Introduction
1. Method and Models
A. Approaching Jesus
B. Cultural Poetics
C. The Hero's Journey
D. The Bible as Literature in Translation
Fig. 1 - Origins of the English Bible
2. Historical Context
A. Ancient Judaism
Fig. 2 - Map of Israel circa 30 A.D.
B. The Roman Empire
Fig. 3 - Debt in First-Century A.D. Palestine
Fig. 4 - Herod's Temple
C. The High Priesthood and Apocolyptic Cults
Fig. 5 - Contemporary Imagining of First Century A.D. Semitic Man
D. Disciples and Evangelists
A. Overture (1:1-1:15)
B. Birth, Childhood, and the Missing Years
Fig. 6 - Tree-stem of Indo-European Languages and Letter Comparison
B. Irony and Awe (1:16-2:12)
C. Subversive Teaching (2:13-4:34)
D. The Sermon on the Mount
E. Renewal and Rejection (4:35-6:29)
F. Feeding the People (6:30-8:21)
G. Journey to Jerusalem (8:22-10:52)
Fig. 7 - Map of Jerusalem circa First Century A.D.
H. Coronation in Jerusalem (11:1-12:44)
I. The Mock King (13:1-15:47)
J. The End (16:1-17)
Afterword
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
The project is divided into five sections. Following this Introduction, the first chapter explains the critical method and models I employ in reading. The second chapter provides the contextual metahistory necessary for an informed interpretation, presented as detailed commentary in the third chapter. Finally, in the Afterword, I briefly consider the contemporary relevance of the character and teachings of Jesus and the future of the Bible as literature.
1 - METHOD AND MODELS
In Jungian psychology, Christ is the highest expression of the self, though not without a shadow, and in some religious thinking, the purpose of life is to attain perfection with Christ as an example. Despite the love that delivered this enigmatic character to us across two thousand years of storytelling, many people, including myself in past times due to irrelevant anxieties concerning the Bible, are more aware of the distortion of Jesus for schismatic economic and political gains than the inspiring and ironic portrayal of Jesus and the heroic caution he offers against social destruction in the Christian source texts. In approaching such an iconic figure, it is necessary to establish the critical precepts and justified assumptions I utilize in my interpretation of Jesus as a mythic hero, subversive teacher and unruly social reformer in the Gospel of Mark.
APPROACHING
JESUS
Cultural Poetics, more restrictively known as New Historicism, is an accepted mode of literary study since the early 1980s that places a text within the social practices and institutions of a culture at a particular time-space to deduce the text’s meanings and effects. In the academic specialization of Biblical studies, similar approaches are known as the Socio-Historical Method and the Contextual Method, both principally concerned with the meaning of a text within a community’s social history. The dominant trend in modern academic studies of the New Testament, especially in the last twenty-five years by the Jesus Seminar, is the search for the historical Jesus, the reconstruction of an actual person in time-space and his authentic teachings, from 1) archaeological evidence, 2) less than a dozen ancient text sources, and 3) well-informed speculation.
My focus is not concerned with whether the story is factually correct—it isn’t; nor am I overly concerned with later institutional doctrine regarding Jesus, such as the Nicene Creed recited in Catholic liturgy since the fourth century A.D. Instead, I propose the story follows the archetypal hero quest pattern, constructed within a paradigm, or universe of discourse, intended to yield wisdom and irony, if properly read as mythopoeia. An intelligent and imaginative interpretation necessarily considers Jesus in his distinct cultural context, which is better estimated from the knowledge gained through the pursuit of a historical Jesus. The cultural context of Chapter Two includes not only a survey of the political and economic state, but also a broad overview of the Hebrew texts that inspire the story of Jesus. Indeed, the Gospel of Mark explicitly demands intertextuality, the framing of the story within a symbolically rich literary tradition.
Jesus, so far as he is portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels, is an archetypal hero. Archetypes are repeated “narrative designs, patterns of action, character-types, themes and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social rituals” (Abrams 13). Carl G. Jung, initially a disciple of Sigmund Freud, suggests all humans inherit primordial images from our ancient ancestors, and further, that “access to the archetypal images...succeeds in revitalizing aspects of the psyche which are essential both to individual self-integration and to the mental and emotional well-being of the human race” (Abrams 260). Indeed, the crucifixion of Jesus expresses a most fundamental archetype, a death/rebirth theme associated with the cycle of seasons and seasons of life. In this way, the story is myth, “an independent, closed, symbolically rich narrative about some archetypal character whose story, which takes place in the primeval time of the beginning, represents some universal aspect of the origins or nature of humanity in its relation to the sacred or the divine” (Moye 578).
The popular monomyth scholar Joseph Campbell asserts, “The hero is the one who, while still alive, knows and represents the claims of the superconsciousness which throughout creation is more or less unconscious” (Campbell 259). Especially for those who believe life is lived in God’s image, the story of Jesus offers insight into human nature and the often hidden ways and will of God; the Bible is the story of God’s people, a story not only of characters created by the Author, but also a story of the Author as a character in the Author’s own play. When the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are taken as a whole—from creation, what God has done in the past, to new creation, what God makes possible for and requires of us in the present—Jesus is a mythic hero who teaches that God’s action to rescue a lost and broken world becomes operative when enacted by human agency. In this way, the literary tradition functions like myth, “by narrating a ‘sacred history,’ [it] stabilizes and orders, or regenerates and gives meaning to, what is seen as the chaos of human, or secular and profane, existence” (Moye 579). Also in this way, Jesus fits Northrop Frye’s definition of the mythic hero, a God-man superior to other men and the order of nature. Thus, Jesus overcomes death as a mythic hero who exists in the timeless literary universe of symbols, clues, messages and hints that urgently point toward the eternal, immortal, infinite and beautiful mystery of the Real while offering direction to guard against social destruction. However, when Jesus enters Jerusalem as told in the Gospel of Mark, though perhaps greater in power than other men, he is subject to social forces and the order of nature, to his death, as a fitting example of Frye’s hero of epic tragedy—if not for the ironic ending. In acting against the “great and conspicuous seat of power” (Campbell 337), Jesus is the hero, “which means that he...intervened in [a] critical situation in an extraordinary fashion, acting outside, above, or in disregard to normal patterns of behavior, especially in putting his...life at risk” (Miller 1). In his heroism, Jesus is a subversive teacher and unruly social reformer, a symbol for contemplation, and image of freedom, the great boon of the heroic journey that unlocks the flow of life in our hearts and the world to regenerate society (Campbell 40). In the detailed commentary of chapter three, I explicitly show how aspects of the archetypal hero’s quest are portrayed in the Gospel of Mark and influence the accretion and elaboration of the story in later texts.
Because no original source text exists, choosing which Biblical text to interpret is a peculiar challenge that requires a survey of how the text has been delivered across time. Man has been illiterate for most of existence, and despite several thousand years of writing, only a small few, even with the widespread literacy common in contemporary society, can be counted among the literate elite. Thus, oral tradition was the primary mechanism for transmission of rituals, social commentary, entertainment and wish fulfillment for most of human history. Because of a passion among Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for folktales, characteristics of oral tradition are well known. Unlike a fixed text, oral traditions are inherently improvisational. Using standard themes, archetypal characters, rhythmical melodies, and memorable words, an oral transmitter spontaneously reinvents the tale in a performance that may include acting, dance and music. Oral transmission is not a memorized word-for-word recitation, but an entertaining extemporization based on mastery of a tradition coupled with a feel for pace, repetition and surprise.
The Bible is an example of an ancient oral tradition that swallowed regional folktales. Once attributed to Moses, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Pentateuch, are likely edited together into a continuous tale from four distinct sources. The written texts in Hebrew, and some Aramaic, record an oral tradition with origins stretching back to the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia; Sumer, Babylon and Assyria. Jewish religious practice developed into the study of documents and oral traditions chronicling man’s interaction with God. Jews living in exile in Babylon under Persian rule during the 6th century B.C. collected, combined, edited and rewrote the stories that form the Hebrew Bible, later known to Christians as the Old Testament or Old Covenant, which was intended to preserve Jewish cultural identity and serve as a guide for proper living. Canonization, which was not definitive until after the Christians selected their primary texts, was a gradual process of embracing the documents most widely accepted as inspiration, belief and practice. The first translation into Greek in the 3rd century BC at Alexandria is named the Septuagint (LXX), after the seventy authors supposedly associated with the project. The first century A.D. authors of the New Testament use Greek to record the story of Jesus, who taught in Aramaic, and New Testament intertextuality references the Greek Septuagint, not the Hebrew texts.
From oral tradition to written Hebrew, to teaching in Aramaic recorded in Greek, the trend of encounter with the Bible is primarily in translation, which is why I interact with an English New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) as my primary source augmented by other versions in Hebrew, Greek and English, as noted. English translations, earliest rendered from the Vulgate, a 4th century A.D. Latin translation of the Septuagint, were not generally available until the fourteenth century A.D., when John Wycliffe was exhumed and posthumously burned for his so-called vulgar translation. William Tyndale translated the New Testament and the Pentateuch before he was arrested and burned at the stake. Such were the passions in 1517, when Martin Luther’s assertions—that 1) salvation is determined only by faith, not strict adherence to ritual, and 2) scriptures, not clergy or tradition, determine what an individual must believe and practice—inaugurated the displacement of the Roman Catholic Church as the dominant institution of Western civilization.
Within fifteen short years, Henry VIII furthered the Protestant Reformation when he founded the Church of England to escape the commands of the Pope. After Henry’s death in 1547, England jerked from King Edward’s radical Protestantism to Queen Mary’s aggressive Roman Catholicism in 1553, then to Queen Elizabeth’s renewed Protestantism in 1558. Reflecting the Protestant belief of direct access to the Bible, a variety of competing English translations, including the Geneva Bible, a translation used by Shakespeare, circulated when James I ascended to the throne following Elizabeth's death. In a time when people attended church as the central focus of their life, James—renown for his drunken parties and bisexuality—ordered his bishops in 1603 to produce the most widely-read English translation, the Authorized King James Version (KJV), in a complex committee structure that reviewed the individual work of forty-seven translators working in six separate groups.
At the time of the translation, the Puritans, known then as Separatists and later as Congregationalists, were enraged by the decline of society and the corruption of the rulers of England and the Netherlands. Distressed by the decadence and debauchery of Europe and interpreting the Bible as an infallible guidebook for living, the Pilgrims drunkenly sailed across the North Atlantic Ocean to the wilderness of the New World with plans to create a Christian utopia to inspire the globe. The Separatists justified their escape from the Old World by claiming parallels with the Hebrew liberation from slavery in Egypt and journey to the Promised Land; the new exodus produced the American Civil Religion and carried the Protestant Work Ethic into the Industrial Revolution. An abundance of English translations of the Bible marketed to different consumer categories were published since the turn of the twentieth century A.D.
