One Man's Web

Mark 1:1 - Mark 1:13

The Gospel of Mark

1:1 The beginning
¹The beginning of the good news [Or gospel] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. [Other ancient authorities lack the Son of God.]   (Archē tou euangeliou Iēsou christou)

1. Eyes for Reading: Imagine a Jewish man who has survived the chaos of the destruction of Jerusalem and has ended up employed by the Romans to keep an eye on the undercurrents of Jewish nationalism.¹ A copy of what we now call The Gospel of Mark has come into his possession. What would he see?

He would probably read what we now call verse 1 as the title ² of this document. If he had the mind of a scribe or a rabbi he might wonder if Mark is using  archē, or beginning, as an allusion to Genesis 1:1 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament³ that was in common use at the time. That text begins: Εn ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν, which is, In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. Would he wonder if Mark's first verse, because it is the title, means the entire document is consciously intended as a completion/commentary on Genesis, and the Jewish scriptures, and even the Creationv?⁴

2. Mark lives under Empire: Given Point 1, we might wonder whether that word archē is not also an allusion to the creation story of Babylon which Genesis was crafted to dispute⁵ and to say that the God of Israel is in control of the creation, not the chaotic gods of the empire of Babylon.

Mark never uses the word empire, although he speaks of Pilate and his entourage. But Mark's passion narrative, in particular, shows an imperial culture. It will become clear that, now under Roman rule, Jesus sees much of his own culture still has the same ancestry and underpinnings as the empire of Babylon from which it had escaped. The classic introduction for understanding the connections between Jerusalem, and our own culture, and the culture of Babylon, is Walter Wink's article "The Myth of Redemptive Violence."⁶ It helps us see that the toxicity of empire is something which Mark takes for granted.

3. The beginning of... These words seem an abrupt and odd way to start a text; it is surely obvious that we are at the beginning. But if we are reading a title, what does that imply? Is there something more to come beyond this book? The fact that Jesus goes ahead of the disciples to Galilee (16:7) suggests that for those of us who follow him, there is more to come.

4. Jesus the Christ: But our imagined intelligence officer is not thinking about headings and first lines because he has seen that this beginning is about someone who is called Jesus Christ, which to Jewish eyes means: God‑Saves Messiah. And he would see immediately that this is not a personal name, but a title which we would today write as Jesus the Christ.⁷ He realises this book about Jesus Messiah is a direct challenge to the Caesars and to the Empire. This will especially be the case if he has one of the early manuscripts of Mark which includes the words Son of God in verse 1. The Caesars took the name Son of God for themselves,⁸ as kings had frequently done for in the past. (cf Psalm 2:7 for an example, and see Point 4 below.)

Our intelligence agent will also have registered the word euangelion,⁹ which we translate as good news, but which had a history and context which implied more than that. It is likely that euangelion was what we might call "an emperor's word,"¹⁰ which others used carefully. In this first sentence, it might suggest to our reader the "world shaping victory" of this Jesus Messiah was just the kind of nationalist sentiment which had caused the Temple to be destroyed. Our imagined intelligence official is now going to read the rest of Mark very carefully. Will he see only a ridiculous Messiah on a cross? Will he see one more Jewish agitation against Rome, or will he be inspired by Mark's sensibility, a sensibility which understands that all human culture tends to empire, and also understands that Jesus offers us a way out of this seemingly inevitable exile into a completely different freedom?

5. The Son of God... In Mark's culture, when one met the chosen or designated son of a ruler, it was effectively to meet the ruler himself. The son had all the power of the father. Rulers called themselves Son of God to indicate that they had all the authority of God. There is nothing about biology in this; the son is chosen by his father.  Augustine was the adopted son of Julius Caesar, not his biological son.¹¹ To call Jesus Messiah the Son of God is to claim that he has all the authority of God.

In this one first verse of his gospel Mark condenses what the people of Galilee, the ordinary people at the bottom of society's pecking order, knew as their reality; they were a people living under empire, living near the bottom of the heap, and living in a domination system.¹² But Mark, in this one first verse, also turns all that on its head: Jesus Messiah is the Son of God. He is the one who comes to complete creation. Caesar is an imposter.

