One Man's Web

Living by the Sea - Mark 4:35 - 5:43

It is what flows from the human heart, not from the womb, that separates us from God.

4:35-41 The storm
³⁵ On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, 'Let us go across to the other side.' ³⁶And leaving (ἀφέντες) the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was (ὡς [when?] ἦν ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ). Other boats were with him. ³⁷A great (μεγάλη) gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep (καθεύδων) on the cushion; and they woke (ἐγείρουσιν) him up and said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing (ἀπολλύμεθα)?' ³⁹He woke up (διεγερθεὶς) and rebuked (ἐπετίμησεν) the wind, and said to the sea, 'Peace Silence! Be still! (Σιώπα, πεφίμωσο.)' Then the wind ceased (eκόπασεν ὁ ἄνεμος), and there was a dead great (μεγάλη) calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, 'Why are you afraid? (Τί δειλοί ἐστε;) Have you still no faith? (οὔπω ἔχετε πίστιν;)' ⁴¹And they were filled with great awe (ἐφοβήθησαν φόβον μέγαν) and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?'

Notes

1. Beginning a threefold structure: By the sea we now see three acts of power. One occurs on the sea. This is followed by the healing of a man and of a woman by the sea. This parallels the healing of the man and woman in chapter 1:21-31, although the events of chapter 5 concern two women—one older, and one still a little girl—who are linked as one by the number 12. (5:21-43)

2. On that day: (4:36) This phrase is telling us to connect the parables of the seeds and the sower, and what we make of them, to the story which follows

3. Evening had come: (4:35) He is crossing the sea at night: The sea was seen as a dangerous place, the place of chaos, and setting the scene in the evening adds to this. Myers says, "Mark consistently refers to the freshwater lake as a "sea" in order to invoke the most primal narratives in the Hebrew tradition: the Ark of Noah; the crossing of the Red Sea; and the psalmic odes to storms."¹ The sea storm is not only symbolic of violent elemental chaos conquered by Jesus, (cf Genesis 1:9, 9:11) but also a symbol of our violent elemental cultural history, which Jesus will also overpower.

4. The other side: (4:35) This phrase continues Mark's challenge to us about "those outside." Jesus does not use "those outside" as a category to exclude people. Instead, he crosses over to the other side, a gentile region. With the image of all the "birds of the air" sheltering under the shrub, he has already indicated that the culture/kingdom of God will include Gentiles. Now he is about to cross into Gentile territory. This is also made clear by the fact that on the other side people are herding pigs; it is not Jewish territory.

5. Leaving the crowd behind: (4:36) We can't cross to the other side without leaving the crowd behind. This is because the crowd lives by defining itself over against the other, and by victimising the other. Leaving the crowd behind means to cross the sea, that place of danger, which in the end becomes the place of enlightenment. It means a trust in Jesus and a following and going with him. It means to take him with us in the boat.

6. Just as he was: (4:36) The meaning of this phrase is uncertain. It is tempting to think that it tells us we should take Jesus just as he is, not in the form we think he should be. But that may simply be an artefact of translation: In the phrase hōs ēn en tō ploiō, as he was, in the boat, the word hōs can also be translated as when. This would mean the verse means something like after sending away the crowd they took him away when he was back in the boat. (aphentes also bears the meaning of send.)  This assumes Jesus left the boat during the dismissal of the crowd.²

There is a little irony here. The boat was meant to be the place of safety, so that the crowd would not crush him. (cf 3:9, 4:1) When the storm explodes, Boyce comments: "So much for implied safety of the boat."³ Being in the boat, also known as "following Jesus" means casting off into the storm.

7. Other boats were with him: (4:36) The boats on the sea are not with them, but with him—Jesus. For the reader, this implies that if we are on stormy seas in the boat of the church, he is with us.

8. A great gale arose: (4:37) The story is suddenly close to the story of Jonah. Reading Jonah in the LXX, we find the same Greek words for great, sea, perish and sleep are used in both narratives. We see the ship of Jonah is the same Greek ploion in which Jesus crosses to the other side. When Jesus rebukes the sea and it dies down (ekopasen), and when the sailors ask Jonah "What shall we do to you, that the sea may die down (kopasei)"and Jonah replies, "Cast me into the sea, and the sea shall die down (kopasei)" (1:11-12), both words are forms of the verb kopazō, abate, or die down.

⁴But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea (πνεῦμα μέγα εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν), and such a mighty storm came upon the sea (κλύδων μέγας ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ) that the ship (τὸ πλοῖον) threatened to break up. ⁵Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep (ἐκάθευδε). ⁶The captain came and said to him, 'What are you doing sound asleep? (LXX Why are you snoring. ῥέγχεις) Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish (ἀπολώμεθα).'

7 The sailors [lit. they] said to one another, 'Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.' So, they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. ⁸Then they said to him, 'Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?' ⁹'I am a Hebrew,' he replied. 'I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.' ¹⁰Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, 'What is this that you have done!' For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.

¹¹Then they said to him, 'What shall we do to you, that the sea may quieten down for us?' For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. ¹²He said to them, 'Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quieten down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.' ¹³Nevertheless, the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. ¹⁴Then they cried out to the Lord, 'Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish (ἀπολώμεθα) on account of this man's life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.' ¹⁵So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. ¹⁶Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. (Jonah 1:1-15 NRSV, Greek from the LXX)

9. The similarities between the storm of Mark 4 and the storm of Jonah:

1. Both stories involve crossing the sea by boat;
2. The crossing is interrupted by a violent storm;
3. In each case the central character of the story is asleep, although it seems that Jesus was not a snorer. Mark says Jesus was in the stern, asleep (καθεύδων) on the cushion… The boat carrying Jesus would likely have a stern platform for the tillerman, with a covered area underneath, and it is most likely here that he would be asleep. Jonah is also on the lower deck;
4. In deliberate contrast to Jonah and Jesus' sleeping, the sailors are terrified;
5. The main character is central to a miraculous calming of the waters in both stories. And in both stories
6. The sailors then marvel.⁴

It is difficult not to conclude from the way Mark's story is told that it is closely modelled upon Jonah's adventure.

Dissimilarities: Marcus points out that anyone sensitive enough to see the similarities listed above will also see the differences. Mark intends this, of course: listen if you have ears to hear!

1. Where Jonah is fleeing God's will, Jesus is doing God's will;
2. Jonah is avoiding crossing over to the Gentiles of Nineveh, but Jesus is crossing over into Gentile territory;
3. The sailors ask Jonah to intercede with God for them, while Mark's sailors turn to Jesus. Marcus suggest they ask Jesus to save them in the manner of the sailors in Psalm 107:

²⁸ Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
   and he brought them out from their distress;
²⁹ he made the storm be still,
   and the waves of the sea were hushed.
³⁰ Then they were glad because they had quiet,
   and he brought them to their desired haven.

But this is to read with the hindsight of faith.  Mark's sailors, the disciples, are not yet really seeing who Jesus is; they are afraid.  They do not say "Lord, save us," but "Teacher do you not care that we are perishing!?"

4. In Jonah, God stills the storm; in Mark, the disciples ask, "Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him!?" begging the question of Jesus' relationship to God.⁵
5. We can add to these differences that in Jonah, the storm is raised up by God for God's own purposes. In Mark, the storm is a function of the demonic, as will be seen in the language Jesus uses. (See Point 12.)

11. He was sleeping: (4:38) The Gods of the biblical world were often imagined as sleeping. This was a sign of their absolute power; they could sleep with immunity. But Israel changed that image to one of concern⁶ :

 ²³ Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord?
   Awake, do not cast us off for ever!
²⁴ Why do you hide your face?
   Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? (Psalm 44:23-4)

There is an ambiguity here, a "combination of omnipotence with that of apparent indifference"⁷ which reminds us of the questions and fears about Jesus' power which underlie the mystērion surrounding the power of Jesus the culture of God.

After Jesus is awakened, the question 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?' invites the reader to remember the proclamation of the opening verse of the gospel: Surely this is "Jesus Christ, the Son of God," who rescues us.

In NRSV's translation, Jesus woke up. The Greek word diegertheis (διεγερθεὶς) is passive. And it is related to egeiro (ἐγείρω cf 1:31) where Jesus raised/lifted up Peter's mother-in-law. Indeed, KJV translated the text as "he arose." This is way outside my competency with Greek, but like Boyce, I wonder: " he immediately "woke up" (the word is actually "arose" and may [there be] here be a telling and parabolic clue to the end of this story?"⁸

12. He rebuked the wind... Silence! Be still: (4:39) The word epetimēsen is the same word used to rebuke the unclean spirit in Mark 1:25. In that place, the spirit is told to be quiet (phimōthēti) which is a form of pephimōso which is used here in Chapter 4.⁹ The implication is that the storm not simply bad weather; Jesus is using language which rebukes the demonic. A traditional translation (such as in KJV) is that Jesus said, "Peace, be still!" There is nothing irenic about the word Siōpa. It is a command to silence.  The storm is a function of the demonic and is silenced.

