CHAPTER 13
It’s the last chapter before we get to the end game.
Jesus foretells the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple and
all of that. It’s a really, really
bleak vision – and we read it already in Matthew (never mind that Mark wrote it
first and Matthew just took it from him).
This section is the main reason scholars typically estimate that Mark
was written in the aftermath of the failed Jewish Revolt against Rome; in which
the Temple and the city were totally destroyed – and all the horrors Christ
describes pretty much came true.
But this chapter is what Matthew already noted in Chapters
24-25.
CHAPTER 14
The last three chapters cover the same ground as the last three
chapters of Matthew: 1) the arrest of Christ, 2) his execution, and 3) his
resurrection.
The main outline is the exact same. But that just makes the differences a bit
more interesting. Once again, perfumed
oils are put on Christ, and the apostles are unhappy, saying the money used for
it could’ve been given to the poor.
This time, however, they go into a bit more detail, giving us a greater
sense just how valuable the perfumed oil was.
We’re told it could’ve been sold for more than 300 days wages. Yowza!
Imagine that in modern life.
Doing about 20 seconds searching on the internet (so the
answer I got must be true!), in the year 2013, an average day’s wage in the US
is $70. Thus 300 days wages comes out
to ….$21,000! My oh my that is some nice
perfumed oil! OK – I’m sure the average
per capita income on ancient Judah was far lower – but that makes it even worse
to some extent. Those people were
poorer, and they could use something of value that much more. This little extra detail makes Christ look a
bit worse – hence maybe why Matthew excluded it.
The rest goes just as it had in Matthew – until the Last
Supper. Oh, the big items are still the
same. Wine is still blood, and the
wafer is still the body. The doctrine
of transubstantiation is still holding up.
The difference is that Matthew adds an extra phrase. Mark quotes Jesus saying, “This is my blood
of the covenant, which will be shed for many.”
But in Matthew it read: “This is
my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of the many for the
forgiveness of their sins.” Depending on how you look at it, Matthew either
decided to clarify what was already there in Mark – or he helps create (or at
least further develop) the theology of the early Christian church. It was more important to stress that the
communion is to help one’s sins be forgiven by the time Matthew put pen to
papyrus.
Christ then tells Peter he’ll thrice deny him – but there is
an odd difference. Here, the denials
will happen before the cock crows twice.
In Matthew, it’s just the cock crowing.
Sure enough, when the time comes, Peter will do it just before the
second cock crow. Rather oddly, the
first cock crow is added in seemingly by an editor, as its in brackets. It’s a weird quirk and I can see why Matthew
cleaned it up. It flows better the way he does it.
Christ again prays in the Garden. A reader pointed out something important to me after I covered it
in Matthew. That scene in the garden is
one of the more powerful scenes in the entire Bible. I’ve said all along in this project that the Bible is at its best
when it is at its most human, and Christ is rarely so human as he is in the
garden. He is praying to God for help
because he doesn’t want to go through with it.
That is a deeply human reaction.
Also, it’s relatable. Everyone
has their doubts. No Christian is a
pure saint. But here, they can look up
to Christ and see that even he had his doubts.
So they can take some solace and sympathy in that. Powerful stuff, man, powerful stuff. Also – it’s scenes like this that help the
case for the historical Jesus. If he
wasn’t real, it’s not likely they’d make up a story of Christ doubting, well,
his own divinity. It’s
counterintuitive.
The arrest scene has a few differences. Actually, wait – I forgot one thing from
earlier. Mark in general has less info
on Judas than Matthew did. Matthew had
Judas sell out Christ for 30 pieces of silver.
We get no denomination in Mark. (Later on, Matthew ties this to a
fictional prophecy, and then has Judas’s death become the basis for a place
called the Field of Blood. There is
nothing like that in Mark. Matthew
plays up the story of Judas more).
Anyhow, both Matthew and Mark have the same basic story of
the arrest – the kiss of betrayal, the scuffle, (note: I thought Matthew said
the priest lost his ear, but no – I misread that. It was the priest’s servant who lost an ear, just as it is in
Mark), Christ arrested. But there are
some differences.
First, the great line from Matthew isn’t here. Matthew had Christ tell Judas: “Friend, do
what you have come for.” It helps play
up the story of Judas, but it’s left out of Mark. Instead, Mark has his own addition – and it’s a weird one. During the arrest, all the apostles fled
(just as in Matthew). But Mark tells
us, as Christ was led away, “Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a
linen cloth about his body. They seized
him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.”
