Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark
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|1: And when they drew near to
to Beth'phage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his
2: and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately
as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever
untie it and bring it. 3: If any one says to you, `Why are you doing
say, `The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'"
4: And they went away, and found a colt tied at the door out in the
street; and they untied it. 5: And those who stood there said to them,
"What are you doing, untying the colt?" 6: And they told them what
||Jesus had said; and they let them go. 7: And they brought the colt to Jesus, and threw their garments on it; and he sat upon it. 8: And many spread their garments on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. 9: And those who went before and those who followed cried out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10: Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!" 11: And he entered Jerusalem, and went into the temple; and when he had looked round at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.|
|1: And when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Beth'phage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples|
Vernon K. Robbins (1976) has shown that Mark 11:1-6 is a doublet
of Mark 14:13-16. Here are the parallels:
Bethpage means something like "House of Green Figs" which may be a
to Jesus' coming miracle. Neither town is found in the Old
or in Josephus or in any other non-Christian source prior to Mark.
ancient location is unknown. Against this, there are other
possibilities for the name. On the other hand, figs are commonly grown
around Jerusalem, and place names with "fig" as a component are known.
This reference, which reverses the order of the two cities of
and Bethany as they currently are situated and has Jesus entering the
city from the northeast even though Bethany and Bethpage are in the
southeast, is often considered a
error by exegetes that demonstrates the writer's unfamiliarity with the
area. Given the problems pre-industrial peoples often have relating
locations to each other, I am dubious of the "error" interpretation.
Note how the RSV has translated the verse as vaguely as possible, to
minimize the problems.
OT construction is evident here in the writer's decision to
Jesus' entry into Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, reflecting the
belief in ancient Judaism that the Messiah would begin his work on the
Mount of Olives (Josephus records individuals actually attempting to
this out). This is based on the passage in Zech 14:4:
|v1: in this section of Mark, Bethany functions as a base from which Jesus mounts forays into the heart of enemy territory, the Temple and Jerusalem. Just three narrative sites occupy the Gospel from here on in, Bethany, the Mount of Olives, and Jerusalem (Myers 1988, p349-350).|
as the Mount of Olives and the Temple Mount face off throughout the
rest of the Gospel of Mark, so in the OT mountains frequently face each
other in paired opposition, for example, Horeb and Carmel in 1 Kings 18
and 1 Kings 19, and Ebal and Gerizim in the Pentateuch.
|2: and said to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it.|
This passage is created out of the Old Testament. Zech 9:9
|v2: As Helms (1988, p103) observes, it is also miraculous to imagine that Jesus could simply hop on a colt that has never been ridden before (v2).|
Stephen Smith (1996) also sees affinities between this passage and 1
Kings 1:33-48, where David shows that Solomon will be his successor by
making him ride a mule down to Gihon where the priest and the prophet
are waiting to annoint him.
many exegetes have noted, an unridden colt signifies a colt for the
King, since no one but the King was allowed to ride the colt without
his express authorization.
|3: If any one says to you, `Why are you doing this?' say, `The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.'"|
RSV has translated away a Markan play on words. The Greek actually says
"Its Master has need of it" where Master could refer to either Jesus
or the owner of the creature.
J. Duncan and M. Derrett (2001) write:
|8: And many spread their garments on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields.|
Gundry (1993) notes:
The scene as presented is historically implausible.
the scene also recalls the entry of Simon Maccabaeus into Jerusalem in
1 Mac 13:51, as well as the entry of Messianic pretender Menahem into
Jerusalem and to the Temple as told in Josephus.
that the references to the colt cease after v7. Thus some exegetes have
argued that the passage conflates two different stories, one about a
colt, the other with Jesus on foot.
|9: And those who went before and those who followed cried out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!|
These praises are taken from the Septaugint versions of Psalm
and 148:1 (Helms 1988, p 104); the Greek of the two texts is the same
both (Eulogemenos ho erchomenos en onomati Kuriou). Psalm 118
was written during Maccabaean times to celebrate the entry of Simon
Maccabaeus into Jerusalem but was traditionally attributed
|11: And he entered Jerusalem, and went into the temple; and when he had looked round at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.|
Note that while there may be a crowd of some kind, only Jesus is said
to have entered Jerusalem.
