Notes

1. Paul Scherer, “A Gauntlet with a Gift in It,” Int 20 (1966): 388.

2. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 312.

1. The absence of a verb makes it more likely that this opening line serves as a title rather than a verbless sentence (compare the beginnings of Prov. 1:1; Song 1:1; Eccl. 1:1 without predicates, and Rev. 1:1). The result is that verse 2 continues awkwardly in Greek: “Just as it is written by the prophet Isaiah…,” but Mark is not known for grammatical deftness.

2. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “Echoes and Foreshadowings in Mark 4–8: Reading and Rereading,” JBL 112 (1993): 229.

3. C. H. Giblin, “The Beginning of the Ongoing Gospel, Mk 1, 2–16, 8,” The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck, ed. F. Van Segbroeck, et al. (BETL; Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 2:975–85.

4. Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, 1:76. The preaching and activity of John the Baptizer up to the death and resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the church’s preaching about Jesus.

5. C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), 1:55.

6. Ernest Barker, From Alexander to Constantine: Passages and Documents Illustrating the History of the Social and Political Ideas 336 B.C.–A.D. 337 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), 211–12.

7. George W. MacRae, “Whom Heaven Must Receive Until the Time,” Int 27 (1973): 151.

8. See further L. W. Hurtado, “Christ,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992), 106–17.

9. See further Jacob Neusner, William Scott Green, and Ernest S. Frerichs, eds., Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987).

10. Trans. by R. B. Wright, “Psalms of Solomon,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 2:667.

11. Josephus contends that the correct interpretation was that it “signified the sovereignty of Vespasian, who was proclaimed emperor on Jewish soil” (J.W. 6.5.4 §§ 312–13; see Tacitus, Histories 5.13).

12. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, 31–32.

13. Cicero, Pro Flacco 28.67.

14. Copyists were tempted to expand the titles of books and also to give full confessional titles, and the title “Son of God” thus may have been added. On the other hand, Christian copyists employed abbreviations for sacred names (nomina sacra) by using the first and last letter of the word. The similarities of the endings, which would have been written ΙΥΧΥΥΥΘΥ, may have played tricks on the eye of a copyist and caused the omission of the title.

15. Leon Morris, “Disciples of Jesus,” in Jesus of Nazareth: Essays on the Historical Jesus and New Testament Christology, ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 124.

16. W. Russell Hindmarsh, “They Changed Our Thinking: IV Albert Einstein (1879–1955),” ExpT 84 (1973): 199, citing a quotation in the New York Times.

17. Michael Card, The Name of the Promise Is Jesus: Reflections on the Life of Christ (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1993), 81.

18. Eusebuis, Ecclesiastical History, 3.39.15.

19. See the summary of extensive scholarship about Papias in Black, Mark, 82–94, 104–11. The extant fragments from Papias are conveniently collected and translated in William Schoedel, The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 5: Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Fragments of Papias (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1967), 89–123.

20. Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark, 74–81.

21. Ibid., 52. See further the arguments of Martin, Mark: Evangelist and Theologian, 52–61, and the critique in Black, Mark, 201–9.

22. Ibid., 48–49.

23. For the technical discussion establishing the case, see Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark, 1–28; Black, Mark, 224–50; Joel Marcus, “The Jewish War and the Sitz im Leben of Mark,” JBL 111 (1992): 441–62.

24. F. F. Bruce, “The Date and Character of Mark,” in Jesus and the Politics of His Day, ed. Ernst Bammel and C. F. D. Moule (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), 78.

25. Tacitus, Annals 15.44.

26. Tacitus, Histories 1.2.3.

1. Frank Matera, “The Prologue As the Interpretive Key to Mark’s Gospel,” JSNT 34 (1988): 5–6, argues from a literary-critical perspective that a shift in narrative point of view occurs in 1:14. Verses 2–13 provide privileged information solely for the reader; 1:14 begins to relate public events that characters in the story observe or participate in.

2. Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St. Mark, 17, writes: “We find placed in our hands at the outset the key which the evangelist wishes us to have, in order that we may understand the person and office of the central Figure of the book.”

3. Hooker, Mark, 31–32.

4. Gundry, Mark, 34.

5. Joel Marcus (The Way of the Lord, 12–17) notes that it is characteristic of Qumran exegesis to juxtapose Scriptures; and Ex. 23:20 and Mal. 3:1 are conflated in rabbinic literature in Ex. Rab. 32:9 and Deut. Rab. 11:9. Marcus argues that if Mark has fused Ex. 23:20/Mal. 3:1 with Isa. 40:3, he has a knowledge of the Hebrew or Aramaic text found in the MT and the Targum. Mark fuses Scripture in 1:11 (Isa. 42:1/Ps. 2:7); 11:17 (Isa. 56:7/Jer. 7:11); 13:24–26 (Isa. 13:10/34:4/Joel 2:10/Ezek. 32:7–8); and 14:62 (Dan. 7:13/Ps. 110:1). See also Howard Clark Kee, “The Function of Quotations and Allusion in Mark 11–16,” in Jesus und Paulus: Festchrift für Werner Georg Kümmel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. E. E. Ellis and E. Gräässer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975), 175–78.

6. Derrett, Mark, 46–47.

7. Marcus, The Way of the Lord, 20; see also R. Guelich, “‘The Beginning of the Gospel’: Mark 1:1–15,” BR 27 (1982): 8–10. Isaiah forms an important backdrop for understanding Mark’s story. In Isa. 40:9–10, the context of Isa. 40:3 cited in Mark 1:3, there is a reference to preaching the gospel and the Lord God coming with might. The splitting of heavens (Mark 1:10) is mentioned in Isa. 64:1. The heavenly voice (Mark 1:11) echoes Isa. 42:1. Living at peace with animals (Mark 1:13b) can be found in Isa. 11:6–8 and 65:25. The forgiveness of sins is prominent throughout Isaiah. Isaiah is also cited as the explanation for the people’s incomprehension of the kingdom of God appearing in Jesus’ ministry (Mark 4:12, citing Isa. 6:9–10) and provides the key details of the end time (Mark 13:24–25, citing Isa. 13:10; 34:4). Perhaps the chief reason for naming Isaiah as the source of the quotation is that Isaiah speaks of the desert while Malachi speaks of coming to the temple. Mark does not revere the temple. It is not to be the place of preparation of the people, only the place where treacherous leaders prepare the death of Jesus. The way is the way through suffering prepared by John in the desert. The purification work envisioned by Mal. 3:3 prepares for God’s presence in a different temple altogether (see Geddert, Watchwords, 156).

8. Hooker, Mark, 36.

9. Mark uses the title John the Baptizer (baptizon, a participle) in 6:14, 24, 25.

10. One need not interpret 1:4 to mean that baptism effects the forgiveness of sins. One can translate it, “a baptism of repentance on the basis of the forgiveness of sins.” The divine action of forgiveness of sins would precede any human action (see Isa. 40:2; Jer. 31:34; Mic. 7:18). Swete (Mark, 4) comments that baptism is “the expression and pledge of repentance,” which responds to this forgiveness. The baptism purified the faithful (Isa. 4:4; Zech. 13:1) and marked them out as members of the faithful Israel. It also prepared them to receive the Holy Spirit (Ezek. 36:25–27; see also 1QS 1:21–25; 4:20–21).

11. Minear, Mark, 48.

12. Gundry, Mark, 38–39, 45.

13. See John 1:51; Acts 7:56; Rev. 4:1; 11:19; 19:11; Job. As. 14:2; 2 Apoc. Bar. 22:1; T. Levi 2:6; 5:1; 18:6; T. Judah 24:2.