Oh, and after the arrest we never see Judas again. Matthew had him throw the money away and
kill himself, but once again that’s Matthew focusing more on the Judas end of
the story.
The. Hell? That’s a
doozy to just throw in there. No name
or anything, either. Just a naked guy running off as Christ is arrest. It makes so little sense, that I assume it
really happened. Some guy was sleeping
without much clothing on, and lost his cloak to the soldiers and ran off
naked. Sure – these things, they
happen. But it’s such a senseless part
of the story that it’s no wonder Matthew edited it out.
Oh, and Christ has a similar angry reaction as in Matthew,
but Jesus has been angry so many times that it just looks like him getting
irked off again. Actually, it goes on
longer in Matthew. There, Christ says
that if he wanted to resist, he could call on his father to send a flock of
angels down to save him. That isn’t in
Mark, though. Assuming that Matthew was getting his story from Mark, he decided
to add that extra element, to further show Christ’s divinity.
Christ stands before his accusers and they sentence him to
death. Meanwhile, Peter does thrice
deny Jesus.
CHAPTER 15
Jesus Christ dies.
Again – it’s the same basic story as in Matthew. There is Pilate and the choice before the
crowd of freeing Barabas and Jesus. He’s
crucified (and again, it’s some other guy carrying the cross. Huh).
Jesus dies, and the Temple’s sanctuary curtain again tears just
then. Jesus is buried.
OK, so how does Mark contrast with Matthew in the
particulars? First, Pilate seemed to
have a reduced role here. (Or, more
accurately, Matthew expanded on Pilate’s role compared to what the earlier
written Mark had done). The whole
Pilate sequence takes 26 verses in Matthew, but just 15 in Mark. Well, much of that is Matthew wrapping up
the Judas story, but even still – there is some differences.
Most notably, Mark doesn’t have Pilate washes his hands of
the affair, and claim him innocent of this man’s blood. The main story is the same, but Matthew
wanted to add that. As a general rule
of thumb, the more you play up Pilate, the more you’re trying to absolve Rome
of blame and/or the more you’re trying to put the blame squarely on the Jews
for Christ’s death.
Along those lines, Mark also has a slightly toned down scene
with Barabas. Oh, it’s all basically
the same, with the Jews calling to free Barabas instead of Christ. However, this time he’s listed as a rebel
“who had committed murder in a rebellion” whereas Matthew just called him, “a
notorious prisoner.” He sounds worse in
Matthew – and thus the Jews sound worse for wanting to kill him.
Both gospels have the crowd become more militant when Pilate
asks them if they’re sure they want Barabas to go – but in Matthew they are so
agitated that Pilate fears a riot. Not
so in Mark. There is a clear trend here
of putting all the blame on the Jews in Matthew. You get a similar theme in Mark, but it’s not so starkly
done.
The crucifixion scene in Mark is mentioned in Bart D.
Ehrman’s book “Misquoting Jesus” in which he discusses how the Bible was
changed by the copyists. In this scene,
though, he looks not at a change that is still in the Bible, but one that was
used in ancient times in some Bibles.
Instead of asking “My God, My god, why have you forsaken me?” some
copyists turned “forsaken” into “mocked.”
The reason? It dealt
with theology. Some early believers –
before church doctrine was really solidified in the fourth century – thought
that Jesus and Christ were separate, and that on the cross the spirit of Christ
left the carpenter Jesus. This
statement of forsaking was taken as the moment when Christ left Jesus. For various reasons, the people that
believed this theology really liked the book of Mark – it was their favorite
gospel. So some copyist tried to
undermine them in their favorite gospel.
He figured “mocked” would hurt their theory.
Christ dies, and once again Mary Magdalene makes her first
appearance then – along with the Virgin Mary. Mark, like Matthew, also
downplays the mom’s role, but not as seriously as Matthew had. Whereas Matthew kept calling her “the other
Mary,” Mark repeatedly refers to her as “Mary the mother of the younger James
and Joses” – guys already listed in Mark as Christ’s brothers. So both acknowledge Mary’s family connection
without really making too big a deal of it.