Although some have objected that the Romans would probably not
permitted a man the crowd acknowledged King to enter the city to
crowds, Price (2003, p 292) argues that what is really going on is a
of Markan irony. The crowd is simply giving out the Hosanna! as part of
the usual Passover wish that the Davidic messiah would come and restore
the Davidic monarchy. And sure enough, in front of them, is the Davidic
messiah -- but the crowd doesn't know. To them, Jesus is just one of
of thousands of entrants to the city for the Passover festival, who
like thousands of others, to be arriving on a donkey.
scene, the "crowd" does not acknowledge that Jesus is the messiah,
in Luke, they clearly do. However, the vast distance being traversed
during Jesus entrance, as well as the presence of both straw and
may be signals that Mark did not frame it the way Price is
Note also that in Mark there
is no crowd. v9 says "And those who went before and those who
out..." implying that the speaking is done not by a crowd but
most probably by disciples who have come into Jerusalem. with Jesus. No
crowd is ever directly mentioned, just the "many" who spread their
garments on the road or lined it with branches.
Regardless of how one reads the
entry, the salient fact is that the Romans had a low tolerance for even
the slightest whiff of sedition, and would have dealt with it
ruthlessly. As Brent Kinman (1994) concedes while attempting to defend
the historicity of the incident, even among scholars who accept the
historicity of the story, the reality of Roman touchiness on the
subject of sedition creates apprehension. Kinman goes on to argue that
since Pilate's coming up to Jerusalem must have been an extravagant
affair, Jesus' entry must have paled beside it. While this approach is
the distilled essence of speculation, Kinman does bring up one common
point, that the Gospel portrayals need not be read as having the crowd
in its entirety acknowledge Jesus the savior. Against this is Gundry's
observation of the sheer length of Jesus dramatic entrance, as well as
the details of the crowd laying things at his feet the whole way.
In any case, as we have seen, this passage is created off of
the Old Testament. At the level of the overall framework, beginning
with the arrival in Jerusalem the parallels to the
Cycle become ever denser. Here the writer of Mark begans to rely more
more on that cycle for his plot structure and the details of his story
(Brodie 2000, p92):
The E-E Cycle also explains some of the stranger details of
The writer of Mark has also modeled this on the sequence in Zechariah 14. Duff (1992), who connects the entrance into the city to Zech 14, summarizes that text below. Note how the sequence in this text resembles this section of the Gospel of Mark, with the entrance into Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, down a processional highway, accompanied by his holy ones.
At the detail level, the passage is a creation off of the
1 Samuel 9 and 1 Sam 10:
and 1 Sam 10:2-7:
The scene may also represent a common convention of Greek drama, the hyporcheme, as proposed by Bilezekian (1977):
Duff (1992) also points out that the procession surrounding
the entrance of the warrior-king into the city was originally modeled
on Greek epiphany processions, in which the deity enters the city.
Frequently the entering King is either greeted as a god, or performs
sacrifices that "function as an act of appropriation" (p60).
This pericope consists of two chiastic structures looking more
or less like this:
The presence of the supernatural juxtaposed with OT creation
the level of detail and of the plot structure, along with the presence
of Mark literary creation (the doublet of v1-6), and the
conventionality of the entry in Greco-Roman culture indicate that there
no support for historicity in this pericope.
|12: On the following day, when
from Bethany, he was hungry. 13: And seeing in the distance a fig
tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he
to it, he found nothing
||but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14: And he said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it.|
|13: And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.|
Perhaps the scene is based on Psalm 37:35-6. More likely is Micah
where "the imagery of a search for figs is a figure for God's search
righteous Israelites, and the image of a barren or withered fig tree is
occasionally used to represent national failure as a manifestation of
judgment" (Brown 2002).
