Gospel of Mark Chapter 15

Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark

Chapter 15

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Mark 15:1-15

1: And as soon as it was morning the chief priests, with the elders and scribes, and the whole council held a consultation; and they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him to Pilate. 2: And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And he answered him, "You have said so." 3: And the chief priests accused him of many things. 4: And Pilate again asked him, "Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you." 5: But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate wondered. 6: Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. 7: And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barab'bas.

8: And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he was wont to do for them. 9: And he answered them, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" 10: For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. 11: But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barab'bas instead. 12: And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the man whom you call the King of the Jews?" 13: And they cried out again, "Crucify him." 14: And Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him." 15: So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barab'bas; and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

NOTES

1: And as soon as it was morning the chief priests, with the elders and scribes, and the whole council held a consultation; and they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him to Pilate.

v1: The Greek "symboulian" may be read as "convened a council" or "prepared a plan" (Brown 1994, p.630-32). The manuscript tradition also contains another Greek phrase that means "prepared a plan," strengthening the latter reading (Donahue and Harrington 2002, p430). The writer's meaning here is not clear.

v1: contains the usual Markan redaction "as soon as" implying rapidly moving events. The chief priests, elders and scribes appear as a Markan plot device to drive the action. They crop up in v1 to take Jesus to Pilate; v3, to accuse Jesus before Pilate; v11 to stir up the crowd, and finally in v31 to mock Jesus in his death throes.

v1: Although some exegetes have attempted to argue that this consultation represented a second meeting to pass judgment in a capital case as required under Jewish law, recall that the Jewish day begins at sunset, so it is still the same day of the first trial.

v1: Jesus is bound for the first time here. Isaiah 3:10 (LXX), where the Just One is bound, and of course Isaiah 53:6, 12 (LXX), as well as Psalm 27:12 (LXX) are all sources for this scene.

Isa 3:10 (LXX) Woe to their soul, for they have devised an evil counsel against themselves, saying against themselves, Let us bind the just, for he is burdensome to us: therefore shall they eat the fruits of their works. (Brenton translation)

v1: Pilate. Roman administration is generally divided into two periods for analysis. In the first, from 6 CE to 41 CE, seven Roman governors (titled "prefects") ruled Judea. From 41-44 Agrippa, a Jewish king and descendent of Herod the Great, ruled Judea. After 44 the province reverted to direct Roman rule under 7 Roman governors, (titled "procurators") terminating in the inept Florus whose clumsiness provoked the Jewish War of 67-70. The second half of the period was one of seething revolt and unrest. It would be an error, however, to project this back into the period 6-41. In Judea there are no surviving records of an armed revolt or of Roman executions of notorious bandits, failed messiahs, or revolutionaries (Brown 1994, p677-679). As Tacitus tersely put it: "Under Tiberius all was quiet" in Judea.

Pilate was appointed not on merit but because he was a favorite of Sejanus, a power in Tiberius' court. Nevertheless, the fact that he governed for a decade argues that he must have been relatively competent. Additionally, although Tiberius moved against many of Sejanus' appointees after Sejanus' death in 31, Pilate remained in office for five more years, another signal of competence. Moreover, Judea was quiet during his term; the Roman legions were withdrawn, leaving local auxiliary troops to police the public order. Finally, although Pilate ruled for ten years, he never removed a Jewish high priest from office, unlike his predecessor Gratus, who had deposed four high priests during his eleven-year rule (Brown 1994, p694-695). In addition to Josephus, the New Testament, Tacitus, and Philo, Pilate is known from a single inscription found at Caesarea on the Palestinian coast in 1961.

2: And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And he answered him, "You have said so."

	v2: The Gospel of Mark does not contain enough evidence to warrant any conclusion about the legality of Pilate's trial under Roman law and custom. As Brown (1994, p726) points out, the account of the trial of Jesus ben Ananus (see below) in Josephus would probably look fairly implausible if anyone cared to make a case like that brought against the trial of Jesus under Pilate, but no scholar has ever challenged it.
	v2: Pilate asks if Jesus is the King of the Jews, although that term has never been used in the Gospel, including during the Sanhedrin trial. Since the writer does not say that the Jewish leaders gave Pilate any information, why didn't Pilate start out with more basic questions of the "where are you from?/what is your name?" variety?
	v2: As with the Sanhedrin, the accuser asks after Jesus' true identity, but in the Trial before Pilate the order is reversed; Jesus' silence follows rather than precedes the question.
	v2: Historically, the first use of the title "King of the Jews" was by the Hasmonean high priests when they established an independent Jewish state in Palestine a century or so before this time. Herod the Great also styled himself "King of the Jews." (Brown 1994, p731).
	v2: in a rare instance of agreement, in all four canonical gospels the Greek of this line is exactly the same.
	v2: Recall that Greek had no punctuation. Hence, in Greek this exchange is marvelously ambiguous, as either figure speaking could be asking a question or making a statement. It could read as Pilate saying "You are the king of the Jews" and Jesus replying "Are you saying so?" The narrator has clarified this by defining Pilate's comment as a question, leaving the ostensible ambiguity in Jesus' answer.(Fowler 1996, p198)

5: But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate wondered.

v5: Jesus' silence recalls Isaiah 53:7:

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. (NIV)

Note also that in the discourse in Mark 13, Jesus told his followers not to be anxious about what to say, but that the Holy Spirit would speak for them. Another fulfillment of Mark 13 as a Passion prediction.

v5: A. Y. Collins (1994) has also identified Psalm 38 in the background here:

11: My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, and my kinsmen stand afar off.
12: Those who seek my life lay their snares, those who seek my hurt speak of ruin, and meditate treachery all the day long.
13: But I am like a deaf man, I do not hear, like a dumb man who does not open his mouth.
14: Yea, I am like a man who does not hear, and in whose mouth are no rebukes.(RSV)

Psalm 38 has also been identified with 15:40-1, the watching women, as well.

v5: Pilate functions as an effective double of King Herod in Mark 6:14-29) in the this scene. As Mary Ann Tolbert(1989) points out, Pilate:

"...like King Herod before him, initially responds positively to the man in his custody. Pilate, indeed, as the narrator informs the audience, recognizes that the accusation against Jesus arises out of the envy of the chief priests (15:10) rather than out of any crime Jesus has committed and seeks to release him (15:9, 12, 14). However, also as with King Herod, Pilate's nobler instincts collapse under the press of expediency..."(p273)

6: Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. 7: And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barab'bas.

v6-7: Barabbas, literally "son of the father" is a probable doublet for Jesus himself (the Son of the Father). Indeed, there are manuscripts of Matthew that have "Jesus Barabbas" in this passage, and this must have been the case in the early days of Christianity, for Origen defensively insists that many manuscripts of Matthew in his time did not contain the offensive "Jesus" before "Barabbas." As a consequence some scholars have argued that this was the original usage in Mark (which Matthew copied) although this is a minority view. "Abba" was also a personal name in ancient Judaism, so the name may simply mean "Son of Abba."

The custom of releasing prisoners for feasts is not known anywhere in the Roman empire; occasionally prisoners were released on feast days as a specific act of clemency, but, as Crossan argues (1991, p390-1), Roman governors were more likely to postpone the execution or allow the family to bury the body, if they were inclined to clemency. Indeed, Origen, writing two hundred years later in the same part of the world, was surprised to find such a custom claimed in the Gospels. Pilate was not known for his mercy (see accounts in Philo or Josephus) but it is true that our only accounts of his governship come from his enemies. Pilate releasing Barabbas to a Jewish crowd is unlikely (Barabbas could hardly have been the only prisoner in Pilate's hands, so why release a bandit and murderer?), and further, it seems incredible that Pilate would release someone the crowd demanded, who is a known anti-Roman rebel and murderer. Finally, Barabbas himself appears to be fictional. The historical plausibility of this aspect of the scene is low.

v6-7: Some exegetes have argued that this scene is based on Esther. Tim Callahan (2004) notes:

"In a play given during Zagmuku, two actors portrayed characters who were the source of the roles of Mordecai and Haman in Esther, in that one expects royal honors but is put to death, while one seems destined for death but escapes with his life. This would also seem to be the source of Jesus called the Christ and Jesus Barabbas."

v6: Theissen and Merz (1998) note a possible criticism:

"A Passover Amnesty would make sense only if the person freed had an opportunity to take part in the Passover...the narrators had another chronology in mind than the dating of the death of Jesus now put forward in the Synoptics.(p427)

v7: "who had committed murder in the insurrection." What murder? What insurrection? Some exegetes have argued that Mark hides a story about an insurgency against Rome, seeing Jesus' disciples as advocating violence against Rome, and Jesus himself staying aloof from such an affray. Knowing which insurrection the writer referred to would also enable exegetes to refine their estimates of the dating of these events.

8: And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he was wont to do for them.

v8: Note that Mark indicates the trial before Pilate is outdoors, for a "crowd came up." In Josephus' Wars of the Jews Jewish citizens are brought before the procurator Florus, scourged and crucified in the open:

Florus was more provoked at this, and called out aloud to the soldiers to plunder that which was called the Upper Market-place, and to slay such as they met with. So the soldiers, taking this exhortation of their commander in a sense agreeable to their desire of gain, did not only plunder the place they were sent to, but forcing themselves into every house, they slew its inhabitants; so the citizens fled along the narrow lanes, and the soldiers slew those that they caught, and no method of plunder was omitted; they also caught many of the quiet people, and brought them before Florus, whom he first chastised with stripes, and then crucified. Accordingly, the whole number of those that were destroyed that day, with their wives and children, (for they did not spare even the infants themselves,) was about three thousand and six hundred. And what made this calamity the heavier was this new method of Roman barbarity; for Florus ventured then to do what no one had done before, that is, to have men of the equestrian order whipped (21) and nailed to the cross before his tribunal; who, although they were by birth Jews, yet were they of Roman dignity notwithstanding. (2.14.9)

v8: Though some have argued that the crowd could not have known about Barabbas, in fact the writer only has them ask Pilate to perform his usual custom of releasing a prisoner ("as was his wont").