1:2-3 The Messenger
² As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, [Other ancient authorities read in the prophets]
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you (πρὸ προσώπου σου), [Gk before your face]
   who will prepare your way; (τὴν ὁδόν σου)
³ the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
   “Prepare the way of the Lord, (τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου)
   make his paths straight” ’

1. The Messenger: The text jumps straight to the messenger. He is presented as using words from Isaiah. In the economical writing of Mark, these words we call verses 2 and 3 could seamlessly be left out— who would notice if we went from verse one to verse 4? Their inclusion is therefore deliberate and important.

 Mark is quoting Isaiah 40, the great prophecy of the return from Exile:

A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
   make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up,
   and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
   and the rough places a plain.
⁵ Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
   and all people shall see it together,
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ (Isaiah 40:3-5)

There are also allusions to Exodus and Malachi in Mark's quotation, which may be why some early manuscripts changed in the prophet Isaiah to read in the prophets:

²⁰ I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. ²¹Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him. (Exodus 23:20-21)

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. ²But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? (Malachi 3:1-2)

Note that although the Old Testament NRSV, taken from the Masoretic Hebrew text translates the word mal·’āḵ as angel, the Greek Septuagint Old Testament commonly in use in Jesus' time says τὸν ἄγγελόν, which is more commonly translated as a messenger (who may be an angelic being.)

You will see I have quoted more than the specific verses. One of the purposes of quoting the Old Testament was not simply to proof text, or to make a point, as we sometimes do now.  It was also to say, "Read further if you wish to understand."

2. Who is the messenger? The original Greek text lacks punctuation, so our text could read in this way:

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophet Isaiah: ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way...

This would mean that for Mark, Jesus is the one who prepares the way for God, and that Jesus comes as the forerunner of our release from Exile.  This would make sense. The verses in Isaiah are about release from exile, and from captivity. Exodus is about being led out to freedom. Malachi is about things being brought to fulfilment.

But it is much more likely that Mark means the messenger is John the Baptist. The messenger is in the wilderness just as John is in the wilderness (see 1:4.) And the words "who will prepare your way" quoting Malachi 3:1, refer to Elijah, again sent by God. Malachi 4:5 makes this explicit,¹³ and Jesus himself tells us in Mark 9:13 that John the Baptist was Elijah.

3. Before your face: The Greek phrasing of verse 2 is interesting. NRSV tells us

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, [Gk before your face]; that is pro prosōpou sou  

The reason NRSV draws attention to the Greek here, may be because the phrase is used a couple of times in the Septuagint:¹⁴

1. Zechariah 3:8: Hear now, Jesus the high priest, thou, and thy neighbours that are sitting before [thee]: for they are diviners, for, behold, I bring forth my servant The Branch... ⁸ἄκουε δή, ᾿Ιησοῦ ὁ ἱερεὺς ὁ μέγας, σὺ καὶ οἱ πλησίον σου οἱ καθήμενοι πρὸ προσώπου σου...
2. Micah 6:4: For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of bondage, and sent before thee Moses, and Aaron, and Mariam... καὶ ἐξαπέστειλα πρὸ προσώπου σου τὸν Μωυσῆν καὶ ᾿Ααρὼν καὶ Μαριάμ.

Both texts are in the context of restoration by God. At such times, God sends messengers before our face.

1:4-8 John
⁴John the baptizer appeared [Other ancient authorities read John was baptizing] in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with [Or in] water; but he will baptize you with [Or in] the Holy Spirit.’

1. John: For the people of the day, John's description is clearly and obviously a picture of a prophet, and especially of Elijah.

In 2 Kings 1 the king Ahaziah asked who it was who had prophesised against him. "⁸They answered him, ‘A hairy man, with a leather belt around his waist.’ He said, ‘It is Elijah the Tishbite.’" Elijah was no ordinary prophet; the death toll in this chapter from 2 Kings for those who do not go God's way, is high.¹⁵

But John also "bears the identifying marks of the victim."¹⁶ He is unmistakably drawn for us as a prophet, and Israel has the habit of killing the prophets: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!" (Matthew 23:37) Mark does not include this text, his John is simply and clearly an outsider, a fringe dweller. It is from the fringe dwellers and outsiders that we draw our victims and scapegoats.

2. Elijah: The power wielded by Elijah is brutal; 2 Kings 1 has a high death toll. John believed that the one who would follow him was more powerful again! But Jesus will subvert all the notions people hold about power and the necessity for violence.

