebrews in the Hermeneia series (1989, 978-0-8006-6021-5).

Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia series

By Adela Yarbro Collins

Edited by Harold W. Attridge

Item No: 978-0-8006-6078-9

Format: Hardcover with jacket, 800 pages, 7.25 x 9.25 inches

Price: $80.00

To order Mark: A Commentary please call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the Web site at www.fortresspress.com.

To request review copies (for media), or to discuss speaking engagements or interviews, please call 1-800-426-0115 ext. 234 or e-mail toddb@augsburgfortress.org.

To request exam copies for classroom use (professors) go to www.fortresspress.com/examcopy.
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The Trial and Death of Jesus

This book is new from Peeters. My copy arrived today:

The Trial and Death of Jesus
Essays on the Passion Narrative in Mark

Series: Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 45

Editors: Van Oyen G., Shepherd T.

Year: 2006
ISBN: 90-429-1834-9
Pages: XI-268 p.
Price: 40 EURO


What is the significance of the trial and death of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark? In its annual meetings the Mark Group of the Society of Biblical Literature studied the trial of Jesus in 2003 and the death of Jesus in 2004. Both speakers and audience expressed the desire to bring some of the papers together in book form. The current volume fulfills this wish. The contributions presented here represent an up to date expression of one of the most important themes in Markan exegesis. The editors use the metaphor of a prism to illustrate the two sections of the book. Like a concave prism spreading light, the first section presents a range of understandings of the meaning of the death of Jesus. Like a convex prism focusing light, the second section uses multiple methodologies to focus attention on the trial of Jesus, particularly the charge of blasphemy. The papers together raise questions, challenge common views, and interrelate themes that push Markan scholarship forward.
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I have an essay in the volume called "Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative". Here's the full list of contents:

Section One
The Meaning of Jesus’ Death

Sharyn DOWD and Elizabeth Struthers MALBON
The Significance of Jesus’ Death in Mark: Narrative Context and
Authorial Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Mark GOODACRE
Scripturalization in Mark’s Crucifixion Narrative . . . . . . . . . 33

Geert VAN OYEN
The Meaning of the Death of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark: A Real
Reader Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Jocelyn MCWHIRTER
Messianic Exegesis in Mark’s Passion Narrative . . . . . . . . . 69

William SANGER CAMPBELL
“Why did you abandon me?” Abandonment Christology in Mark’s
Gospel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Stephen P. AHEARNE-KROLL
Challenging the Divine: LXX Psalm 21 in the Passion Narrative
of the Gospel of Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Section Two
The Trial of Jesus

Adela YARBRO COLLINS
The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14:64 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

Jeffrey B. GIBSON
The Function of the Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14:64 . . . . 171

Michael E. VINES
The “Trial Scene” Chronotype in Mark and the Jewish Novel . . 189

Kelli S. O’BRIEN
Innocence and Guilt: Apologetic, Martyr Stories, and Allusion in
the Markan Trial Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

Tom SHEPHERD
The Irony of Power in the Trial of Jesus and the Denial by Peter –
Mark 14:53-72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

List of contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Index of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Index of Ancient texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253