It is not the place of humans to command the sea, only God does this: "By his power he stilled the sea, by his understanding he struck down Rahab."  (Job 26:12) Antiochus Epiphanes had "superhuman arrogance" because he thought "he could command the waves of the sea." (2 Mac 9:8) But Psalm 89:25 has been interpreted as referring to the Messiah controlling the sea in Pesikta Rabbati  36.1.¹⁰ As Marcus points out in his commentary on this verse, Epiphanes means "God Manifest—to Jewish eyes, his very name is an idolatrous arrogance.,"¹¹ and it is likely that Mark's text is playing on the despised memory of this oppressor of Israel.

13. A great calm: (4:39) NRSV translates these words as a dead calm which highlights the contrast with the storm well. But that translation also hides a threefold structure in the story: There is a great storm, a great calm, and a great awe. The same word megalē is used each time.

^"But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered." (Mark 3:27) In this text at the end of Chapter 3, the claim is that Jesus the strong man has come.¹²   Then follow the parables of Chapter 4 which address the cognitive dissonance Jesus' followers felt because so much of their experience suggested that the strong man had not plundered the house. What the parables of the seeds, and Jesus' conversation with the disciples about the mysterion of the kingdom seem to be saying is that we need to be given the eyes to see this mystery. Now, on and by the sea, three times over in the narrative of the storm, and then again at the tombs, and again in the healing of a life being bled dry, we are shown the mega-power of the strong man. Will we see it?

14. Why are you afraid / feared a great fear: (4:40) deiloi is cowardly timidity, but ephobḗthēsan phóbon mégan (4:41) lit "they feared a great fear" is a reverential fear.¹³ It has seen. Byrne (ibid) reads the question of Jesus to the disciples as "chiding" their lack of faith and then later points out that Jesus will go back to Nazareth (6:6) where he is astonished at the people's lack of faith. In the meantime, we will see the contrasting great faith of Jairus and of the woman who is made well in chapter five.

15. Who then is this: (4:41) cf Mark 1:27: "What is this?" And now, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" The question is rhetorical; there can only be one answer. (Although, cf the comment of Mark 4:1 Point 2.)¹⁴ Although Mark constantly points us to Jesus' identity, there is another thought in the disciples' question: Our "great awe" knows that we can never know fully. There is something utterly beyond our comprehension of that power which overpowers such storms as this, and the two which follow. If we do not in some way ask, "Who then is this," we have lost sight of this, and begun to reduce God to something more like us.

16. Have you still no faith?: (4:40) Hamerton-Kelly preached on the connections between faith and fear.

His questions to us, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" show us first that fear is the opposite of faith and secondly, that faith is essentially confidence in Jesus. Faith is confidence in Jesus and fear is lack of confidence in him.... the full understanding of our lesson involves two kinds of fear and one kind of faith. There is the bad fear of the terrified disciples tossed in the storm, who think that their maker does not care about them, and there is the deep and mind-stretching awe of the creature in the presence of the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth. The faith occurs when the first fear turns into the second, as we see who Jesus really is, and we entrust ourselves in awe to the one who brought us into being in our mother's womb.¹⁵

Why does Mark point us towards Jonah?
If there were no reference to Jonah, this story would still be full of power.  The disciples are taken from complete fear to holy awe. Jesus acts with a power that is normally associated with God alone. The story suggests that although it seems we are at the mercy of the storms of life, Jesus "is in the boat with us," and we will be safe. The storm follows on from the parable of the seeds, reinforcing the understanding that the culture/kingdom of God is real, and will prevail. But Jonah is in the story.  The references are so obvious that it is clear Mark is saying we cannot fully understand Jesus in this story unless we understand the reference to Jonah. Jonah will reinforce other aspects of the parables of the seeds.

In Jonah, God is fully in control.  The sea, that dangerous place of chaos that people felt challenged the power of God, is at God's disposal. But Jonah is no Jesus; he is completely at the mercy of the sea, just like us.

The book of Jonah is about a refusal to "go across to the other side" to Nineveh which, like the country of the Gerasenes, is Gentile territory. (cf 5:1) Jonah begins with a determination to remain the same, mired in hatred of the other. Jonah the man is a "hater," one who flees from God, one who refuses to repent, and who is furious and terrified—the two emotions go together—at the repentance of others. He is self-centred, and blind to the humanity of others. Ironically, he becomes the scapegoat. He is us—humanity living under empire. Only God can save him.

Jonah needs to be transformed, and to repent of his hatred of the Ninevites, who symbolise all those who are other. Instead, he chooses to flee by ship, ironically stepping right into God's hands.

The mythic resonance of crossing over the great water is one of transformation from one state to another. It signifies... conversion... it is accompanied by a great storm...¹⁶

The storm is the crisis of leaving the crowd behind, and being converted to a new human being which sees the outsider and the gentile as human like us; as sister and brother. But the book ends with Jonah in a great sulk, more concerned for his own comfort from the shade of a shrub¹⁷ , and furious that God allows it to wither, than he is about the lives of a hundred and twenty thousand people who had no shrub under which to make a nest.

Behind Jonah's rage at the other is fear. Avivah Zornberg says that in Jonah the ship's captain

expresses the existential plight of those who stand between death and life. Uneasily straddling death and life, the sailors stand and cry [out to God.] Jonah escapes into a stupefied sleep.  Here, the midrash registers the core [-- what's really at the root--] of Jonah's flight. To flee from God is to refuse to stand between death and life; it is to refuse to cry out from that standing place. The opposite of flight from God is, in a word, prayer.¹⁸

Our prayer cries out to God, in fear of the chaos around us, "Surely you could made a better Creation—something safer!" Apparently not.  It seems we must all uneasily straddle life and death for that is what it means to be upon the journey of becoming human. Empire seeks to avoid death, whether by getting to the top of the pole, or by allowing ourselves to be stupefied by the glitter of consumerism, or some other distraction.

Later in Mark, we will see Jesus stand between life and death, and pray. (Mark 14:32-42) But at that time, like Jonah, the disciples will sleep. Where Jesus sleeps, he images the God who can sleep because all is under control, but the disciples sleep like Jonah, overwhelmed. Refusing to stand between death and life, they flee into sleep. Jonah's "stupefied sleep" is to flee towards a place, or state of being, where we "have nothing, and even what we have will be taken away." (cf Mark 4:25)

Jonah is also the story of a scapegoating. We need to remember that myth lies. ¹⁹ It tells a story (or re-enacts a story) to exonerate the persecutors and to make sure the victim is seen to be guilty.  In the book of Jonah, the lots conveniently fall upon Jonah, who is carefully drawn as the odd man out, and is therefore the ideal scapegoat. The story is constructed to show his guilt; he is fleeing from the presence of the Lord. The story neatly avoids, as do the sailors themselves, the fact that we are all largely fleeing from the presence of the Lord. And, as in Mark 5, where the victim stones himself, Jonah "the victim goes along with the lie and asserts his guilt."²⁰ (See the comments on Mark 5:5. "He was always howling and bruising himself with stones.") But the author of Jonah, already sensitive to the demonisation of outsiders, senses something of what is going on, for the sailors seek to avoid the violence against Jonah, and then beg God's forgiveness when they fail. In a remarkable statement, they recognise Jonah is "innocent blood."

Jesus is also "innocent blood," and will give himself like Jonah. But the reader sees he is far greater than Jonah, for he is able to rebuke the wind and save his followers. The irony, not to mention the paradox, is that his way will cost him his life, not just three days in the belly of a big fish.  (Matthew makes the link of the three days explicit. Matt 12:40-41, 16:4) Jesus is not Jonah, but in the end, he is indeed the scapegoat.

We know that demonising the outsider and making them a scapegoat damages our humanity—and theirs. We know that to hold onto our rage and refuse change also damages us. But we give in to the cares of the age. Like Jonah, we are humanity living under empire in the middle of thorns, falling far short of what we could be. But Jesus is humanity living in the culture of God. He is able to leave the crowd behind, choose to cross over to the other side, and have compassion upon the demonised other.  And all the storms and fears of change which rise up within us, and beat against us when we seek to repent, are silenced by him.

A Pastoral Issue
Some people see this story as symbolic while others in the same pew will defend its literal historicity. My approach to this conflict is to pull it straight out into the open in order to avoid it becoming a point of "othering" used to identify the true believers. So, I would simply say, publicly, that there are two ways to look at this story of Jesus calming the storm on the lake:

Ever since the story was first told, there have been people who have believed it is literally true: Jesus commanded an actual physical gale to stop, and it did.  And since the story was first told, there have also been people who understand the story to be about a deeper truth than the mere calming of a physical storm; in other words, they understand it to be true in another, perhaps even deeper, way. They see that Jesus will take us safely through all the storms of life when we are about to be drowned. He will empower us to live in the eye of the storm, to live well, despite evil, destruction, and death, raging around us. We will be able to live in a way which is good for us and in a way which God desires— which is the same thing, even though it seems impossible and too hard. (He will enable us to live even as we are perishing!)

I would say I really, really hope that the story of Jesus overpowering the storm is true in this second way. That's because Jesus calls me to follow him, and to do what he did. And I can't command storms any more than I can command the piano stool to fly around the church. The universe is not made like that, and it does not work like that. If Jesus is a magician, I'll never be good enough.