3. The Jordan wilderness. The Jordan is the place Israel entered the Promised Land. The wilderness is the place of renewal, and the place where Israel lived with God, so it is reasonable to think that a voice crying in the wilderness will be carrying a message from God. In Mark, the Jordan and the Wilderness are never simply geographical locations; they are theological symbols.

4. Doubles: A narrative double begins with the similarity between two characters, but then shows a point of difference or contrast. Mark will use this technique elsewhere; for example, Judas and Peter become a double in the passion narrative, and the feasts of Herod and Jesus function as a double. In this current text John is the voice in the wilderness. Jesus also first appears in the wilderness and, when baptised, is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. He too is an outsider and thus likely to become a victim. Indeed, they both die at the hand of empire. The technique of the double is Mark's way of alerting us to look for the differences between John and Jesus.

5. A note about repentance: Jirair Tashjian¹⁷ points out that "the whole Judean countryside" has implications about repentance being something for the whole nation, and that it is not just something for individuals. That is, he will separate the nations. We are not separated individuals. We are nations— ethnicities. There are all sorts of alliances around culture and identity which are often at odds with other groupings. Nations are judged. There is a challenge to our individualism here.¹⁸

6. Moving to the wilderness: The Old Testament is already aware of the scapegoat. We get the word scapegoat from a translation of Leviticus 16:

⁶ Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin-offering for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. ⁷He shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting; ⁸and Aaron shall cast lots on the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. ⁹Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin-offering; ¹⁰but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, so that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel. [Azazel is traditionally rendered as a scapegoat^19a] (Leviticus 16:6-10)

Hamerton-Kelly notes that "the driving out of the scapegoat is a movement from the Temple to the wilderness. It is the way out of sacred violence." He notes that although Mark sets up a spatial contrast between Galilee and Jerusalem, Galilee was also a place where Jesus met opposition and where he is rejected by his own home town because of his euangelion. (cf 6:1-6) Indeed, it is in Galilee that the Pharisees "went out... and conspired with Herodians... to destroy him." (Mark 3:6) Hamerton-Kelly believes "the real contrast is between the wilderness, which is the place of the scapegoat, and the temple, which is the place of the scapegoaters."¹⁹

This movement to the wilderness begins here with John "appearing” in the wilderness (1:4) and Jesus coming to him in the wilderness. (1:9) Jesus will then be driven by the Spirit out into the wilderness. (1:12)

We fear becoming the scapegoat, and rightly so, for our deep instinctual self knows that it brings with it the risk of death: We are at least ritually killed if we are made the scapegoat in a situation. But Jesus (and John) show us another side to all this: We can choose to step out of sacred violence. This is a movement towards freedom. Not being a part of the crowd, as dangerous as that is, also frees us from the violent vagaries of the crowd; not in the sense that we will be saved from violence done against us—that may indeed increase, but from being swept up to be a part of violence done to others. I remember a friend consciously and deliberately stepping out of the crowd, refusing to be a part of its violence. It turned on him, yet I see now that he was the freest person in the whole situation.

7. John and Jesus: They both go out into the wilderness. We could say that this is to "step out of the crowd," and we shall see throughout the gospel that this stepping out is one characteristic of those who show faith in Jesus. John and Jesus share the same death as scapegoats, destroyed by the rivalry and envy of others. (cf 6:14-29) But John has not understood the way of Jesus. He is presented to us in the violent imagery of Elijah.

We begin to understand this because of the spiral structure of the gospel. It is written primarily for its community who know that Jesus has died and been raised. Like them, we find an unsatisfactory ending in Mark.

Mark does not wrap up all the loose ends, [and so] we have no alternative but to return²⁰ to the beginning of his narrative, "the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ" (1:1) and to start to read it again as our story.²¹

This is what Mark intends, and certainly this invitation to a constant circling through the gospel has been my experience of it.  Hamerton-Kelly takes this movement one step further.  He notes the "Messianic Secret" (For example, see 5:43: "He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.") which hides Jesus' Messiahship until after his death, so that we can then at last see what Messiah really means. He says,

Having read the Gospel once uncomprehendingly, we start again at the empty tomb and travel through the wilderness of Judea, the countryside and villages of Galilee... fearfully back to Jerusalem, and to the cross, this time with eyes to see and ears to hear (4.12). This time we see and hear because it is Jesus who leads the way, not John.²²

And in doing this, we who are all John because, like John, we are formed by the culture of empire, begin to read with new eyes, and to see the point of difference within the double. (See Point 4 above.)  Jesus does not follow the way of Elijah.