14. This verb is used again in 15:38 to describe the temple curtain torn from top to bottom at Jesus’ death.

15. Minear, Mark, 50.

16. Josephus Ant. 20.5.1 §§ 97–99.

17. Juel, Mark, 34. Juel writes (A Master of Surprise, 34–35): “Viewed from another perspective, the image may suggest that the protecting barriers are gone and that God, unwilling to be confined to sacred spaces, is on the loose in our own realm.”

18. Leander Keck, “Spirit and Dove,” NTS 17 (1970–71): 63.

19. Marcus, The Way of the Lord, 74.

20. Gustav Dalman, The Words of Jesus (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902), 280.

21. B. W. Bacon, “Notes on New Testament Passages,” JBL 16 (1897): 136–39; “Supplementary Note on the Aorist εὐδόκησα, Mark i.11,” JBL 20 (1901): 28–30 (see Luke 12:32; 1 Cor. 1:21; Gal. 1:15; Eph. 1:4–9; Col. 1:19; 2 Peter 1:17; cf. Matt. 17:5).

22. Marcus, The Way of the Lord, 74.

23. Richard J. Bauckham, “Jesus and the Wild Animals (Mark 1:13): A Christological Image for an Ecological Age,” in Jesus of Nazareth: Essays on the Historical Jesus and New Testament Christology, ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 3–21.

24. Gundry, Mark, 58.

25. In an ancient Jewish work, Books of Adam and Eve 37:1–3, Seth and Eve went to the gates of Paradise, and “a serpent, a beast, attacked and bit Seth.” Eve rebuked it in a loud voice: “Cursed beast! How is it that you were not afraid to throw yourself at the image of God, but have dared to attack it? And how were your teeth made strong?” Jeffrey B. Gibson (in “Jesus’ Wilderness Temptation According to Mark,” JSNT 53 [1994]: 21–23) argues that being with the beasts does not indicate communion with them but their subordination to Jesus. In T. Ben. 5:2; T. Iss. 7:7; T. Naph. 8:4, 6, the imagery of God’s watchcare in Ps. 91 is used to argue that those who are faithful will be protected by the angels, and the beasts will become subject to them. According to T. Iss. 7:3, the wild beasts have power only over those who sin.

26. This same verb (diakoneo) means “to serve food” in Mark 1:31. In 1 Kings 19:5–8 Elijah fled into the desert, ready to quit and die, and an angel came to him in a dream and twice said: “Get up and eat.” When he ate and drank, he went to Horeb on the strength of that food forty days and nights. According to Ex. 14:19, an angel of God went before and behind Israel in the desert (see also 23:20, 23; 32:34; 33:2).

27. Robert H. Stein, Playing by the Rules: A Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 11–12.

28. Marcus, The Way of the Lord, 22. The wilderness is the place where it was expected that a second exodus would occur (Isa. 40:3; Ezek. 20:35–38), one that would surpass the first—there would be no haste and no flight in fear (Isa. 52:1–12), and the wilderness would be changed into a paradise (51:3). See Ulrich W. Mauser, Christ in the Wilderness: The Wilderness Theme in the Second Gospel and Its Basis in the Biblical Tradition (SBT 39; Naperville, Ill.: Alec R. Allenson, 1963), 51.

29. Bilezikian, The Liberated Gospel, 58.

30. Gundry, Mark, 59.

31. Eduard Schweizer, “The Portrayal of the Life of Faith in the Gospel of Mark,” Interpreting the Gospels, ed. James Luther Mays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 175.

32. Juel, Mark, 37.

1. See Cranfield, Mark, 62.

2. The word “gospel” is used only by the narrator (1:1, 14) and by Jesus (1:15; 8:35; 10:29; 13:10; 14:9). “Of God” in the phrase “the gospel of God” (see Rom. 1:1; 15:16; 2 Cor. 11:7; 1 Thess. 2:2, 8–9) may be taken as a subjective genitive, meaning “the gospel that comes from God,” or as an objective genitive, meaning “the gospel about God” that has been committed to Jesus to proclaim. In 8:35 and 10:29, Jesus and the gospel are synonymous.