The stories of the storm and the man in the tombs are leading up to the cross, where Jesus dies; where Jesus, an innocent man, is murdered by the powers that be. Where even in all his faith he cries out, "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?" This is not a magician who knows the magic words and causes some act of power that brings him down unscathed. This is a man who really dies, who trusts through the agony and pain that God loves him, and who is brought through death to resurrection and is rescued just like the writer of Psalm 22, whom he quotes.²¹

None of what I have just said is to deny Jesus' power. Mark's world of demons and legions of pigs and storms being calmed, is not at all strange, if we think about the stories as symbols. It's actually not much different from our own, because the stories show us in a timeless way that there are forces in the world which push us around. These can range from the things that go wrong in our brain that make us mentally ill, to the social issues of discrimination and poverty that seem to try and fence our lives in. The gospel of Mark identifies some of these powers, or forces, and says to us that Jesus helps us overcome them.²²    

So, some folk see a literal truth in the story which demonstrates that Jesus possesses enormous power which comes from God. They get the point of the story. Yet I would say, very carefully, that if Jesus literally stopped the storm, if that's all the story is, then I will always be in danger of using Jesus power to avoid my fear, when what life is about is living through fear and facing our inevitable death, just as Jesus did.

I see the story of the storm being about something horribly ordinary—it's one more storm that might kill us, and at the same time, much, much more powerful. It's about Jesus rescuing us from the storms which are worse even than dying— from the horrors of life which are unbearable, which drive us mad, and which terrorise us from the inside out. It is about Jesus leading us to live with him in the eye of the storm. Mark's story of Jesus overpowering the storm, which is designed to make us think of the story of Jonah, says that even when life throws you overboard, even when you are swallowed by the big fish which symbolises death—  after three days, death will spew us out on dry land because it cannot contain us.²³

What if we have someone whose fragility cannot bear to go beyond the literal? I emphasise that if it's the literal understanding that makes sense to you, then hold onto that. God will be faithful to your trust.  All I ask is that you do not "other" those who understand such stories differently.

 

5:1-20 In our right minds
They came to the other side of the lake the sea, (τῆς θαλάσσης)  to the country of the Gerasenes. [Other ancient authorities read Gergesenes; others, GadaRenés] ²And (kai) when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately (εὐθὺς ) a man out of the tombs with (in?) an unclean spirit (ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ) met him. ³He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him (δῆσαι) any more, even with a chain; ⁴for he had often been restrained (δεδέσθαι Perfect Infinitive Middle or Passive) with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one (οὐδεὶς) had the strength (ἴσχυεν) to subdue him. ⁵Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling (κράζων) and bruising himself with stones. ⁶When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed (προσεκύνησεν) down before him; ⁷and he shouted (κράξας) at the top of his voice (φωνῇ μεγάλῃ), 'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure (ὁρκίζω) you by God, do not torment me.' ⁸For he had said to him, 'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!' ⁹Then Jesus [Gk he] asked him, 'What is your name?' He replied, 'My name is Legion (Λεγιὼν); for we are many (πολλοί).' ¹⁰He begged him earnestly (πολλὰ) not to send them out of the country (τῆς χώρας). ¹¹Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; ¹²and the unclean spirits [Gk they] begged (παρεκάλεσαν) him, 'Send us into the swine; let us enter them.' ¹³So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd (ἀγέλη), numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank (κρημνοῦ) into the lake sea, and were drowned in the lake sea (τὴν θάλασσαν).

¹⁴ The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. ¹⁵They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac (δαιμονιζόμενον, demon-possessed) sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid (ἐφοβήθησαν). ¹⁶Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. ¹⁷Then they began to beg (παρακαλεῖν) Jesus [Gk him] to leave their neighbourhood. ¹⁸As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged (παρεκάλει) him that he might be with him. ¹⁹But Jesus [Gk he] refused, and said to him, 'Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord (ὁ κύριός) has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.' ²⁰And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed (ἐθαύμαζον).

21 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat [Other ancient authorities lack in the boat] to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake sea.

Notes

1. The other side: (vv1) This parallels verse 21 where Jesus crosses the sea again. Here, in verse 1, Mark is highlighting Jesus choosing to go to the place of difference. The immediate kai euthus does double service here. Along with the sense of haste and immediacy, it makes it clear to us that this is an event which takes place by the sea.

2. Which city? (vv1) Mark is concerned with symbolism here, not geography. Gerasa was 37 miles south east of the Sea of Galilee, and this is probably why Matthew 8:28 has substituted Gadara which was only five miles from the lake. But the Hebrew root of Gerasēnōn "means 'to banish' and is a common term for exorcism,"²⁴ which suggests Mark is using the name symbolically.

3. In an unclean spirit - ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ: (vv2) NRSV says there was a man with an unclean spirit, but Marcus says "en should be taken more literally: the man has been swallowed up by his possessing spirit."²⁵ He is in the spirit. (cf 1 John 4:1, 1 Cor 12:10)

An unclean spirit has nothing to do with hygiene. Unclean is a state of separation from God. In the eyes of many at the time, everything about this man separates him from God. He is a Gentile. He lives among the unclean/impure tombs of the dead. He is upon the mountains (see point 6 below) and he is "in an unclean spirit." Added to this, verse 15 implies that before he was healed, he was naked. (Luke 8:27 makes this implication explicit when he retells this story.)

En, being in, or "swallowed up by his possessing spirit," means that it is barely the man who shouts at Jesus. Rather, he is the vessel for a much more serious confrontation. For the sake of safety, and for living compassionately, we would do well to recognise that when someone explodes at us, screaming, out of control (which means out of control of themselves and under the control of something else,) they are largely a vessel for something else, so a legion of fears and oppressions of empire are exploding from them.

4. kai... euthus: (vv2) Mark's signature phrase is easy to miss: "And when he had stepped... immediately...." This is important to notice because when Jesus first goes to a synagogue it says, "and immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit." (Mark 1:23. Note NRSV hides this by translating the kai euthys of Mark 1:23 as just then.) And here, when he first arrives in Gentile territory, there is immediately a man in an unclean spirit; the Greek words for in an unclean spirit are exactly the same in both stories. (en pneumati akathartō.) His presence challenges the spirit of empire wherever he goes.

5. The man of the tombs: (vv2,3,5) The tombs are mentioned three times. This is a deliberate emphasis; we might call this man "the living dead."

Having faced nature's fury during the storm, Jesus is now confronted by human fury, even though the man's "raging is mainly directed against himself as he tears at his own flesh..."²⁶ Like Jonah, and like us, he is a person living under empire, and empire teaches us that we are the ones at fault. He is stoning himself.

The demoniac is a classic scapegoat figure. He dwells among the tombs and wanders the mountainsides wounding himself and howling. No chains can bind and no man subdue him. He is possessed by a legion of demons, and legion is the mob of his persecutors. He carries his persecutors inside himself in the classic mode of the victim who internalizes his tormentors. He even mimes the lapidation by which he was driven out, compulsively belaboring himself with stones and crying his own rejection.²⁷

6. Mountains: (vv5) The mountains are probably an allusion to false Gods; for example, "they set up for themselves pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree." (2 Kings 17:10)

7. Had been torn apart: (vv4) In verse 4 the chains and shackles had been wrenched apart and broken in pieces. NRSV uses the active voice. Marcus says the use of the passive voice in the Greek is unusual, mimicking the divine passive with a "demonic passive" as a way of indicating the violence being done to the man by the Legion.²⁸

8. No one could restrain him: (vv4) The event reminds us of Jesus' parable of binding the strong man. In Mark 3:27, Jesus speaks of binding (dēsē) a strong man.  Here in 5:3, no one can bind (dēsai) this man. The two stories also have the word for strength in common. In 5:4, no one had the strength (ischyen) to subdue he man. The word is cognate with 3:27's ischyron, the strong man. Byrne notes that here in chapter 5 Jesus is the "stronger one" even though no one (oudeis) else can bind the man.²⁹ In 3:26-27 no one (oudeis) can plunder the house of the strong man unless they have bound the ruler of demons.

Marcus points out the irony of the situation: "Demons themselves 'bind' people... the world's method for dealing with those whom Satan has enchained is to tie them up further."³⁰ Empire seeks to use violence to redeem or control violence.

9. Howling: (vv5) The krazōn of verse 5 means a situation where "when one utters loud cries, but no words capable of being understood."³¹ The spirit that would roll the boy into the fire "cries out" as it is ejected by Jesus in 9:26. The word is also used for "cried out" in a variant reading in Mark 15:39. Does the word indicate the inarticulate cry of someone who simply cannot put words to their terror or torment?

10. Demon: I adjure you... Jesus: What is your name: (vv7) I adjure you (horkizō) is the exorcist's language of command. To know someone's name is to have power over them. The spirit knows who Jesus is and seeks to use the knowledge of Jesus' name, and of his relationship to the Most High God, to preserve itself. Its use of his name is a claim to relationship! It thinks that the Most High God, and therefore, Jesus, are all part of the same reality as itself, even though at the same time, it bows before Jesus as an acknowledgement of Jesus' superior power in the hierarchy of empire. It has not understood that the culture of the Most High God has nothing to do with empire, and that the kingdom/culture of God is a different order of reality. Jesus asks the demon for its name which, in the drama of the tale, might at first make him look the weaker one, yet the demon is forced to comply. Already Jesus' power is plain.