The poetry of Mark does not simply call us to some kind of static allegiance to Jesus. Jesus is always on the move and calling us to follow. (cf Mark 8:34ff) He steps out, (cf 5:2, 5:1-20 In our right minds, Point 9 [This link is not yet live]) he goes in, (cf 1:29) he is on the way. (cf 10:52) This implies that to be static, to stay the same, is a failure of discipleship. We sometimes speak about having a relationship with Jesus; relationships are always moving and growing. We might also wonder if the faux humanity of the culture of empire is also never static: Herod and Pilate, although showing hints of mercy and insight, become further enmeshed as they give in to the murderous crowds.

1:9:-11 Jesus is baptised
⁹ In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart (σχιζομένους ) and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; [Or my beloved Son] with you I am well pleased.’

1. Nazareth and Jordan: Perhaps Jesus had brown eyes or suffered early balding. But those attributes are not in the story, for they do not concern Mark. Biographical facts in this style of literature are not included "for colour"; they have a symbolic purpose.  This gospel, in a sense, begins and ends in Galilee.  Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and after his resurrection, as yet unseen by anyone, he goes ahead of the disciples back to Galilee. Resurrection life is lived in Galilee, and not in Jerusalem, as Mark 16:7 indicates: But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ (Mark 16:1-8)

The general expectation was that the Messiah would come to Jerusalem, and of course Jesus the Messiah will go there to his death.  But there is something else being said here, for the risen Messiah does not come to Jerusalem in Mark's vision; rather, he goes to Galilee, comes from Galilee. Mark sees Jerusalem and its elites as an extension of Rome and its empire.

To be from and in Galilee, and to be from Nazareth, is to step out of empire; Jerusalem is no longer the centre of the world. To be from Galilee is to be an outsider in the eyes of all the world's Jerusalems. It is to be formed by, and have our centre, somewhere else.

The Jordan River is the boundary that for the Jewish people marks their entrance into the Promised Land. It signifies freedom and life as God’s people and nation. This means John's baptizing people in the Jordan is highly political in two ways. It says, "I am not Roman. Rome does not control me." But it is also done outside Jerusalem. "I am free of the rituals of Jerusalem and the Temple."²³ Neither Rome nor Jerusalem is happy about John.

2. In the story of his baptism we see Jesus chosen and blessed by God.

Here is a meeting point of heaven and earth, a deliberate ripping aside of the barrier on the part of God. Jesus is the point of intersection. To turn the cosmology upside down: in him, the depth surfaces.²⁴

Are we able, in this narrative, to see that we too are chosen? Can we believe this? In the movie of Mark

the coming one has arrived and the camera shows the Spirit descending on him. The baptising in the Spirit can begin. One of us, who needs to wash as we do, literally and metaphorically, is where it will all happen. That is promising for us. There is no bypassing of humanity. (My emphasis)²⁵

3. The Curtain: Jesus' baptism story anticipates something which will come later: "And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, [kai to katapetasma tou naou eschisthē²⁶ eis dyo] from top to bottom. (15:38) ... Heaven is being wrenched open to allow people in." In both cases God is the one tearing heaven open for us.²⁷ As Jesus' people understood it, the Holy of Holies was the place where the world intersected with the Divine.²⁸

3. The Voice: God will repeat the statement of verse 11 during the moment we call The Transfiguration, in Chapter 9. (In each case, God is φωνὴ, a voice.) It could be that only Jesus hears the voice in here Chapter 1. The transcendent power which authorises Jesus as Messiah is clear at the baptism, and the Transfiguration reinforces his authority.

4. Parting the Heavens: Jack Spong somewhere says of Jesus' baptism that it is a midrash²⁹ : "Joshua parted the waters of the Jordan when the Israelites entered into the Promised Land. When Jesus goes down to the Jordan and is baptised, he does not part the waters; the heavens are parted. This second Jeshua / Joshua / Saviour is much greater than the first."³⁰

3. The Dove: Why does Mark use the symbol of the dove? 

The very use of the word like (ὡς, as if) indicates symbol and metaphor. Petty³¹ says, "The most natural Biblical association is that of Genesis 8:11 where the dove appears as a sign of the renewal of the earth following the flood."  But there is also "a symbol of the hovering Spirit of creation."³² The dove is a symbol of connection and peace between God and us. God comes to us again. God calms the chaos.³³

Secondly, the story of the baptism refers us back to Psalm 2:7: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you,” and to Psalm 42:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
   my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
   he will bring forth justice to the nations.