To show how the teachings of Jesus are subversive (that is, intended to disrupt), and what social reform he advocates, it is first necessary to establish the metahistorical framework that gives meaning to the complicated symbolism of the text. To that end, I offer commentary and a brief overview of the history and beliefs of ancient Judaism, then discuss the intricate political, economic and religious governing structures of Jerusalem under the Roman overlords, including the Hellenic cultural influences and major groups and characters of the period. Finally, I survey the history of the writing and earliest distribution of the Gospels, both how and when they were written, and also their intended audience, as justification for interpreting the Gospel of Mark.
ANCIENT JUDAISM
Judaism begins as henotheism, the worship of one supreme god to the exclusion of other gods, and evolves into monotheism, the belief of only one God. Because of its origin in ancient Mesopotamian practices, and the long established link to the oldest religion—the Vedic tradition of India—a comparative study of the world’s religions and philosophies, which assimilated features of extinct practices like Zoroastrianism and Mithraism, is useful but beyond the scope of this treatise. An intertextual reader will find links asserted between the various traditions in many sources, such as Dante Aleghieri’s Divine Comedy, the thirteenth century CE literary masterwork highly praised by the Roman Catholic Church, and the seventh century CE Muslim Qur’an, which includes Jews, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists as “people of the book.”The earliest myths assimilated later into the Hebrew Bible were not likely regarded as strict fact by ancient people, but instead, the gods served as symbols to explain the wonder and principles of existence. In the central myth of Judaism—the exodus from bondage in Egypt to living in harmony with God’s will in the Promised Land—the voice from the burning bush declares itself as amorphous and ambiguous being, “I AM WHO I AM,” also potentially translated as “I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE” (Exodus 3:14), a mystery exhibited in creation through degree or gradation depending on the time, place and character of a situation. More practically, the Israelites’ worship centers on a storm god known by the tetragrammaton YHWH (translated “Jehovah” in many English versions, but more likely expressed as “Yahweh”). Yahweh wins the Hebrews’ devotion after intervening in their centuries-long exploitation in a corrupt social stratification, and through Moses, sets forth ordinances to reform society toward justice, mercy and charity.
Yahweh impressively advances from a minor Mesopotamian rain god to the exclusive god of the Hebrew people to the transcendent Lord of Creation, but even the Bible admits Yahweh is not the sole paranormal or supernatural being in existence. With nary a detail, the Hebrew Bible recounts a distant beginning: “The Nephilim [giants] were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God cohabitated with the daughters of men, who bore them children. Those were the heroes of old, the men of renown” (this scribe’s rewording of KJV/JPS Genesis 6:4). Furthermore, “there was a day when the sons of God presented themselves before the LORD, and Satan [the Adversary] came along with them” (scribe’s rewording of NRSV/JPS Job 1:6); in the divine council known in esoteric Judaism as “the Shed,” Yahweh brags of Job’s piety to Satan, who tempts Yahweh into a wager that severely tests Job. In 1 and 2 Kings, the prophets Elijah and Elisha serve as Yahweh’s champions against the rival storm god Baal, and Biblical scholars Diana Edelman, John Day and Mark S. Smith argue that urban priests suppressed ancient folk practice that included rites for Asherah, a figure associated with wisdom and the tree of life who was also worshipped as Yahweh’s consort and queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18).
Yahweh accepts the Hebrews as his chosen people, but their relationship is fraught with conflict from the start. For example, in the garden of Eden, the primeval paradise, Adam and Eve’s sin is not that they ate the forbidden fruit—which calls to suspect Yahweh for the tree’s location since he knew its risk; instead, primitive man’s corruption is in denying an act of free will and shamefully accusing others of coercion. Later, Yahweh shows favor for Abel’s nomadic sheep herding, and Cain, his farmer brother, is jealously enraged to murder; like his parents, Cain profanes his free will and shows the volatile and vicious character of man. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree: in Genesis 6:5, Yahweh destroys man’s violently corrupt civilization by flood, then promises never to repeat the infantile tantrum; instead, Yahweh confuses the languages and scatters the people. Yahweh becomes a psychotic megalomaniac demanding Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac (Genesis 22) to prove his loyalty; Yahweh is arguably sadistic in denying Moses entrance to the Promised Land, because one tap is sufficient to draw water from a rock—two shows lack of faith (Numbers 20:11). Still, Yahweh also shows a capacity to learn through experience and adapt to changing conditions, which offers hope of man’s redemption from corruption too.
“In the burning-bush story a situation of exploitation and injustice is already in existence, and God tells Moses that he is about to give himself a name and enter history in a highly partisan role, taking sides with the oppressed Hebrews against the Egyptian establishment” (Frye 114). Thus, the Exodus myth displays Israel’s most important contributions to Western Civilization: first, the belief that all other gods are false—which not only gives rise to disbelief and marginalizing of potent mythopoeia by bigoted secularism and positivism, but also the competition and conflict between beloved, rejected or distorted mythopoeic icons by an audience that generally lacks the metaphoric framework for proper reading. Second, unlike other ancient societies that positioned a golden age in the far-distant past, the Israelites anticipated a utopian future, an approach that extends into the Hegelian-Marxist dialectic of history, inspired the Separatist migration from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean and fuels American notions of progress.
In the Diaspora following the Babylonian destruction of Solomon’s Temple, and especially during the political and religious oppression of subsequent Persian, Hellenic, Maccabean, Hasmonean and Roman overlords, belief was widespread in a coming Messiah (“anointed one” in Hebrew). The Christ, from the Greek word Khristós, “covered in oil”, is a Jewish king who fulfills God’s utopian promises—a warrior like King David; a judge of the earth; and a priest with authoritative interpretation of scripture. The Messiah ends the existing world order and introduces a time of peace when the righteous live in honor of the Spirit. Some contemporary Christians assert Jesus was the Messiah and eagerly await the Second Coming described in the Revelation to John; many present-day Jews believe the Messiah has yet to make a first appearance.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
At the same time when Ovid created the Classical equivalent of the Bible, The Metamorphosis, Virgil—Dante’s poet-guide through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in The Divine Comedy—wrote the epic poem The Aeneid which chronicles, in the cycles of history, the rise of the Roman Republic, which during the ministry of Jesus, was a newborn Empire in control of Palestine, a center of trade located along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and known alternately as Canaan or Israel. Northrup Frye proposes the Christian Bible as a whole is a sequence of U-shaped patterns depicting the loss and subsequent renewal of Israel, both the land and the people. The series of declines rising to brief liberty fits the typical comic plot—as Frye describes it—moving through descent from prosperity into humiliating disaster and bondage, usually from a failure to act, followed by a repentance—a change of mind—and a fleeting deliverance and restoration, a structure repeated across a linear narrative using metaphorically related, identical, and interchangeable synonyms culminating in the late appearance of the Messiah. “[W]e find that the sequence of U’s can also be seen as a sequence of rises and falls of heathen kingdoms, each an inverted U [the typical shape of tragedy], which differs from a cyclical movement in the fact that at each turn of the wheel the empire has a different name” (Frye 176). At the time of Jesus, Rome was a five hundred year old republic turned militant empire governed by an aristocratic oligarchy of the richest and most influential elite of society. “Roman warlords, emperors, and other patricians became obscenely wealthy” through deliberate economic exploitation and conquest (Horsley 24); after overtaking the Hasmonean oppression of Palestine, Roman overlords established indirect rule by appointing Herod the Great, a sworn ally of the Caesar, as ruler of Judea, when he was approximately twenty-five years old. Though foreign policy belonged exclusively to Rome, Herod secured his power by collecting taxes, providing military troops and supplies, and building cities with temples, arenas and baths in honor of the Caesar. Herod also sponsored the Olympics, hosted games at Caesara Maritima and patronized Greek arts and literature, which was eagerly adopted and adapted by the Romans (Chilton 409).
The early Greeks modeled the image and behavior of their gods after themselves, characteristic of humanism, a set of beliefs emphasizing man's greatness, the importance of the individual and the power of reason. The Hellenic thinkers divided into two primary groups: the Rationalists and the Universalists. The Rationalists—philosophers like Thales of Miletus, Democritus of Abdera and Hippocrates—divide into three branches. The Milesians searched for natural laws to explain the operation of Creation, which they believed is mechanistic and materialistic. The Atomists proposed Creation consists of an infinite number of indivisible atoms constantly in motion. The Sophists, like Protogoras, abandoned the quest to find an absolute truth and proposed all is relative and measured by man. The Sophists advocated knowing what is practical, such as methods of persuasion and how to create success in society.
The Universalists, represented by Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, rejected the relativism and uncertainty of the Rationalists. The most influential philosopher, Socrates, asserted one could know absolute truth through observation, learning and reason: “I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men...” (Plato, Apology 38a) Socrates also proposed an immortal soul released from the troubles of the body at death:
To fear death, gentlemen, is none other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they know that it is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know (Plato, Apology 29b).The practical release from earthly suffering, instead of accentuating the afterlife, is the focus of the Hellenistic philosophy that dominates Roman religion, which emphasized collective ritual, not individual belief. Roman cults adopted and renamed the early Greek gods; Romans saw themselves as neither completely free nor totally submissive to supernatural forces. In general, ancient Rome valued a disciplined obedience to human and supernatural powers to secure a prosperous life. Roman philosophers proposed men are masters of their own being and choose whether to live in ignorant rebellion against nature (sin) or in harmony through tolerance and compassion. Expanding Hellenic (Greek) tradition, Hellenistic philosophy is dominated by 1) the Epicureans, who locate personal peace in the simple pleasures of embodied aesthetic experience, and 2) the Stoics, who propose reason as the ordering principle of a seemingly chaotic world.
At the peak of the Roman Empire, any religious expression was allowed if it a) submitted to the authority, and contributed to the continuation of the Roman government, and b) accepted the Roman Emperor and members of his Imperial Club, typically members of his family, as gods. In an attempt to control the high priesthood of Israel, Herod not only lavishly rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem but also appointed his own loyal priests from Babylon, which caused an eruption of peasant revolts “[l]ed by popular leaders, some of whom claimed to be divinely anointed kings with messianic or prophetic status” (Chilton 412). Burdened by taxes totaling a third of a paltry peasant income (see Fig. 3), Jews appealed to Herod’s heir Archelaus for a reduction in taxes in 4 BCE (Ehrman 241); Herod Archelaus answered with a military slaughter of the gathered mob. Violent rebellion exploded across the realm, prompting the Roman governor of Syria to send soldiers to suppress the insurrection by 1) looting and burning towns, 2) enslaving the population and 3) crucifying over two thousand Jews (Chilton 413). Consensus opinion places the birth of a historical Jesus, Yeshua Ben Yosef, at this volatile time.