11. Legion: (vv9) In this text, the word legion is multivalent. Firstly, the spirit's name is Legion "for we are many." But a legion was also the enslaving tool of empire, a dreaded military force of thousands. In the convenience of a well-crafted story, there just happens to be a huge herd of two thousand pigs nearby, an unlikely scenario in a peasant economy, and the legion stationed in Palestine had a wild boar on its standards!³² Given the opening verse of Mark's gospel, which co-opts the language and titles of Caesar, and of the empire, this suggests the name of the spirit(s) is chosen deliberately. The man is afflicted with—"swallowed up" in—the spirit of empire.  (cf Mark 1:1 and the comments following)

12. Not to send them out of the country: (vv10) "tēs chōras" has three possible translations: "(a) a country or region, (b) the land, as opposed to the sea, (c) the country, distinct from town."³³ So they beg not to be sent out of the region, but also not to be sent away from the dry land. Marcus' picks up the subtlety of Mark here with his translation out of the land. 

13. Pigs and power: Both the spirits and the pigs are a symbol of impurity or uncleanness. The legion think they are striking the "least worst" bargain they can get, but Jesus outwits them because the pigs plunge into the sea and are drowned, returning the demons to the chaos that is their place. Even the pigs can't tolerate them! The sea is mentioned twice, a repetition which emphasises that the spirits are a part of chaos and evil. Caroll makes the interesting observation that "the sea is now possessed by daimones, making it even more threatening for those who may need to cross over it."³⁴ Immediately after this incident, Jesus will cross over it, without incident, because he is in control.

We have some sensitivity about the arbitrary death of 2,000 pigs. If this story troubles us—it should³⁵ —then we would do well to consider our own diets. Bacon involves the deliberate and industrialised deaths of countless thousands more.

14. The herd: (vv13) Hamerton-Kelly says the herd "is an eloquent symbol of the mob in pursuit of a victim. The herd's drowning means the violence ceases when the mob disappears."³⁶

Australian English clarifies his understanding: here, a herd is often called a mob.  And there is something mobbish happening here. The word used for the steep bank is krēmnou, a steep bank or cliff, or an overhang. Such places are sometimes used for the killing of the scapegoat; eg the Tarpeian Rock³⁷ in Rome. In Luke 4:29, for example, the mob tries to cast Jesus over the cliff. The word there is  katakrēmnisai which means to cast off a cliff or cast headlong. It comes from krēmnos.  In the Gerasene story

Normal relationships are reversed. The crowd should remain on top of the cliff and the victim fall over; instead, in this case, the crowd plunges and the victim is saved. The miracle of Gerasa reverses the universal schema of violence fundamental to all societies of the world.³⁸

15. Pharaoh! (vv13) Pharaoh's army were drowned in the sea. Here, a Legion is drowned in the sea. Marcus lists a number of similarities between the vocabulary of Mark 5 and the journey through the Red Sea as it is translated in the LXX.³⁹ The link to Pharaoh supports our understanding that Mark is not thinking specifically of Roman domination as that which opposes the culture of God, but of all empire.

16. Sitting clothed and in his right mind: (vv15) The verse implies that the man had been naked. (cf Luke 8:27, which makes this explicit.) His nakedness adds to the general sense of shame and desolation. Saying that he is sitting means not only that he is no longer running and ranting, but also implies that he is sitting at Jesus' feet, an image of discipleship.  Luke again (Luke 8:35) makes this implication explicit by saying he was sitting at the feet of Jesus. The man is now calm, mirroring the calmness of the sea in the previous pericope. Byrne also says he is the "image of humanity regained,"⁴⁰ but this might suggest that the man was somehow different from me, and his affliction somehow of a different quality to all the storms and raging within me; that is, the word regain implies only that he had lost something, whereas sitting at Jesus' feet, and following him upon the Way, is only to begin to gain our full humanity. In our meeting with Jesus, the healed man and I begin to gain some humanity despite the continuing presence of empire.

17. They were afraid... and begged Jesus to leave: (vv15-17) The movement of this section of the story is important. It says city and country; that is, all of the people in this place come to Jesus! They were all afraid in the same way as the disciples were afraid after the storm. That is, they were all ephobēthēsan with the same appropriate great awe as the disciples in Mark 4:41. But then, despite this, they all ask him to leave. In fact, they are like the Legion, only less perceptive: They come to Jesus, but seeing what Jesus does to them, they beg him to leave so that they can remain undisturbed; even the demons knew they could not remain undisturbed. The man who is in his right mind, by contrast to the crowd which has arrived, begs Jesus that he be allowed to remain with him, which is an attitude of discipleship.

The people do not want their scapegoats returned [as healed people], and they do not want to see themselves as a swinish mob. They fear the revealer because he threatens the order of Gadarene complacency and deprives them of the comfort of the scapegoat. They do not want to break their conspiracy: rather, they want the scapegoat to remain in the shadows of the cemetery as a depository for their violence and a guarantee of their complacency. The fact that they had tried to chain him shows how much they needed him. They recognize the threat Jesus poses to the Sacred they inhabit, and they send him away.

Jesus acquiesces in their request that he go, but he does not leave without a trace. He sends the victim back, refusing his request to join the entourage.⁴¹

The scapegoat lives at the edges of us, and yet, in the middle of us. In the middle of the crowd, the scapegoat is the one who is differentiated. The crowd gathers around that person, or small group, and tips its rage upon them. Sometimes they are driven out, even killed. But mostly it suits us to have them "in the shadows" as Hamerton-Kelly puts it, for there they can be pulled into the centre again whenever we wish to vent more of our violence upon them. To have them returned to us, as Hamerton-Kelly puts it, would be to accept that they are the same as us, and that the issues which trouble us are the problem and the responsibility of all of us, and also that the issues we fear cannot be blamed on the ones we were scapegoating. For this reason, it has suited the Australian Government to keep a small number of asylum seeking refugees in indefinite detention at extraordinary expense⁴² . One might think that setting them free would be financially rational, and would remove the bad publicity such inhumanity generates. But this fails to see that this inhumane policy is a political investment in a scapegoat which pays off because the Government, and us, have these refugees waiting in the shadows whenever we need to rechannel our violent energies. We neither not want our scapegoats returned to us nor too far from us.

When Jesus steps outside the dictates of empire and crosses over to the other side, the powers of empire seek to destroy him. But he prevails over them and there is a great calm. They counter attack with a whole legion, which he overcomes, and there is a great calm; the man is seated and in his right mind. And then they beg him to leave, which is a moment of great pathos. For we are confronted again by the mystery of the seeds, which are, this time, sown in the man's healing: We see that "Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown." (Mark 4:15) They recognise Jesus' power, but are afraid of it, unable to see him offering therm freedom.

18. Go home to your friends: (vv18-20) The healed man is one of the first evangelists.

Only the possessed man perceived the full meaning of the event. He wanted to be 'with him,' a description of discipleship.  While in 1:16-20 the age of renegation demanded that the disciples leave all that was familiar and secure, here the act of renegation means remaining with family and the familiar.⁴³

Marcus suggests the verse means the man is not to be one of "the twelve." His discipleship is to be at home, where he lives. It is a nice foil to the words about family in chapter 3:31-35, not to mention being a challenge to the view, in some circles, that Christians who stay at home are somehow lesser disciples. 

The mystery of the kingdom/culture of God that is addressed by the parables of chapter four remains. The response to the man's message is that people "wonder," (NRSV: amazed)

a response that does not indicate any real understanding. Nevertheless, from now on they have in their midst a constant reminder of an alternative to the order of violence in the restored and reintegrated victim whom Jesus rescued from the mob in himself and the mob in the city of Gadara.⁴⁴

The seed is being broadcast, and there will be a harvest.

The captivity of empire
The calming of the storm, and the healing of the man so that he is calm and in his right mind, are demonstrations of the breaking in—the coming near—of the kingdom of God. Each act is about transition from one way of being human to another. Jesus crosses over to the other side; he crosses the borders of difference, which means he is not living or being according to the categories of empire. The man who was healed by the sea changes his allegiance, and moves to sit at Jesus' feet. Like the disciples, he has gone through a great storm and been rescued by Jesus. But the people of the region refuse to move and so continue to be captive to the way of empire. The disciples will waver, seeing but not seeing. They—we—are still rocky ground and among thorns. Despite their experience on and by the sea, they will soon show they have no idea what is going on. (cf Mark 5:32)

I have friends I imagine must read the story of the man of the tombs and recognise the places they have been in common. I have begun to understand that the physical terrors Mark describes are accompanied by, and symbolic of, much greater inner terrors. As I once asked a friend, "How is it that you are still alive!?" That friend has taught me two things. Firstly, they are human, and no different from me. It could be me living among the tombs instead of them. And more importantly, they have shown me my own vulnerability and instability, and how lost I am. My anxiety, my fears, my desperation, and indeed, my terror, are essentially the same as theirs. Bad luck or happenstance has greatly magnified the weight of those emotions in their life, but we each live with much the same issues. My life is barely under control, and I recognise it would take little to cause it all to spiral out of control. I sense I am not alone in this.

Indeed, the man is a picture of each of us as humans who are not yet "in our right mind." He has been abused and traumatised; he is one of those victims whom the crowd of us—society—have chosen to manage our own sanity and fearfulness. He is one of the victims upon which empire builds its edifice. Only luck means the crowd has not chosen our private terrors as a place to pour their own.