3. Marcus, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, 152.

4. The phrase is Anderson’s definition of kairos (in Mark, 84).

5. George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 218, defines the kingdom of God as “the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among men, and that this Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver men from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God’s reign. The Kingdom of God involves two great moments: fulfillment within history and consummation at the end of history.” See further, C. C. Caragounis, “Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992), 416–30; and Bruce Chilton, ed., The Kingdom of God in the Teaching of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).

6. Marshall, Faith As a Theme, 34. See the Old Testament confessions of God as king: 1 Sam. 12:12; 1 Chron. 29:11; Pss. 47; 93; 96; 97; 99; 103:19; 145:10–13; Isa. 43:15; Jer. 10:7; Mal. 1:14.

7. “The gospel of God” does not form an inclusio with the opening phrase in 1:1, “the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God,” to mark off 1:1–15 as a unit. The two refer to different things. The first is the gospel about Jesus; the second is what Jesus preaches about God.

8. H. H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic, 2d ed. (London: Lutterworth, 1944), 36.

9. Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe (Louisville: Westminster, 1993), 16–19.

10. See R. T. France, Divine Government: God’s Kingship in the Gospel of Mark (London: SPCK, 1990).

11. Walter Wink, “Demons and DMINs: The Church’s Response to the Demonic,” RevExp 89 (1992): 508.

12. John Bowker, Jesus and the Pharisees (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973), 44.

13. A late rabbinic tradition (y. Mak. 2:6, 31d) draws out the contrast between the harsh, judgmental approach to sinners and the goodness of a God who “instructs sinners in his ways” (Ps. 25:8) and who “teaches them the way to repentance.” “They asked wisdom, ‘As to a sinner, what is his punishment?’ She said to them, ‘Evil pursues sinners’ [Prov. 13:21]. They asked prophecy, ‘As to a sinner, what is his punishment?’ She said to them, ‘The soul that sins, shall die’ [Ezek. 18:4]. They asked the Holy One, blessed be he, ‘As to a sinner, what is his punishment?’ He answered, ‘Let the sinner repent, and his sin shall be forgiven for him.’”

14. David Head, He Sent Leanness (New York: Macmillan, 1959), 19, cited by William H. Willimon, Remember Who You Are: Baptism, A Model for Christian Life (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1980), 53.

15. Schweizer, Mark, 32.

16. William Peatman, The Beginning of the Gospel: Mark’s Story of Jesus (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), 15.

17. Marshall, Faith As a Theme, 56 (see the discussion in 51–56).

1. The next unit begins with Jesus’ returning to the sea and calling another to follow him (2:13–14).

2. So Waetjen, A Reordering of Power, 78.

3. Gundry, Mark, 70.

4. As Gundry aptly titles this incident (Mark, 73). On Mark’s presentation of Jesus as a teacher, see R. T. France, “Mark and the Teaching of Jesus,” in Gospel Perspectives Volume I, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield: JSOT, 1980), 101–36.

5. Geddert, Watchwords, 266 n.55. William Manson (Jesus the Messiah [London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1961], 35) writes: “The rabbis taught, and nothing happened, Jesus taught, and all kind of things happened.”

6. The cry, “What do you want with us?” (lit., “What between you and me?” 1:24) is the same cry used by the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17:18 and the king of the Ammonites in Judg. 11:12 as a defensive maneuver. Similarly, in the Books of Adam and Eve 11:2, Eve says to the devil, “What have you to do with us? What have we done to you, that you should pursue us with deceit? Why does your malice fall on us?” Names frequently appear as incantations in the ancient magical papyri because it was believed that knowing the name of a power or enemy gave one a tactical advantage in defeating it.

7. Gundry, Mark, 76.

8. Guelich, Mark, 56–57.

9. Achtemeier, “Mark,” 4:553.

10. Julius Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, trans. F. Rosner (New York: Sanhedrin, 1978), 160. See John 4:52 and Acts 28:7–10 (fever and dysentery) for other instances of fever in the New Testament.