After Herod the Great’s death, his kingdom was divided among his sons. Following continuous rioting by Judeans, Augustus Caesar replaced Herod Archelaus with a Roman governor; Jerusalem was now ruled directly by a foreign empire. “The Roman official in charge of Judea was at first a prefect (a military commander) and later a procurator (a civil administrator)” who appointed and often overruled the chief priest and council on behalf of Rome (Chilton 419). The supreme authority in Jewish society was now subordinate to Roman control, interference and exploitation; Pontius Pilate, appointed in 26 C.E., unscrupulously used the position to enrich himself. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee from his father’s death until 39 AD, notoriously suppressed critics, especially John the baptizer, a popular peasant preacher—and teacher to Jesus—who “denounced Antipas’s marriage to his brother’s former wife” and openly demanded Antipas obey Leviticus 20:21 (Chilton 490); Antipas beheaded his outspoken and widely respected opponent, which further roused the populace to sedition.
Facing onerous economic conditions (see Fig 3), peasants turned to banditry and messianic cults with “two interrelated goals: to attain freedom from Roman and Herodian rule and to restore a more egalitarian social-economic order” (Horsley 50). Fearing civil unrest during pilgrimage festivals at the Jerusalem temple, Rome stationed garrisons in the city and further poisoned Judean attitudes. “Jews celebrating the Passover were not simply remembering the past, when God acted on their behalf to save them from their subjugation to the Egyptians, they were also looking to the future, when God would save them yet again, this time from their present overlords, the Romans” (Ehrman 242).
THE HIGH PRIESTHOOD AND APOCALYPTIC CULTS
After centuries of oppression, apocalyptic fervor was a fever among the Judeans. The expectation that social ills and evils would be divinely annihilated and replaced in the near future by eternal bliss motivated the high priesthood to debate whether the dead should be resurrected, if they were worthy of sharing in the auspicious event. “The supreme legislative, executive, and judicial council in Judea met in the Temple compound” called the Sanhedrin, the Greek word for council (Chilton 421). In addition to leading public prayer and daily sacrificing animals, the Sanhedrin functioned like a municipal assembly by collecting taxes, managing international relations and acting as judiciary of legal issues. In addition to lower ranked scribes, the Sanhedrin was populated by a) local elders, typically from the wealthiest families, and b) appointees of the Roman overlords, most notably in the post of chief priest, the only man allowed to enter the Holy of Holies—the room Yahweh inhabits in the “House of Yahweh” featuring an altar of incense, a seven-branched lamp stand and bread table. Placed beyond the curtained room, a burnt offering, and a wash basin for ritual purification—another topic of hot debate, especially among the two main factions of the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and Pharisees.
The Sadducees, an aristocratic majority of the Sanhedrin acting in cooperation with the Roman overlords, 1) insisted on strict interpretation of scripture, 2) reacted strongly against Hellenic influences and 3) denied the promise of resurrection. The Pharisees, in contrast, a) acknowledged an apocalyptic resurrection and b) emphasized free interpretation and sincerity of intent in religious practice, though they were especially concerned with rigorously observing the Sabbath, and ritual purity—that is, being in the appropriate state of mind for worship. Other groups, such as the Essenes, considered the Pharisees too liberal and Sadducees as corrupt, and withdrew from Jerusalem; the Convenanters—an Essene group led by a Teacher of Righteousness, a priestly messiah who could discern the secrets of the prophets—retreated to the desert where they wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, lost for two millennia and finally recovered in the mid-twentieth century A.D. The Fourth Philosophy is characterized by violent opposition to foreign domination of Judea; one group, the Zealots, invaded Jerusalem in the uprising against Rome in 66 A.D., overthrew the reigning aristocracy and committed suicide rather than surrender to the Roman Empire. North of Jerusalem, the Samaritans rejected all scripture except the Pentateuch and showed outright contempt for Judeans. In this fickle mix, Jesus emerges: “Christianity began in the proclamations of a Jewish teacher, and the correct interpretation of his teaching is the key to eternal life” (Ehrman 11).
DISCIPLES
AND EVANGELISTS
Shortly after the time of Jesus, “tensions between Jews and Rome continued to increase over economic, political, and religious issues” especially when the Roman emperor Gaius Caligula ordered his statue erected in the Jerusalem Temple (Chilton 434). Herod Agrippa I, grandchild of Herod the Great, abused the Jews, most notably the public flogging of thirty-eight members of the Sanhedrin (Chilton 435); following a period of increasing incidences of armed insurrection, Rome launched a military assault on Jerusalem in the late ’60s that culminated in a years-long siege, destruction of the Temple and utter devastation of Jerusalem (Chilton 448). In this ferment, the gospels were produced—not by the disciples of Jesus, but by associates of the apostles, and later evangelists who spread the story across the Roman Empire.
Authorship of the New Testament texts, originally in Greek, is commonly and incorrectly ascribed to their respective namesakes. Consensus opinion among biblical scholars dates the writing of the gospels between 35 and 60 years after the death of Jesus, circa 30 A.D. Many scholars also propose the existence of a yet-undiscovered document code-named “Q” used as a source for Matthew and Luke, both of which expand upon Mark, likely the earliest recorded text. The form of the gospel, which means “good news” from the Anglo-Saxon word god-spell, is a written account of the ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. Perhaps this distinction is what has excluded more than 30 documents from the canon for 1,500 years. Omitted scriptures, like the gospel of Thomas, are collections of sayings with no narratives—offering some precedence for the “Q” source theory; others, like the gospel of Mary or the recently-discovered gospel of Judas—in which Judas is not an evil betrayer but a loyal follower of Jesus’ specific instruction to report him to the authorities—are detailed episodes from the life of Jesus without the overarching narrative found in canonical texts. “It was typical for a great rabbi to have an inner circle of especially dedicated and beloved students with whom he was most closely associated and to whom he communicated the most confidential teachings, including secret mystical lore” (Hauer 250).
The generally held opinion asserts that Mark’s gospel was written in the years prior to the Temple’s ruin around 65 A.D., and Matthew and Luke followed around 70-75 A.D. John was the last of the canonical gospels around 90-95 A.D. Intended to be read aloud during a small gathering typically in a private residence, Mark’s gospel specifically offered lessons for a suffering community experiencing social disruptions and persecution. The gospels also fit the pattern of Greco-Roman biography, and proceed through a series of public encounters that demonstrate the hero’s identity, which was thought to be constant throughout life. “Historical accounts in ancient days were not objective, verifiable accounts of the past, but a story told to relate divine purpose and themes” (Hauer 41). Ancient audiences expected a miraculous beginning and end to life, divinely inspired teachings and supernatural deeds, to see how the character acted and reacted to challenges with well-crafted words and masterful deeds, and to be given interpretive insight into the character and narrative in the opening scene (Ehrman 65).
The earliest Christians were apocalyptic Jews who followed the teachings of Jesus, an apprentice of John the baptizer, and expected a total reversal of the oppressive social order due to his death and resurrection. “Not all the Christian communities that sprang up around the Mediterranean were completely unified in the ways they understood their belief in Jesus as the one who had died for the sins of the world” (Ehrman 280). Early Christians were called Nazareans. Jewish-Christians like the Ebionites retained Jewish religious practices and believed Jesus was empowered by God’s spirit to do miracles and teach the truth of God; he died on the cross, and afterward, God raised him from the dead to Heaven. Marcionite Christians believed Jesus saved humanity from a wrathful god. Gnostic-Christians believed the creator god is inherently evil, as is his creation, and gnosis—knowledge—releases the trapped divinity in man. Proto-Orthodox Christians believed the disciples wrote the gospels to be followed literally for salvation. This group eventually won the favor of the Roman Empire in the fourth century A.D. and used their association with the Roman military to suppress other Christian expression, including the destruction of many non-canonical texts that were lost until a treasure trove of ancient papyrus was located in the Egyptian desert in the mid-twentieth century A.D.
OVERTURE (1:1-1:15)
True to form, the opening scene of Mark’s gospel provides interpretive direction by not only outlining the themes and structure of the text, but also by providing information outright to the reader that is denied to the characters in the play, who persistently fail to comprehend the teaching, actions, and identity of Jesus through the final scenes. “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1) identifies Jesus at the start as an anointed one, the Messiah who fulfills Jewish eschatological expectations as the “Son of God,” an ancient epithet given to those persons who act as the agent of God’s will on earth, not necessarily limited to any single person and better translated as “Man of God.” It is only the beginning, as will be shown, because the reader is invited to carry on from the end of the text to complete the gospel; it is also an ironic opening, considering that the text concludes with an ambiguous denial of the fulfillment it promises. The opening line also parallels the first line of Genesis (“In the beginning when God created…”), and the appearance of John the baptizer at the River Jordan not only implies a new exodus but also a new creation. Before his arrival, though, is a quotation “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah” (1:2) that actually references three sources (Exodus 23:20-21, Malachi 3:1-2, Isaiah 40) and helps the intertextual reader in framing the narrative: in Jesus, the Spirit sends a messenger as a comfort and guide to a lost and wayward people who may reconcile with God by attention and obedience to a new testament.
In this way, John the baptizer represents the Father by offering a purification ritual associated with God’s new covenant; aside from the obvious wilderness parallels in Exodus, his clothing and diet also suggest the harmony of opposites and rebirth. His camel’s hair clothing calls to mind the awkward animal used for desert crossings; his leather belt suggests the gradual process of awakening and rebirth symbolically associated with cattle. Analogous to the tree of knowledge of joy and suffering and the tree of life, he eats locusts, a destructive scourge, and also honey, which sweetly nourishes. By immersing the people of the Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem in the renewing waters of the river, the text’s theme of the fluidity of form is introduced. When Jesus, a disciple of John, emerges from the water, the heavens tear apart, which invokes both God’s original creative acts through separation, but also the conclusion of the text and tearing of the veil that hides God from the people (15:38). The Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove, a symbol of peace and renewal. This indicates a divine descent, which in Vedic thought is a periodic appearance of the Creator in creation so that man may enjoy a golden age after the avatar of God destroys thieves and cleanses minds of impurity.