Mark is claiming that Jesus is greater than the crazed legions of the crowd. When the man comes to Jesus, the legions of empire—all the mind shattering pressures of the crowd, are driven out. The man can at last live in his right mind.

There are patterns in the two stories we have read and the two we are about to read. When Jesus begins his ministry in the synagogue at Capernaum; that is, when he first arrives in Jewish territory, (Mark 1:21-28) he is immediately confronted by a man in an unclean spirit, whom he heals. He then heals a woman—Peter's mother-in-law. We see the same pattern here in chapter 5: When he first arrives in Gentile territory he is immediately confronted by a man in an unclean spirit, whom he heals. The people ask him to leave, but he then heals a woman anyway— two daughters, in fact, who, linked by the number 12 may symbolise the one daughter made whole.

The other similarity between the story of this man, and of the women whom Jesus heals is that, in each case, Jesus gets out of the boat and a crowd gathers. In his presence, the man and the woman we are now about to meet, are able to step out of the crowd and be healed. The crowd in the land of the Gerasenes begged him to leave. The crowd at Jairus' house will mock him. Even the disciples cannot see. It fits very well to read the disciples' words in a voice of scorn: "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'" (Mark 5:31) 

 

5:21 – 43 God enlightens Jairus and others
^{2 1}When Jesus had crossed again in the boat [Other ancient authorities lack in the boat] to the other side, a great crowd (ὄχλος πολὺς) gathered round him; and he was by the lake sea. (παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν) ²²Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet (πίπτει πρὸς τοὺς πόδας)²³and begged him repeatedly (πολλὰ lit: greatly or much), 'My little daughter (θυγάτριόν) is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well (σωθῇ), and live.' ²⁴So he went with him.

And a large (ὄχλος πολύς) crowd followed him and pressed in (συνέθλιβον) on him. ²⁵Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages (ἐν ῥύσει-flow αἵματος) for twelve years. ²⁶She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸for she said, 'If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well (σωθήσομαι)' ²⁹Immediately (καὶ εὐθὺς) her haemorrhage (ἡ πηγὴ-fountain τοῦ αἵματος αὐτῆς) stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed (ἴαται) of her disease (μάστιγος). ³⁰Immediately (καὶ εὐθὺς) aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my clothes?' ³¹And his disciples said to him, 'You see (Βλέπεις) the crowd pressing in (συνθλίβοντά) on you; how can you say, "Who touched me?"' ³²He looked all round (περιεβλέπετο) to see (ἰδεῖν) who had done it. ³³But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling (φοβηθεῖσα καὶ τρέμουσα), fell down (προσέπεσεν) before him, and told him the whole truth (πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν). ³⁴He said to her, 'Daughter (Θυγάτηρ), your faith has made you well (σέσωκέν); go in peace (ὕπαγε εἰς εἰρήνην), and be healed (ὑγιὴς) of your disease (μάστιγός).'

35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, 'Your daughter (θυγάτηρ) is dead. Why trouble the teacher (τὸν διδάσκαλον) any further?' ³⁶But overhearing  ignoring (παρακούσας) [Or ignoring; other ancient authorities read hearing] what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, 'Do not fear, only believe. (Μὴ φοβοῦ, μόνον πίστευε)' ³⁷He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. ³⁸When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly (ἀλαλάζοντας πολλά). ³⁹When he had entered, he said to them, 'Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child (παιδίον) is not dead but sleeping.' ⁴⁰And they laughed (κατεγέλων scorn) at him. Then he put them all outside (ἐκβαλὼν), and took the child's (παιδίου) father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child (παιδίου) was. ⁴¹He took her by the hand and said to her, 'Talitha cum', which means, 'Little girl (κοράσιον), get up! (ἔγειρε)' ⁴²And immediately (καὶ εὐθὺς) the girl (κοράσιον) got up (ἀνέστη) and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement (καὶ ἐξέστησαν εὐθὺς ἐκστάσει μεγάλῃ). ⁴³He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

 

Notes

1. Sandwich: The story of Jairus and his daughter, and of the woman who was made well, are a Markan sandwich. In NRSV's rendering, the two stories are woven together seamlessly. But Mark's Greek readers may have noticed the different style of the two stories: Jairus' is made up of "short sentences dominated by the historical present", and the woman's story is "long sentences filled with participles and dominated by the aorist."⁴⁵ Mark has put together two stories from different sources, and the sandwich structure tells us that the two stories interpret each other, as do the number 12 and the word daughter.

2. The sea and the other side: (vv21) The sandwich is set by the sea, that place of the chaos which challenges the Creation and God. The sea links the three healings: Where there is illness, chaos lies nearby. Jesus never walks around the lake; he never skirts chaos, but always faces it, crossing the sea. This is our calling if we follow him.

3. The crowd: (21, 24) The crowd also provides the hint of chaos. It presses upon him in verse 24. We have already seen a congnate of synethlibon back in Mark 3:9 where thlíbōsin is translated as crush. "The word thlibōsin can mean to press upon or crowd a person, but it also has the metaphoric sense of oppressing or afflicting."⁴⁶ In both cases the crowd is ochlos polys, although in one case NRSV calls it great and in the other: large. I'm guessing that this a stylistic decision because we think of great crowds gathering and large crowds following someone. RSV simply said a great crowd, in both cases.

4. Jairus, one of the leaders of the synagogue: (vv22) In Mark 12:28, "one of the scribes" is clearly sympathetic to Jesus. In the same way, "one of the leaders of the synagogue" reminds us that, even in the religious establishment, not everyone opposed Jesus.

The name Jairus means God enlightens, or God awakens.⁴⁷ Bartimaeus (10:46-52) is the only other person healed by Jesus who is also named by Mark. This contrast with Mark's normal practice of not naming people suggests the leader of the synagogue's name was deliberately chosen to add to the theological content of the story; that is, Jairus really was a man who was enlightened by God. Jairus is also the first of three parents in Mark who ask for healing on behalf of their children; the other two being the Syrophoenician woman (7:24-37), and the man whose son had a spirit that made him unable to speak. (Mark 9:14-26).

5. When he saw him: (vv22) These words could be omitted from the story, which means they are a deliberate inclusion by Mark: Jairus really saw Jesus—he saw something of his significance. We are meant to be reminded of the words from Isaiah 6 which Jesus uses in 4:10-12, where some "may indeed look, but not perceive." This seeing by Jairus will soon contrast with 6:1-6 when Jesus goes back to Nazareth where they will see and not see, and take offence at him. Note that the woman had heard (vv27) about Jesus, again echoing chapter 4. She really hears, and perhaps Jairus really hears for his daughter for, unlike the crowd, he does not laugh (or fear and despair), but believes (vv36, 40).

6. Jesus also sees: (vv 32) He looked all around to see (perieblepeto idein). Mark contrasts this with the disciples, who although they use the related word Blépeis, clearly do not see what is going on. Jesus also sees in 1:16, 19; 2:14, and 12:34. Jesus sees and knows.

7. He fell at his feet. (vv23) In each of the three stories by the sea, the subject of the healing falls or bows before Jesus. (vv6,23,33) Jairus and the woman both fall before him. The demon legion which has enveloped the man in the tomb bows. The Greek word in that place can mean to prostrate oneself in worship, but unlike the prostration of Jairus and the woman it comes not from piptō, to fall, but is the word prosekynēsen. Strong's Concordance says this word derives from "pros and a probable derivative of kuon (meaning to kiss, like a dog licking his master's hand); to fawn or crouch to, i.e. (literally or figuratively) prostrate oneself in homage (do reverence to, adore) -- worship." Given that the legion tried to bargain with Jesus, perhaps there was more fawning than simple acknowledgement of Jesus' power.

8. At the point of death: (vv23) Because of Jairus' role, and because she is twelve years of age, it is tempting to interpret this leader's daughter as the synagogue, or as Israel itself. For we who are Christian this can quickly devolve into antisemitism and supersessionism.⁴⁸ The point is rather that if we really see Jesus, we realise that we, and all we hold dear, is also at the point of death. This includes even the church. The irony is that after seeing Jesus as the crucified risen one, we may begin to realise that if the church is not at the point of death, then we have not seen him after all!

9. Daughters: A thygátrión (vv23) is a little daughter, and this is the word used by Jairus. Thygátēr (vv34, 35) seems simply to mean daughter. Mark links the two women by calling them both, daughter. When Jesus called the woman daughter in verse 34, it did not imply that she was related to him, or that she was younger than he was. It was a typical and affectionate way of speaking to a woman at the time.⁴⁹ For Mark's original readers, and for us, it also hints at the new family of 3:34-35. In English, in verse 35, not using the tender diminutive thygátrión seems to make the pronouncement of the daughter's death all the more stark.

10. The laying of hands: (vv23) There were expectations surrounding how a healer would work. Here, it is expected that Jesus will need to lay his hands upon the girl. This will be contrasted with the way the woman is healed in vv27-8, and differs from Matthew 8:5-13, where Jesus need "only say the word."

11. The crowd intensifies: (vv24) As noted above in point 3, the crowd is described in the same way despite NRSV's use of the different English words great and large. The Greek is ochlos polys in each case. But now that Jesus intends to act, the same crowd changes its mood. It presses in upon him, becoming oppressive. (vv24) There is the hope that good may be done, but something about the crowd reacts against this hope. Mark is perhaps hinting that when evil is confronted, we find we are part of the problem.