10: For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

v10: Looking at the larger literary structure of Mark, Jerome Neyrey (1998) has argued that the behavior of Jesus' enemies in Mark is driven by the social relations of the honor-shame culture of Palestine:

"Thus Pilate's perception that it was "out of envy" that Jesus was handed over is a striking clue which leads us to identify and connect seemingly disparate elements in the narrative into a coherent and plausible cultural scenario.(86) The narrative strategy in portraying Jesus envied seems to serve the basic rhetorical aim of the gospel, namely the praise of Jesus and the acknowledgment of him as Christ, Prophet and Lord -- that is, the Most Honorable person in the cosmos next to God."

v10: Donald Senior (1987) notes:

"The word used here for "envy" (phthonos) has connotations of malaicious intent or spite. The Book of Wisdom assigns "envy" (phthonos) as the devil's motivation for bringing death into the world (Wis 2:24)."(p111)

12: And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the man whom you call the King of the Jews?"

v12: And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with [the man whom you call] the King of the Jews?"

The material in brackets appears to be a longer addition found in many manuscripts.

4: And Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him."

v14: Echoing Isaiah 53:9

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. (NIV)

Other parts of this verse show up elsewhere in the story.

v14: Tolbert (1989, p273n2) points out that Pilate makes three attempts to release Jesus, just as Peter makes three denials of Jesus. In the typology of the gospel as delineated back in Mark 4 in the Parable of the Sower, Peter is rocky ground, while Pilate represents thorny ground. Both fail to recognize and respond to Jesus, but whereas Peter makes a comprehensive threefold failure, Pilate nearly succeeds in releasing Jesus, a partial success. This, Tolbert avers, shows the difference between the infertility of rocky ground and the stunted fertility of thorny ground. Dart (2003) links the three offerings of Jesus by Pilate to the three times times that the disciples fell asleep in the Garden, chiastically.

15: So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barab'bas; and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

v15: The verb here, paradidonai, is the same one used elsewhere when Jesus says he will be "given over" or "delivered over."

Historical Commentary
Several scholars (Helms 1997, p37, Evans 1995, Sanders 1995, p266)) have observed that this scene has strong similarities with, and may be related to, a passage in Josephus, from Book VI of Wars:

But, what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, (23) began on a sudden to cry aloud, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!" This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city. However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say any thing for himself, or any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before. Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, where he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him. Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if it were his premeditated vow, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day, nor good words to those that gave him food; but this was his reply to all men, and indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come. This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals; and he continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was going round upon the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, "Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!" And just as he added at the last, "Woe, woe to myself also!" there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages he gave up the ghost. (Whiston translation)

Craig Evans (1995:108) analyzed Josephus's account of Jesus ben Ananias. Like Jesus, he predicted doom on Jerusalem and the Temple, even referring to Jeremiah's prophecy of judgment against the temple (Jer 7:34), just as Mark did in Mk 11:17. Note that the Jewish authorities arrest and beat Jesus ben Ananias and hand him over to the Roman governor, who interrogates him. He refuses to answer the governor, was scourged and then released. Although Jesus was not released, Pilate asks the crowd in 15:9 whether they want Jesus released, and eventually does release Barabbas, who, though Evans does not make the connection, is a double of Jesus. Lawrence Wills (1997, p160) further fleshes out the parallels:

*he enters Jerusalem for a pilgrimage festival (Sukkot)
*he delivers an oracle against Jerusalem, the Temple, and the people
*he is seized by leading citizens
*he is beaten, later scouraged
*he offers no answer to interrogators
*he is taken by them to the Roman procurator
*he is considered a madman (exestokos; compare Mark 3:21 exeste, and also John 7:20)
*he prophesies his own death
*he dies

One should add, of course, that his name was "Jesus."

This scene also represents supernatural fulfillment of Jesus' prophecies from earlier in Mark. In Mark 12:7 the Wicked Tenants conspire to kill the vineyard owner's son, Jesus. That has now come true.
The basic frame is a doublet of the previous pericope (Ludemann, 2001):

Mark 14:53-65 Mark 15:1-20

Jesus before the Sanhedrin Jesus Before Pilate

14:53a 15:1

14:55 15:3

14.60 15:4

14:61a 15:5

14:61b 15:2

14:62 15:2

14:64 15:15

14:65 15:16-20

Finally, the overall frame of this chapter and the next is Daniel 6:

Mark Daniel 6

The chief priests and scribes try to trap Jesus with arguments over the law The satraps and adminstrators trap Daniel with a law

Joseph of Arimathea, a leader of the nation opposed to the spokesman for the people of God secretly reveres Jesus (as Pilate becomes steadily more Christianized in Christian legend, he assumes this role) Darius a leader of the nation opposed to the spokesman for the people of God secretly reveres Daniel

the death of Jesus is required by law (implied in Mark) the death of Daniel is required by the law of the Medes and Persians

Pilate is reluctant to execute Jesus, tries to convince crowd to let him go Darius is reluctant to put Daniel in the lion's den, Darius exerts himself until evening to save Daniel

Pilate, though distressed, is forced to put Jesus in a tomb
Darius, though distressed, is forced to put Daniel into a lion's den

Joseph of Arimathea looks forward to the kingdom of God Dairus tells Daniel his god will save him

At dawn, as soon as it was light, the women who cared deeply for Jesus go to his tomb Just after sunrise Darius who cares deeply for Daniel goes to the lion's den.

Joyful news: Jesus is raised! Joyful news: Daniel lives

A mysterious young man, perhaps an angel, announces the news An angel shut the lion's mouths

Adapted from Helms (1988, p135)

The chiastic structure of this pericope is very complex and looks something like this:

A
And as soon as it was morning the chief priests, with the elders and scribes, and the whole council held a consultation;

B
and they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him to Pilate.

C
And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"

D
And he answered him, "You have said so."

E
And the chief priests accused him of many things.

F
And Pilate again asked him, "Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you."

G
But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate wondered.

H
Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked.

I
And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barab'bas.

J
And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he was wont to do for them.

J
And he answered them, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"

I
For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up.

H
But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barab'bas instead.

G
And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the man whom you call the King of the Jews?"

F
And they cried out again, "Crucify him."

E
And Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?"

D
But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him."

C
So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barab'bas;

B
and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

A
And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the praetorium); and they called together the whole battalion.

The writer also likes miniature chiasms, such as this one:

A: Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner
B: for whom they asked.
B': And he answered them
A': "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"(RSV)

Mack (1988) argues:

"The trial before Pilate was necessary simply because historical credibility demanded it. The Romans, rather than the Jews, executed criminals by means of Crucifixion."(p295)

The various literary and supernatural elements in this scene, the presence of OT construction at every level, the extremely complex literary structure, along with its low historical plausibility and a certain probability of creation out of non-Christian sources, indicate that there is no support for historicity in this pericope. Based on Mark, there is no way to know whether there was ever a trial before Pilate, whether Pilate was actually involved, or whether the Romans executed Jesus. As the writer of Mark presents it, this trial is most probably a fiction.

Mark 15:16-20

16: And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the praetorium); and they called together the whole battalion. 17: And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on him. 18: And they began to salute him, "Hail, King of the

Jews!" 19: And they struck his head with a reed, and spat upon him, and they knelt down in homage to him. 20: And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

NOTES

16: And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the praetorium); and they called together the whole battalion.

v16: the soldiers are not legionnary troops from Rome, but local auxiliaries, Greek speakers, recruited from neighboring provinces.

v16: After a trial outdoors, the soldiers now lead Jesus into the praetorium. Traditionally the praetorium has been identified with the Fortress Antonia in Jerusalem. However, no surviving historian identifies what building in Jerusalem was called the "praetorium." The praetorium was originally the seat of the Roman army leader which, when such individuals evolved into administrators of occupied territories, later became the term for the Roman governor's adminstrative center. Raymond Brown (1994, p706-10) identifies two possible candidates, the Fortress Antonia and the Herodian Palace in Jerusalem. However, the writer indicates neither and it is highly likely that we are looking at historians imputing knowledge to the writer of Mark he neither had nor needed. For all the author of Mark would have had to know was that Judea was Roman-occupied territory, so naturally it would have had to possess a praetorium, just as one can be sure that a given town in the United States has a City Hall even though one has never been there. Pilate's administrative seat was on the coast in the Roman city of Caesarea. He came up to Jerusalem only for festivals and such adminstrative duties as might take him there.

v16: T. E. Schmidt (1995) reads this as the beginning of a triumphal procession. The writer of Mark specifically states that they call together the whole cohort, difficult to believe for the mockery of a single prisoner. The use of the term praetorium may signify the local seat of power, but to a Roman reader it would recall the headquarters of the Praetorian guard in Rome, which always accompanied the triumphant leader. He concludes:

"We should consider the details here as chosen carefully to evoke a familiar occasion; namely, the gathering of the soldiery as the precursor of a triumph."(p6)

17: And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on him.

v17: T.E. Schmidt (1995) focuses attention on the purple coak and the crown of thorns:

"Both the combination and the very presence of these symbols is striking. The wearing of purple was outlawed for anyone below equestrian rank. The only available robe of this kind would be that of Pilate, but it is inconceiveable that he would lend such a precious garment to be struck and spat upon by common soldiers. Along similarly practical lines, one wonders where in the courtyard of a palace thorns would be available to form a crown. Are we to imagine that the solders delayed their mockery while someone looked for a thorn bush nearby? The strangeness of these details, their likeness to the ceremonial garb of a triumphator, and their combination with other details of the narrative suggest a purpose rather than a coincidence."(p7)

Schmidt notes that Matthew, recognizing the problem, changes the robe's color to scarlet.

19: And they struck his head with a reed, and spat upon him, and they knelt down in homage to him.

v19: This pericope is the fulfillment of the supernatural prophecy given in Mark 10:33-4. The various parts of it all represent creation off the OT, controlled by Isaiah 50:6

I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. (NIV)

v19: Price (2003, p312) contends that context is also provided by Micah in 1 Kings 22:24-27. In Mark the elements of Micah are found in Mark both Mark 14 and 15 (see 14:65).

compare Micah 5:1b

They will strike Israel's ruler on the cheek with a rod. (NIV)

20: And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

v20: perhaps an allusion to the eschatological vision of Zechariah 3:1-5 in which a high priest receives sacerdotal garments in exchange for filthy robes (Crossan 1988, p128). Note that the high priest's name is Joshua, Hebrew for Jesus:

1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD , and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. 2 The LORD said to Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD , who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?" 3 Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. 4 The angel said to those who were standing before him, "Take off his filthy clothes." Then he said to Joshua, "See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you." 5 Then I said, "Put a clean turban on his head." So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the LORD stood by. (NIV)

v20: Note that Jesus is led out through the streets of Jerusalem. The verb is used only here in Mark (Schmidt 1995, p8)

Historical Commentary
Another possible source, mentioned as a parallel in Crossan (1991) but adduced as a possible source by others such as Price (2003) is a passage from Philo's Flaccus, Book VI. As Herod Agrippa I is visiting Alexandria, the crowd there decides to play a prank on him.