Following the archetypal hero model, Jesus is estranged from typical family patterns. His kin is identified in 6:3 and his mother is present at the crucifixion in 15:40, but after his baptism in 1:9, Jesus is adopted as the Beloved Son in 1:11 by a voice from heaven, presumably the transcendent active creative pattern typically identified as the Father, or Lord of Creation. But since “the tendency has always been to endow the hero with extraordinary powers from the moment of birth, or even conception,” when the story is retold in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, an auspicious virgin birth is added to better fit the audience expectations and classic archetypal hero model of a miraculous beginning (Campbell 319). As it stands in Mark, Jesus as the Beloved Son parallels Genesis 22:2, when God tests Abraham by demanding he sacrifice his only son Isaac; unlike Isaac, Jesus does not escape suffering and slaughter, which is poetically previewed in 1:12-13 as 40 days of temptation in the wilderness by Satan, the Adversarial Son of God. Again, the accounts in the gospels of Matthew and Luke expand this reference, failing to see its function as previewing the archetypal quest pattern of separation-initiation-return and setting up the narrative of Mark’s gospel as a whole for the audience: Jesus is isolated in a series of controversies, rejected and executed, then risen as a sign to inspire man (1:15).
BIRTH, CHILDHOOD, AND THE MISSING YEARS
Zechariah was a priest of advanced age and no children. During a rare offering of incense in the Temple sanctuary, he was shocked into prolonged silence by a visitation from the angel Gabriel, who promised a son named John to herald the Messiah. Six months later, Gabriel appeared to Zechariah’s cousin by marriage, a virgin named Mary engaged to the carpenter Joseph, and the angel promised that an immaculate conception would produce the son of God and heir to the throne of David. When Joseph found her pregnant, he feared disgrace and planned to break the engagement; he was comforted by an angel during a dream and promised that the child would redeem Israel.
In those days, Rome decreed a census, and while all the people were busy registering, Mary hid in a barn and gave birth to a boy. Shepherds, inspired by angelic visions, gathered round her and praised the child. Babylonian wise men notified Herod that the astral aspects indicated the birth of the Messiah; this alarmed Herod, who called his chief priests and scribes to council in secret and asked the astrologers to search for the child. They followed a star to the place of the child’s birth and offered gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrhh. They were warned in a dream not to return to Herod. During the baby’s circumcision at the Temple in Jerusalem, a devout man named Simeon approached and predicted, “This child will divide Israel, and reveal the inner thoughts of many.” Joseph had another angelic dream vision that warned him that Herod would try to kill the boy, so he took counsel and fled with his family to Egypt. When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Babylonian wise men, he was outraged and ordered all boys under the age of two to be killed, a parallel of the Pharaoh’s decree in the book of Exodus but an event with no historical evidence. Hidden in a foreign land, Jesus survived the massacre of the innocents. After the death of Herod, Joseph had a third angelic dream visitation telling him it was safe to return to Israel.
According to “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas”, Jesus speaks at birth, and like other five year-olds, he is often maliciously clever and mischievous. For instance, when Jesus is playing near a stream on the Sabbath, he fashions twelve clay birds in the sand. Other parents complain about his profaning the Sabbath, and when Jesus is reprimanded by his dad, the boy claps his hands and cries so that the birds come to life and fly away. Another tale describes when Jesus is bumped by another lad running through the village. Jesus says “You shall not go further on your way,” and the boy instantly collapses and dies. When the parents complain, Jesus blinds those who accuse him. Joseph and Mary lock Jesus in his room so he doesn’t cause further trouble, but when a village boy falls from the roof and dies, the village parents quickly blame Jesus, who raises him to life. Next, he heals a boy who accidentally split his foot with an ax. What these tales suggest is a child blessed with extraordinary powers who is all too human and unaware of his divine antecedents. Thus, Jesus has humanly characteristics that he transcends to become a Man of God and thus serves as a lesson for our potential, but the early church was careful not to allow Jesus to appear too human and emphasized an otherworldly and pure nature. Plus, it sets a bad example when Jesus, annoyed by an incompetent teacher, curses and strikes him for failing to correctly explain the origins of the letters. Obviously, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and pious devotees could not accept such behavior in their hero.
The parents took the child to the annual Passover festival, and in his twelfth year, they were separated from the boy for three days; they found him in the Temple, where he was sitting among the teachers and asking questions. The child astounded them with his wisdom and authority, an attitude that would later cause hostility toward him. This wasn’t the only time he was lost to his parents. Swami Abhedananda and Swami Trigunatitananda personally examined and called “authentic” a Tibetan text telling of the life of Jesus from 13 to 29. Swami Vivekananda, who did not see it, called it a fraud. According to this account, Jesus (as “Isa”) escaped family pressure to marry and ran away with a merchant caravan to India where he studied six years with Brahmin priests. He then traveled to China where he studied six years with Buddhists and Taoists. He returned to Israel through Persia at age 29. This is an intriguing proposition that suggests that Jesus had intimate familiarity with the philosophy of the East, and this must be considered when interpreting his life and teachings.
This revelation would especially illumine the first five verses of the Gospel according to John, which is so poorly translated in English so as to be meaningless. The English text famously says, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Aside from being a run-on sentence, this also translates two Greek words “theon” and “theos” with the same English word. A better translation, in light of the Greeks idolizing the Brahmins of India and considering the missing years of Jesus, would read:
In nature is a pattern, and this pattern was before the satirical poet, and Brahman is the pattern. This was in nature before the satirical poet. Everybody through Brahman exists, and nobody exists without Brahman. In Brahman is life, and the Light of Brahman is the life of the anthropod. And the Light in the darkness shines, though the darkness does not know it.Though Brahman is an unfamiliar term to most Christians, its most direct equivalent is Spirit. Brahman is creative, conscious existence. It is infinite, undivided, and unchanging, though it seems divided, changing, and finite in appearance. The secret of Creation is that all things have their origin and end as Spirit, or Brahman. The repeating pattern of separation and reconciliation with Spirit is bridged by an avatar, or a mask of God. The avatar is not God, yet plays Creator like a mock king in the image of God; this is a comedic role, not to be taken seriously, except as it reveals Truth.
IRONY
AND AWE (1:16-2:12)
If we accept Northrup Frye’s literary classification of the Bible as comedy, then we cannot ignore the text’s irony, a technique of advancing a multiplicity of meaning, usually hidden beyond the obvious meaning, in as few words as possible (Frye 40). Applying the classification to the opening scene of Mark, the Creator enters creation in a most absurd virgin birth tended by a deviant midwife clad in animal skin who eats insects. Liminal continuity is not certain: measurement of time in Mark’s gospel is consistently recorded in days, which suggests the 40 days of temptation by Satan in the wilderness begins in Galilee when Jesus calls his disciple Simon Peter, whom he rebukes in 8:33 as Satan, and ends in abandonment and death six weeks later in Jerusalem for slander and treason. Surely then this explains Simon Peter’s fisherman’s net, a symbol of a twisted trap. But fish too are a symbol of wisdom hidden in the depths of the ocean, itself a symbol of undifferentiated formlessness representing the transcendent unity beyond visible creation. Later, disciples mend their nets (1:19), and by catching wisdom from the chaos, offer spiritual nourishment: “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” (1:17) which can be read either as their role as apostles, or as nourishment—food for people as an example to examine. Jesus and the disciples embody the relationship between God and Israel (the people) in the Hebrew Bible and offers insight into the nature of man and the nature of the Creation. While incarnated in the form of Jesus, leading another wilderness crossing and renewal of a vicious society, “the angels waited on him” (1:13).
The teaching and exorcism in the synagogue (1:21) and the healing (1:30) set the structures followed throughout Mark’s gospel: a sandwiching technique, whereby the links between teaching, exorcism, healing and other parallels provide the key for overall interpretation (Barton 890). In 1:25, when Jesus silences the demon with his words like fists, he commits his first unruly act: he works on the Sabbath. When he heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, aside from another transgression of the Sabbath, the action establishes the structure for all healing scenes in Mark’s gospel: illness (in bed with a fever), request (the disciples appeal to him in unison), healing (takes her by the hands and lifts her up), cure (fever leaves her), and demonstration of wellness (she serves them). Meanwhile, the whole city gathers ’round the scene at sunset (1:32); Jesus heals the sick until morning (1:35), when he retreats for brief solitude and private worship. “Everyone is searching for you” says Simon Peter (1:37), and in his reply, Jesus reconciles all people, not only the Hebrews, as God’s people: “Let us go out to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim my message there also; for that is what I came out to do” (1:38). Simon Peter later founded the church that absorbed and extended its mother religion and distorted the teaching of Jesus in a visibly corrupt institution akin to a leper (1:40).
Aware that his teacher John the baptizer was arrested (1:14) and his own popularity now endangered his ministry, Jesus “stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (1:45). When reports circulated that he was home, the crowd tore apart his house to hear his word, and four men requested he heal a paralytic, a man numb and unable to move due to poison and injury (2:3). Pleased by the show of faith, he heals the man, scolds the Temple scribes for their inadequate attitude, and by referring to himself as the Son of Man, introduces his overarching purpose in Mark’s gospel: the harmony of opposites through suffering and vindication.
SUBVERSIVE
TEACHING (2:13-4:34)
Jesus shocks the Temple scribes and Pharisees when he shares table fellowship with a tax collector, among other sinners (2:15). Sharing a meal equalizes social status, and among the Jewish population, the unclean tax collector was one of their lowliest own working in evil collusion with Rome. His curt reply, “I have come to call not the righteous but the sinners” implies the loyal servants of the Empire questioning him ought to join him too (2:17). In 2:18, Jesus openly deviates from John’s teaching, challenges authority, and foresees the consequences: he predicts the bridegroom who nourishes the wedding guests in the time of fulfillment will be taken from them—foreshadowing the cross and calling to mind the fish, and later the bread, that nourishes. In a parallel to the imagery of the Last Supper of 14:22, he adds that the wine of suffering does not share the same flask as the wine of initiation, knowledge, joy, and immortality—in the same way a patch is of no purpose on a frayed fabric. While harvesting grain, Jesus defends breaking the Sabbath law with a mocking reminder to the Pharisees that King David and his companions violated ritual prescription by eating the bread of Yahweh, a dangerous public association between a peasant preacher and the Messianic bloodline (2:23). The questioner of authority finally clashes with authority at the synagogue, an extension of the Temple akin to a withered hand, and frightened by the disturbance, the Pharisees conspire with the Herodians to murder him (3:1). The crowds shout, “You are the Son of God” (3:11), but Jesus retreats to a mountain, not only a place of safety but also symbolic of transcendent ascension and a parallel to Mount Sinai in the Hebrew Bible. When he returns home, his family doubts his sanity and the scribes taunt him into talk about binding Satan and the unification of division (3:20). More and more isolated from his family and townsmen, he defends the Spirit and calls kin any who surrender to God.