12. The woman: (vv25-26) Her affliction is described in 5 graphic clauses echoing the description of the man who lived among the tombs; affliction is heaped upon affliction in both stories. We are meant to remember the man of the tombs and to see a link between their two situations. Like the man, this woman is without hope.

She suffers bleeding which does not stop. It is not specifically stated that this is menstrual bleeding, but given that Mark is uncomfortable specifying the nature of her bleeding—he is also uncomfortable specifying the nakedness of the man who was now clothed in vv15—it is unlikely she had constant nosebleeds or an unhealed wound. Her illness has lasted for twelve years. The number immediately suggests that this may be a story about Israel in some form.  The number will be injected into the story of the girl being raised from the dead, in order to link the two women.

The Greek text is ousa en rhusei haimatos, which literally means being in a flow or spring of blood. We typically translate en as with, so that there is a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit. But Marcus says that in en pneumati akathartō (5:2) "en should be taken more literally: the man has been swallowed up by his possessing spirit." ⁵⁰  The same is true of the woman; the illness takes over her life.

She is a contrast to Jairus: female, chronically ill and therefore isolated, and poor.⁵¹ Yet she is healed first: Jesus stops for the sake of a poor sick woman on the way to the house of the important man. It is important to note here that the privilege of the male leader who is well off and healthy is common to most, if not all cultures. This is a statement about the hierarchies of empire, not a critique of Judaism. A sermon which says at this point, "Within Judaism, women...", is anti-Semitic.

There is a subtlety here which we must understand. The illness will be isolating because of its physical effects; she is likely to be anaemic. But "as long as those affected with impurity stayed away from the sacred precincts [of the temple] Jewish society did not care about their impurity."⁵² She was not specifically isolated because the illness was menstrual.  And if there was prejudice about her bleeding, if any man in the crowd had known that she suffered that, and responded badly, his prejudice was no different to menstrual misogyny in any culture, including our own. This is not a "Jewish" problem. If we preach about it as a Jewish problm we use Judaism and Jesus and his people as scapegoats to avoid facing our own menophobia, misogyny, and violence.

13. And had spent all that she had: (vv26) She is now poor. She "had suffered under many physicians"; she had been a woman who had some wealth. She has lost everything to this disease.

14. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸for she said, 'If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.' (vv27) This verse reminds us about chapter 4. She hears, and really hears, because she acts in trust that she will be healed. This contrasts with the people of 4:12 who "listen, but not understand."

She is in the crowd, en tō ochlō. (vv27) Like all of us she is possessed and swallowed up by the crowd, the culture of empire, until she steps out of it and is then given the blessing of peace and of healing. (vv32)

She comes behind Jesus. Is it too much to see an allusion to Exodus 33:23 where Moses is permitted to see the back of God? After her healing she will fall before him. (vv33)

In Matthew 9, the story is told with a small difference. Where Mark has it that the woman only touched Jesus' cloak, Matthew says she touched the fringe of his cloak; the kraspedou. Mark does use the same phrase as Matthew in Mark 6:56 where they begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak (κρασπέδου τοῦ ἱματίου). The kraspedou⁵³ is mentioned in Numbers 15:37-41 as a mnemonic of "all the commandments of the Lord" who is "the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord your God." (Num 15:41) (cf Acts 19:12)

15. I will be made well/saved: (vv28) (cf σωθῇ in vv23 where it refers to making the little daughter of Jairus well, cf John :17, 1 Cor 5:5 saved) The word does double duty not just grammatically, but also symbolically. It means deliverance by God... "before Jairus' daughter can experience "salvation," she will first experience death."⁵⁴

16. The whole truth: (v33) This story of salvation uses part of a judicial phrase—"the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Marcus points out that it is also martyrological, noting Greek texts where the phrase is used, including the defense speech for the trial of Socrates.⁵⁵ What does this phrase say to those called to endure even though their brother betrays them? (cf Mark 13:11-13)

17. Touching: (vv28) Marcus notes a superstition that menstrual blood can nullify the power of a healer.⁵⁶ His reference indicates that although much is made of Jewish ideas of uncleanliness, similar ideas about menstrual bleeding existed, and still exist in many cultures, including our own. The problem here is male power hierarchies, and scapegoating, not Judaism. (cf Pliny the Elder (Historia naturalis 7.64-65⁵⁷ )

Across cultures, impurity flows to corrupt the pure, but here, in Jesus, the power flows the other way. The woman is made clean. Beck calls this "positive contamination."⁵⁸ Mark is using the idea that the healer needs to touch, but is also clearly aware of the style of healing that is in Luke 7:7: "Say the word, and my servant will be healed," for in 1:21-28 he appears not to touch the man in the synagogue in Capernaum, or the paralysed man in 2:1-12. But here, in Chapter 5, touch is woven into a wider context. People are pressing in upon him; we have already noted the sense of threat in synethlibon. But in all the crush and touch, Jesus is able to discern something different, a different touch, so to speak. His discernment bewilders the disciples.

18. The disciples: (vv31) The disciples don't, and can't, see. Mark is still explaining the parables of Chapter Four to the reader. The difference between Jesus and the disciples could be seen simply as something supernatural. But perhaps it is also about discernment. The more we live in the kingdom, the more we will see, even if in this age our ability to see and discern will always be closer to the disciples' ability rather than to Jesus' ability. Marcus notes that in vv32 the words "the one having done this" are feminine, and suggests this is not simply because the narrator knows it was the woman, but because it is meant to heighten the sense of Jesus' clairvoyance.⁵⁹ He had already seen.

19. Blood: Why is there a story concerning bleeding? What causes any story to be remembered, to be developed and crafted, and to become a part of a tradition? Why does Mark choose this story above one of a woman who, for example, suffered 12 years of constant debilitating migraines? Hamerton-Kelly says of the story that "blood is the usual trace" of the scapegoat mechanism upon which cultures are built.⁶⁰ Perhaps it happened exactly as Mark has written it, but we remember the story, and he chose the story, because it has power; it evokes something in us. It reminds us at a semi-conscious level that our culture is built upon blood, upon a "conspiracy of violence."

Inside the conspiracy, [and inside the crowd,] the woman is constantly covered in blood; when she leaves it, the bleeding stops.⁶¹

Assigned male at birth, I can testify to how much I have been conditioned to vent my deepest disgust and self-loathing upon women, and especially to focus it upon the attributes of the female reproductive system. As I once said in a sermon:

Why do we do this? It's because we all shed blood. We all have blood on our hands, but we blame the woman…We pretend we don't shed blood— only women do that— and we say they are unclean, they are separated from God, because we know we are unclean, we are separated from God. We hate and exclude and kill.⁶²

20. For twelve years: (vv25) We will find the beloved daughter is twelve years old, which creates an obvious link between the two women. Twelve is also a pointer that we should ask what this story says about Israel, the nation of twelve tribes.

21. Her disease: is twice called mastigos (vv29, 34), which means affliction or scourge. Mark similarly uses the word in 3:10. We English readers will remember that Jesus is scourged in John 19:1 (emastigōsen), but Mark does not play on this possibility, using the word phragellōsas, or flogged, in 15:15.

22. Your faith has made you well: (vv34) The woman is saved, not by Jesus, but through her faith. She chooses to step out of the crowd. By calling her "Daughter" another link is made between the two women in this Markan sandwich. As Jesus uses the word here, Daughter is a term of respect. Marcus points out that it may also have been seen in the light of 3:31-35: In stepping out of the crowd, she has entered the new family gathered around Jesus.⁶³

23. Go into peace: hypage eis eirēnēn (vv34) The word eis means into. Here in Mark, this traditional blessing really is about going into: Into a new family, and into a new culture, the culture of God.

24. Your daughter is dead. (vv35) There is a blunt contrast between the hope with which Jairus approached Jesus. The person is no longer his little daughter, and the people "from his house" are dismissive: "Why trouble the teacher any further?" If this is a story of Israel, the words "from his house" may be a way of reflecting the disbelief of many of those who were members of the synagogues.

25. Polys: (vv21, 23, 24, 38) In verses 21 and 24 the Greek πολύς (great) is used to indicate the size of the crowd. In verse 23, repeatedly is polla, used to intensify Jairus' request to Jesus to come to his house. In verse 38 it highlights the despair of those facing death; there is alalazontas polla, wailing much.

26. Ignoring what they said: (vv36) The word parakousas can be translated as overhearing (eg ESV and NIV) or as ignoring (note the NRSV comment) Marcus says "all seven LXX instances [of parakousas] and the only other NT one (Matt 8:17) mean 'ignore.'"⁶⁴

27. Do not fear only believe. (vv36) The Greek is present imperative; that is, "keep on believing." Already, Jairus has trusted Jesus. The power of the text is such that every reader realises that if Jesus had not been delayed by his healing of the woman, then perhaps the girl could have been saved. But there is no triage in the kingdom of God. All will be saved, despite death.⁶⁵

28. Peter, James, and John: (vv37) Marcus notes that this restriction of the number of witnesses is a common pattern in miracle stories, reflecting "a feeling... that... certain doctrines and practices are too holy for general publicity."⁶⁶ (cf Do not throw your pearls before swine, Matt 7:6) These three disciples will be with Jesus at the Transfiguration in Mark 9:2, and also in the garden in Mark 14:33. "Thus the raising of Jairus' dead daughter is implicitly related to Jesus' own death and resurrection."⁶⁷ Not only does Mark love the number three, but three witnesses is one more person that is required under the law. (cf Deuteronomy 19:15)

29. The mourners. (vv38-40) The mourners are a crowd, and the crowd does not understand what it is seeing.

30. Then he put them outside: (vv40) ekbalōn can also be translated as cast them out; it is the language of exorcism. There is no place for the crowd, the culture of empire, if there is to be healing. It must be "cast out."