VI. (36) There was a certain madman named Carabbas, afflicted not with a wild, savage, and dangerous madness (for that comes on in fits without being expected either by the patient or by bystanders), but with an intermittent and more gentle kind; this man spent all this days and nights naked in the roads, minding neither cold nor heat, the sport of idle children and wanton youths; (37) and they, driving the poor wretch as far as the public gymnasium, and setting him up there on high that he might be seen by everybody, flattened out a leaf of papyrus and put it on his head instead of a diadem, and clothed the rest of his body with a common door mat instead of a cloak and instead of a sceptre they put in his hand a small stick of the native papyrus which they found lying by the way side and gave to him; (38) and when, like actors in theatrical spectacles, he had received all the insignia of royal authority, and had been dressed and adorned like a king, the young men bearing sticks on their shoulders stood on each side of him instead of spear-bearers, in imitation of the bodyguards of the king, and then others came up, some as if to salute him, and others making as though they wished to plead their causes before him, and others pretending to wish to consult with him about the affairs of the state. (39) Then from the multitude of those who were standing around there arose a wonderful shout of men calling out Maris; and this is the name by which it is said that they call the kings among the Syrians; for they knew that Agrippa was by birth a Syrian, and also that he was possessed of a great district of Syria of which he was the sovereign; (40)

The name "Barabbas" may also have been suggested by "Carabbas;" the first letters differ by one stroke. It might also be noted that the two men in these back-to-back pericopes, Jesus ben Ananus and Carabbas, were considered both mad and harmless. Markan irony at work?

Raymond Brown (1994, p874-877) lists numerous possible sources, including the Carrabas story, games of mockery involving the appointment of a mock king, theatrical plays and mimes, and carnival festivals.

Vernon K. Robbins (1992) observes a widespread eastern Mediterranean tradition of such mockery, finding similarities to Mark's account in the mocking of a mock King at the Sacian feast of the Persians. Ranging more widely, he also notes that both among both pagans and early Christians it was was considered traditional for kings to give themselves up for the people, citing both 1 Clement 55 and the legend of Codrus, the last king of Athens, who went out to meet his enemies in slave's clothing and was killed by them, unrecognized, and so saved his people.

T.E. Schmidt (1995) has also related this to a widespread tradition of triumphs in antiquity. Here the Roman soldiers clothe Jesus in royal robes, just as the king or general entering the city. This tradition of triumphs originated as a celebration of the king's entrance into the city, after which he would appear as a god. Schmidt also notes that in Roman culture such anti-triumphs as depicted here in Mark were known. After his fall from power (31 CE) Sejanus was dragged before the Senate dressed in royal power, mocked and struck about the face. Similarly Vitellius, fallen from the position of Emperor, was led along the Sacred Way to the new Caesar, mocked and insulted by those lining the path. In many Roman triumphal processions human sacrifice, generally of captives, was practiced.

Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:14-15 writes;

14: But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15: For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16: to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? (RSV)

Schmidt (1995) observes that the reference to Christ as a leader in a triumph appears followed by the strange metaphor of fragrance. However, he points out that Suetonius records that as Nero entered the city of Rome after his accession, many were slain along the route, and perfume sprinkled over the area. Perhaps fragrance was part of the procession; indeed, some imagery suggests that incense was carried with the procession.

John Dart (2003, p71) has worked out a chiasm for this pericope and the adjoining one based on keyword structures:

A
delivered him to be crucified

B
soldiers led him away

C
they clothed him

D
in purple

E
make crown, place on head, salute

F
Hail, King of the Jews!

E'
struck head, spat on him, knelt

D
mocked in purple cloak

C'
put clothes on him

B
led him out

A'
to be crucified

The E/E' brackets have been compressed, but they also form a chiasm of actions with the line Hail, King of the Jews! in the center.

Dart's chiasm is not correct; certain elements are out of order. I have reconstructed it in the order that has come down to us to yield a chiasm with an alternating center, seen elsewhere in Mark.

A
And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the praetorium);and they called together the whole battalion.

B
And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on him.

C
And they began to salute him, "Hail, King of the Jews!"

C
And they struck his head with a reed, and spat upon him, and they knelt down in homage to him.

B
And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, and put his own clothes on him.

A
And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

The brackets here are quite simple. The A brackets contain geographic movement with the usual repetitions of vocabulary. The other brackets should be clear from the vocabulary and thematic parallels.

The various elements of OT creation and traditions common around the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East, as well as its complex literary structure, indicate that there is nothing to support historicity in this pericope.

Mark 15:21-32

21: And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. 22: And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull). 23: And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it. 24: And they crucified him, and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. 25: And it was the third hour, when they crucified him. 26: And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

27: And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. 29: And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30: save yourself, and come down from the cross!" 31: So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32: Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

NOTES

21: And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.

v21: Simon of Cyrene. There are a number of proposals for who he was. Brown (1994, p913-916) reviews some of the points. Simon is absent from the Gospel of Peter and from the Gospel of John. Roman practice, as described by ancient sources, was to force the prisoner to carry his own cross. Further, the writer presents Simon as "compelled" but it is unlikely, given Roman policy for respecting local law, that the Roman soldiers would have forced a Jew to work on a major holiday like Passover. Yet we are never told Simon was Jew. Simon is a Greek name, along with Alexander, while Rufus is a Roman one. Nor would the soldiers have ordered Simon to help out of pity, since they had just abused and mocked Jesus. Brown's position is that perhaps Simon was ordered to help because Jesus was so weak the soldiers feared he might die before he arrived at the execution site. This position is viable whether one views the narrative as history or fiction.

Price (2003, 319-20), argues that Simon of Cyrene is a double of Simon Magus, from the Philistine town of Gitta, who according to Epiphanius claimed to have undergone a passion as the Son of God. "Gitta" is easily confused with "Kittim," a term for Cyrene (Cyrenaica is in what is now Libya). Cyrene was a Gentile town, but a Jewish colony had been established there (Blount 1993, p179).

Randel Helms (1988, p121-2) along with other scholars (Reinach, for example) has argued that Simon is the ideal apostle who is doing exactly what Jesus said a disciple must do in order to imitate him: take up his cross. Blount (1993) argues this same position from the point of view of rhetoric.

"Simon is a sort of 'every-human' who participates in a discipleship centered on God's divine plan. Everyone cannot function as Jesus. Everyone can, however, function like Simon.

Against this interpretation, however, it must be noted that Simon is compelled, and does not choose freely.

Helms also observes that 8:34 follows on 8:33, in which Jesus famously calls Simon Peter "Satan." Donald Senior (1987,p116) points out that the phrase "take up the cross" is the same in both passages. Is Simon of Cyrene a double for Simon Peter? Jesus says that whoever would follow him must first deny himself; Peter instead denies Jesus. Has the writer of Mark piled up irony here, showing a Simon denying himself to take up his cross, even as another Simon denies Jesus? Has he injected a historical figure into the passage? Or did these events occur as written? There's no way to know. One connection between 8:34 and 15:21 is that the mention of "cross" in 15:21 is the first time in the Gospel since 8:34. Jesus has managed to make 3 Passion predictions without mentioning the term even once.

Another way to look at the names mentioned in 15:21 is to remind oneself that as tradition develops, names are generally given to unnamed characters. Thus the high priest's servant who loses an ear in Gethsemane is unnamed in Mark, but in John becomes Malchus. Similarly, the unnamed bandits crucified with Jesus are given a variety of names in later Christian literature. If Mark is working off a source, perhaps he is merely giving a name to a character that has no name in his source.

T.E. Schmidt (1995) argues that Simon represents the person who accompanied the sacrificial bull in the processions, carrying an enormous double-bladed ax, the instrument of the victim's death.

Mary Ann Tolbert (1989), observing Mark's many affinities with ancient popular literature, writes:

"With the exception of the hero and heroine and perhaps a couple of faithful servants (Xenophon) or a faithful friend (Chariton), all of the other characters in the ancient novels are minor and appear for an episode or two and then disappear." (p76)

Simon of Cyrene may be, in the final analysis, simply one more minor figure whose job is to move the process along.

v21: Many exegetes have taken the phrase "coming in from the country" -- often translated as "returning from the fields" as a point against historicity, since work on a feast day was forbidden. But the writer of Mark does not give enough information about Simon to permit a sure judgment on the matter.

v21: Romans 16:13 refers to a Rufus.

v21: Interestingly, in chapter 7 of Josephus' The Jewish War there is a scene in which a man named Rufus seizes a man named Eleazar and carries him off to the Roman camp to be whipped and crucified, which he survives.

v21: Margaret Barker (Temple) points out;

"Signing with a cross was also a custom from the first temple. When Ezekiel received his vision of the destruction of Jerusalem, he saw the six angels of destruction and a seventh, who was instructed to pass through the city and mark a letter tau on the foreheads of those who were faithful to the Lord (Ezek 9.4). In the old Hebrew alphabet, the tau is a diagonal cross, the sign which was also used when the high priest was anointed on his forehead (b. Horayoth 12a)."