Also standing behind this may be Hosea 9:15-6, where the wicked are driven from the house of the Lord and the image of barrenness is found in conjunction with the Temple:
|v13: Jesus' search for fruit on the fig
tree is usually interpreted as an allegory based on the use of the fig
tree to represent Israel in the OT, including Jeremiah 8:13, 29:14,
Joel 1:7, Hosea 9:10, and 9:16. For example, Jeremiah 8:13 notes:
|v13: As Oakman (1993) points out, the
Cursing is scientifically absurd. Normally, when leaves are present on
a fig tree, there is fruit. Thus, an allegorical meaning is deduced.
|v13: Thomas L. Thompson (2005, p78)
points out that the writer is saying that it is not the tree but Jesus
who is out of season. The righteous (Israel) should be ready for the
messiah whenever he comes. He also observes that Jer 24:1-10 offers a
scene of two baskets of figs outside the Temple, one representing the
remnant of Good people who will be taken into exile when Jerusalem is
destroyed, the other representing the very bad.
|v13: Jan Sammer notes:
This pericope's chiastic structure is impossible to clearly
The wrter's A brackets are typically geographical movements, and there
is nowhere else in the gospel where Jesus makes so many movements in so
short a volume of text.
or all the movements may constitute a single A bracket. That
would work very nicely. But the writer did not leave us enough examples
to unravel his thinking on this matter.
This pericope is the "A" section of one of the Gospels' most
famous chiasms, an A-B-A' structure that sandwiches the Cleansing of
the Temple between the Cursing of the Fig Tree.
The presence of the
supernatural and creation from the OT indicate that there is no support
for historicity in this pericope.
|15: And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons; 16: and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple. 17: And he taught, and said to them,||"Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers." 18: And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching. 19: And when evening came they went out of the city.|
|15: And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons;|
From Nehemiah 13:8-9:
|v15: The Lord has come to his house, as promised in Mal 3:1 at the beginning of the Gospel.|
|v15: the verb "drive out" also links
the text back to Hosea 9:15:
activity of "plundering" the Temple may well relate back to the
plundering of the Strong Man's House in Mk 3:27.
As exegetes have noted, the Temple, fundamentally an economic
institution, was the center of the economic life of Jerusalem, driving
employment for many petty producers like bakers, incense makers,
goldsmiths, and so forth (Myers 1988, p300). Moneychanging was a
normal and sanctioned activity, necessary because the foreign coinage
carried by pilgrims from overseas for donations to the Temple had to be
changed to a coin acceptable to the Temple. As Crossan (1992) writes:
Some conservative exegetes have argued that non-Temple related money-changing probably went on as well, and that Jesus was targeting such unsanctioned and purely commercial transactions.
|16: and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple.|
The Greek says "vessels" by which the sacrificial equipment of
the Temple is meant, not "merchandise" as a number of translations will
have it. From Nehemiah 13:8-9
|v16: This story also has an interesting parallel in 2 Maccabees. There the story is told of the high priest Onias III, revered by the Jews for his righteousness. In 2 Macc 4:32-4 Onias attempts to prevent Menelaus from stealing vessels from the Temple. Later Onias is killed after being tricked into leaving his sanctuary near Antioch. After his death, in 2 Macc 15:11-16, he visits the Jewish leader Judas Maccabeaus in a dream. Like Jesus, he saved the Temple vessels from being plundered, was betrayed and killed, and then appeared to his followers after his death. Strangely, Josephus informs us that his brother's name was Jesus (later Jason). Daniel 9:26, the famous passage where the messiah is "cut off," is generally held to refer to Onias III.|
Josephus (Against Apion,
|17: And he taught, and said to them, "Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers."|
|v17: The writer of Mark has Jesus shouting out parts of the Old Testament while overturning benches and preventing people from carrying the sacrificial vessels around an area that is thousands of square yards in size.|
the writer has yoked together two diametrically opposed visions of the
Temple. In the passage from Isa 56 the Temple is presented as an
inclusive institution where YHWH's promise even encompasses foreigners
and outcasts, but the passage from Jeremiah 7 cited in the second half
of v17 is a diatribe on the corruption of the Temple that foresees its
destruction just as the previous shrine at Shiloh was destroyed (Myers
In addition to the reference to destroyed Temples, the passages surrounding Jer 7:11 contain important themes from the Gospel of Mark, including abominations on the heights (in the holy Temple of God):
and the bridgegroom:
Duff (1992), observing the citation of Isaiah on prayer, points out
that Jesus gives instructions on what is right outside the Temple in
Hans Dieter Betz (1997), one of many scholars who accepts this incident
as historical, notes:
Buchanon (1991) also points out that there is no message in Mk 11:17
that Jesus wanted those present to understand that the Temple must be
destroyed. Taking his point further, one could argue that the first
half of his remarks indicate the opposite.
term "robber" here refers more correctly to those who steal by
violence. The term is used extensively in Josephus and most probably
refers to the Jewish insurgents of the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70, who
occupied the Temple at the height of the siege of Jerusalem (Marcus,
complaint of Jesus here is in another chreia-like utterance in which
Jesus provides both the setting and the response: Q: Shouldn't this be a place of prayer?