He will not cry or lift up his voice,
   or make it heard in the street;
 a bruised reed he will not break,
   and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
   he will faithfully bring forth justice.

In Psalm 2, the king, the Messiah [τοῦ χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ (and the Christ of him) (Septuagint)] is singled out from the raging nations that are rising up against the Lord and his anointed. The inundation of baptism draws Jesus out of the inundation of the nations raging against one another. In Jesus, we too are drawn out of this inundation and so freed from raging against everybody else. But we are not freed from being the target of raging nations when they unite against the one who has been freed from their wrath. These baptismal words spoken to Jesus also refer to Isaiah 42:1, the first line of the first song of the Servant of Yahweh. Throughout these songs, the Servant has been called out of a violent society to become instead the victim of that society’s violence. Unlike the Psalmist who threatens the raging nations with a rod of iron, (Ps. 2:9) the Servant does not retaliate in any way against the violence inflicted on him. In baptism, we too are overwhelmed by the Servant’s suffering, but then we are also overwhelmed by God’s vindication of the Servant.³⁴

I can't quite see the connection between the words of the voice and Isaiah 42, but Davies,³⁵ in Matthew, also says the "quotation...appears to be a conflation of Ps 2.7, a line from a royal psalm, and Isa 42.1, a line from a prophecy abut a suffering servant."

Think about Mark's Gospel:  Martin Kahler called it "a passion narrative with a long introduction." I describe it as Mark telling us, "Read this book if you want to see the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection." Jesus does not strike back. We begin to see in Mark, even at this early point, that there is something different about this Messiah. We will see that not only is he against Empire, but that he is not like Empire; he is not simply a greater, somewhat better, form of Empire.

1:12 The Wilderness
¹² And the Spirit immediately drove him out (ἐκβάλλει) into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

1 Forty: This number recalls the Exodus' 40 years, and Moses' 40 days on the mountain. Elijah was also in the wilderness for 40 days and was also provided with food by an angel. The wilderness is the quintessential place for meeting God, but it is also the place in Jewish tradition where demons dwell.

2. Wilderness and Wild Beasts and Angels: There is something elemental about the presence of wild beasts. Is this the beginning of the theme of mastery of the elements of the Creation which we will see developed much more fully in the healings and the stilling of storms? Perhaps the original listeners might think, "Even the wild beasts do not harm him!" Elemental implies that something is "not safe." Wilderness may be experienced as the absence of God, as testing, and full of fear; I remember a city friend who was shaken by the emptiness and space around the arid town where his girlfriend lived. Wilderness is an ambivalent space to inhabit. We might wonder if to be truly faithful by going into wilderness means to live with uncertainty. We live by trusting, or as someone has said, by faithing.

Hamerton-Kelly sees an allusion to Adam's original place alone among the beasts at the beginning of creation. The narrative has arrived at the moment when Jesus will come into Galilee and announce the Kingdom of God, which I am calling the culture of God. From his Girardian perspective which sees our cultural genesis in the originary victims, Hamerton-Kelly³⁶ says

Thus the first principle (archē) of the Gospel is the revelation of the victim at the foundation of the world, the archetypal human being driven by sacred violence to wild beasts in the wilderness. The message from heaven, identifying him as Son of God, transforms the Messiah from the agent of sacred violence into the suffering servant and the potential victim. The archē of the Gospel is the start of a journey that begins by going into the wilderness and continues by way of the scapegoat, in and out of towns, synagogues, houses, and temple, and finally out to Golgotha and onto Galilee, following him who goes before.

"Living like Jesus" is not only to choose to follow him into the wilderness but, sometimes, to be driven out by empire. Indeed, "the life of grace must dodge between the powers."³⁷

Hamerton-Kelly's emphasis on archē is supported by Marcus who notes that enmity between humans and animals was seen in the OT and other Jewish sources as a result of breaking the original harmony of Eden. Marcus then reminds us of Isaiah 11:6-9 where that harmony is restored in a future time when "the spirit of the Lord shall rest on him." (Isaiah 11:1). Mark's baptism story is clear that future restoration was present in Jesus. Marcus concludes that Mark does not equate Jesus with Elijah through the 40 days in the wilderness. (In Mark, Elijah is to be seen in John the Baptist.) Rather, Jesus is modeled at this moment upon Adam, who was tempted by the snake which is working against God. The snake is interpreted as Satan in later Jewish legend. In those legends Adam's meals in the garden are served by angels.³⁸ All this suggests that the journey of the suffering servant is beginning the reversal of the fall.