22: And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

v22: Golgotha is another place-name with no known referent. Simon of Cyrene disappears as quickly as he came, one verse later. Burrows (1977) writes:

"The main objection to the traditional site lies in the fact that it is now inside the city walls, whereas the crucifixion took place outside the city (Jn 19:20; Heb 13:12; Lev 16:27). Just where the northern wall was in the first century is not yet conclusively established, but it is difficult to find a convincing course for it that would leave the traditional Calvary and tomb outside. The persistence of the tradition in spite of this fact is a point in its favor. Some remains of what may have been a city wall have been found, but the area cannot be thoroughly excavated because it is covered with buildings. No other site, however, has any evidence at all to support it."

v22: T.E. Schmidt (1995) suggests that Golgotha may also be translated as head as well as skull. That would make Golgotha the Place of the Head. A Roman legend records that in Rome when a temple was being built on a hill, a human head was found with its features still intact. According to the legend, the soothsayers then said this meant the hill would be the head of all Italy. The hill was thus named Capitoline Hill. The significance of this should not be missed: the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on Capitoline Hill, the Capitolium, the placed named after the Death's Head, was the terminus of every Roman triumph.

v22: The RSV smoothes out awkwardness here; the verse should more correctly read: "And they brought him to the Golgotha place, which is interpreted Skull-Place (Brown 1994, p933). Brown (1994, 936-7) observes that the Greek of "place of a skull" is also ambiguous. While in Mark and Matt it appears to be a direct translation of "Golgotha," in Luke "place" is not part of the designation, while in John the phrase is ambiguous and ancient scribes were divided on what is meant. Some manuscripts of John even read "He came out to a place called Skull." The Golgotha tradition also varies among manuscripts of Mark; some do not have the "the" before the place names. The idea that the narrative in Mark reflects tradition is obviously impaired by such confusion. The confusion over a simple place name should also reflect on the historicity of characters like Simon of Cyrene. And of course, while later tradition implies that Golgotha was a hill, the writer of Mark did not specify that.

v22: the verb "bring" here is unclear in its meaning. Does it imply that Jesus was physically carried, or just that he was compelled? Schmidt (1995) observes that the verb bring may be translated as bear, implying that Jesus was carried in mock triumph in a portable chair, as a king enjoying a triumph.

v22: If the site of execution is a Markan fiction, why did the author invent a place, rather than simply using the Mt. of Olives, a mountain already located outside of Jerusalem, which the author was familiar with, and from which the Messiah was expected to begin his activities?

23: And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it

v23: Jesus has just said in 14:25 that he would not taste wine until he dies. According to Brown (1994, p941), wine mixed with myrrh was prized in antiquity. Perhaps from Proverbs 31:6-7:

6 Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; 7 let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. (NIV)

v23: Raymond Brown (1994) writes:

"The contents of the Marcan narrative are to a great extent determined, both materially and verbally, by a desire to show fulfillment."(p901)

24: And they crucified him, and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.

v24: Joe Zias has a good overview of Roman crucifixion practices online here.

v24: "casting lots" from Psalm 22:

18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. (NIV)

v24: Berlin (2001), discussing the attempt of Haman to usurp the Kingship in the Book of Esther, notes the importance of garments in the Bible:

"The Bible provides indirect proof in that a person's garment represents the person and/or the position he holds. The transfer of a garment may signal the transfer of the office from one person to another. Aaron's son Eleazar dons the priestly garments of his father as he inherits the priestly office (Num 20:25-28); when Elisha receives Elijah's cloak it means that he has replaced Elijah (2 Kgs 2:13-15). David's cutting off a corner of Saul's cloak (1 Sam 24:4) registers in both men's minds as the symbolic taking of the kingship."

v24: does not tell us how they crucified him. Victims could be either nailed or tied to a cross, in various positions and ways, involving affixing, but also sometimes impaling. The "cross" could be a stake or plank, or crossed wood in many different shapes. The author of Mark may be implying nailing, since throughout this scene he is tracking Psalm 22, whose 16th verse says:

Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. (NIV)

Zech 12:10 may also be playing a role:

"And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

Psalm 119:120 (118 in the Septuagint) states:

Nail my flesh with your fear; for I am afraid of your judgments

This verse is cited by the Epistle of Barnabas (5:14) as a prophecy.

v24: Although skeptics have long pointed to tradition of dying and rising Gods around the Mediterranean, much of the research they rely on is antiquated, incorrect, or useless. Richard Carrier (2003) outlines the issues here. Bruce Metzger's (1968) discussion, though dated and somewhat polemical, looks at some of the problems here.

v24: Although commentators rarely point it out, there is a certain savage irony in having a carpenter die affixed to a piece of wood.

v24: As Mahlon Smith (1998) has pointed out, in 14:1 the chief priests fear that his execution during a feast will cause a riot, but then they go ahead and have Jesus executed during a feast anyway.

25: And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

v25: The "third hour" was dropped by both Matthew and Luke.

v25: Jesus is executed on Passover, according to Mark. In the context of Jesus' role as High Priest, recall that Passover is the only sacrifice not offered by a priest.

v25: Paul in 1 Cor 5:7 notes:

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. (RSV)

26: And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

	v26: The RSV once again smoothes out the writer's awkward doublets, for in Mark's Greek the "inscription" is "inscribed." Note that the placement of the inscription was not described, although the fact that passers-by could see it indicates that the writer was probably thinking of it as being above Jesus' head. There is no evidence from antiquity for the practice of placing an inscription with the charge above the condemned. The inscription is different in each of the canonical gospels and in the Gospel of Peter. The writer once again leaves out an important detail, not saying who did the inscribing.
	v26: Ludemann speaks for many when he argues that this could not have been invented, as it would have caused "serious political difficulties" for the Church (2001, p108), and so, under the criterion of difference, must be authentic. This another misapplication of the embarrassment criterion. There was no Church in the time when the Gospel of Mark was written, and further, Mark was written by an individual, not an institution, whose attitude toward the inscription is unknown. This detail is utterly consistent with the writer's practices throughout the Gospel, in which Jesus' enemies ironically correctly identify him when they intend to mock him. Numerous scholars have dismissed the inscription as an invention of the writer of Mark.
	v26: T.E. Schmidt (1995) points out that it was common for those suffering a Roman judgment to be forced to wear a sign proclaiming his crime for all to see. In a Roman triumph, he notes, the lictors in the procession carried signs announcing the territories taken by the general. Schmidt also observes that the writer of Mark may have had in mind the moment at the end of the triumphant procession when an accolade is given to king or general.

27: And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

v27: Two other bandits (or perhaps 'insurrectionists'; Greek: lestai) are crucified with Jesus.

v27: as Mary Ann Tolbert points out (1989), exegetes have argued that these two thieves, one on each side of Jesus, must be historical. However, she observes, where James and John ask if they can sit at Jesus' side in Heaven, Jesus replies in Mark 10:40, saying:

40: but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."

Tolbert analyzes this:

"While Jesus can promise them strife and persecution, he cannot grant them "to sit at my right hand or at my left...for that honor is "for those for whom it has been prepared." Later in the midst of the cruifixion, all the disciples having fled, the reader meets "those for whom it has been prepared," the robbers, not James and John, and the reader also realizes clearly that in the Gospel of Mark, despite what the disciples might wish, Jesus' coming "in his glory" is Jesus crucified on a cross. The narrative develops its own sense and coherence, if one will but look for it before rushing too quickly out of the text into history."(p31-2).

It should be added that the portrayal of those sitting at Jesus' left and right hand as thieves/insurrectionists may well be yet another of the writer's endless attacks on the disciples.

v27: Schmidt (1995) aso notes that this echoes several practices associated with triumphant emperors. The image of three raised about the crowd recalls the Emperor flanked by his two consuls. It also recalls Vespasian celebrating his triumph over the Jews in 71 with his sons Domitian and Titus riding beside him.

v27: Jesus was transfigured with Moses and Elijah; he is crucified with two thieves.

28 "and the scripture was fulfilled which says, "He was counted with the lawless ones"

v28: Some manuscripts of Mark have a v28 "and the scripture was fulfilled which says, "He was counted with the lawless ones" (Isaiah 53:12)" but most authorities consider this a spurious addition. It has no opposite in the chiastic structure of this passage, another point against it.

29: And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30: save yourself, and come down from the cross!" 31: So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32: Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

v29-32: from Psalm 22:

7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: 8 "He trusts in the LORD ; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." (NIV)

Markan irony, of course, since Jesus will rescue himself by living again.

9: And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days,

	v29: the Greek of "wagging" (kinein) is the same as is used in the Septuagint version of Psalm 22.
	v29: Brown (1994, p446) points out that passers-by would not be likely to know that Jesus had been accused of this falsely, for which of them would have been at the trial of Jesus by the Sanhedrin? Therefore, he concludes, it is most likely that the author wants the reader to believe that Jesus had actually made such a claim where it had been heard by the public.
	v29: The word "passers-by" indicates the writer is thinking of a place along a road. This is buttressed by the writer's description of Simon of Cyrene as 'coming in from the fields' which would seem to imply he is walking on a path or road.
	v29: passers-by, priests, and scribes: another Markan group of three, common in the Passion Narrative.

30: save yourself, and come down from the cross!"

	v30: Compare Mark 8:34, where Jesus specifically states that to be saved, one must accept the cross.
	v30: Ched Myers (1988, p356), observes that this mockery completes a tryptich in which Jesus is mocked by Jewish guards as a prophet (14:65), Roman guards as a King (15:16-20), and Jewish onlookers as Messiah.

32: Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

v32: note that the writer refers to Jesus as "King of Israel" here. Once again Psalm 22 is the source:

8 "He trusts in the LORD ; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." (NIV)

Historical Commentary
This scene is filled with elements of OT creation, based above all on Psalm 22. Psalm 22 is a lament, not a prophecy. Sanders (1995) writes:

"The accounts of Jesus' Crucifixion are full of quotations from, and allusions to, Psalm 22....As usual in these circumstances, we do not know which elements really took place."(p274)

See discussion of the pericope below for further comments.