A: But you've made it a den of thieves!
The structure of this periocope is a simple chiasm:
This is perhaps the most important single event in Mark outside the Crucifixion, for in many interpretations it triggers the authorities' actions against Jesus. Even when rejected as historical, scholars believe that there is an underlying kernel of history. Therefore it will be analyzed in some detail. There are several reasons to think that the author of Mark invented this story.
First, there is the historical improbability of the Temple
The Temple area itself is tremendous in size, more than 12 football
across and capable of holding tens of thousands of people. Looking at
Fredriksen (2000) has recently explained why she has altered her
on its historical probability:
Price (2003, p295) points out that the Temple covered 35 acres, the size of 34 football fields.
As Josephus notes, there were Roman auxiliaries on call in the
Antonia right nearby. The moneychangers undoubtedly had their own
and servants, and so did the local priests. It is therefore unlikely
Jesus could have generated an incident there that was prolonged enough
for anyone to notice. There were too many warm bodies to squelch it
it got rolling. A further problem, as Buchanon (1991) points out, is
that the Temple was not merely the main religious institution of the
Jewish religion, it was also the national treasury and its best
fortress. The Temple's importance should not be underestimated: all
three sides in the internal struggle during the Jewish War fought to
gain control of the Temple. Not only is it highly unlikely that Jesus
could have simply strolled in and gained control of the Temple, it is
also highly unlikely that anyone would have permitted him to leave
unmolested after such a performance.
An additional problem is provided by the awkwardness of v17, which has Jesus teaching as he is tossing out the moneychangers. It is almost comic to imagine Jesus shouting out parts of the Old Testament while overturning benches and preventing people from carrying the sacrificial vessels around an area that is thousands of square yards in size. Note that Jesus turns over the tables as if there were only a handful of them, rather than some tables.
David Seeley (2000) notes many of the practical arguments
In addition to the commonsense issue of implausibility, as Crossan has noted in The Birth of Christianity, a story may be labeled invented when, on every level, it shows obvious literary derivation. Speaking of the Passion Story, he writes: "The individual units, general sequences, and overall frames of the passion-resurrection stories are so linked to prophetic fulfillment that the removal of such fulfillment leaves nothing but the barest facts..." (1998, p.521). The Temple Cleansing is one such story; indeed, the combination of OT creation and Markan redaction leaves nothing at all, not even the barest facts.
At its lowest level, the individual details of the story itself, the Temple Cleansing is composed of two basic strands, one of Markan redaction, the other of OT literary invention. The Temple Cleansing in part is taken from the story of Nehemiah and the Temple, and borrows from it two key details:
First, Jesus overturns the benches of the moneychangers, just
was displeased and threw Tobias' furniture out of the rooms that had
been given to him (Nehemiah 13:9). Troughton (2003, p14) writes:
In the next verse (13:9) Nehemiah returns the sacred vessels back to the rightful place, just as Jesus prevents the vessels from being moved out of the precincts (Mk 11:16). "Nehemiah 13.4-9 details the threat to the Temple cult through accommodation of "foreign influences," notes Troughton (2003, p6), clearly paralleled in Jesus' attack on the merchants as a den of robbers.
Further borrowing of details from the OT is apparent in the
that Jesus' utters: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all
nations' But you have made it 'a den of robbers.' -- which
Isaiah and Jeremiah. The word "robbers" used here is better translated
as "insurrectionists." Some have seen a reference to the occupation of
the Temple by Jewish Zealots during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
Jeremiah passage containing 7:11 Mark quoted in v17 is also quoted by
Ben Ananias in Book VI of Josephus Wars. Some
exegetes have argued that Jesus may be modeled after Jesus ben Ananias.