11. Philo expanded on this list of divine chastisements in his On Rewards and Punishments, 143. Fever heads the list, and Philo regarded it and other diseases as the wages of impiety and disobedience. The rabbis had reputed cures for fever (b. Git. 67b; b. Shabb. 66b); but because of the influence of the biblical texts, they regarded fever as both demonic (caused, for example, by dancing in the moonlight, b. Ned. 41a; b. Git. 70a) and as a divine punishment (b. Ber. 34b).

12. b. Ned. 41a.

13. The “many” is a Semitism for the “all” (see 10:45; cf. Matt 8:16; Luke 4:40).

14. Jesus prays in Mark three times—here at the beginning of his ministry, in the middle (6:46), and before the end (14:35–36)—always alone, at night, and at times of tension.

15. The verb “looking for” (zeteo) is always used by Mark in a negative sense. Jesus’ family is “looking for” him to take him back home because they think he is beside himself (3:32). The Pharisees “ask for” a sign from him, which is what only an evil generation would do (8:11–12). The high priests and elders “began looking for” how to destroy him (11:18; cf. 12:12; 14:1) and later “were looking for” false witnesses against him (14:55). Judas was watching for a good time to betray him (14:11). The women were “looking for” a dead body at the tomb (16:6). The seekers are always wrong. Kelber (Mark’s Story, 22) notes the subtle disagreement. The disciples want to repeat the glory of the previous day, while Jesus is oriented toward new places and the future and plans to move elsewhere.

16. Jacob Milgrom (Leviticus 1–16 [AB; New York: Doubleday, 1991], 816–20) translates the Hebrew as “scale disease.” See also J. Baumgarten, “The 4Q Zadokite Fragments on Skin Disease,” JJS 41 (1990): 159, 162; Kenneth V. Mull and Carolyn Sandquist Mull, “Biblical Leprosy: Is It Really?” BibRev 8 (April 1992): 32–39, 62.

17. b. Sanh. 47ab.

18. A later rabbinic tradition sentences lepers to forty lashes for entering precincts forbidden to them (b. Pesah. 67a; t. B. Qam. 1:8).

19. According to a tradition in Lev. Rab. 16:3, a rabbi, “when he saw a leper, would throw stones at him and shout: ‘Go to your place and do not defile other people.’”

20. The snorting could be connected to Jesus’ warfare with Satan and might reflect the strain of the struggle. Possibly, the man’s flattery implied that if Jesus did not help, he was less powerful than others judged him to be.

21. Literally, he “cast him out,” but the verb need not entail force or displeasure. In James 2:25, this word has the meaning “speed on one’s way” (see also Matt. 7:4–5; 12:35; 13:52).

22. According to m. Meg. 3:1; 4:7–10, only a priest may declare lepers clean or unclean (see Lev. 13:3; t. Meg. 1:1). Even if the priest is ignorant of what to say, he is the one who must say it and must therefore be instructed what to say (CD 13:5–6).

23. Lane, Mark, 88.

24. William Wrede, The Messianic Secret (London: James Clarke, 1971) argued that the “messianic secret” did not go back to Jesus but was a theological invention of the Evangelist that was read back into the story of Jesus to cover up the fact that the historical Jesus never made any messianic claims for himself and was not recognized as the Messiah by his disciples until after his resurrection. It explained why Jesus was neither acclaimed nor recognized as the Messiah during his earthly ministry. See further the introduction and essays in C. M. Tuckett (ed.), The Messianic Secret (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), and James L. Blevins, The Messianic Secret in Markan Research 1901–1976 (Washington, D.C.: Univ. Press of America, 1981).

25. Hengel, Mark, 43. Tolbert (Sowing, 227–28) contends that “the author’s intention in fashioning the secrecy passages is not to propose that Jesus remained unknown and did not attract crowds but rather to verify that Jesus did not seek for himself renown or glory, although the spread of fame and the growth of multitudes around him was inescapable, given who he was and what he did. It was not his desire but his fate.”