Mark 15:33-39

33: And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34: And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 35: And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah." 36: And one

ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down." 37: And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. 38: And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39: And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

NOTES

33: And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

v33: Compare to Amos 8:9:

"In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD , "I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10 I will turn your religious feasts into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day. (NIV)

Dominic Rudman (2003, p104) notes that this text contains two elements found here: the darkness at noon (the sixth hour), and "mourning for an only son." One might add a third element, that Jesus was executed during a religious feast. Darkness over all the land is also found in Exodus 10:21-23, and in Jeremiah 15:9, where it appears as a punishment from God. Similarly in Wisdom 5:6 the sun does not rise on those who strayed from justice. There are many similar OT parallels.

v33: Darkness is frequently associated with the deaths of heroes in antiquity. Gundry gives a long list (1993, p963) that includes both Greco-Roman and Jewish exemplars. Even certain famous rabbis had their deaths embellished in this way (Rosse 1987, p15). Adelle Yarbro Collins (2000) writes:

"In the narrative of Mark, the centurion makes his acclamation in response to the signs or portents that accompany the death of Jesus, the darkness over the land from noon until mid-afternoon and the tearing of the veil of the Temple. This context suggests that he understood Jesus' death in terms of the apotheosis or deification of a ruler. Virgil wrote "... the Sun shall give you signs: ... He expressed mercy for Rome when Caesar was killed; he hid his shining head in gloom and the impious age feared eternal night." Plutarch wrote that events of divine design accompanied the death of Caesar, including the blocking of the sun's rays. "For throughout the whole year the sun rose pale, and it had no radiance; and the heat which came from it was weak and effete, so that the air lay heavy, due to the feebleness of the warmth which entered it. The fruits, half-ripe and imperfect, faded and decayed because of the chill of the atmosphere." Extraordinary events also occurred when Romulus, the founder of Rome, departed. "... Suddenly strange and unaccountable disorders with incredible changes filled the air; the light of the sun failed, and night came down upon them, not with peace and quiet, but with awful peals of thunder and furious blasts driving rain from every quarter, during which the multitude dispersed and fled...." Although Romulus disappears and, it is implied, does not die, his disappearance serves as a prototype of the apotheosis of the Roman emperor."

v33: since the Greek ge can mean either "earth" or "land" the text is ambiguous as to whether the writer means the darkness to have covered the whole planet or merely Judea. The Gospel of Peter interprets the darkness to be only over Judea, while in Luke the darkness covers the whole earth. In the Septuagint OT ge typically means the whole world in similar situations (for example, in Exodus 10:22, which may lie behind this verse). Ancient records do not record a darkness over the earth at this time. Judea or the world, as a supernatural event this is obviously unhistorical.

v33: Goodacre (2004b) establishes the time framework used by the writer of Mark:

"All that Amos 8.9 is able to explain is, at best, one element in the story: the darkness at midday. But this time reference is one of many in the Passion Narrative and they all have one thing in common: they happen at three hour intervals. The darkness that comes over the earth at 12 lasts three hours until 3 p.m., when Jesus dies (15.33-4). Before the darkness begins, Jesus has already been on the cross for three hours, since 9 a.m. (15.25). Before that, Jesus was brought before Pilate at dawn, 6 a.m. (15.1, ????). Nor does the pattern stop there. There appears to be something like a twenty-four hour framework, broken up neatly into three hour segments. Thus, if we imagine the Last Supper taking place at 6 p.m. (14.17, "then it was evening . . ."), Jesus and the disciples would then go to Gethsemane at 9 p.m., Jesus would be arrested at midnight, and Peter denies Jesus during the Jewish trial at 3 a.m., cockcrow (14.72)."

He then goes on to explain, citing Mark 13:35-37, which shows that

"The text itself appears to be drawing attention to the three hour pattern, alerting the bright reader to what is to come. And though an explanation has been put forward separately by three different scholars, a Canadian (Philip Carrington) in the 1950s, an Englishman (Michael Goulder) in the 1970s, and a Frenchman (Etienne Trocme) in the 1980s, it is still hardly known at all in mainstream scholarship. These three scholars claim that the liturgy is the only thing that would make sense of this. What is happening, they suggest, is that the early Christians were holding their own annual celebration of the events of the Passion at the Jewish Passover, remembered as roughly the time of Jesus' death. While other Jews were celebrating Passover, Christian Jews held a twenty-four hour vigil in which they retold and relived the events surrounding Jesus' arrest and death, from (what modern Christians would call) Maundy Thursday at 6 p.m. to Good Friday at 6 p.m. Perhaps Mark's account of the Passion, with its heavy referencing of Scripture, its regular time notes, was itself influenced by such a liturgical memory of the Passion."

Acts supports this by noting Christian prayer hours, in 3:1 and 10:9.

v33: Mary Ann Tolbert (1989, p74-76), notes that the Gospel of Mark resembles Greek popular literature. In such literature, it was common for the sections prior to the ending to have a loose, episodic chronology. However, such literature frequently ended with a series of recognition scenes in which "the heart....is the question of identity" and of course, the Passion Narrative of the Gospel of Mark is pre-eminently concerned with the question of Jesus' true identity. In the recognition scenes of Greek popular literature time is strictly controlled, just as it is in the Gospel of Mark. Tolbert concludes:

"The recognition sequence in Mark, like those of the ancient novels, is carefully plotted over a series of days and uses time references to tie the events together."(p.76)

Note that Tolbert's observation does not conflict with Goodacre's argument above. Rather, it provides a broad background of literary convention which serves as a foundation for the particular timing choices of the author of Mark.

34: And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

v34: taken from Psalm 22:1 (22:2 in some Bibles):

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

v34: The writer's rendering of "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" most closely resembles Aramaic, but appears to be a mixture or perhaps a non-standard transliteration, a common problem when languages do not have standard transcription methods (see Brown 1994, p1051-1053 for discussion). The wording also varies in certain manuscripts. For example, Codex Bezae has Elei, Elei, lama zaphthani, while Codex Vaticanus omits the second "my god." Bezae also has the unusual "why have you reviled me?" instead of "Why have you forsaken me?" found in Western manuscripts. It is not easy to settle which tradition is correct. Brown (1994, p1055) also notes that Mark may have been interpreted in some western Latin traditions to be rebuking the sun for leaving him in darkness, seeing the Greek "helion, helias" for Eli as referring to the sun.

v34: Whitters (2002) observes:

"While the precise meaning of the crowd's words about Elijah cannot be ascertained, what is important is their dramatic effect on the reader. Now the reader encounters for the last time a question that persists throughout the gospel. Is Jesus even now on the cross a prophet like Elijah? How does Jesus take on Elijah's character while transcending him, even as he took on the character of a Davidic king and transcended it? The reader perceives that the narrative develops with attendant irony. When Jesus is mocked as king, he truly is king, though not of a type within their ken. When Jesus is associated with Elijah, he truly is a type of Elijah: intercessor, immortal, wonder-worker, eschatological prophet. The reader knows that irony speaks some form of truth."

v34: Goodacre (2004b) responding to exegetes invoking the embarrassment criterion, writes:

"Mark is not in the least "embarrassed" by this cry. It is an ideal means of expressing plausibly the horror of the cross at the same time as reaffirming, by quoting the Psalms, that it is in God's will."

v34: what did Jesus really say? None of the four canonical gospels or the Gospel of Peter has the same words.

v34: Fowler (1996, p109) points out that only to the reader is it given to understand Jesus' dying words, for the narrator takes a moment to explain what they mean. Those present, according to the writer, do not understand what Jesus said, instead mistaking them for a cry to Elijah (v35-6).

35: And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah." 36: And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."

v36: Psalm 69:21 (69:22 in some Bibles):

They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.(NIV)

v36: "And one ran...." The writer does not tell us who, Roman soldier or Jewish onlooker, ran for the wine.

v36: It would have been extremely difficult for bystanders who knew Aramaic and Hebrew to confuse the terms the writer uses here. Elijah is Eliyahu in Aramaic, sometimes abbreviated to Eliya, while the term "my God" is Elahi, represented by Eloi in Mark. Brown (1994), discussing this problem, observes:

"Having heard in exotic Aramaic Jesus' words "Eloi.....," and having been told that this was misunderstood by hostile Jewish bystanders as an appeal to Elias (Greek transcription for "Elijah"), they would have assumed that th Semitic underlying the Greek form of the prophet's name was close to the transliterated Aramaic Eloi that Jesus used. That is what hearers of Mark's gospel who know no Aramaic have been doing ever since."(p1062).

v36: Donald Senior (1987) observes:

"In popular Jewish piety Elijah, as the greatest of prophets and one who had saved the widow and her son in their hour of desperate need (1 Kings 17:1-24), was the "patron saint" of hopeless cases."(p124)

37: And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.

v37: Vernon K. Robbins (1992), points out that Mark has inverted the parallels with Psalm 22:

"The Markan sequence uses scenes from Ps 22 (21) in the reverse order in which they occur in the Psalm. In the Psalm, the sufferer's cry is a cry for help; in Mark, Jesus' cry is his final death cry. In the Psalm, the sufferer says many things after this initial cry, and in the end he tells god how he will praise his name in the midst of the congregation (22,22), how all the proud of the earth will bow down to him (22,29), and how the Lord's deliverance will be proclaimed to the coming generation (22, 30-31). In Mark, in strong contrast, Jesus final utterance is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me". (p1179)

v37: almost certainly physically impossible, since Crucifixion killed by suffocation, and was undoubtedly preceded by unconsciousness. Further, how would the onlookers have known he breathed his last at that precise moment? This verse is most probably theological in origin, since breath and spirit were associated across the ancient world, and represents Jesus' spirit leaving his body.

v37: A. Y. Collins (1994) has argued that Psalm 18 may lie behind the cry of Jesus. The LXX of Psalm 18 (Psalm 17 LXX) has:

18:7 (17:7). "In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears."(p498)

Collins then goes on to observe that the curtain tearing in the Temple may be a signal of God's divine power issuing forth from the Temple. Psalm 18 is a Psalm of messianic thanksgiving, or a royal victory song.

v37: the canonical Gospels all give extremely brief accounts of Jesus' moment of death.

38: And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

v38: The tearing of the Temple curtain recalls the sky ripping open and the spirit of God descending on Jesus in Mark 1. Frank Zindler (2003, p70) has argued that this dates the Gospel of Mark after 75, when the veil of the Temple was on display in Rome, and treats this pasage in Mark as an aetiological myth. However, there is no need to see the passage in this manner. David Ulansey (1991) points out that Josephus described the curtain in the Temple as having a picture of the heavens on it. With this in mind, he argues:

"In other words, the outer veil of the Jerusalem temple was actually one huge image of the starry sky! Thus, upon encountering Mark's statement that "the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom," any of his readers who had ever seen the temple or heard it described would instantly have seen in their mind's eye an image of the heavens being torn, and would immediately have been reminded of Mark's earlier description of the heavens being torn at the baptism. This can hardly be coincidence: the symbolic parallel is so striking that Mark must have consciously intended it."

Josephus makes it clear that the Temple was a microcosm of creation, in which the outer parts represented the sea and the land, but the interior, where even the priests were highly restricted from, was heaven where God resided. The veil of the Temple, which screened the Holy of Holies, was thus a barrier between heaven and earth. (Barker 1988).

v38: Despite the fact that the tearing of the Temple Veil would have been an extraordinary event, Josephus does not record it.