Earl Doherty (1999, p248-58) has identified other OT cites that may
the basis for this passage, including Malachi 3:1, Hosea 9:15, and
Of these, the most likely is Zech 14:21, a classic example of Markan hypertextuality, which is Temple-focused. There the nations of the world are pictured worshipping at the Jerusalem Temple. Further, Zech 14:4 will be cited later in the gospel. Numerous exegetes have linked Zech 14:21 to this passage (Duff 1992, p65). Krause (1994) has also detected the shaping hand of Hosea 9 behind the Fig Tree and Temple sequence. Note how the sequence contains both the fig tree and a driving out of individuals from the Temple.
The other details of the story are redaction of the author of Mark and contain no items of historical value.
At the next level, the level of intermediate structure, the
writer of Mark
using the OT. The story of Jesus closely parallels the Elijah-Elisha
in Kings. Thomas Brodie (1998, p92) explains. At the climax of the two
legend cycles, the Temple is cleansed (Jesus drives out the
Jehu kills the priests of Ba'al). Both are annointed (2 Kings 9),
with cloaks on the ground (2 Kings 9), wait before taking over (2
9:12-13, Mark 11:11), challenge the authorities (2 Kings 9:22-10:27),
11:11 - 12:12), and money given to the Temple (2 Kings 12:5-17, Mark
12:41-44). As Brodie puts it (p93):
At the highest level, the overall story structure, the writer
of Mark is
again relying on the Elijah-Elisha cycle. Jesus north-to-south movement
generally parallels the movements in the Elijah. Where Jesus departs
this movement, so does Elijah. As the EEC narrative approaches
so does Jesus, and the parallels intensify. A second narrative source
for this might well be 1 & 2 Maccabees, where in 11:1-9 the writer
parallels Simon's entry into Jerusalem in 1 Macc 13, and then in
11:15-19 he parallels the story of Onias III and the Temple vessels in
To sum up:
Markan redactional elements are obvious in "On reaching Jerusalem" (v15) and v18 (the conspiracy and crowd amazement) and v19. The whole passage is typical of the writer of Mark. "Overturning the tables" and "not permitting vessels to be carried out of the courts" are taken from Nehemiah. These two details would not be transmitted by oral tradition; they exhibit clear literary dependence. Hence, the writer of Mark had to have added them via OT construction. Jesus' words cite two different OT authors and cannot be oral transmission; they exhibit literary dependence. The use of the Elijah-Elisha narrative for both the plot of the current set of pericopes and the overall framework of Mark is another example of literary construction that could not have been transmitted. The entire "event" smacks of either Markan redaction or literary dependence on every level.
Here is the text broken out in detail:
A final knock against this is event is that Josephus does not
it, nor does Paul (neither Jesus' Temple Cleansing nor his predictions
of the Temple's destruction), nor, apparently, did Justus of Tiberias,
of Galilee (who does not mention Jesus at all). No source other than
Gospels mentions this event. Paula Fredrikensen (2002) notes:
In summary, although judgments of outright fiction are generally implied rather than stated in this commentary, here it is clear that what we are looking at is a fiction from the hand of the writer of Mark. The silence in the external sources, the presence of OT creation in what is generally considered the "historical information" in this pericope, the markers of the writer's redactive habits, the presence of literary structures that culminate the Elijah-Elisha Cycle in the Gospel of Mark, and the strong historical implausibility of this event indicate that there is no history whatsoever in this pericope.
|20: As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21: And Peter remembered and said to him, "Master, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered." 22: And Jesus answered them, "Have faith in God. 23: Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, `Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart,||but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.24: Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25: And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."|
|23: Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, `Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.|
recalls Paul's words in 1 Cor 13:2.
Seeley (2000) observes:
This observation is also echoed by Duff (1992), who sees the mountain saying as further condemnation of the Temple.
|25: And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses."|
|v25: This is the only time "your father in the heavens" occurs in Mark. Though it is attested in all manuscripts, it is mostly likely a marginal gloss that found its way into the text, since the language is Matthean rather than Markan (Ludemann 2001, p79).|
Thomas L. Thompson (2005) writes:
The commentary on prayer is set up by the supernatural events
fig tree. The idea of forgiveness of tresspasses was a common one in
antiquity. This pericope completes an A-B-A' chiasm set up by the
previous interaction with the fig tree. Because of the presence of the
supernatural and the banality of the injunction to forgive, as well as
the relationship to Paul, there is no
support for historicity in this pericope.
