In the Sea of Faith we have paid quite a lot of attention to the book known as the gospel of Mark. At various times in annual conferences and in Sofia, we have taken against the churches’ way of cherry-picking stories. We have read the entire gospel at a single sitting, we have removed the chapter and verse numberings and read it as if it were a novel. In these ways, we have read Mark mindful of form criticism and of literary criticism and have attempted to read it in its original context. Exploring that context imaginatively, a letter of appreciation and enquiry was sent to Mark – and a reply was received!
This seems a good time to take this study a step further and ask: What considerations might have guided Mark in his writing?1 It is widely supposed that Mark was writing either during the first Jewish/Roman Wars (66-70 CE) or very soon after. In 70 CE, the Jerusalem temple was ransacked and destroyed, and the inhabitants of the city either taken into slavery or slaughtered. The original eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus of Nazareth were either dead or nearing the end of their lives and with that the oral traditions were threatened. The oral traditions would have included the almost arbitrary Roman power of execution, a power exercised by the vassal authorities at the Jerusalem temple and at the court of the tetrarch Herod Antipas.
Leaving on one side the details of the extent of the violence2, what were the circumstances within the occupation? A military occupation divides the conquered peoples. At one extreme, there are those who will welcome the oppressor and might even become collaborators – for example, as tax collectors. At the other extreme, there are those who will continue to resist the oppressor, even to the extent of preparing to act militarily. These two groups will be opposed to each other, in this case, setting Jew against Jew. In between, there will be any number of compromises – and could be further complicated by an apparent collaborator also being a member of a group plotting armed resistance! An important consequence was that one didn’t know who one’s friends were, the ordinary relationships of trust, without which a community can hardly exist, vanished. What was once a coherent society, under the occupation, had become fractured. Mark’s Jesus seems to be acting so as to heal this fracture.
Given that: “Roman officials were always on the lookout for potential rebellion in the empire. Both imperial officials and military members were known for practicing widespread torture and random crucifixions.”3 what should Mark write and how should he write it?
My present suggestion is that Mark set about writing an account of Jesus’ life and teaching made relevant to Mark’s own situation. He could draw on a growing oral tradition, perhaps supported by his own experience of Jesus, but he could also draw on his present experience, and the experience of his immediate contemporaries, of trying to live in the way exemplified earlier by Jesus within the occupation.
That life, Mark understood, was typified as one of resistance to the Roman occupation. Resistance in the form of sustaining Jewish identity, resistance in the form of supporting individual and community morale, resistance in the form of interpreting and developing the Jewish tradition in the manner of the prophets and resistance in the form of challenges to the vassal authorities at the Jerusalem temple and in Herod Antipas’ court. The question immediately arises as to how he might write in support of such resistance without being seen as seditious by the occupiers – with the inevitable violent response? Mark’s answer to this question turns out to have been as if he had asked himself: “What is it that we Jews know and that the Romans do not?” Whether or not Mark did ask that question, we cannot say, of course. But it might be helpful to proceed as-if he asked such a question.
What follows is just a small selection of items from the gospel which among many possible others might be used in support of this description of Mark’ gospel as an act of resistance. For example, take the very first sentences: Mark quotes two passages which he says are from Isaiah – the second is, but the first is from Malachi. Most commentators excuse Mark for this minor ‘error’, but if read in its violent context, it might well have been done intentionally. Might not an educated Jew read this as a hint that what follows has been written to be interpreted – much as a letter received under war-time censorship that was dated Wednesday, 3rd June, 1941, but that the 3rd of June that year being a Tuesday would serve as an alert that the letter contained more than immediately met the eye.
Among many possible examples in illustration, I choose one double story, in which the healing of the woman with a haemorrhage is embedded within the story of Jairus’ daughter (5:22-43). Within what I take to be Mark’s strategy of writing in such a way that it will be understood by Jews but remain opaque to the Roman occupiers, the number twelve is significant in that to Jews it symbolizes Israel but does not do so to gentiles. The haemorrhage has lasted for twelve years and Jairus’ daughter was twelve years old. So, to Jews, both stories are are understood to be about Israel. In both stories the effective agent is faith – in the case of Israel, something close to self-belief. Notice the several ways in which this story speaks of resistance to the Roman occupation, These include that the woman (Israel) acts on her belief; that Jesus addresses her as ‘daughter’ confirms that by the action of this healing she is now re-established as a full member of her community; that the division of Israel by the occupation can be overcome; that in the meantime it is possible to live peaceably together, and that Israel can be healed of the disease of occupation – that is to say, that this brief statement by Mark’s Jesus contains at least four instances of resistance.
The party then moves on to Jairus’ home which is in a state of commotion because the girl (Israel) is understood to be beyond all hope and is dead. Mark’s Jesus mocks this and pronounces her (Israel) to be but sleeping. “Do not be afraid” Jesus says “only believe”. Understood by a Jewish reader, this would be an affirmation that Israel’s self-belief can be sufficient – such an affirmation being a further act of resistance. With his immediate colleagues and together with the girl’s parents, he enters the house and takes hold of the girl’s hand. Mark then uses the Aramaic ‘Talitha cum’ by Jesus, bidding the girl arise which she does immediately and starts walking around. At this point, Jesus asks that the child be given food. This part of the story suggests that the native Aramaic is the appropriate language to use – an act of resistance, and that it is immediately effective is yet a further act of resistance. That the child should be given food would be understood that the people will need continuing intellectual and emotional sustenance to sustain them in the meanwhile. This, of course, provides a rationale for Mark in writing his gospel – his own personal act of resistance.
I hope that by this writing you have been persuaded to read Mark as if it was written at a time and in a place that was violent – and make your own fresh evaluation of the gospel.
- Although there are good reasons for thinking otherwise, I shall assume that there was just the one writer and for reasons of simplicity I shall call the writer Mark.
- I will not add descriptions of crucifixion other than to say that it has claims to be among the cruelest ways of killing, coupled with an ability to terrorize a population – a violent form of control. Contemporaneous accounts suggest crucifixions were numbered in many thousands. Roman citizens had the right of trial, others had not.
- After Jesus and Before Christianity: Vearncombe, E. et al, (2021) New York, Harper Collins, (p.37)