Jesus next teaches the crowd principles of existence—the mysteries of the kingdom of God—with a series of related garden metaphors. The first admits a quality of gradation in creation, the expression of Spirit in degree depending on the time, place, and character of a situation (4:1). The second, quoting Isaiah 6, suggests many will not believe the fulfillment now manifested, and the holy seed for most becomes nothing more than a stump to be burned (4:12). He suggests that, in general, man’s nature is all branches, no roots—like tumbleweed—or sown upon infertile soil (4:13). Following various sayings regarding secrecy and candor, and declaring human attitudes as ruler of the constriction or flow of Spirit, he compares the judgment of end days to the cyclical harvest of a wheat field, extending the bread and nourishment motif. He suggests the mustard seed is most like the kingdom of God in the way that a point manifests a range of possibilities the further it extends from the center to the circumference (4:30).
THE SERMON ON THE
MOUNT
·
Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the mourning,
and the exiled.
·
Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the sincere,
and the peacemakers.
·
Woe to the rich, the proud, the thrilled, and
the flatterers.
·
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
·
Love your enemies and people who hate you.
·
Reconcile with your enemies; seek no revenge.
·
Do good to those who curse you.
·
Persevere and be more virtuous than scribes and
priests.
·
Show mercy: don’t be a scoffer or a bigot.
·
Be loyal; give no false witness.
·
Make no promises, but do as you say.
·
Do not worry about food, drink, clothing, or the
trouble of tomorrow.
·
Give to beggars, borrowers, and thieves. Do not
seek return of what is stolen.
·
Lend with no expectation of return. Do not
horde.
·
Do not make a show of your generosity or your
religion.
·
Pray simply in secret. Fast without complaint.
·
Protect wisdom from abuse; show no folly in your
words and actions.
·
Beware false prophets.
The traditional definition of a prophet is an inspired
interpreter of the will of Spirit. The warning to beware false prophets needs
some qualification, especially since later Christianity has great fear of the
enemies of the Christ. There is no mention of an Antichrist in any of the four
gospels; the popular idea is a conflation of Satan, the adversary and
prosecutor in the divine council of the Most High, and Lucifer, an enlightened
Babylonian king and slaveholder associated with Venus. The original term was an
insult by early Christian devotees against anybody who denied Jesus as a Man of
God. Though not explicitly referring to the Antichrist, 2 Thessalonians 2
describes a “Man of Lawlessness,” which means anybody who rejects the Five
Books of Moses; it also mentions a “Son of Perdition,” a hyperbolic description
of ignorant confusion that does not know Spirit as the Life of all Creation.
The text can be summarized as thus:
In the end
times after the rejection of corrupt religion, the breath of God enters the mouths
of sinners and the mysteries are revealed. God approved a powerful delusion so
that belief in the deception would revive the dead, the poor in spirit. The Man
of Sin is separate no longer when exalted in the knowledge of Spirit as the
essence of his being and unity of existence. The inspired Man of Sin destroys
irreligion by love and Truth as a redeemed Man of God.
The second reference to the Antichrist is in the book of
Revelation: a false prophet assembles the whole world for battle, and the Christ
returns like a thief in the night to make war with a sword that comes from his
mouth. Those expecting him to “walk in
the clouds” should know that in Greek, the phrase is a hemp joke. In an
apocalyptic caution, Jesus warns that he will cause division in the world until
the days when an idol is erected in the Temple, and the disciples must be as
wise as serpents yet innocent as doves.
RENEWAL
AND REJECTION (4:35-6:29)
Embarking in a boat “across to the other side,” a great windstorm arises that swamps the boat (4:35). Aside from the storm tossing parallels with Noah’s Ark—a story of renewal and a new covenant in the Hebrew Bible—the boat imagery suggests a ritual voyage to cure sickness and explore the unconscious, a haunted otherworld of the dead. Like Yahweh in his attempts to rescue an anxious and lost people in the Old Testament, Jesus stills the wind and sea, calms the chaos, another parallel with Genesis and suggestive of his inheritance of powers that once belonged to Yahweh. The boat is saved from sinking. On the other side, Jesus exorcises the demon called Legion—5,000 Roman soldiers—from a man living in bondage among the tombs. Returning to the theme of fluidity of form, Jesus commands the unclean spirits to enter swine, a beast raised only outside Israel and a symbol of gluttony, greed, and ignorance. Then, suggesting the deliverance of the Hebrew people from bondage and the sinking of the Pharaoh’s army in the parted sea of Exodus 15:4, Jesus commands the swine to charge down the hill and drown in the sea. But rather than celebrate their newfound liberty, “[t]he people were apprehensive that Jesus had disrupted their delicately balanced adjustment to the alien possession” (Coogan 65) and beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood (5:17), an escalation of his isolation and rejection. Rather than accept the cured man as his companion, Jesus commands him to spread the good news among Hellenistic Gentiles (5:20).
When Jesus returns across the sea, a leader of the synagogue requests a healing for his daughter, an Eve antitype whose twelve years of hemorrhaging ceases when she touches Jesus’ cloak. When Jesus calls the crowd to account, even though she is afraid, she admits her act of free will, shows faith, and wins healing. In a parallel revival of a marriage-ready twelve year-old girl from death by the power of the word, Jesus not only foreshadows the resurrection but also suggests a rebirth of Israel—the people of God expanded now to include Gentiles and Jews free from their military overlords. But before revival is rejection, and when Jesus returns to his hometown, many are offended and show widespread unbelief (6:1). Facing a hostile and doubtful context, Jesus performs no miracles (6:5). Instead, he resumes traveling and sends forth disciples to heal and anoint others (6:13). He insists on austerity in their mission, and in Matthew’s gospel, he directs them to work without compensation and dwell with the virtuous.
“King Herod [the younger] heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known” (6:14). Jesus is fully aware that the messianic fervor, his clashes with local rulers, and his association with John the baptizer curse him and demands confrontation. “From obscurity the hero emerges, but the enemy is the great and conspicuous seat of power” (Campbell 337). The king is damned in the eyes of the hero as the man who misuses the seat of power and “directs or manages a social order from which the hero is self-excluded or which he follows only on his own terms” (Miller 181). By cutting away from Jesus to a scene that looks back in time, the narrative again raises the identity theme and questions of the mystery hidden behind the name and fluidity of form. Herod, whose chef’s wife was among the crowd of devotees, surmises that Jesus shares the Spirit of John the baptizer, which damns Jesus to the same fate, shown in flashback: at a party honoring the governor’s own vanity, Herod, eager to please his daughter (Jerusalem) beheads John the baptizer (Jesus) as a wish fulfillment for his wife (Rome, who does not accept any challenges to her supreme position). The scene, while not entirely factually correct, is not without wicked cannibal humor: in presenting John’s head on a platter, the text suggests by association that the death of Jesus—who learned and spread the word of the Father as a Beloved Son and an apprentice to John—is an offering for corrupt people (6:28), calling to mind fish and loaves as nourishment for people. The disciples place the headless corpse in a tomb (6:29-30).
FEEDING
THE PEOPLE (6:30-8:21)
In a parallel structure, both within the sequence of feeding the Jews (6:35) and feeding the Gentiles (8:1), and beyond to the Last Supper (14:22), Jesus mirrors the wilderness feeding of Israel by Moses in Exodus 16:13 and Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42 by offering a feast of fish (wisdom for the mind) and a total of twelve loaves of bread (harvested grain risen by yeast—the Spirit of God, the transcendent active creative force). After the miraculous exponential multiplication of nourishment at the first feeding, Jesus departs to the mountain, and the disciples, mirroring the suffering of lost and wayward people, row their boat against an adverse wind and strain without their captain (6:47). In walking on the water, Jesus passes across the water, like the wind of God passing over the water in the Genesis creation story, suggesting a renewal of creation. He nearly passes them, which suggests the Passover when Yahweh freed Israel from bondage in Egypt, but also the Gospel of Thomas, which advises, among the sayings said to bestow eternal life, to “become passers-by” (Cameron 30). They are terrified, so Jesus joins them in their boat and calms the chaotic wind. He declares, “Take heart, ego eimi (“I AM” – Greek); do not be afraid” (6:50). Their doubt and confusion escalates across the sequence.
Between the parallel feeding scenes, the Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem are investigating the popular peasant preacher and miracle worker, and demand to know why his disciples do not follow tradition, which for Jesus is akin to washing cups and vessels without consideration of the purity of the contents ingested (7:1). Jesus first quotes Isaiah 29, a prophecy concerning the siege and renewal of Israel then sarcastically accuses the Pharisees of insincerely abiding by human custom learned by rote rather than a concern for authentic spiritual nourishment and guarding against social destruction (7:9). Using toilet humor, he accuses them of corrupting the proper honor of God and of neighbor by supporting a fraudulent Temple (7:19).
Then in a parallel to the healing of the dead Jewish daughter in 5:35, Jesus attempts to escape attention by hiding in the home of a Greek Gentile, a woman who acts as a model of courage and faith (7:28). After insulting her and accepting her brave rebuke, Jesus heals her possessed daughter with an acknowledgement that they share the same God in the transcendent unity beyond obvious manifest appearances (7:29). Next, he baptizes the deaf mute of Hellenic origin with spit—mirroring the earlier verbal insult—and by the power of the word, heals the corruption (7:34). Aware of the controversy of Hellenic philosophy in Jewish circles, especially the low opinion of Sadducees toward Greek teaching methods, Jesus orders secrecy, but his eager followers openly declare his embrace (7:16). Jesus accepts the gathered crowd of Gentiles and oversees a smaller feast for those who traveled a great distance and remained loyal (8:2).
Mirroring the disciples’ doubt, the Pharisees test him by asking for a sign; Jesus refuses to produce a miracle, impossible except in selfless service and a context of faith. He sails away with the disciples and cautions them against mixing the grain of the harvest with corrupt yeast—the spirit of the Pharisees and Temple scribes (7:15). The disciples bemoan a lack of bread, starving even in the presence of that one loaf in the boat with them, the bridegroom who nourishes the wedding guests (7:14). Moreover, Jesus questions them on the miracles he does produce—showing the text’s theme of harmonizing opposites and unifying division; they fail to comprehend the association of the twelve loaves for Israel and its relation to the fulfillment of the solar cycle, and for the Gentiles, seven—the number of cyclical renewal, the lunar phases and progression of enlightenment and wholeness through perpetual renewal in its season, the seven-year release of debt (Fig. 3), the seven-branched candlestick in the House of Yahweh, the seventh day of rest as a crowning achievement and time for contemplation, and initiation—the crossing from the known to the unknown.