|27: And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, 28: and they said to him, "By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?" 29: Jesus said to them, "I will ask you a question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30: Was the baptism of John from heaven||or from men? Answer me." 31: And they argued with one another, "If we say, `From heaven,' he will say, `Why then did you not believe him?' 32: But shall we say, `From men'?" -- they were afraid of the people, for all held that John was a real prophet. 33: So they answered Jesus, "We do not know." And Jesus said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."|
|27: And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him,|
|v27: it is implausible that Jesus is walking in the Temple, which two paragraphs ago he has just trashed.|
|30: Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? Answer me."|
Note that Jesus refers to the baptism of John. Could the writer be
implying a double meaning? Recall that in Mark, baptism can mean
"sacrificial death." The writer seems, from the subsequent verses, to
be discussing the baptism John offered, not the one he was given by
Herod. But nevertheless, the double meaning is present.
This entire pericope consists of Markan redaction, with the
of chief priests, scribes, and elders out to get Jesus. It is highly
that determined enemies of Jesus would have accepted the answer given
11:33; it is unlikely therefore that an account of remembered history
simply have broken off without a far longer exchange. The exchange
shows a variant on the chreia form, in this case the teacher is shown
besting his adversaries with a clever question rather than a clever
This pericope begins a block of 5
stories that doubles the block of 5 controversy stories in Mark 2 and
3. It is also John the Baptist's last appearance in Mark.
The implausibility of the situation should become apparent if
one thinks about the political
sensitivity of the question Jesus has just asked: Jesus has just
queried the Jerusalem Temple leadership what they think of someone the
writer informed us 5 chapters ago was executed by Herod, the potentate
of the territory next door, who held his Tetrarchy by Roman largesse.
The writer of Mark seems unaware of the political
implications of having Jesus asking the Jewish authorities whether they
think a recently executed political
prisoner was a real prophet.
The focus instead is on the source of Jesus' authority.
Mark McVann (1994) reads this as an honor-shame conflict. The
Temple's honor, slandered by Jesus' Cleansing of it, must be avenged,
and so the authorities challenge Jesus hoping to impugn his status as a
true prophet, but instead Jesus shames them. McVann observes that Jesus
does this by referring to John's Baptism, which was as insulting to the
Temple as Jesus' own acts, since it represented a way for the people to
be brought into the community of God without the Temple structure as an
The Jesus Seminar (Funk et al 1997) observed:
This pericope is part of a structure that extends into the next chapter;
implausibility of the situation both from a political standpoint, and
the fact that Jesus has just trashed the Temple, as
well as the presence of several habitual features of the writer's
style, all indicate that there is no support for historicity in this
John Paul Heil (1997) writes:
I agree completely.
The writer of Mark has a powerful
focus on the Temple which he reveals in two ways. First, the writer
mentions the Temple in the text of the Gospel itself. The first of
twelve uses of word "Temple" in Mark comes in Mark 11:11, when Jesus
arrives in Jerusalem. This is followed by several mentions in Jesus'
cleansing of the Temple in Mark
11:15-19. In Mark
11:27-33 Jesus is pictured walking in the Temple. Again in Mark
12:35-44 the action takes place in the Temple. In Mark
13:1-31 Jesus makes his famous prophecy of the Temple's
destruction. More references follow in Jesus' arrest,
before the Jewish authorities, and crucifixion.
From Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem forward, the Temple is one of the
most important threads in Markan discourse.
If the reader returns to Malachi to see the context, the Temple is present:
The writer has cleverly located three important themes from the Gospel here: the coming of the messenger of the Lord, the convenant, and the Temple. However, in order to place them all together, the reader is required to return to the Old Testament to view the passage in context. If you read on to Malachi 3:2, there the coming of the messenger of the Lord is compared to a refiner's fire that will purge and purify.