31. Not dead but sleeping / rising up (vv39 - 42) Not dead but sleeping is a statement of the Christian hope. Jesus has encapsulated much of the gospel in these three words, although they can, of course, degenerate into a euphemism by which we avoid the apparent finality of death of which the mourners, the crowd, are only too aware.

The story is not merely the story of this one girl. In vv41, he tells her to get up: In 16:6, he is ēgerthē: raised. The girl got up: anestē, in vv42, just as he is to be anastēnai in 8:31. (see also 9:31 and 10:34)

Since these two verbs and their cognate nouns were so commonly used for Jesus own resurrection in early Christianity generally... Mark's readers would immediately grasp the implication that the power by which Jesus raised the dead girl was the same eschatological power through which God later raised him from the dead.⁶⁸

The only question is whether we will keep on believing with Jairus, and step out of the crowd with the woman who was made well. In Mark, to scorn (kategelōn) is to mourn, and to be defined by that mourning.

32. Something to eat (vv43) Is this a reference to the eucharist?

The Women
In Chapter 7, as Jesus speaks about what causes a person to be separated from God, Mark makes a parenthetic comment, and an inspired imaginative leap: "By this he declared all foods clean." (7:19b) Could Mark, at about Chapter 5:34, have made the parenthetic comment, "By this (healing) he declared all women clean?" In Chapter 7 Jesus is talking about using tradition and faith to avoid our responsibilities to other human beings, quoting Isaiah: "This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me," and concludes by listing some of the evils which flow from such distanced hearts. (7:6, 21-23) I doubt that declaring all foods clean was in his thoughts at that moment, but the insight is a consequence of his teaching, and Mark (or the early church) saw it, and added the comment into his gospel. We can imagine someone present exclaiming, "Are you saying all foods are clean!?" And Jesus stopping for a moment: "Well, yes, of course!"

Something the same is happening here in Chapter 5.  It is what flows from the human heart, not from the womb, that separates us from God. And if someone exclaimed, "Are you saying that all women, even when they bleed, are clean!?" he would stop for a moment, then say, "Well, yes! Of course." And so, by the third century, the Didascalia Apostolorum, (The Teaching of the Apostles) specifically uses this text to refute the idea of menstrual separation from God.

And when [your wives have] those issues which are according to nature, take care, as is right, that you cleave to them, for you know that they are your limbs, and love them for themselves….On this account, a woman when she is in the way of women, and a man when an issue comes forth from him, and a man and his wife when they have conjugal intercourse and rise up one from another- let them assemble without restraint, without bathing, for they are clean.⁶⁹

Yaakov Elman>⁷⁰, says this teaching is "one of a kind" among early Christian texts; it remains a contested issue within churches today, as any Google search about menstruation and holiness will attest. The quotation, through its reference to bathing, makes it clear that the author was reacting to Jewish practices. Shaye Cohen says the text " is part of a long polemic against Jewish practices."⁷¹ But there is no excuse for any hint of antisemitism in our expounding of the text. Firstly:

For most Jews of the second temple period the locus of God's presence was the temple and the temple mount, and as long as those affected with impurity stayed away from the sacred precincts Jewish society did not care about their impurity.  Thus the Gospel story about the woman with a twelve year discharge, clearly a case of zaba⁷², does not give any indication that the woman was impure or suffered any degree of isolation as a result of her affliction.⁷³ (I have added the emphasis.)

And

Christian feminists tend to love this story for, selectively interpreted, it plays perfectly into the argument that Jesus rejects any religious practice that would keep women from being equal to men. The problem with the argument is that it rests on faulty historical reasoning, and bad history cannot lead to good theology. Although no version of the story cites Leviticus, mentions impurity, expresses surprise at a bleeding woman in public, finds odd Jesus's touching a corpse, or portrays Jesus as abrogating any Law, New Testament scholars import all this and more⁷⁴.... Thus we read of the "woman's courage in breaking with crippling cultural taboos imposed on her[,] so as to reach Jesus directly and be fully restored and integrated as a person with full rights in her society.''⁷⁵ The inevitable conclusion of this reading is its practical payoff for women in the church today: "To continue to exclude women from certain Christian ministries on the basis of outmoded Jewish taboos is to render null and void the liberation that Jesus won for us."⁷⁶ The end, the liberation of women today, does not, however, justify the means, the false portrait of Judaism. (Amy Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew, Chapter 5, pp175)

The problem is not with Jewishness but with the almost universal attitudes of culture (controlled by men, even if reinforced by many women) towards women. Fear of the feminine is common across many cultures. At its most brutal, male misogyny attacks female reproductive ability. The foulest and most emotive swearing of men focuses upon the female reproductive organs and a woman's ability to bleed.⁷⁷ Men use women's body parts to swear about other things they fear. The most violent act of men is to rape women and kill their children. There is nothing essentially Jewish about the woman's story. Various forms of what is codified in Leviticus and found in Jewish writings since then, can also be found across the church for centuries. A simple Google search shows many people are still not certain that the woman made well has been made clean. The new Christians did not suddenly choose to follow the teachings of Leviticus because they were in the Bible; they followed them because Leviticus aligned with the prejudices they brought to the Faith.

Of course, one can read Leviticus to argue for such taboos.  One can no doubt find Rabbis of Jesus' time who would apply Leviticus literally.  But this is to ignore the fact that most cultures have, or have had, similar taboos, including our own; it is not a Jewish problem. Perhaps a helpful thought experiment would be to consider our feelings if Jewish people—or anyone else—made pronouncements about our faith based on the teachings of the Westboro Baptists!

The woman is a scapegoat; Hamerton-Kelly  is correct: "Blood is the usual trace" of the scapegoat mechanism upon which cultures are built.⁷⁸ She is, like most scapegoats, in the centre of the crowd, available for every low level hatred and contempt, always at risk of overt violence and being cast out, even killed. She is the counterpoint of the man living among the tombs. And she is as strong as he was. He refused to be bound by the chains they put upon him. She will not be bound by the crowd, but steps out of it, and reaches out to Jesus, just as the man of the tombs did.

Mark is not showing us a problem specific to Judaism. Rather, he is confronting all those people, enlightened like the leader of the synagogue, who are coming to Jesus. For he is saying the faith of Israel is as compromised as the Gentiles' faiths—no more, and no less. For this woman is no Gentile in contrast to Jairus' Jewish daughter (contra Augustine and others,⁷⁹ ) she is a daughter of Israel, shown by the number 12, and by the way Jesus addresses her. Rather, to every Jairus who reads his Gospel, Mark is saying, "Do you see this woman in the midst of your people. She is your "man of the tombs."

It is not simply that the leader of the synagogue, whose daughter is twelve years old, is a man with lots of privilege, who has to wait—has to learn to wait—for the healing of a nobody, a poor woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. That must happen, and Myers is correct to say that

within the "family" of Israel, these "daughters" represent the privileged and the impoverished, respectively. Because of such inequity, the body politic of the synagogue is "on the verge of death."⁸⁰

But the inequity of empire is deeper than the chasm between privilege and poverty, and not limited to the polity of Jesus' people. The scourge of empire is rooted in the scapegoat mechanism. The message to Jairus is that 

if he wants his little daughter, his spiritual community, to be healed, … then all the daughters have to be healed. The culture/kingdom of God has no scapegoats. Jesus does not give healing on the basis of status and income. Jesus heals the insiders, the outsiders, the 'also-rans,' and those we wish to exclude.  Unless we accede to this, we remain "far from the kingdom of God." ⁸¹ (cf 12:38)

The kingdom/culture of God is terribly compromised by empire wherever the daughters of God are treated as less.

I said in "Blood" that

at the very least, there is another layer to this story... It is the poor woman, the least of the community, who enlightens the leader. It is the woman who has no hope at all, but who still trusts Jesus, who teaches and enlightens the rich man in his time of need.⁸²

It suggests that the scapegoats are, in fact, Jesus-to-us. They are the ones who open us to healing. (cf Matthew 25:31-46)

Mark asks us, "Do you see?  If you will reach out, if you will step out of the crowd and tell the whole truth of your human situation, you will be made whole. You will not only hear about Jesus, not only see new ways of living, not only see the scapegoat mechanism of empire, but you will meet him: You will fall before him and be blessed by him. This is what it means to be pure before God."