The Spirit drives Jesus into this journey. The word is ekballein, and in most of Mark it is used in the driving out of demons. He is obedient. He appears to master the temptations of Satan, unlike Adam.  (This is one place where Mark's narrative has been filled in with much more detail by Matthew and Luke.)

The "Satan" which opposes the call of God upon Jesus is also a real force. We may not choose to personalise the Satan in our time and world view, but there is a truth here. Satan means we are making real choices when we choose to answer or ignore the call. It's not a game. To repent and believe in the good news is not some mere head thing. It is not an idea to which we assent. It is action with consequences.³⁹

Jan Richardson⁴⁰  says

How will we see the angels if we don’t go into the wilderness? How will we recognize the help that God sends if we don’t seek out the places beyond what is comfortable to us, if we don’t press into terrain that challenges our habitual perspective? How will we find the delights that God provides even—and especially—in the desert places?

Andrea Prior (Dec 2023)

 

Footnotes

1. This is not as unlikely as it seems. Yosef ben Matityahu was a leader of the Jewish forces in Galilee against the Romans during the first Roman-Jewish war which led to the destruction of the Temple. He managed to surrender and become an historian sponsored by the Emperor Vespasian.  We know him as Josephus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus (Back)

2. The verse and chapter structure of the bibles we use today was a very late addition, over a thousand years after the New Testament was written. There is an introductory article at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapters_and_verses_of_the_Bible (Back)

3. This is called the Septuagint. It was much more commonly  read than the older Hebrew texts. (Back)

4. The Gospel of John does something similar. It begins with "In the beginning..." (Back)

5. In his book Genesis, Speiser has a section of the Enuma Elish placed alongside some of the Genesis creation story. He says

While we have before us incontestable similarities in detail, the difference in overall approach is no less prominent. The Babylonian creation story features a succession of various rival deities. The biblical version, on the other hand, is dominated by the monotheistic concept in the absolute sense of the term. Thus the two are genetically related and yet poles apart. (E. Speiser Genesis pp11) (Back)

6. Wink says, " In short, the Myth of Redemptive Violence is the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. It is the ideology of conquest, the original religion of the status quo. The gods favour those who conquer... The Myth of Redemptive Violence is the simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and primitive depiction of evil the world has even known. Furthermore, its orientation toward evil is one into which virtually all modern children (boys especially) are socialised in the process of maturation. Children select this mythic structure because they have already been led, by culturally reinforced cues and role models, to resonate with its simplistic view of reality...." http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_060823wink.shtml (Back)

7. We get Christ from the Greek Christos, which is the Greek word for the Hebrew Messiah, which means anointed one. (Back)

8. For example: "Gaius Julius Caesar divi filius: Two years after his adoption, [Augustus] founded the Temple of Caesar additionally adding the title divi filius ("son of the divine") to his name in attempt to strengthen his political ties to Caesar's former soldiers, following the deification of Caesar." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus) (Back)

9. From the time of Alexander the Great and on into the Roman Empire... [gospel] was used to refer to history-making, world-shaping reports of political, military, or societal victories... [When] despite all odds, Greece managed to defeat Persia [in the battle of Marathon] ... Greece sent heralds to take the euangelion (proclamation of good news) out into every town and village in the country, to tell the people what had happened, and declare to them that they were free! Those heralds were “evangelists.” (https://nickcady.org/2019/01/09/the-gospel-of-caesar-augustus-what-it-tells-us-about-the-gospel-of-jesus-christ/)

In 9 B.C., within a decade of Jesus' birth, the birthday of Caesar Augustus (63 B.C. - A.D. 14) was hailed as euangelion (pl.). Since he was hailed as a god, Augustine's "birthday signaled the beginning of Good News for the world." (James Edwards The Gospel According to Mark pp 24) (Quoted by Brian Stoffregen, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark1x1.htm)

“The following was found chiselled on the ruins of an old government building in Asia Minor, dated 6 BC:

‘The most divine Caesar . . . we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things . . . for when everything was falling (into disorder) and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave the whole world a new aura;  Caesar . . . the common good fortune of all . . . The beginning of life and vitality . . . All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the new beginning of the year . . . Whereas the Providence which has regulated our whole existence . . . has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us (the emperor) Augustus . . .who being sent to us and our descendents as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order;  and (whereas,) having become (god) manifest /PHANEIS/, Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times . . . the birthday of the god (Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of good news /EVANGELION/ concerning him.’”   (Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President, p 70)  (Quoted https://frted.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/jesus-augustus-christ-caesar-i/) (Back)

10.  I take it that NT Wright's words about the understanding of the word gospel in Paul's world applied just as much to the time of Mark.

"On the one hand, the gospel Paul preached was the fulfillment of the message of Isaiah 40 and 52, the message of comfort for Israel and of hope for the whole world, because YHWH, the god of Israel, was returning to Zion to judge and redeem. On the other hand, in the context into which Paul was speaking, “gospel” would mean the celebration of the accession, or birth, of a king or emperor. Though no doubt petty kingdoms might use the word for themselves, in Paul’s world the main “gospel” was the news of, or the celebration of, Caesar." (https://ntwrightpage.com/1998/01/01/pauls-gospel-and-caesars-empire/ ) (Back)

11. In fact, he was his nephew. (Back)

12. The issue is what is commonly called "systemic injustice"--sources of unnecessary human misery created by unjust political, economic, and social systems. Its opposite, of course, is "systemic justice," also known as structural, social, substantive, or distributive justice. The test of the justice of systems is their impact on human lives. To what extent do they lead to human flourishing and to what extent to human suffering?

This is what the political passion of the Bible is about. Its major voices protest the systemic injustice of the kingdoms and empires that dominated their world. They do so in the name of God and on behalf of the victims--slaves in Egypt, exiles in Babylon, exploited peasants in the time of monarchy and again in the time of Jesus, and the most vulnerable in all times--widows, orphans, the poor, and the marginalized. And in the name of God, the major figures of the Bible advocate a very different vision of our life together. (Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, (HarperCollins 2004) pp129) (Back)

13. Marcus pp 142 (Mal 4:5 says 5 Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.) (Back)

14. The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible which most people in Jesus' time were using. An online copy can be found at https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/septuagint/(Back)

15. https://www.onemansweb.org/let-the-gospel-make-its-mark-mark-1-1-8-advent-2.html(Back)

16. Hamerton-Kelly pp68 "The wilderness is the place of the scapegoat (Lev 16:10), and John the Baptist bears the identifying marks of the victim. We are told in detail what he wore and what he ate in order to point out these marks. He is the outsider and those who go out to him symbolically pass from the world of the executioners to the side of the victim." (Back)

17. http://www.crivoice.org/lectionary/YearB/Badvent2nt.html(Back)

18. From https://www.onemansweb.org/life-goes-on-mark-11-8.html and https://www.onemansweb.org/theology/matthew-2531-46-the-far-near-country.html(Back)

Holloway, Simon "Did you know the history of the word ‘scapegoat’? It was first coined in the 16th century to describe the ritual animals that the Jewish community placed their sins onto in preparation for Yom Kippur? 

Today we use the word ‘scapegoat’ to describe people who symbolically take on the sins of others. So let’s look at its origins. 

The word was coined by a Protestant scholar, William Tyndale, in 1530, when he undertook the task of the first translation of the entire Hebrew Bible into English. He found he needed to introduce some new words into the English language in order to make sense of the Hebrew, as he understood it. And where the Torah describes Yom Kippur, he met with a problem. 

A key part of Yom Kippur, as described in the Torah, is the ritual slaughter of two goats; one for the Lord, and the other is designated “for Azazel”. Jewish tradition takes “Azazel” as the name of a rocky headland off which one goat, having the sins of the community symbolically placed upon it, would be thrown. The other goat, the one for the Lord, would be slaughtered as part of the general Yom Kippur rituals. This slaughter would bring atonement to the community...

Tyndale however, who practiced Christianity, translated “Azazel” differently. Christian tradition similarly acknowledged that one goat was to be slaughtered for atonement of the community. But the second goat, bearing the community’s sins, was understood to have simply gone free – to have escaped. Tyndale named this goat the “escapegoat”, which evolved later to be used as ‘scapegoat’. 