Christ is buried, but there is a big difference here with
Matthew. In Matthew, the author goes to
great pains to explain to us that Christ’s tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers
to ensure no one disturbed it. Matthew
went over so many charges and counter-charges between Jews and Christians over
how Jesus’s body came to disappear that I thought it had a ring of truth to it
– real disputes over how the guarded tomb became empty. But there is nothing like that in Mark. There are no guards mentioned at all. There
is just a stone rolled by a centurion with the two Marys looking.
CHAPTER 16
This is one of the most amazing moments in the history of
Biblical archeology. Throughout the
gospels so far, I’ve noted the writings of Bart D. Ehrman as he has tried to
tell the masses about Biblical scholarship on the New Testament. A main focus for him has always been how the
word of the Bible has change, and the copies we’ve found from the New Testament
are often different from each other – and sometimes different from out modern
Bible. Occasionally, these changes have
big theological importance – and they’re never greater than in the last chapter
of Mark.
Here is the story of Mark – according to the oldest and best
surviving copies of the Gospel we have from ancient times.
Mary Magdalene and “Mary, the mother of James and Salome”
(another Christ sibling) go to the tomb.
To their surprise, the rock has been rolled away. They go in, and see a young man (no identity
beyond that given) in a white cloak. He
tells them that Jesus has been raised from the dead. He tells the women to go to “the disciples and Peter” (I guess
that means Peter is leader, not just disciple now. I guess). They should
tell the apostles to go to Galilee to see Jesus there. The two Marys, stunned
and scared, flee the tomb. Instead of
telling the apostles, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”
THE END.
Wait, wait – time out, WHAT? How the hell do you end the story like that? You have some guy saying Christ has been
raised – but no Christ himself! You
have the mystery man telling the Marys to tell the gang – but they never
do! It’s the most unsatisfying and
abrupt ending of all time. The hell?
Yeah, I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that the
version we have isn’t this version.
Boy, if copiers were ever going to make any additions, they’d make them
here. You can’t really blame them. I bet some copier must’ve though, “Man, whoever copied this before me must’ve
had the last page missing. That sucks –
we have an incomplete version! What
might it say? Well, let me give it a
crack….”
And so we get our more modern – and more conventional –
ending. The Marys never talk, but
that’s fine – Christ showed up. Jesus
first appears to two (unnamed) apostles.
They tell the rest, but aren’t believed. Then suddenly Jesus is with all
of them. He gives them the mission to
spread the word to all the world and then ascends into heaven.
Let’s take stock for a second. Matthew had the apostles see Christ in Galilee, and the mystery
man in tomb here in Mark also wants them to go to Galilee. So there is that similarity. But when Christ actually does see the
apostles in Mark – it’s apparently in Jerusalem.
Actually, both Mark and Matthew have their own degrees of
ambiguity on Christ’s return from the grave.
It’s very stark in Mark, the oldest of the gospels. As originally written, we’re just told
Christ is risen – that’s it. In
Matthew, we’re told the apostles first aren’t really sure what they’re seeing.
Anyhow, what the hell was the point in Mark? I really don’t know. Throughout, though, we’ve seen the apostles
come off poorly. Maybe he didn’t want
the apostles to get that glory. Did
Christ return? Sure – but the important thing is that WE know he returned.
Screw them apostles. Whoever wrote this
really didn’t think much of them. From
reading Ehrman and some other Biblical scholars, there is reason to think – good
reason – that St. Paul often clashed with the original apostles. That doesn’t mean he wrote this (unlikely,
as he was dead by the time he wrote this), but whoever wrote it wanted Paul’s
version to triumph over the other strands of Christianity. But it left a deeply unsatisfying ending,
and as time went on, those other strands weren’t as important. (The others were
based on Jerusalem, which of course had been totally destroyed). So future gospels would let Christ see the
savior, thinking that helped the story more than a swipe at the apostles.
Just a theory, but it’s the best
I can do.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
I can believe that this was the first one written. It does feel like Matthew cribbed from it
when writing his gospel.
But I can also see why Matthew gets top billing. That was a more satisfying gospel – if for no reason than it had all the teachings of Christ, like the Sermon on the Mount, that Mark is in the dark about.
It’s an intriguing gospel here, with interesting hints on
Jesus. Was Jesus really as frequently
peeved as Mark makes him out to be?
Maybe, but it’s hard to say. Given that Mark doesn’t know Christ’s
teachings, it’s doubtful that he ever met him, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment