Most of us want, even insist on, certainty, even though it is nearly impossible to obtain. Ambiguity defines our actual experience. Apocalypticism is one way to provide that certainty. Faith often is presumed to produce such certainty.
The concluding episodes in Mark’s gospel run ambiguity up against ambiguity all the way to the very end. To what purpose?
Pilate crucified Jesus under the charge of king of the Judeans. Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE, was the last person to hold the title. He was a client king of the Roman emperor. The title was at that time vacant, although several of Herod’s relatives were vainly maneuvering for the title. When Pilate condemned Jesus as king of the Judeans, did he see Jesus as contesting for Herod’s title and becoming a Roman client king or, like Judas Maccabeus, claiming the title and leading a revolt against Rome? King of the Judeans occurs in Mark’s gospel only in association with Pilate’s trial.
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In the Sanhedrin trial, when the chief priest demands, “Are you the Anointed One, the son of the Blessed One?” (14:61) Jesus confesses, “I am! And you will see the Human One sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of the sky!” (14:62) At this the chief priest accused him of blasphemy.
At Caesarea Phillipi, when Jesus asked his students whom they thought he was, Peter (Rocky)[1] had responded that he was the Anointed one (8:29). Jesus told him to be silent. Then Jesus taught “that the Human One was destined to endure much, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scholars, and be killed, and after three days rise” (8:31). When Peter (Rocky) rebukes him, Jesus in effect tells him to go to hell. “You’re not thinking in God’s terms, but in human terms” (8:33).
The scene at Caesarea Phillipi forms a mirror opposite to the trial before the Sanhedrin. In the first scene, Jesus silences Peter’s (Rocky’s) confession of him as the Anointed, while openly admitting it before the chief priest. In the first scene the Human One is to suffer and die, while before the chief priest the Human One will come on the clouds of glory. In the first, Peter (Rocky) is on the side of the devil, while in the second the chief priest accuses Jesus of blasphemy.
How to reconcile this? Context makes the difference. At Caesarea Philippi, coming off the powerful signs and wonders of the Galilean ministry, Peter (Rocky) looks to a powerful Messiah. In the Sanhedrin trial, the chief priest is clearly God’s anointed, the one with the power. Jesus is the loser, the one who will die at Roman hands.
The author of the Gospel according to Mark presents the audience with three points of view—a Judean and a Roman, which together constitute a human point of view, and finally God’s. These three perspectives are the hermeneutical clue to the narrative’s final scenes.
At the crucifixion, the passersby (Judeans) taunt Jesus, “Save yourself and come down from that cross” (15:30). The chief priests and scholars (traditionally “scribes”) join in the attack. “‘Anointed One,’ ‘the King of Israel,’ should come down from the cross here and now, so that we can see for ourselves and believe!” They are asking for a sign. Earlier in the story when the Pharisees had asked for a sign, Jesus had responded, “this generation won’t get any sign!” (8:12) Is the prohibition still in place?
Jesus remains silent until he cries out “‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?)” (16:34). Warned not to expect a sign, what does a reader/audience make of this acclamation at Jesus’ death? It puts an audience under extreme stress. For the author and narrator, the brutal fact is that Jesus died in despair. The tradition has tried several strategies to avoid this conclusion, including that Jesus intended to quote the end of Psalm 22 instead of the beginning. But this is an argument from desperation, in an effort to avoid the obvious. Is the tradition seeking a sign?
The centurion’s confession, “This man really was God’s son!” (16:39), apparently solves this problem. But is it a confession? That is certainly the way the tradition has understood it. But recent scholarship has challenged this. The centurion was the official in charge of Jesus’ death, the person who put him to death. More likely his comment is sarcastic. “This guy was the son of God, you kidding me?” If this were a confession, one would expect the Greek to be smooth and elegant. But the Greek is harsh and unbalanced. The sound of the Greek points to sarcasm.
The author is an allegorical thinker. In chapter four, Jesus instructs his students in how to interpret parables, to find the secret, the double meaning. “You have been given the secret of the empire of God” (4:11). In discussing the end-time signs in chapter 13:14, the narrator interrupts Jesus’ reference to the “devastating desecration” to warn the reader/audience to figure out what it really means.
Applying the allegorical method to the centurion’s sarcastic remark, a reader finds a confession of faith. But not an apocalyptic confession of triumph. Author and reader stare into the darkness of Jesus’ despairing death to find true faithfulness. The tension produced by the paradox of a despairing messiah, son of God, requires insight into true faith.