39: And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

v39: This is often seen as the climax of the Gospel of Mark, although some have argued this view is false. See Johnson (1987, 2000), who points out that while exegetes tend to link the "Son of God" in v39 with the same expression in Mark 1:1, text-critical evidence strongly suggests that the earlier occurrence is an insertion. Additionally, though translators (RSV, KJV, ASV, YLT, NIV -- with a note, YLT with no article) usually gloss 15:39 as:

"Truly this man was the Son of God!"

Johnson (2000) writes:

"It is doubtful whether any English translation can adequately represent the qualitative emphasis that Mark expresses in 15,39 by placing an anarthrous predicate before the verb. Perhaps the verse could best be translated, "Truly this man was God's son." This has the advantage of calling attention to Jesus' role or nature as son of God. It minimizes the question whether the word "son" should be understood as definite or indefinite. At the same time it leaves open the possibility that Mark was thinking of Jesus at this point as "a son of God."

However, a point in favor of "the Son of God" is the context, which emphasizes the death of someone divine with mighty portents of darkness. Furthermore, the writer of Mark has the narrator say "he thus breathed his last ("in this way he breathed his last" in some translations), indicating that the Centurion had taken note of the way Jesus had died.

v39: Donahue (1995) says in a footnote:

"There is an interesting structural parallel between Mark and the second half of Isaiah. Mark, like Isa 40:3, begins with a voice in the wilderness, and just as Isaiah looks to the time when the pagan nations will stream to Zion (Isaiah 60-62, esp. 60:14; 61:5), near Mark's conclusion a non-Jewish centurion confesses Jesus as son of God (15:39). Also, citing Isa 56:7, Mark 11:17 says that the temple (located on Mount Zion) will be "a house of prayer for all nations."

v39: While nearly all exegetes read this as a straight comment, Dennis MacDonald (2000) has argued that the centurion's confession is sarcastic, following traditions in Greek dramatic style: "This man is truly the Son of God! (And I'm Julius Caesar!)."

Achilles and the centurion both gloated that their victim, thought by some to be divine, now was dead. Achilles gloated that he slew "that man the Trojan glorified in their city like a god." The centurion mocked Jesus when he saw him die: "Truly this man was God's Son!"(p185)

Some might be tempted to argue that the Centurion knows that Jesus is the Son of God because of the darkness at noon, but of course, any real person standing at the execution of a convicted rabble-rouser would have no reason to connect the dying man to the darkness (in fact, there are three possible candidates on that hill, never mind a thousand other possibilities).

Robert Fowler (1996) also makes a similar argument, pointing out that the Roman soldiers have just mocked and abused Jesus, so a sincere declaration by the Centurion would deviate from this pattern. Further, the Centurion's position in Mark is ambiguous is he standing "opposite" Jesus or the Temple (recall the other times in Mark where Jesus is positioned "opposite" the Temple). This ambiguity is not clarified until 15:44, when the Centurion reports Jesus' death (if indeed it is the same Centurion). Fowler points out that regardless of which reading of the Centurion's Confession we choose, we cannot escape irony -- either the Centurion is ironically correct in mocking Jesus as "son of God" or the Centurion has sincerely acclaimed the man he has just killed as son of god, a bit of dramatic irony.

v39: In the Gospel of Mark no human calls Jesus "Son of God" during his own lifetime (Brown 1994, p482).

v39: In several of the ancient Codexes the Centurion "sees" Jesus cry out and then expire (Brown 1994, p1144)

v39: Whether one end is inserted or not, this recognition is most probably fictional, for it completes a doublet that may well be the highest level framework for the Gospel of Mark:

"The overall Gospel may be viewed as a two-step progression. The first line of the Gospel refers to Jesus as "the annointed one, the Son of God." At the end of the first half of the story [Peter] acknowledges Jesus as "the annointed one." At the end of the second half of the story, the centurion identifies Jesus as "son of God" (Rhoads et al 1999: p50).

v39: Margaret Barker (Temple) speculates:

"Two goats were necessary for the Day of Atonement, and the customary rendering of Leviticus 16.8 is that one goat was ‘for the Lord’ and the other goat 'for Azazel'. This way of reading the text has caused many problems, not least why any offering was being sent to Azazel. One line in Origen’s Contra Celsum may provide vital evidence here. He says that the goat sent into the desert represented Azazel. If this was correct, then the sacrificed goat must have represented the Lord. The le meant ‘as the Lord’ not ‘for the Lord’, and Israel did not, after all, make an offering to Azazel. The blood which renewed the creation was new life from the Lord. Since the high priest himself represented the Lord, wearing the Sacred Name on his forehead, we have here a ritual in which the Lord was both the high priest and the victim in the act of atonement."

v39: Burton Mack (1988) writes:

"The symmetry of threes is obvious, as is the correlation of the crucifixion events with those transpiring in the natural and institutional orders of things. The schema is mythic. There is no "earlier" report extractable from the story, no reminiscence. This is the earliest narrative there is about the crucifxion of Jesus. It is a Markan fabrication."(p296)

Historical Commentary

Mary Ann Tolbert (1989) lays out the basic chiastic structure of the Crucifixion scene. This structure, common in the Gospel of Mark, contains an A-B-C-B'-A' format as shown below. Note how the events of B and B' parallel each other. First, someone is called on for help, then something to drink is offered, then a terrible, painful event occurs, and then a cloth is torn. Within the C structure the events are paralleled, recognition of Kingship by the Roman soldiers paralleled by darkness in which Jesus' Divine Kingship is recognized by nature itself, and ironic mocking of the guards is paralleled by Jesus' cry that God has given up on him. Finally, A and A' open and close with the Romans recognizing the status of Jesus, once satirically, once seriously (or perhaps sarcastically). This is not a portrayal of historic events, but a literary creation by a writer of genius working at the top of his game.

Chiastic Structure of Markan Crucifixion I
(Tolbert (1989, p279)

A Soldiers mock Jesus as King

B
compel passerby to help carry cross

offer wine

crucify him

divide his garments

             C               3rd hour -- King of the Jews

               ironic mocking

               6th - 9th hour: darkness

               Jesus cries that God has forsaken him

B'
bystanders think Jesus calls Elijah

offer vinegar

dies with great cry

temple curtain torn

A' centurion says Jesus is "Son of God"

However, Tolbert's chiasm does not quite capture the complex structure of the Crucifixion scene that runs from 15:20 to 15:39. Here is my expanded version of it that captures more of its complex structure with greater clarity.

Chiastic Structure of Markan Crucifixion II
(Expanded from Tolbert (1989, p279)

A Soldiers mock Jesus as King


B compel passerby to help carry cross

offer wine

crucify him

divide his garments

                C 3rd hour

Title on Cross: King of the Jews

                  D

A - Robbers are crucified

B - Passers-by mock Jesus

                  D'
                                      B' - Chief priests and teachers of the law mock Jesus

A' - Robbers mock Jesus

               C' 6th - 9th hour darkness

Jesus cries that God has forsaken him


          B                bystanders think Jesus calls Elijah

offer vinegar

dies with great cry

temple curtain torn

A' centurion says Jesus is "Son of God"

However, this structure is, I now believe, wrong. The original Markan structure has been corrupted. Here is my final revision of this very complex chiastic structure:

A
And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

B
[missing verse? Or is 15:39 a back-assimilation from Matthew?]

C
A
And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.

B
And they crucified him,

C
and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take

D
And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.

E
And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."

F
A
And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

B
And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!"

F'

B
So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe."

A
Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

E
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

D
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

C
A
And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."

B
And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.

C
And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

B
And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

A
There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Within this structure the writer builds the details out of the Old Testament, including the citations of Psalm 22.

Looking at the structure as a whole, much becomes clear. The three women in the A' brackets are there to balance the three men in the A bracket. In all likelihood neither was present at this scene; at least some individuals are inventions of the writer.

There is something wrong with the B bracket; either 15:39 is interpolated, or a verse was removed. Matthew 27:36 also offers: "then they sat down and kept watch over him there" which may have been moved in Matthew, and constituted the original B bracket, opposed to the Centurion's B' bracket. However, the most likely solution is that Matthew has faithfully followed Mark here, and the original C bracket looked like this:

C
A
And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.

B
And they crucified him,

C
and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take

D
[then they sat down and kept watch over him there.] (Mt 27:36)

This beautifully opposes:

C'
A
And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."

B
and Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.

C
And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

D
And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

Over time one element has become lost in Mark; that would not be unprecedented, as a similar situation obtains in Mark 14:47-48. There is a manuscript that has "And they were guarding him" at 15:25, so perhaps that was originally part of the text. Or else 15:39 is interpolated. Take your pick.

We can now reconstruct the A bracket properly to show the nifty parallels that the writer has placed there:

A
A
And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne.... the father of Alexander and Rufus,

B
who was coming in from the country,

C
to carry his cross.

D
And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).

This nicely parallels:

A
A
There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me,

B
when he was in Galilee,

C
followed him, and ministered to him;

D
and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

This offers us three men as opposed to three women, 2 sons of one mother as opposed to 2 sons of one father, "Galilee" opposed to "coming in from the country", "taking up the cross" opposed to "following and ministering", "they" who bring opposed to "many other women", and finally, "Golgotha" opposed to "Jerusalem."

Paula Fredriksen (2002) meditates on some of the historical problems caused by Jesus' crucifixion:

"We are so habituated to knowing that Jesus was crucified that we fail to notice how awkwardly that fact fits with what else we have. If Pilate were simply doing a favor for the priests, he could have disposed of Jesus easily and without fanfare, murdering him by simpler means. (I repeat: Pilate’s seriously thinking that Jesus did pose a serious revolutionary threat –the simplest implication of crucifixion – is belied by Jesus’ solo death.) So too with the priests: if for whatever reason they had wanted Jesus dead, no public execution was necessary, and simpler means of achieving their end were readily available."

Mainstream scholarship is almost entirely unanimous in accepting that Jesus died by Crucifixion, though now and then a voice outside the mainstream disputes this. In a discussion of the possibility that the Crucifixion was not historical, Patrick Narkinsky (2004) speaks for many exegetes when he observes

"Stipulating (but not necessarily conceding) that the gospels are not basically historical, the crucifixion is unlikely to be fabricated. The problem is this - Jesus is described as Christ from the beginning of the Christian movement. The Christ - or Messiah - was in Jewish expectation the king of Judah who would finally overcome foreign overlordship and restore the people of YHWH to their rightful place of glory. Crucifixion at the hands of the Romans would present a prima facie case that Jesus was *not* the Messiah. It seems grossly improbable to suppose that any Christian would have made it up."