JOURNEY
TO JERUSALEM (8:22-10:52)
“One had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet—it is only by advancing those bounds, provoking the destructive other aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience” (Campbell 82). The extended sequence of initiation sandwiched between two scenes of healing the blind frames the meaning of discipleship and suggests a gradual awakening to eternal life as the principles of existence are mastered. Jesus performs another baptism of spittle upon a blind man led out of the village of Bethsaida, “house of the fisherman.” First seeing people as walking trees, then seeing clearly after a second healing (8:24), the possible meanings are multiple: the blind man may be the disciples’ progression toward enlightenment as they journey to Jerusalem. The blind man is Israel on another exodus from bondage in Egypt; the blind man is the Temple, corrupted by the chief priests and the Roman overlords. Confrontation is inevitable: “The hero is devoted to combat and confrontation: he must be prepared to seek out, or at least never avoid, those aspects of the quest involving ‘blocking’ strategies, threats and finally violence” (Miller 163). Jesus journeys to Jerusalem at his peril.
The theme of identity and the fluidity of form rises again, when Jesus inquires of his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” (8:27). Some suggest he is a reincarnation of John the baptizer or Elijah, in a mirror of Herod’s questioning in 6:14; others say he is a new prophet, an inspired interpreter of the will of God (8:28). Simon Peter declares Jesus the Messiah—the Jewish king who fulfills God’s utopian promises: a warrior of the Davidic bloodline; a judge of the earth; and a priest with authoritative interpretation of scripture who ends the existing world order and introduces a time of peace in which all live in honor of the Spirit of God, the transcendent unity and power in and beyond the obvious manifested and differentiated illusion. Acknowledging duality as the nature of the cross, Jesus says the Son of Man must undergo suffering, rejection, and persecution before vindication as the Son of God. Simon Peter, who first calls him Christ, now tempts Jesus to abandon the call, and Jesus silences him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (8:32).
Jesus foreshadows his death and vindication by reference to the cross—in geometrical terms, a center point that transverses the four directions of the compass, soars upwards to a zenith and dives below to an abyss. The cross creates a totality: by it, God and man are conjoined; time—a continuous and invariable succession of instants—and space are intermingled. By the cross, man climbs to atonement with God, and by the cross, man learns images of the center and of the circumference are linked in symbolic dynamism and differ only by the angle of observation. Because of the inherent oppositional nature of the cross, creation is imperfect—giving rise to confusion, conflict, and the seasonal need for purifying and renewal; the cross necessarily creates suffering, as shown by the isolation, rejection, and death of Jesus, who teaches man to seek authentic spiritual nourishment and guard against social destruction. As his devotee, the reward of initiation is awakening to eternal life (9:1). Jesus is a correlative of the active creative principle, the Lord of Creation, as explicitly shown in the mountaintop transfiguration, when Jesus, accompanied by Peter, James and John, is purified and divided into 1) Moses, the lawgiver and guide of God’s people through the wilderness atonement, 2) Elijah, the supreme teacher whose apprentice Elisha—meaning salvation—inherited 2/3 of his spirit, and 3) the storm god Yahweh present as the overshadowing cloud, the Lord of Creation—another virgin birth scene showing the text’s fluidity of form and identity themes when all three collapse into a single coterminous being, Jesus, “my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” (9:7).
Coming down from the mountaintop, the disciples are afraid and doubt; they inquire on doctrine, to which Jesus mockingly asserts, “Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it was written about him” (9:13), linking John the baptizer to Elijah, and by association, linking Jesus to Elisha, the man of wisdom and miracle worker. The healing story that follows in 9:14-28 is a call to awe, absolute trust, and dependence on God, but also displays more of Mark’s humor in a vision of Jesus purifying his inheritance: a father, with the simple prayer of “I believe; help my unbelief!” (9:24) asks Jesus to heal his boy of disturbing, fitful losses of consciousness since childhood that remain even after the demon submerged him in water and burned him; Jesus, full of Yahweh’s wrath, chastises the crowd then commands the demon to depart “and never enter him again!” (9:25). When the demon is exorcised, the boy is a corpse until Jesus raises him by the power of faith. Mirroring the scene, Jesus passes through Galilee predicting his betrayal into human hands, his execution, and his resurrection. Mark narrates, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” but that is another example of Mark’s irony (9:32). Jesus asks, “What were you arguing about on the way?” (9:33). They are too ashamed to admit “they had argued with one another about who was the greatest” and ignored most of his teaching (9:34).
Jesus outlines the proper attitude of a devotee; he advocates service to and honor of the Spirit of God with the vulnerability and surrender of a child, the lowest rank in ancient society (9:35). His line, “whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (9:37) echoes the teaching of Krishna in Hindu mythopoeia—Brahminic religion based on the reconciliation of all paths to God: “In any way that men love me, in that same way they find my love: for many are the paths of men, but they all in the end come to me” (Mascaró 23). Jesus cautions against sectarian bigotry (9:38) and assures that all sincere effort is rewarded (9:41). For those who distract and block devotees, Jesus warns “it would be better for you if a great millstone [used for grinding grain] were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea” (9:42), calling to mind the harvest of the wheat field, the miraculous bread, the first teachings of the kingdom of God by garden metaphor, and the imagery of the various boat voyages. Water purifies desire, an unquenchable flame that also, paradoxically, transforms and awakens. With an allusion to the holy seed of immortality for most becoming nothing more than a stump to be burned (4:12), Jesus teaches that man must reject whatever frustrates the duty to honor God as the living, immortal, eternal, infinite transcendent unity and power in and beyond obvious manifested and differentiated illusion—God’s play (9:43) in which man, like the Author, is not merely audience but player and writer too.
The necessary season of suffering and trial is a progression of awakening, an initiation that renews and rewards so far as man’s attitude rules the constriction and flow of Spirit, (9:48). Since the worm, the serpent coil of desire and ignorance, burns eternally, peace is in sincere duty as a guard against social destruction (9:50). By substituting salt for faith, Jesus raises the theme of harmony of opposites and unification of division but with a caution against vanity by a subtle reference to the last chapter of Isaiah, a homecoming, vindication, and judgment by fire. Salt, according to Jung, is a lunar symbol representing the bitterness of wisdom gained through harmonizing opposites into wholeness, and suggests danger lies in a shadow denied, repressed, and twisted by blindly staring at the sun. Shadow and reflection is a part of the light too, so long as there is light.
On a journey across the river, a symbol of fluidity of form, fertility, death, renewal and the transcendence of obstacles (10:1), the Pharisees question Jesus on marriage customs, and Jesus mocks their wrongheaded vanity; Jesus teaches that marriage is like the link between heaven and earth, a lifelong reciprocal interdependence, in which neither command, exploit, or approach the other as property to trash (10:2). His second reference to receiving the kingdom of God as a child is not an invitation to infantile solipsism: instead it is call to surrender and duty as an agent of spiritual nourishment (9:18) and guard against social destruction, quoting Mosaic law in a way that further suggests a new exodus wilderness initiation and crossing to a new creation rejected only by the rich man—the fraudulent authorities of Rome and the Temple (this scribe’s composite rewording):
The theme of identity and the fluidity of form rises again, when Jesus inquires of his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” (8:27). Some suggest he is a reincarnation of John the baptizer or Elijah, in a mirror of Herod’s questioning in 6:14; others say he is a new prophet, an inspired interpreter of the will of God (8:28). Simon Peter declares Jesus the Messiah—the Jewish king who fulfills God’s utopian promises: a warrior of the Davidic bloodline; a judge of the earth; and a priest with authoritative interpretation of scripture who ends the existing world order and introduces a time of peace in which all live in honor of the Spirit of God, the transcendent unity and power in and beyond the obvious manifested and differentiated illusion. Acknowledging duality as the nature of the cross, Jesus says the Son of Man must undergo suffering, rejection, and persecution before vindication as the Son of God. Simon Peter, who first calls him Christ, now tempts Jesus to abandon the call, and Jesus silences him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (8:32).
Jesus foreshadows his death and vindication by reference to the cross—in geometrical terms, a center point that transverses the four directions of the compass, soars upwards to a zenith and dives below to an abyss. The cross creates a totality: by it, God and man are conjoined; time—a continuous and invariable succession of instants—and space are intermingled. By the cross, man climbs to atonement with God, and by the cross, man learns images of the center and of the circumference are linked in symbolic dynamism and differ only by the angle of observation. Because of the inherent oppositional nature of the cross, creation is imperfect—giving rise to confusion, conflict, and the seasonal need for purifying and renewal; the cross necessarily creates suffering, as shown by the isolation, rejection, and death of Jesus, who teaches man to seek authentic spiritual nourishment and guard against social destruction. As his devotee, the reward of initiation is awakening to eternal life (9:1). Jesus is a correlative of the active creative principle, the Lord of Creation, as explicitly shown in the mountaintop transfiguration, when Jesus, accompanied by Peter, James and John, is purified and divided into 1) Moses, the lawgiver and guide of God’s people through the wilderness atonement, 2) Elijah, the supreme teacher whose apprentice Elisha—meaning salvation—inherited 2/3 of his spirit, and 3) the storm god Yahweh present as the overshadowing cloud, the Lord of Creation—another virgin birth scene showing the text’s fluidity of form and identity themes when all three collapse into a single coterminous being, Jesus, “my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!” (9:7).
Coming down from the mountaintop, the disciples are afraid and doubt; they inquire on doctrine, to which Jesus mockingly asserts, “Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it was written about him” (9:13), linking John the baptizer to Elijah, and by association, linking Jesus to Elisha, the man of wisdom and miracle worker. The healing story that follows in 9:14-28 is a call to awe, absolute trust, and dependence on God, but also displays more of Mark’s humor in a vision of Jesus purifying his inheritance: a father, with the simple prayer of “I believe; help my unbelief!” (9:24) asks Jesus to heal his boy of disturbing, fitful losses of consciousness since childhood that remain even after the demon submerged him in water and burned him; Jesus, full of Yahweh’s wrath, chastises the crowd then commands the demon to depart “and never enter him again!” (9:25). When the demon is exorcised, the boy is a corpse until Jesus raises him by the power of faith. Mirroring the scene, Jesus passes through Galilee predicting his betrayal into human hands, his execution, and his resurrection. Mark narrates, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” but that is another example of Mark’s irony (9:32). Jesus asks, “What were you arguing about on the way?” (9:33). They are too ashamed to admit “they had argued with one another about who was the greatest” and ignored most of his teaching (9:34).
Jesus outlines the proper attitude of a devotee; he advocates service to and honor of the Spirit of God with the vulnerability and surrender of a child, the lowest rank in ancient society (9:35). His line, “whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (9:37) echoes the teaching of Krishna in Hindu mythopoeia—Brahminic religion based on the reconciliation of all paths to God: “In any way that men love me, in that same way they find my love: for many are the paths of men, but they all in the end come to me” (Mascaró 23). Jesus cautions against sectarian bigotry (9:38) and assures that all sincere effort is rewarded (9:41). For those who distract and block devotees, Jesus warns “it would be better for you if a great millstone [used for grinding grain] were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea” (9:42), calling to mind the harvest of the wheat field, the miraculous bread, the first teachings of the kingdom of God by garden metaphor, and the imagery of the various boat voyages. Water purifies desire, an unquenchable flame that also, paradoxically, transforms and awakens. With an allusion to the holy seed of immortality for most becoming nothing more than a stump to be burned (4:12), Jesus teaches that man must reject whatever frustrates the duty to honor God as the living, immortal, eternal, infinite transcendent unity and power in and beyond obvious manifested and differentiated illusion—God’s play (9:43) in which man, like the Author, is not merely audience but player and writer too.