Just like the goat for Azazel, Jewish people throughout the ages have indeed encountered the phenomenon of scapegoating on many occasions. 

Today, the rituals of Yom Kippur have changed hugely since it was first described in the Torah, but the habit of blaming others for things that we ourselves have done has not changed so much since Tyndale first described it."  https://sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au/jewish-culture/the-origins-of-the-scapegoat/ (Back)

19. Hamerton-Kelly pp60-61(Back)

20. All is revealed, in Mark’s Gospel, when Jesus dies and the Holy of Holies is unveiled to view. What, then, must Mark achieve in his Easter story? He ends at 16:8, and sends his readers back – not least in their liturgical cycle of readings – to Galilee: to Jesus’ first appearance after Mark’s own prologue. There the readers shall discover not just the earthly Jesus, but the heavenly Son of Man who has fought in his life on earth the battle whose triumph he should be seen celebrating in visions of heaven. Mark has programmatically confused heaven and earth; for only so can he tease his readers into understanding what he believes must be understood. Mark’s whole Gospel is a parable; and those who heard it in his day as a straightforward narrative were those, in Mark’s own terms, outside. His Easter story is not written as evidence, to persuade his readers of Jesus’ resurrection; it sends them back to the story’s start, to see unveiled there the Jesus, at once earthly and risen, whom they had not recognized before........  Round and round we modern readers go, disputing the range of possible facts which could have given rise to the New Testament’s testimony to Easter and to the early churches. But perhaps we are not yet listening to the New Testament itself. Its authors were making claims which, they believed, would confound their readers’ understanding; and they set out to equip those readers while they were reading to understand what they were reading... We will still, of course, want to ask what records of what history lay beneath these texts that have turned to mystagogy in our hands; and we may have reasons of our own to plunge straight into the history of Easter. But as historians we are not yet, I think, ready for the immersion; for we have not begun to do justice to the texts that seem to offer it. Those who still read Mark in our day as a straightforward narrative, as a biography, are, on Mark’s own terms, those outside: they study with all their might but shall never understand. (Robin Griffith-Jones http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25349-2129555,00.html)(Back)

21. Marcus pp 1096(Back)

22. Hammerton-Kelly pp62-3 (Back)

23. David Froemming Salvation Story pp63 makes these two points.(Back)

24. Bill Loader  http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MkLent1.htm(Back)

25. Ibid. Quoted with other reflections at https://www.onemansweb.org/life-through-death---mark-1-9-15.html(Back)

26. To be clear, ἐσχίσθη and σχιζομένους are both forms of the word σχίζω, to tear or divide.(Back)

27.  https://www.onemansweb.org/tearing-heaven-open.html(Back)

28. This reflects the thought of James Alison. A relevant article, which gives some interesting background to the Temple rituals can be seen at http://jamesalison.com/some-thoughts-on-the-atonement/(Back)

29. A midrash is a new story crafted from the biblical text which helps interpret new situations. It connects the original text to the new events and helps the listener interpret them. It was a common  method of interpretation used by the rabbis.(Back)

30. I recall hearing Jack say this in a lecture in Adelaide. Quoted at https://www.onemansweb.orgy/the-beginning-mark-1-1-15.html(Back)

31. https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2010/01/lectionary-blogging-luke-3-1517-2122.html(Back)

32. Loader  https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2010/01/lectionary-blogging-luke-3-1517-2122.html(Back)

33. https://www.onemansweb.org/baptism-jesus-and-us-luke-3-15-22.html(Back)

34. Andrew Marr Moving and Resting in God’s Desire, pp. 189-90 quoted by Paul Nuechterlein. http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/epiphany1a/(Back)

35. Davies pp47(Back)

36. Hamerton-Kelly pp69-70 (Back)

37. Bill Loader   https://billloader.com/MtChristmas1.htm(Back)

38. Marcus pp168-169(Back)

39. https://www.onemansweb.org/tearing-heaven-open.html(Back)

40. Jan Richardson's words are no longer posted at Episcopal Café at (https://www.episcopalcafe.com/and_the_angels_waited_on_him/) but can be seen on the Wayback Machine (on 2022-08-11) at https://web.archive.org/web/20210225021750/https:/www.episcopalcafe.com/and_the_angels_waited_on_him/(Back)