As always, Mark is inviting us to see beyond the immediate story. The whole truth is not the story of a woman sneaking into the crowd when some very pious folk may have considered she should not present. Our whole truth is a confession of our hopelessness and of our complicity with the crowd. We can only come to him from out of the crowd. Our whole truth is that we have stood with those who condemn the innocent. "There is no one righteous, not one." (Romans 3:10)

 

Footnotes

1. Ched Myers et al "Say to This Mountain": Mark's Story of Discipleship, quoted by Nuechterlein http://girardianlectionary.net/year_b/proper_7b.htm 

2. cf Marcus, Joel, Mark 1-7, and Mark 8-16, (The Anchor Yale Bible) pp332

3. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-2/commentary-on-mark-435-41-3

4. These points are listed by Marcus pp337-8

5. Marcus pp337-8

6. Marcus pp338

7. Marcus pp338

8. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-2/commentary-on-mark-435-41-3

9. Marcus pp333

10. Marcus pp334

11. Marcus pp334. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphanes

12. Marcus pp336

13. Byrne, Brendan, A Costly Freedom, (St Paul's Publications 2008) pp94 fn9, and pp99

14. "Much will be said below about seeing and not seeing, and it is foreshadowed here. If we were blind, if we could not see or hear, then like the scribes, we would see this sitting on the sea, and walking on the sea, as even more proof that Jesus belonged to the kingdom of satan. (cf 3:22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, 'He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’) The mystērion of it all is that we can see something else!" https://www.onemansweb.org/theology/intro/parables-mark-41-34.html 

15. http://hamerton-kelly.org/storms/  

16. Carroll, John, The Existential Jesus, (Scribe 2007) pp45

17. A gourd: "The Hebrew term for the plant that is translated in a variety of ways in English, including “vine," “gourd," or simply “plant" or “bush" has a long history of controversial translations." (https://tips.translation.bible/tip_term/gourd/) LXX uses the word κολοκύνθῃ in Jonah 4:6-10) The shrub in Mark 4:32 is essentially a λαχάνων  which is translated as shrub by NRSV but is simple a garden plant.  See especially Luke 11:42: But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every kind of garden (lachanon | λάχανον | acc sg neut) herb, yet disregard justice and the love of God. These you should have done, without neglecting the others.  (Mounce https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/lachanon)

18. Gottleib Zornberg, Avivah,  The Murmuring Deep:  Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious, (New York:  Schocken Books, 2009),  pp84-85

19. "By saying myth lies, Girard is claiming that we create myths to justify "the originary sacrifice" of our tribe or community, "to cover over the victim, to blame the victim so thoroughly that no one is in doubt about the victim’s guilt and deserved punishment. In myth, even the victim goes along with the lie and asserts his guilt." https://www.onemansweb.org/intro.html#sixteentext

20. https://www.onemansweb.org/intro.html#sixteentext  

21. Edited from Prior: https://www.onemansweb.org/storm-and-tombs-a-sermon.html Verse 1 of Ps 22 reads "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? "

22. Edited from Prior https://www.onemansweb.org/facing-the-fear-mark-4-35-41.html

23. Edited from Prior: https://www.onemansweb.org/storm-and-tombs-a-sermon.html

24. Marcus pp342

25. Marcus pp 342

26. Carroll pp47

27. Hamerton-Kelly pp93 Cf also Girard, The Scapegoat, pp155

28. Marcus pp343

29. Byrne pp96

30. Marcus pp343

31. Marcus pp343

32. Marcus pp351

33. See, eg, https://biblehub.com/greek/5561.htm

34. Caroll pp48

35. Apart from a lack of empathy with our fellow created animals, there is this: "Classical theological commentary cited this story to argue that animals have no moral importance in Christianity. Saint Augustine of Hippo concluded from the story that Christians have no duties towards animals, writing:  'Christ himself shows that to refrain from the killing of animals and the destroying of plants is the height of superstition, for judging that there are no common rights between us and the beasts and trees, he sent the devils into a herd of swine and with a curse withered the tree on which he found no fruit.'^" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_of_the_Gerasene_demoniac 

36. Hamerton-Kelly pp93

37. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpeian_Rock

38. Girard, René, The Scapegoat, (1986 The Johns Hopkins University Press), The Scapegoat pp179

39. Marcus pp348-9

40. Byrne pp97

41. Hamerton-Kelly pp93-4)

42. At May 12 2021: The Guardian reported that "Australia will spend almost $3.4m for each person in offshore detention... [meaning that the] daily cost to taxpayers is $9,305 for each of the 239 people now held on Nauru or in Papua New Guinea." https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/12/australia-will-spend-almost-34m-for-each-person-in-offshore-detention-budget-shows 

43. Crotty, Robert,  Good News in Mark, (Fontana 1975) pp73 Renegation is "the act of disowning or renouncing."

44. Hamerton-Kelly pp94

45. Marcus pp364

46.  Marcus, pp 258  

47. Marcus pp356

48. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism In short, the idea that the Church has replaced the nation of Israel. But see NOSTRA AETATE, 4 "In company with the Prophets and the same Apostle, the Church awaits that day, known to God alone, on which all peoples will address the Lord in a single voice and "serve him shoulder to shoulder." https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html  

49. Marcus pp360

50. Marcus pp342

51. Chronic illness is isolating by its nature; it hinders our full involvement in our community. I am not talking about some kind of isolation caused by the fact that her illness was a menstrual illness. 

52. Shaye J. D. Cohen, Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity pp279 in S. Pomeroy editor, Women's History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)

53. See, for example: https://biblehub.com/thayers/2899.htm

54. Marcus, pp366

55. Marcus p360

56. Marcus pp358

57. "But nothing could easily be found that is more remarkable than the monthly flux of women. Contact with it turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seeds in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees falls off, the bright surface of mirrors in which it is merely reflected is dimmed, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air;  to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison." (Quoted in Kubiś, Adam. (2020). The Hemorrhaging Woman and Jairus’ Daughter as Representatives of Israel. An Attempt at the Symbolic Reading of Mark 5:21-43. The Biblical Annals. 10. 355-387)  

58. Beck, Unclean..., pp81

59. Marcus pp359

60. Hamerton-Kelly pp95

61. Hamerton-Kelly pp95

62. Andrea Prior https://www.onemansweb.org/blood-a-sermon-on-mark-521-43.html  

63. Marcus pp360

64. Marcus pp362

65. cf Marcus pp370

66. Marcus pp 371

67. C. D. Marshall quoted in Marcus pp371

68. Marcus pp373

69. (Didascalia Apostolorum Chapter 26, the translation by Arthur Vööbus, quoted by Cohen, Shaye J.D. The Significance of Yavneh and Other Essays in Jewish Hellenism (Mohr Siebeck 2010) pp 412-413) Google Books search: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mmj4RcszCHgC&pg=PA413&lpg=PA413&dq=%22The+polemic+demonstrates+that+Christian+women+in+Syria%22&source=bl&ots=5G9gfK52RC&sig=ACfU3U2IYf2QZeqsH6WfdpwmV0nvIWhiIg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiijvixnPvzAhUhyDgGHbJrAG4Q6AF6BAgCEAM (Accessed 9 January 2024)  

70. Yaakov Elman, Shoshannat Yaakov pp274  Google Books search: https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Shoshannat_Yaakov/QdjGEVo0bVEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%E2%80%A6.On+this+account,+a+woman+when+she+is+in+the+way+of+women,+and+a+man+when+an+issue+comes+forth+from+him,+and+a+man+and+his+wife+when+they+have+conjugal+intercourse+and+rise+up+from+one+another&pg=PA274&printsec=frontcover Accessed 9 January 2024  

71. The Significance of Yavneh and Other Essays in Jewish Hellenism Cohen pp 412-413

72. Zaba: a woman with a uterine or vaginal discharge.

73. Shaye J. D. Cohen, Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity pp279 in S. Pomeroy editor, Women's History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)

74. Levine's footnote here says: "See Amy-Jill Levine, “Discharging Responsibility: Matthean Jesus, Biblical Law, and Hemorrhaging Woman," in Treasures New and Old: Recent Contributions to Matthean Studies, Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series, no. 1, eds. David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), pp. 379–97, reprinted in Amy-Jill Levine, ed., A Feminist Companion to Matthew, Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings, 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 70–87."  Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew (p. 227). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

75. Levine's footnote here says: Teresa Okure, “Feminist Interpretations in Africa," in Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Searching the Scriptures, vol. 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1993), p. 82. See also Elizabeth Amoah, “The Woman Who Decided to Break the Rules (Reflection, Mk 5:25–29)," in Pobee and von Wartenberg-Potter, eds., New Eyes for Reading, p. 3. Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew (p. 227). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.  

76. Levine's footnote at this point says: Teresa Okure, “Women in the Bible," in Virginia Fabella and Mercy Amba Oduyoye, eds., With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), p. 55. Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew (p. 227). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

77. One might include among the targets here, Gay and Trans men who are seen to "betray" masculine superiority

78. Hamerton-Kelly pp95

79. The Hemorrhaging Woman and Jairus’ Daughter as Representatives of Israel. An Attempt at the Symbolic Reading of Mark 5:21-43. The Biblical Annals. 10. 355-387)

80. (Ched Meyers, quoted at Prior: https://www.onemansweb.org/fred-and-much-more-mark-5-21-43.html

81. These paragraphs are heavily edited from the post Blood at https://www.onemansweb.org/blood-a-sermon-on-mark-521-43.html  

82. https://www.onemansweb.org/blood-a-sermon-on-mark-521-43.html