The necessary season of suffering and trial is a progression of awakening, an initiation that renews and rewards so far as man’s attitude rules the constriction and flow of Spirit, (9:48). Since the worm, the serpent coil of desire and ignorance, burns eternally, peace is in sincere duty as a guard against social destruction (9:50). By substituting salt for faith, Jesus raises the theme of harmony of opposites and unification of division but with a caution against vanity by a subtle reference to the last chapter of Isaiah, a homecoming, vindication, and judgment by fire. Salt, according to Jung, is a lunar symbol representing the bitterness of wisdom gained through harmonizing opposites into wholeness, and suggests danger lies in a shadow denied, repressed, and twisted by blindly staring at the sun. Shadow and reflection is a part of the light too, so long as there is light.
On a journey across the river, a symbol of fluidity of form, fertility, death, renewal and the transcendence of obstacles (10:1), the Pharisees question Jesus on marriage customs, and Jesus mocks their wrongheaded vanity; Jesus teaches that marriage is like the link between heaven and earth, a lifelong reciprocal interdependence, in which neither command, exploit, or approach the other as property to trash (10:2). His second reference to receiving the kingdom of God as a child is not an invitation to infantile solipsism: instead it is call to surrender and duty as an agent of spiritual nourishment (9:18) and guard against social destruction, quoting Mosaic law in a way that further suggests a new exodus wilderness initiation and crossing to a new creation rejected only by the rich man—the fraudulent authorities of Rome and the Temple (this scribe’s composite rewording):
• Do not profane your free will.
• Honor
your mother and father.
• Honor
your spouse and children.
• Do not murder.
• Do not
cheat.
• Do not
bear false witness.
• Honor
appropriate limits.
The disciples, rather than considering the steep challenge of entering the kingdom of God through a seasoning of fire, show man’s inherent weakness for glamour as they debate and lust for anticipated positions of rank in the kingdom of God. Echoing the earlier prediction of death, Jesus explicitly foreshadows his condemnation, execution, and resurrection (9:12), and parallel to the disciples’ contest of superiority in 9:34, Jesus responds to their request “to do for us whatever we ask of you,” (10:35) by offering himself as scapegoat for the Jerusalem tyrants and Roman overlords, and thus, becoming a memorable teacher to others to guard against social destruction (10:45).
Finally, the pilgrims arrive in Jericho, the city of palm trees and moon, the oldest city in the world visited by Elijah and Elisha in their conquest of the Promised Land. Reflecting the healing scene that began the initiation journey in 8:22, a blind man calls Jesus the Son of David, heralding the king’s return, and asks Jesus to restore his vision. Jesus says “Go; your faith has made you well” (10:52) before traveling on to Jerusalem and rejecting the first blind man’s grave warning, “Do not go into the village” (8:26).
CORONATION
IN JERUSALEM (11:1-12:44)
Fearful of mob action by his delighted and spellbound crowd during the Passover festival, especially after Jesus effectively and ironically dismisses a confrontational inquiry of the source of his power (11:33), the fraudulent Temple authorities escalate their plans to kill him (11:18) while Jesus teaches submission to God, mutual trust, and honor (11:21-25). He completes the garden metaphors by comparing Israel to a vineyard (12:1), a garden for immortality and wisdom with clear boundaries, oversight, and tools for harvest. The landlord sends a sequence of servants, who are turned away, insulted, beaten, and killed; finally, he sends his beloved son to collect a share of the harvest, but foreshadowing the crucifixion, the tenants seize and kill the son. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others” (12:9).
When Jesus suggests his teaching will replace the Temple establishment, they set a trap in collusion with the Herodians. In perfect sophist form, the Pharisees first flatter his authenticity then ask whether it is lawful to pay tribute to the Roman overlords (12:14). Jesus stalls by asking for a coin; the hypocritical Pharisees know it is not lawful, but if he says as much, he is admitting rebellion against Rome and inviting sure death. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (KJV 12:17). A true master of deliciously ambiguous irony, below an apparent show of respect to the Emperor, Jesus also hides the precedence of God over Empire and a rejection of tribute to Rome. Next, the Sadducees emerge to question him on a convoluted property rights and inheritance issue (12:18); Jesus draws attention back to proper contemplation (12:26) by naming three crucial laws (12:29) to Temple scribes broken by ostentation “and for the sake of appearance long prayers” (12:38), exploitation (12:41), rote ritual sacrifice and burnt offerings (this scribe’s contemporary rewording):
• God is the infinite, undivided,
unchanging Spirit in differentiated appearances.
• Honor God with your whole
being.
• Honor your neighbor.
Winning the silence of the Temple scribes, Jesus quotes Psalm 110, a coronation song for a priestly king that alludes to the ancient royal order of Melchizedek, the king of righteousness (loyalty to social commitments and duties) in ancient Jerusalem who worshiped the Canaanite god El – God Most High, and in Genesis 14:19, blesses Abram and receives his share of the inheritance in the King’s Valley at a feast of bread and wine as the Lord of creation establishes his everlasting testament.
THE MOCK
KING (13:1-15:47)
Mark 13 follows the typical structure of an apocalyptic testament, an eschatological prophecy that informs present struggles with a call to vigilance through the destruction, personal suffering, and general corruption of the last days, when Roman overlords occupy and destroy the Temple, a political conflict realized for Mark’s first audience. In the intertextual reference to Isaiah 13 and 34, Ezekiel 32 (Egypt as dragon), and Joel 2-3 (a locust plague, call to repent, salvation, deliverance, and judgment), Jesus declares a crisis of the natural order will define the end time (13:24), which is followed by a new beginning, a spring renewal of the garden and fig tree, a new blessing of sweet spiritual nourishment for those who stay alert as faithful servants of the master of the vineyard (13:32).
In the house of Simon the leper, in anticipation of his ordeal, Jesus is anointed with luxurious oil imported from the Himalayan mountains (14:1). This detail is essential to an understanding of the Christ, the anointed one. In Mark, an unnamed woman pours the oil on his head. The detail of the “rich Indian perfume” is further textual confirmation of the link to the Brahmins of India and the need to read for irony; Jesus is an outcaste Jew who pretends to be the God of Israel. The scene is repeated in all of the gospels with variation. Luke narrates in 7:36-50 that Jesus was in the home of a Pharisee, and a sinful woman bathed his feet with tears, kisses them, and dries them with her hair. The Pharisee scolds him, but Jesus silences him. “I entered your house, and you gave me no kiss,” he says to the Pharisee. Irony demands that we observe double-meanings: the woman was likely a prostitute, and Luke’s narrative may be employing common euphemisms to imply that Jesus enjoyed sexual favors from her. In 12:1-8 of John’s text, the anointing scene is in the home of Lazarus, and Mary [Magdalene] uses her hair to wipe and anoint his feet with expensive pure nard. Judas Iscariot and the other disciples are outraged and suggest the jar could have been sold and money given to the poor. Jesus tells them to stop complaining; he declares that wherever the good news is truly spread in the world, it will be in honor of the woman and in memory of her deed (Mark 13:9).
Judas Iscariot, who stole from the common purse, reports him as a pretender to the throne of David and accepts a bribe from the fraudulent authorities scheming to kill him (14:10). Jesus covertly arranges a Passover meal with his disciples: he warns that one of the twelve sharing the bread and dipping into the bowl of learning and wisdom—the bowl a symbol of knowledge through death and rebirth akin to a boat—will sell out, though none admit to it (14:17). In a parallel of Exodus 24, Jesus offers a new covenant for a new people of God initiated by his sacrifice: he vows that after the wine of suffering, he will drink new wine of immortality, knowledge, and joy in the kingdom of God. All sing Psalms 115-118, a sequence that glorifies the Lord with thanks for healing, praise from all nations, and gratitude for victory in battle. Approaching the Mount of Olives, Jesus predicts by allusion to Zechariah 13 that his followers will scatter and foreshadows his resurrection as a sign of renewal. Simon Peter insists he will not desert or deny his teacher, but Jesus explicitly predicts his radical abandonment and failing (14:30). Despite his exhortation to “keep awake” in 13:37, his disciples fall asleep twice at Gethsemane, “the oil press”, while Jesus shows distress, agitation, and grief in surrender and obedience to Abba, God as Father (14:36). A mob of chief priests, elders, and scribes appear with swords and clubs; Judas singles out the leader of the rebellion to the fraudulent authorities by a kiss, a distortion of the sign of affection, respect, and mutual bond. One of the scribes loses his ear in the scuffle; then, the Jerusalem rulers arrest Jesus, who willingly submits with a mocking insult (14:43) and watches his disciples desert and scatter. (14:50). Matthew describes how later Judas returned the silver to the Temple, where it is refused; he throws it on the floor and hangs himself in regret. The priests use it to buy land for a graveyard (27:3-10).
A common reading of 14:51 is to interpret the naked young man who flees the arrest scene as symbolic of the disciples’ doubt and abandoning Jesus to authority. Again, because of Mark’s pervasive irony, an informed reading requires further explication without inhibition. The healing of the Greek daughter (7:29), the awakening of the Hellenic deaf mute (7:34), and the adoration of eunuchs—males castrated for the purpose of halting physical maturation beyond adolescence as the people of God (Isaiah 56)—provides intrinsic framing that demands intertextuality, especially since the Gospel of John is attributed to the disciple Jesus loved (John 21:24). Even the language of the narrative itself—Greek for a story about Jews who spoke Hebrew and Aramaic—suggests further meaning. There is a strong indication that the fleeing youth was Jesus’ Greek beloved, a respected relationship in Hellenic culture but scorned among the Jews. When Jesus was arrested, he was committing a crime punishable in Judaism by death: homosexuality.
Whereas the Greek practice glorified the natural erotic love between males when serving the purpose of teaching arête, the democratic and masculine virtues of courage, strength, justice, and truth, Jewish culture was repressive and prohibitive of same-sex relations. Nevertheless, there are instances and practices within the tradition hidden behind knowing double-meanings and ironic euphemisms. For example, the phallus played an important role in ancient Judaism when affirming a bond. In Genesis 47:29, Jacob, on his deathbed called Israel, asks his son Joseph, a prefiguration of Jesus: “If I have found favor with you, put your hand under my thigh and promise to deal loyally and truly with me. Do not bury me in Egypt, but let me lie with my fathers’” and they swear together—four thousand years later, we testify when we swear an oath, a covenant, a testament (Friedman 17), derived from the Latin word meaning both a dead man’s bequest but also a witnessing of testicular virility.