Faith as paradox is clearly God’s point of view. At the transfiguration, the voice from the cloud had announced, “This is my son, the one I love, listen to him!”(9:7) What he had just said was: “If any of you wants to come after me, you should deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow after me” (8:34).
After Jesus’ last breath, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (15:38). The allegorical reader sees “devastating desecration” and knows how to interpret Jesus’ death. It is God’s judgment on the human viewpoint. The author is playing a dangerous game in trying to provoke a powerful paradoxical insight on the part of a reader/audience. But it can misfire. It can and did lead to blaming the Jews for Jesus’ execution.
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Following the centurion’s exclamation, the narrator immediately draws attention to the fact that “some women were observing from a distance” (15:40). The women’s appearance is abrupt and jarring. While the author’s normal literary style is abrupt and paratactic, this is especially so. In Greek the period leads off with a verb “there-were” followed by two connectives, “and also” (de kai). It might be translated: “Now look there were even women. . .”
Since women are associated with burial, their presence is not completely unexpected. After naming some of the women (unusual and noteworthy), the narrator remarks that they regularly followed Jesus while in Galilee and also regularly “assisted him” (15:41). The translation is difficult. The Greek diakoneō means to serve at table, to serve, to assist, to look after. Somewhat later, the ecclesiastical office of “deacon” was derived from this word. The women are part of Jesus’ entourage and providing special service. The narrator now forces the reader/audience to consider the view of Jesus’ activity in Galilee and on the way to Jerusalem. With Jesus were not only his male students, but also a group of women who were followers and offered assistance. Furthermore, the male students have all fled. Only the women are faithful to the end.
From this point, the narrative follows the women to the very end.
They are present at the burial and, after the Sabbath, they approach the tomb which they find empty except for a young man who tells them,
Don’t be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He was raised, he is not here. Look at the spot where they put him. 7But go and tell his students, including ‘Rock,’ ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’
The young man acknowledges Jesus with a geographical marker, not a Messianic title. No Anointed, master, or son of God. Simply Jesus the Nazarene. The crucified one was raised and is not here but is going to Galilee. Formally it is a translation story, like that of Elijah. The author has drained the transcendent from the story. No sign will be given. Not even the resurrection. They are to return to Galilee, back to the beginning of the good news.
Galilee is both a geographical place, as well as an allegorical space where Jesus goes before to meet his students and those women who follow and assist him. This describes the secret of God’s empire, the good news, the Anointed’s community.
The women flee in fear. “And they didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone: talk about terrified . . .” (16:8). This plays to the strategy of no sign will be given. If the women did not tell anyone, where did this story come from? It also creates an ambiguous ending for the narrative that unsettled the authors of the other canonical gospels and later editors and scribes of the Gospel according to Mark. The manuscript tradition has several endings for the gospel. Eventually by the fifth century the so-called Longer Ending became the accepted text (Textus Acceptus). Despite overwhelming manuscript evidence that the original ending of the gospel was 16:8, most printed versions of the Bible accept the longer ending (16:9–20), with a footnote to the manuscript evidence.
The author of the Gospel according to Mark employs apocalyptic tropes but cuts away their predictive power. At the end of the apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13, Jesus says, “As for that exact day or hour—no one knows, not even heaven’s messengers, nor even the son, no one, except the Father” (13:32). What good is the discourse if the speaker doesn’t know the time? The author pursues this strategy throughout the narrative’s second half.
The author composed this story in the aftermath of the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple; in the midst of the Flavian propaganda on coins announcing Judea Captiva; the Arch of Titus celebrating his triumph over Jerusalem and its God; and the Flavian Amphitheater (the Colosseum) paid for from the booty gained in sacking Jerusalem and built by sixty thousand Judeans enslaved by the war. This was an apocalyptic horror that cried out for revenge. The Gospel according to Mark replicates this apocalyptic horror in Jesus’ despairing death. But the gospel calls not for revenge, but seeing God in suffering and finding community, the followers in Jesus, emerging out of and through that suffering.
The author provides the reader/audience with a profound meditation on faith and faithfulness and in the paradox of Jesus’ despairing death an experience of faith itself.
Throughout this essay I have avoided gendered pronouns or the name “Mark” when referring to the author of the Gospel according to Mark. The anonymous author’s gender is unknown and given the narrative’s conclusion, it may well be female. Only the women are left.
[1] The Greek word Petros means “rocky,” and it appears to be the nickname Jesus used for Peter. (We don't know what Peter's real name was.)
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