26. Williams (Other Followers of Jesus, 134–35) notes that after the disobedience of the deaf man (7:36–37) the next scene also begins with a large hungry mob in the desert (8:1). John J. Pilch (“Secrecy in the Mediterranean World: An Anthropological Perspective, BTB 24 [1994]: 155) points out that “an existence that allows little or no privacy is very exhausting.”

27. Hooker (Mark, 59) comments that the scene “conveys vividly the power and authority which he exercises.” Gundry (Mark, 67) also notes “how great must be the power of Jesus to induce that kind of conduct.”

28. Ernst Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus (MeyerK; 2 Aufl.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963), 32.

29. Unlike those who are sick, those identified as controlled by demons in Mark have extraordinary strength (5:4) and suffer violently (5:5; 9:22). They are agitated by Jesus’ presence, usually howl their alarm (1:24; 5:7), and cause some kind of damage, harm, or noise when they leave. See Graham Twelftree, Christ Triumphant: Exorcism Then and Now (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), 71.

30. G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 109. Paul identifies his thorn in the flesh as from Satan (2 Cor. 12:4). See 1 Enoch 7:3–4 for an explication of Gen. 6:1–4; 15:9–11: “The spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle and work destruction on the earth and cause trouble.”

31. Ernest Best, “Exorcism in the New Testament and Today,” Biblical Theology 27 (1977): 3. We distinguish between the evil of what we call a natural disaster, earthquake, monsoon, tornado and the evil that lies in personal sin.

32. Twelftree, Christ Triumphant, 175, citing CD III/3. 519.

33. Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 278–79.

34. Achtemeier, “Mark,” 5:555.

35. David E. Garland, “‘I Am the Lord Your Healer’: Mark 1:21–2:12,” RevExp 85 (1985): 327–43.

36. See Lev. 14:34; 26:21; Num. 12:1–15; Deut. 24:8–9; 28:27; 2 Kings 5:20–27; 15:5; 2 Chron. 26:20; in a fragment of CD 4Q270, lepers are listed in a category of transgressors; see also the later tradition in b. ‘Arak. 15b–16a; Lev. Rab. 17:3. The tattered clothing prescribed for the leper in Lev. 13:45 was interpreted in Targum Onkelos as a sign of mourning, presumably for the leper’s godless life for which he was now suffering punishment.

37. God worked by stretching out his hand (Ex. 4:4; 7:19; 8:1; 9:22; 14:16, 21, 26).

38. See Anderson, Mark, 204.

39. See m. ’Abot 1:6, which advises one to choose a teacher.

40. Marshall, Faith As a Theme, 136.

41. Schweizer, Mark, 48.

42. Walter Wink, “The Parable of the Compassionate Samaritan: A Communal Exegesis Approach,” RevExp 76 (1979): 203.

43. Hooker, Mark, 79.

44. Jimmy Allen, a pastor and former president of his denomination’s convention, tells the tragic story of how AIDS infected four members of his family (Burden of a Secret: A Story of Truth and Mercy [Nashville: Moorings, 1995]). His daughter-in-law was infected by the virus through a transfusion, which she passed on to two of her children. When his son, also a minister, turned to his church for support, they asked him to resign. They met with similar rebuffs from other churches they later tried to attend.

45. David L. Schiedemayer, “Choices in Plague Time,” Christianity Today 31 (Aug. 7, 1987): 22.

46. Morton T. Kelsey, Psychology, Medicine & Christian Healing: A Revised and Expanded Edition of Healing & Christianity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).

47. Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 99–100.

48. For a thorough interactive discussion on this issue, see Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views, ed. Wayne A. Grudem (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996). This book discusses four different views on this subject advocated by Christians today, each one written by a strong proponent of his particular view.