Whether and how this event occurred is difficult to say. Certainly Paul speaks of the Crucifixion, but he knows nothing about it -- date, timing, location, and details all appear to be an invention of the writer of Mark working off the OT. The Death of Jesus is a supreme literary creation, and there is no support for historicity in this pericope, save for the bare fact of Jesus' crucifixion.

Mark 15:40-41

40: There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me,

41: who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

NOTES

40: There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me,

v40: in Tolbert's (1989) reading of Mark, the Markan epilogue begins here. I have followed this in pericoping Chapter 15. Based on the chiastic structure of this passage, broken out in detail above, I believe Tolbert is wrong.

v40: here, for the first time in the gospel, women followers of Jesus are made known. Note that in v41 Mark emphasizes that there were "many". Goodacre (2004) writes "The note that they were watching [greek deleted] echoes the wording of Psalm 38.11 LXX." (38:11 says: "those who were close to me stood from a distance" (Brown 1994, p1158)) Goodacre adds that:

"It is a notorious problem to unravel the identity of this woman or two women. The problem was felt from the earliest times, for the text could be translated in six different ways."

v40: Salome was a common name in Palestine of that time (Brown 1994, p1154).

v40: Crossan (1998, 571-2) points out that the three women looking on from afar links them to Peter, who followed Jesus after his arrest "at a distance."

41: who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem

	v41: Joan Mitchell (2001) notes that with this line the writer of Mark has retrojected the women back throughout his gospel. To see what that does, try imagining the women present, but silent, at major events in the gospel, such as Peter's identification of Jesus as the Messiah in Mark 8.
	v41: "followed him." When the writer set this down, did he mean that the women were "disciples?" Difficult to answer, and scholars go both ways on the question. Tolbert (1989, p292) offers the most decisive reading: the women are much better than the Twelve. This follows naturally from her reading of the Twelve as the rocky ground of the Parable of the Sower.
	v41: Ched Myers (1988, p280-1) that women in Mark are always pictured as unmarried. He notes that married women in antiquity were second-class citizens, so unmarried women were the lowest of the low.

Historical Commentary

The sudden appearance of the women here, watching from afar, makes historical assessment difficult. There is some suggestion that the writer is fulfilling the "prophecies" of the OT, as well as programs that he laid out earlier in the Gospel. Note that in Mark 13 the reader is advised to Watch! and here we find the women doing just that, buttressed by a citation of the OT. There has been no mention of them anywhere prior to this point in the Gospel, nor is there any support in any earlier tradition for these names. The writer has opposed this group of women to the disciples who also followed all the way from Galilee, but failed and fled when pressed, the "rocky ground" of Tolbert's reading of the Gospels.

Dennis MacDonald (2000, p185) has drawn attention to numerous parallels between the Homeric Epics and the New Testament. In The Iliad three women lament from the walls of Troy as Hector is slain, watching from afar. However, the writer may have assigned the women to the role of witnesses to the Crucifiction and Resurrection because he had already had the men flee.

Perhaps the names of the women watching are from tradition, perhaps the writer of Mark made them up. In either case, given the presence of the OT in this verse, it does not seem that there is any support for the historicity of this event.

Mark 15:42-47

42: And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, 43: Joseph of Arimathe'a, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. 44: And Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead.

45: And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph.46: And he bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. 47: Mary Mag'dalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

NOTES

42: And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath,

v42: the writer makes a basic error of Jewish tradition at this point. Steven Carr (2004) writes:

Mark 15:42, "When evening was already come, because it was Friday (paraskeue) that is, the day before the sabbath ..." . This means "either that Friday began with that sunset, and Jesus had died on Thursday; or else, the evangelist forgot [or did not know] that the Jewish day began at evening." Matthew 27:57-62 clarifies Mark's confusion over Jewish days. Interestingly, the NIV tries to translate the problem away by writing for Mark 15:42 'So as evening approached ", rather than "And when evening had come ", as the RSV has it.

43: Joseph of Arimathe'a, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.

v43: The Greek is full of the writer's typical awkwardness. It may also be read that "Joseph, having come from Arimathea...came in before Pilate. That Greek is generally seen by the author of Mark to identify Arimathea as Joseph's hometown, but it does not have to be read that way (Brown 1994, p1213n19).

v43: The Greek for "respected" (euschemon), occurs in Acts 17, twice in 1 Corinthians, and then only in the LXX of Proverbs 11:25 (Brown 1994, p1213).

v43: Here the writer shifts from using synedrion, a Jewish technical term for Sanhedrin rendered in Greek, to the more common bouleutes ("council member"), from the Greek word boule, which any Greek-speaker would recognize as a ruling council. The terms are used more or less interchangeably in Josephus (Brown 1994, p1214).

v43: Byron McCane (1998), after noting that Roman prefects usually left the body to rot on the cross, argues:

"Roman prefects like Pilate, in fact, often allowed crucifixion victims to be buried. Cicero, for example, mentions a governor in Sicily who released bodies to family members in return for a fee (In Verrem 2.5.45), and Philo writes that on the eve of Roman holidays in Egypt, crucified bodies were taken down and given to their families, "because it was thought well to give them burial and allow them ordinary rites" (In Flaccum 10.83-84). In addition, as Crossan has pointed out, the famous case of Yehohanan, the crucified man whose skeletal remains were found in a family tomb at Giv'at ha-Mivtar, proves that a Roman governor in Jerusalem had released the body of a crucifixion victim for burial. [6] Finally, the Gospels' assertion that Pilate "used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked" (Mark 15:6 par.) is also relevant here, for it shows that during the first century CE one could plausibly tell stories of Roman judicial clemency, especially around religious holidays. Thus the fate of Jesus' body in Roman hands should not be regarded as automatic. The occasion of Jesus' death was a Jewish holiday, and Pilate was not in the process of suppressing a revolt, but rather simply trying to protect public order.

On balance, then, the Romans involved with the death of Jesus naturally would have expected that the body would remain on the cross, unless Pilate ordered otherwise." (p435-6)

v43: Raymond Brown (1994, p1207-9), observes that Roman practice toward the bodies of the dead was generally to permit them to be buried, unless the individual executed had been convicted of treason. Then, as Augustus had said of the traitor Brutus, "That matter must be settled with the carrion-birds." Similarly, those killed during the reign of terror after the death of Sejanus in AD 31 had their property confiscated and their bodies were forbidden burial, reported Tacitus. In fiction, including Petronius and Horace, it is generally assumed that those hung on a cross were left there to rot. Like McCane, Brown argues that it is unlikely that Pilate would have permitted the body to be taken down and buried, since Roman governors handling a charge of treason in an occupied province would want to ensure that the victim's death was as humiliating as possible to prevent them from becoming a martyr.

v43: "..and asked for the body of Jesus." Prompt burial, before sundown on the day of death, was a Jewish religious duty; in fact the rabbinical writings contain stories of persons buried before being entirely dead (Carrier 2004b, McCane 1998). Both tradition and the rabbinical writings mandate that certain criminals condemned by a Jewish court were buried separately from others in dishonor (Carrier 2004b, McCane 1998). Brown (1994, p1210), points out that just because the Roman authorities had considered Jesus a criminal does not mean that he would have been considered a criminal in the eyes of Jewish authorities.

v43: McCane (1998), asking what history is recoverable despite the glorification of Jesus' death and burial, observes:

"In view of this clear tendency [to glorify the burial], one characteristic of the burial narratives stands out as strikingly significant: the canonical Gospels depict Jesus' burial as shameful. Even though they take obvious steps to dignify the burial of Jesus, these documents still depict a burial which a Jew in Roman Palestine would have recognized as dishonorable. For in every Gospel up to the Gospel of Peter, Jesus is not buried in a family tomb, and he is not mourned. This fact is both surprising and revealing."(p448)

The problem with this observation should be obvious: according to the writer of Mark, Jesus' family was from Galilee and lacked the means to maintain a tomb in Jerusalem. It is thus not surprising that he was not buried in the family tomb. In Mark no one from Jesus' family is present when he died. Further, as the writer notes, Jesus' disciples had all fled, leaving just a handful of women followers behind.

v43: "..took courage..." Carrier (2004b) writes:

"Thus, though the Gospels make it appear as though Joseph of Arimathea was winning some special privilege for Jesus, there is in fact no reason to suppose he was doing anything out of the ordinary for a Jew in Jerusalem. Approaching the Roman prefect and asking for the bodies of the condemned before sunset may have been a routine courtesy (since Pilate would not expect Jesus to have died already). For Pilate to have forced a corpse to remain up against one of the most sacred of Jewish laws could not have failed to result in the sort of suicidal demonstration that followed his placing of the standards within the city walls. At the very least, Jewish outrage at this crime (and it would be a crime even to the Romans, violating the Augustan law cited above) could hardly have escaped record."

v43: "Arimathea" is another place name with no known referent, though it is often assigned to the Ramathaim of 1 Sam 1:1. The phrase "Joseph of Arimathea" has been variously interpreted. Richard Carrier (2004) notes that:

"....Arimathea can mean something like "Bestdoctrine" in Greek based on known models from other city names on record ....and in formal terms it would translate "Joseph of Bestdoctrine," i.e. the termination Mark uses implies Bestdoctrine as a town's name)."

Carrier cautions that though such a name sounds artificial, it may simply be a real place, or created out of one. However use of a name to define the role of a character or a place is found elsewhere in Mark, for example, as in Jairus -- "he will awaken" for the father of the girl raised from the dead. Dennis MacDonald (2000) has argued that Mark based him on King Priam, who goes to beg the body of his son Hector from Agamemnon. Some have also seen a similarity to the story of Josephus in his autobiography:

Life 76
And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintances. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered.

Note that this narrative contains the skeleton of the Joseph of Arimathea story: a man named Joseph goes to beg the Roman commander for the bodies of three crucifixion victims, one of whom survives. Interestingly, Josephus' father was named Matthias. Is "Arimathea" a corruption of 'bar Matthias," son of Matthias? In a couple of manuscripts of Matthew it is "bar matthias," as in the medieval Gospel of Barnabas.