Ironic puns abound: Simon, who suffers corruption of the skin, is Peter after the apostles reverse the circumcision clause of the Old Testament. Other examples in the Hebrew Bible include jealous Saul’s embarrassment and rage when Jonathan swears loyalty to David after stripping naked (1 Samuel 18:1-4) and eating honey from the tip of a long staff (1 Samuel 14:27). Another example is when the prophet Elijah lays on top of a lifeless teenaged boy; he kisses the youth, who becomes warm, rises, then sneezes seven times (2 Kings 4:32-37). Ambiguity of language and images is the key to interpretation, as homosexual activity was taboo and would not be explicit nor direct.
When the beloved disciple of Jesus flees naked from the Temple authorities, it not only shows the fear of persecution from the Sadducees toward Hellenic methods of pedagogy, forbidden in the Old Testament by outnumbered Palestinians in hostile territory directing all sexuality toward breeding, but also suggests Jesus is forsaken by God as an antitype of Abraham’s sacrificing his only beloved son. The disavowal serves as an initiation ordeal following the archetypal quest pattern that transforms a Son of Man to a Son of God. In John 18:15, in a scene following a parallel of Judas’ kiss of betrayal in Mark, the beloved disciple is also known to the high priest, perhaps by a secret bond, and he sweet talks access into the courtyard for Simon Peter, who is later found naked with the beloved disciple in his boat after Jesus is executed (John 20:7). The high priest likely advocated the weak charge of blasphemy to hide his own homosexual associations.
At the first trial by the Sanhedrin, false witnesses accuse Jesus, and when asked directly if he is the Messiah, Jesus replies “I am” with an intertextual reference to the prescribed suffering, death, and vindication of the Son of Man (14:61). The high priest (named Caiaphas in Matthew and condemned as a hypocrite by Dante) rushes the trial to conclusion and exposes Jesus to the mob—who spit on him, blindfold him, strike and beat him (14:65). Meanwhile, Simon Peter—the first to call Jesus “the Christ”—ironically swears an oath: “I do not know this man you are talking about” (14:71) and denies any association with him three times before the cock’s crow.
When asked if he is the King of the Jews by Pilate in the Roman trial, Jesus returns to ironic ambiguity, “You say so” (15:2). Jesus—meaning “Yahweh saves”—is offered to the mob with a criminal named Barabbas—meaning “son of Abba” (Father). Luke emphasizes that Pilate did not suspect Jesus for the accused crimes and tries to avoid involvement; Matthew describes how the governor’s wife dreamt of Jesus’ innocence. John shows how the high priest manipulates Pilate to nurture an alliance with Herod by executing Jesus on charges of insurrection and Messianic claims. Master of political theatre and passing responsibility, Pilate convinces the mob to reject the false son for the true son (15:15), who is beaten and handed over to be crucified as a scapegoat, a purifying sacrifice that removes barriers to the covenant and the atonement of society. The scapegoat is innocent so far as what happens to him is obscenely excessive, but the scapegoat is also guilty by inescapable association with an unjust and cruel society (Frye 41). The Roman soldiers mock him, crown him with thorns, beat him, spit on him, salute and bow down in respect before bringing Jesus to Golgotha, the place of a skull, where Jesus refuses wine poisoned with myrhh, a sedative, in an mythic parallel of the hemlock that killed Socrates (15:21). In John’s account, he drinks it in the last moments before death.
At nine o’clock in the morning, he is crucified for treason against Rome (15:25). Hard of hearing passers-by taunt him; so do the chief priests, the scribes, and (in John) the other criminals condemned to death. Six hours later, Jesus cries out Psalm 22, a sunrise lament of unconditional love. Darkness covers the land in a crisis of the natural order, and Jesus is dead (15:37). His last words are either: “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 14:34 and Matthew 27:46); “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” (Luke 23:46); or, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The curtain of the Temple is torn, making the hidden God visible to all (15:38). The Roman soldiers provide witness, “Truly this man was God’s Son” (15:39) and remove him from the cross. The corpse of the Son of Man is released to Mary mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus cured of seven demons and in extracanonical texts caused jealousy among the disciples by kissing the teacher. Joseph, a passer-by, entombs the corpse with honor (15:45).
THE
END (16:1-17)
The original conclusion, in an ironic variation of literary deconstructionism, forever defers meaning and calls the reader to complete the narrative. In the tomb at sunrise on the first day of the week, the angelic young man of 14:51 declares, “He has been raised; he is not here” and tells us to look for him again in Galilee (16:6). Jesus will be seen again as promised in the north, corresponding to Heaven: Galilee—the start of discipleship, initiation to ease suffering, and sea crossings; connected in a harmony of opposites and unification of division by a river and wilderness to Jerusalem, the serpent, and the Dead Sea in the south. The ladies flee in ironic terror from the tomb; the earliest ending stops with another divine command rejected, when the witnesses do not report the stiff lifted because they are afraid, echoing Genesis 3:10 when Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of joy and suffering, then profane their free will.
This ending proves unsatisfying and later scribes added two further conclusions the text of Mark: in the longer ending, the ghost of Jesus appears and reprimands the disciples for lack of trust and wrong-headedness; he directs them to heal and to spread the revelation of Spirit. In the shorter ending, the disciples declare the promise of eternal life to the world. Matthew, Luke, and John develop the finale with supplemental details that when considered in composite, answer the greatest of all literary mysteries.
The day after the crucifixion, the Sadducees and Pharisees asked Pilate for guards to the crypt; “Secure the imposter’s tomb, or his devotees may steal the body and report that he is raised from the dead. The last deception would be worse than the first.” Soldiers were posted, but at dawn on the third day, there was an earthquake; the soldiers fainted from fright. Later, they confessed to the chief priests, who paid the soldiers to say the disciples stole the body while they were sleeping. Meanwhile, the women who found the empty grave told the disciples of the missing body, and they doubted the story. Simon Peter and the beloved disciple set out to investigate, and John reached the tomb first. Mary Magdalene waited outside, and while she was weeping, she saw angels and the ghost of Jesus. The group returned to the village, and the other disciples did not believe the foolish lie and hid from the villagers. During the week, they gathered and claimed many sightings of his ghost, until along the road to the Mount of Olives, they saw him risen to the stars. Thereafter, they spoke in various tongues about the glory of Spirit.
This ending proves unsatisfying and later scribes added two further conclusions the text of Mark: in the longer ending, the ghost of Jesus appears and reprimands the disciples for lack of trust and wrong-headedness; he directs them to heal and to spread the revelation of Spirit. In the shorter ending, the disciples declare the promise of eternal life to the world. Matthew, Luke, and John develop the finale with supplemental details that when considered in composite, answer the greatest of all literary mysteries.
The day after the crucifixion, the Sadducees and Pharisees asked Pilate for guards to the crypt; “Secure the imposter’s tomb, or his devotees may steal the body and report that he is raised from the dead. The last deception would be worse than the first.” Soldiers were posted, but at dawn on the third day, there was an earthquake; the soldiers fainted from fright. Later, they confessed to the chief priests, who paid the soldiers to say the disciples stole the body while they were sleeping. Meanwhile, the women who found the empty grave told the disciples of the missing body, and they doubted the story. Simon Peter and the beloved disciple set out to investigate, and John reached the tomb first. Mary Magdalene waited outside, and while she was weeping, she saw angels and the ghost of Jesus. The group returned to the village, and the other disciples did not believe the foolish lie and hid from the villagers. During the week, they gathered and claimed many sightings of his ghost, until along the road to the Mount of Olives, they saw him risen to the stars. Thereafter, they spoke in various tongues about the glory of Spirit.
AFTERWORD
George Aichele argues that the Gospel of Mark is “an incoherent, fragmentary narrative” (53), and John Meagher suggests the text has no deliberate concealment, only the distorted clumsiness of a sometimes clever storyteller (86). J.L. Magness notes the earliest text ends in a barbarous Greek conjunction that is confusing and chaotic, and Douglas W. Geyer claims the narrator is a befuddled bard who mixes up the punch-line of the joke (8). “Jesus is found unconvincing and without honor, his wisdom and works implausible…No changes in local beliefs are made because of his visit” (Geyer 186, 194). With the exception of the dignity given at his birth and the early awe of the crowd, Jesus is an outcaste: a bastard son who runs away from home to live with strange foreigners then returns as a scandalous sorcerer to be tortured and killed as a political rebel. The first ending of the text is tragically ironic: there is no blessing, only a regression into fear and silence; there is no redemptive appearance, only prophetic failure and persecution of his followers. The further endings of Mark add the resurrection as a vengeful ghost; the accretions in Matthew, Luke, and John imply a deception: his body is stolen, perhaps by lying soldiers; the disciples, who misunderstand his teaching throughout the text and give false witness when questioned, are unreliable, gullible, and stupid. Their priestly cult is founded on confusion and a blood-drinking, flesh-eating human sacrifice ritual.
In Matthew, at a dinner with the Pharisees, Jesus bemoans that his reputation among the children of the marketplace will be that of a glutton and a drunk (11:19). The Greek word for “glutton” implies decadent sense enjoyment, not only for food but also for eroticism and other delights. His ministry is surrounded by rumor and conflict, and his mystery-mongering and teaching by riddles obscures wisdom and preserves ignorant superstition. He is a hypocrite: rude toward his family, aggressive toward his enemies, scorning of his devotees and disciples, a sexual deviant with a prostitute and a teenaged boy, and an inflated personality who is sometimes angry and restless. His directives are contradictory: he often commands the disciples to be silent, and other times he tells them to shout secrets from the rooftops. He is an intriguing character study.
The Bible as literature, and as a tool in religious practice, has a complicated future. There will always be those of simple faith who believe that if they are good and pray, their wishes will be fulfilled and a fantasy of personal immortality will be granted. Others will miss the point, and in their misunderstanding, uphold sectarian bigotry and foolish irreligion. Some will avoid the book based on prejudice and anxiety. A few will take the hint from the text and explore the world’s religions, especially Brahminism, the complete account of the evolution and action of the impersonal Spirit in Creation and in man, and also Buddhism, the cure for suffering and enlightening path to joy, peace, and freedom. Many will discover an increase in their pleasure of the story, and the clarity of its message will be more obvious after further education in other wisdom traditions. In the encounter with the ancestral inheritance and knowledge of the elders, they will grow as a soul with a purpose in the world.
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