49. Kelsey, Psychology, Medicine & Christian Healing, 24.

50. See Ted Schwarz, Faith or Fraud? Healing in the Name of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993).

1. G. H. Dalman, Sacred Sites and Ways (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 69.

2. Jesus sees faith in action. The determined friends must have believed that Jesus has the power to heal, if only they could just reach him. Faith in Mark means more than simple belief; it shows itself in actions. It is not thwarted by the obstructions of crowds (see also 10:46–52), ritual taboos (1:40–45; 5:25–34), or social rebuffs (7:24–30).

3. P. von der Osten-Saken, “Streitgespräch und Parabel als Formen markinischer Christologie,” in Jesus Christus in Historie und Geschichte, ed. G. Strecker (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1975), 376–81. Scribes appear alone as opponents in 1:22; 2:6; 3:22; 9:11, 14; 12:28, 38. They appear with the Pharisees in 2:16 and 7:15, and with the elders and chief priests in 8:31; 11:27; 14:43, 53; 15:1.

4. See Ex. 34:7; 2 Sam. 12:13; Pss. 32:1–5; 51:1–4; 103:2–3; 130:4; Isa. 6:7; 43:25; 44:22; Dan. 9:9; Zech. 3:4.

5. Marshall, Faith As a Theme, 185. The question of blasphemy is unspoken now, but it will reappear publicly at Jesus’ interrogation before the high priest and will accelerate his condemnation to death.

6. 1 Sam. 16:7; 1 Chron. 28:9; Ps. 139:1–2; Jer. 17:9–10; Sir. 42:18–20; Luke 16:15; Acts 1:24; 15:8; Rom. 8:27; 1 Thess. 2:4; Rev. 2:23.

7. Those who glorify God are not identified as “the crowd,” but as “all.” Is the “all” meant to include the skeptical teachers of the law? If so, then this incident is a controversy story of a quite different stripe. Those who have questioned Jesus secretly in their hearts are persuaded that what he says is valid because of what he has done. The proof is in the pudding. Later, after a series of controversies, “teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem” will reach a quite different conclusion about the source of his success (3:22).

8. See, most recently, Delbert Burkett, “The Nontitular Son of Man: A History and Critique,” NTS 40 (1994): 514–21. See also I. Howard Marshall, “Son of Man,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992), 775–81.

9. “Son” may be a term of endearment like “daughter” (5:34, 41). He addresses the disciples with this term (10:24), and it is a term used for the childlike reception of the kingdom (9:36–37, 42; 10:13–16).

10. Ernst Haenchen, Der Weg Jesu (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1966), 101. Pesch (Das Markusevangelium, 1:156) suggests that the friends are responding to Jesus’ preaching of a merciful God who forgives sins and for this reason bring their friend.

11. The Scripture treats sickness as something caused by God as a chastisement for sin or by some evil power (see Ex. 15:26; Deut. 7:15; 28:22–28; 32:39; Job 2:5–6; Pss. 41:3–4; 103:3; 107:17; Isa. 19:22; 38:16–17; 57:17–19; John 5:14; 9:2–3; Acts 5:1–11; 12:20–23; 1 Cor. 11:30; James 5:16). The assumption is that God is in total control of illness. According to a later rabbinic tradition (b. Ned. 41a), “R. Alexandri said in the name of R. Chiyya b. Abba: A sick man does not recover from his sickness until all his sins are forgiven him, as it is written, ‘Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases’ (Ps. 103:3).”

12. Juel, Mark, 46.

13. John Young, “Health, Healing and Modern Medicine,” in The Gospel in Contemporary Culture, ed. Hugh Montefiore (London: Mowbray, 1992), 157.

14. Anderson, Mark, 100.

15. John R. Donahue, “Miracles, Mystery and Parable,” Way 18 (1978): 253.

16. Walter Wink, The Bible in Human Transformation: Toward a New Paradigm for Biblical Study (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), 49–65.

17. Cited by Kat Duff, The Alchemy of Illness (New York: Bell Tower, 1993), 50.

18. Leonard I. Sweet, Health and Medicine in the Evangelical Tradition (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1994), 142.