Whoever Joseph was, he is probably invented. Note the fact that although he is a "secret" admirer of Jesus, he goes to beg only Jesus' body, though three men have been crucified that day (Kirby 2002). Three men means either three men in one tomb, or three tombs, neither of which we see. Kirby also makes a case for historical implausibility, pointing out that Jewish veneration of holy sites was on the rise at the time:

If Pilate considered the historical Jesus to be an enemy of the state, how much more would Pilate have to fear not only making him a martyr but also establishing a shrine to Jesus right in Jerusalem? It is in Pilate's best interest to make certain that Jesus would have been buried without honor and in obscurity (2002, p190)

Crossan (1998) has a pithy summary of the logical problems caused by Mark's story of Josephy of Arimathea:

"Mark's story presented the tradition with double dilemmas. First, if Joseph was in the council, he was against Jesus; if he was for Jesus, he was not in the council. Second, if Joseph buried Jesus from piety or duty, he would have done the same for the two other crucified criminals; yet if he did that, there could be no empty tomb sequence. None of these points is unanswerable, but together they persuade me that Mark created that burial by Joseph of Arimathea in 15:42-47. It contains no pre-Markan tradition" (p555).

v43: the shame of the failure of Jesus' disciples is increased. The disciples of John buried their leader, but the disciples of Jesus left it to his enemies to take care of his body.

v43: Vernon K. Robbins (1992, p1192) summarizes Mark 15 as a five act story driven by an ironic comment on kingship -- with Jesus as the king who is recognized ironically by Pilate, mocked as king, nailed to the cross as king, recognized by the centurion as a son of God (a True King), and then buried by someone who was awaiting the kingdom, capping a gospel whose major message is that the kingdom of God has come. The entire passage is literary construction. Additionally, the presentation of Jesus as True King in the trial and death of Jesus at Roman hands is a doublet of the presentation of Jesus as True High Priest before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin.

v43: Joseph of Arimathea also presents an interesting but little-realized structural parallel with the women in 15:40-1. Just as they have been present, but did not appear in the text, throughout Jesus' campaign in Galilee, so Joseph was present, but did not appear in the text, at Jesus trial before the Sanhedrin and presumably, the trial before Pilate as well.

v43: Weeden (1971) observes that the detailed explication of the burial procedure serves notice that the interment was both complete and in accordance with Jewish rules for wrapping and burying corpses.

44: And Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead.

v44-45: are redactional. The writer of Mark has the centurion report in 15:39 that Jesus is God's son, now he has him report that Jesus is dead. Roman, not Jewish, testimony to Jesus' life and death is thus created. Because this event (Pilate's surprise) is not found in either Luke or Matthew at this point, some commentators have surmised that these are later additions from the hand of another redactor. The verse contain both Markan and non-Markan style, but on the whole the thesis has not found widespread support.

v44: Bruce Chilton (2005) observes:

"Mark is unique in having a befuddled Pilate "utterly astounded that he had already died" (15:44), as if he had not known Jesus had been flogged prior to crucifixion"

v44: it is implausible, but not unbelievably so, that Jesus died so quickly. Ancient sources suggest that the few hours Jesus lived on the cross were regularly exceeded. Plausibility would be easier to judge if the writer had informed us of exactly how Jesus' execution had proceeded.

v44: As Tolbert (1989, p285) points out, modern audiences often view Jesus' sufferings as fearsome and terrible, but in the ancient world the kind of physical suffering inflicted on Jesus was common and unremarkable. Indeed, she observes, the writer's audience would probably not have been very impressed by six hours on the cross, as surivival for days on a cross was not unheard of. I might add that brutal physical cruelty is commonplace in our world as well, but it is one of the triumphs of our culture is that inhabitants of modern industrial states rarely encounter it anymore, heightening the experience of Jesus' suffering for moderns. For Tolbert, it is the alienation from the humans around him -- family, friends, disciples, community, authorities -- that constitutes the deepest dimension of suffering in Mark (p286).

46: And he bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.

v46: redactional, and anticipates the scene in Chapter 16. Richard Carrier (1999) and other scholars have been wont to argue that the stone "rolled" in front of the tomb is an anachronism dating Mark to after 70, since round stones were not used prior to that time. However, a square stone may also be "rolled" in some sense, so the wording, while suggestive, is not conclusive.

v46: Some commentators have argued that Joseph would not have been able to purchase a linen shroud on a high feast day, for what merchant would have sold it to him? However, humans are not culturebots. Such stereotyping of all Jews as pious feast-observers has no place in a serious analysis of human behavior. No doubt just as everywhere else in the world, there were plenty of merchants willing to make a quick buck selling needed goods at a premium on a high feast day. For that matter, not all the merchants in Jerusalem were Jews.

v46: Karel Hanhart has argued, based on the work of Claude Montefiore, that v46 is taken from Isaiah 22:16:

What are you doing here and who gave you permission to cut out a grave for yourself here, hewing your grave on the height and chiseling your resting place in the rock? (NIV)

47: Mary Mag'dalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

v47: The Greek actually says "they were observing" not "saw."

v47: redactional, since it is necessary for the women to know where Jesus is laid so they can visit him to annoint him.

v47: The current site of the Tomb, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is built on a Roman Temple to Aphrodite (or Jupiter). Eusebius reported that a cave tomb was found underneath the Church in his time, and modern archaeology has also reported finding traces of a cave tomb there. The tradition that Jesus was buried there is a later development.

v47: OT creation is a possibility. Isaiah 53:9 says:

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. (NIV)

Historical Commentary

The chiastic structure here crosses a chapter boundary, showing how badly Mark has been cut up by traditional interpreters. The chiasm runs:

A	There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.
	B	And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath,
		C	Joseph of Arimathe'a, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus.
			D	And Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph.
			D	And he bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.
		C	Mary Mag'dalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
	B	And when the sabbath was past, Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salo'me, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
A	And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.

Note that the last two verses of this chiasm are actually Mark 16:1-2.

The scene as presented here presents a number of historical implausibilities, as identified above, as well as traces of creation from the OT. There is no support for historicity in this pericope.

Excursus: An Additional Argument for Markan Priority

While the vast majority of scholars believe that Mark was the first gospel written, a minority of scholars, driven largely by conservative religious apologetics, continues to argue that Matthew was the first Gospel (it is the first Gospel listed in the New Testament). The literary structure of Mark 15:20-39, in addition to being a thing of great beauty, is also an argument against the priority of Matthew over Mark. Let's look at the elements the writer of Mark assembled in this little essay.

Soldiers mock Jesus as King
compel passerby to help carry cross to golgotha
offer wine
crucify him
divide his garments
3rd hour
Title on Cross: King of the Jews
Robbers are crucified
Passers-by mock Jesus
Chief priests and teachers of the law mock Jesus
Robbers mock Jesus
6th - 9th hour darkness
Jesus cries that God has forsaken him
bystanders think Jesus calls Elijah for help
offer vinegar
dies with great cry
temple curtain torn
centurion says Jesus is "Son of God"
three women watch
many women, from Jerusalem

As we have seen, these elements form a neat chiastic structure whose parts are internally parallel and center on an A-B-B'-A' chiasm:

A	And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull).
	B	[missing verse? Or is 15:39 a back-assimilation from Matthew?]
		C	A	And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh; but he did not take it.
			B	And they crucified him,
			C	and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take
				D	And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.
					E	And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."
						F	A	And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.
								B	And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!"
						F'		B	So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe."
							A	Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.
					E	And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.
				D	And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabach-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
		C	A	And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Eli'jah."And one ran and, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Eli'jah will come to take him down."
			B	And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.
			C	And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
	B	And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"
A	There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Mag'dalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salo'me, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

Now, the same scene in Matthew 27:31-54 copies virtually every element from Mark.

Mocked as king
Help from Simon to Golgotha
vinegar
Crucifixion
Garments divided
third hour
and sitting down, they were watching him there*
Title: king of the Jews.'
Robber crucified ,
Passers-by mock
Chief priests/scribes mock
Robbers insult him
And from the sixth hour darkness came over all the land unto the ninth hour,
`My God, my God, why didst Thou forsake me?'
Calling Elijah
vinegar
Jesus dies
veil torn
earth did quake, and the rocks were rent,
tombs were opened, and saints walk
Truly this was God's Son.'
three women
women from Jerusalem

Now we have problems. The neat chiastic structure of Mark has been torn here in several ways.

1. Matthew has no reference to the third hour. If you return to Mark 13 you will see:

13: 35: Watch therefore -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning --

The writer of Mark has provided the timetable for the arrest, trial, denial, and trial of Jesus, setting up careful three hour intervals that are finished up in the 3-6-9 structure of the Crucifixion. This passage is not in Matthew 24-5, which parallels Mark 13. Instead, there is a whole slew of parables. In other words, in Mark 14-15 we see a carefully wrought structure that extends back through the Gospel to Mark 13; while in Matthew we have his usual dull didacticism. Why does Matthew preserve the reference to the 6th hour? In Mark it relates to a time scheme that does not exist in Matthew. Looking at the time reference, the reader is invited to consider which of these two came first.

2. The second problem is that there are two elements in Matthew that spoil the chiasm "earth did quake, and the rocks were rent, tombs were opened, and saints walk." Matthew-firsters would have us argue that the writer of Mark has extracted that chiasm above from Matthew. Does that make sense? In other words, Matthew-firsters argue that Matt wrote what would have been a neat chiasm if Matt hadn't screwed it up by adding elements and deleting two. Then the writer of Mark came along and said to himself: "Hey! This is almost a chiasm! Now if I just add another parable to Mark 13 to signal the time, pop in the third hour there, delete the quake, the dawn of the dead, and VOILA! It's poetry!"

The question is clear: did Matt write an almost-chiasm adjusted by the writer of Mark, or did Matt delete and interpolate a beautiful Markan chiasm?

*See commentary on 15:21-39.

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Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark
Chapter 1	Chapter 9	Home
Chapter 2	Chapter 10	Home
Chapter 3	Chapter 11	Topical Index
Chapter 4	Chapter 12	Topical Index
Chapter 5	Chapter 13	References
Chapter 6	Chapter 14	References
Chapter 7	Chapter 15	Contact Author
Chapter 8	Chapter 16	Contact Author