In literary terms the Gospel of Mark is a hypertext, a text that is based on, yet transvalues, another text, termed the hypotext. A modern example is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5, which parallels the Gospels, but transvalues them. Instead of the dynamic Jesus rushing around Palestine healing the sick and raising the dead and bringing a message of the Kingdom of God, we have the helpless Billy Pilgrim, who takes no action on his own, has no control over his own miraculous abilities, and brings a message that there is nothing that we can do about life. In the Gospels Jesus dies and saves the world, but in Slaughterhouse-5 Billy Pilgrim lives and the world (Dresden) dies. Similarly, the Gospel of Mark is built off the Old Testament, but reconstructs and recontextualizes its citations to focus them on Jesus and on the events of the writer's time. One strong aspect of Markan hypertextuality is its relentless focus on the Temple in Jerusalem. It also contains citations that refer to plundered, destroyed, and occupied Temples and altars. Given this, the writer of Mark is most probably writing at a time after the Temple was destroyed.
Thomas L. Thompson (2005) highlights the importance of the "plundered Temple" theme for understanding Messianism:
This Temple-focus of Markan citations is found in many places in the Gospel of Mark. In Mark 4:1-20 the writer gives us one of the most famous and enigmatic passages in the Gospel, 4:11-12.
This passage parallels Isaiah 6:10 in the Septuagint:
If we go back to the context, however, we once again see the Temple.
The words that Jesus speaks are uttered by a voice in the Temple. Once again, when we return to the Old Testament, we find the Temple.
Sometimes the writer's Temple focus is not as obvious as in the citations above. Let's take a look at Mk 3:1-6.
This passage parallels 1 Kings 13:4-6:
If you start with the text from Mark, and return to the text from 1 Kings 13, you notice that while the action in Mark takes place in a synagogue, in 1 Kings it occurs in an altar. If you go back to the proceeding action in 1 Kings 13, you will see two interesting passages:
The man of God prophesies that the priests of the high places will die, as would come true in the writer of Mark's time when the Temple was destroyed. Note further that Jeroboam's sin, like the Romans', was to appoint "anyone who wanted" to be a priest. This led to the downfall of the kingdom, just as the Temple fell. This passage offers a Temple, but one that will be plundered and destroyed.
In Mark 12:1 the writer offers a different nod to the Temple. Here he opens the Parable of the Tenants with a quotation from Isaiah 5:
Compare this to Isaiah 5:
However, the reader will search in vain for a reference to the Temple in this passage. That is because the reference resides not in the text of Isaiah but in Jewish tradition: the tower represents the Temple, and the vat the Altar. As Heil (1997) reads the parable Jesus presents:
There is no way to know for sure, but perhaps the writer was probably not only familiar with the Jewish Torah, but also the traditional readings of it as well.
In the episode of the Temple Cleansing (Mk 11:15-19) the writer echoes Nehemiah 13:8-9 in describing Jesus' actions of overturning the furniture and stopping the vessels from leaving the Temple:
The action here is taking place in the Temple, making the Temple focus obvious, but there is an additional aspect: Tobiah is a foreigner. The Temple is occupied by a foreigner, perhaps once again a reference to political conditions in the time of the writer of Mark. Similarly, two verses later, in Mark 11:17, the writer gives us a double helping of his Temple-focused hypertextuality:
In 11: 17 the writer yokes together two diametrically opposed visions of the Temple. The first half of the passage is from Isaiah 56. It presents the Temple as an inclusive institution where God's promise even encompasses foreigners and outcasts. By contrast, the second half of the passage cites Jeremiah 7, a diatribe on the corruption of the Temple that foresees its destruction just as the previous shrine at Shiloh was destroyed. Both hypertextual themes, the Temple itself, and violence in and against it, are present in this passage.
These same themes of violence and plundered Temples crop out in other places in Mark. In The Sanhedrin Trial (Mark 14:53-65) the High Priest responds to Jesus' affirmation of his identity with:
This appears to recall the scene in 2 Kings 11:14 when Athaliah, the Queen, is standing at the Temple when the true king Josiah, who had been hidden there, is brought out. The full text runs:
Once again, we see the juxtaposition of familiar themes from Mark: the True King, the Temple, and violence. These same things may pop up again in Mark 16:5, whose young man has been identified with the heavenly young men in 2 Macc 3 who save the Temple from being plundered and destroyed.
Although in the Gospel of Mark the Temple rises to narrative prominence in the second half of the Gospel, through the use of a hypertextuality that is strongly Temple-focused, the writer of Mark makes its presence known throughout his Gospel.
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Commentary on the Gospel of Mark
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