19. Ibid., 142.

1. In 2:18–22 and 2:23–28, we find parallel patterns of question (2:18, 24), argumentation (2:19–20, 25–26), and double answer: first answer (2:21, 27), second answer (2:22, 28).

2. See, further, John R. Donahue, “Tax Collectors and Sinners: An Attempt at Identification,” CBQ 33 (1971): 39–61.

3. Minear, Mark, 60.

4. D, Θ, 565, f¹³ (except 346), Tatian.

5. Anderson, Mark, 103.

6. Gundry, Mark, 125.

7. Gundry (Mark, 134) argues that it is the irresistible force of Jesus’ new teaching with authority that creates the split. “The point is solely in the power of the new. Mark means the sayings to indicate again that Jesus’ authoritative pronouncements end all discussions. They brook no contradiction. They slam the door against all doubt. The story ends without debate.”

8. Hooker, Mark, 101.

9. To make a path through someone’s grainfield was illegal for all but the king. If this action is an open proclamation of kingship, it is suppressed to focus on the issues of the interpretation of the Sabbath laws and the authority of Jesus.

10. Jesus’ answer refers to Abiathar instead of Ahimelech, who was the priest involved in this incident (according to 1 Sam. 21:1–6). Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son, who barely escaped the massacre of the priests ordered by King Saul when he discovered what had happened. While one might point to the confusion between these two priests in the Old Testament (1 Sam. 22:20; 30:7; 2 Sam. 8:17; 1 Chron. 18:16; 24:6) or suggest a scribal mistake, the explanation for the mention of Abiathar lies elsewhere. The text does not say that David came to Abiathar but that this event happened when Abiathar was high priest. Abiathar is specifically identified as the high priest and was more than just a priest, as Ahimelech was. The term reflects the convention of eponymous dating (see Luke 3:2), and Abiathar was the high priest during David’s reign and especially linked to him. Another alternative is to interpret the Greek phrase epi Abiathar as a reference to the general section in the book of Samuel, as the phrase in 12:26, epi tou batou, “at the bush,” refers to the passage in Exodus (so J. W. Wenham, “Mark 2, 26,” JTS 1 [1950]: 156). Still another explanation attributes the discrepancy to dual traditions embedded in the Old Testament accounts in 1–2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles. The minor tradition reversed the roles Abiathar and Ahimelech, and Jesus and/or Mark drew upon it (M. K. Mulholland, “Abiathar,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992], 1.)

11. The incident assumes that the implied listeners already embrace Jesus as an authoritative interpreter of the law and are interested in his argumentation and directives. It is unlikely that this argument would convince the unconverted, but it would reinforce the convictions and practice of Christians. Legalists are more at home with rules and propositions and always seem to have trouble with narrative. What are they to do with a case like David?

12. G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 47.

13. The disciples choose not to go hungry, but one is not supposed to fast on the Sabbath (see Judith 8:6; Jub. 50:12; m.Sabb. 16:2; m.Ta‘an. 1:6; b. Sabb. 118–19).

14. Gundry, Mark, 142.

15. Jesus has healed on the Sabbath before (1:21–28, 29–31), and no one raised any objections.

16. In the biblical idiom it is synonymous with a fat heart, a stiff neck, blind eyes, and deaf ears.

17. J. D. M. Derrett, “Christ and the Power of Choice (Mark 3,1–6),” Bib 65 (1984): 172, contends that this man would have stood out when the congregation stood for prayer and raised both hands to shoulder height, palms outward, in prayer. A withered hand is frequently the punishment for stretching out one’s hand to reach for something sinful (see Ps. 137:5; Zech. 11:17). Jeroboam’s hand “dried up” when he tried to take action against the rebellious prophets (1 Kings 13:4–6). His condition would have been regarded as proof of unconfessed sin that had not escaped God’s notice (see Ps. 32:1–5).

18. Minear, Mark, 63.

19. Since the man is not in any mortal danger but suffers from a chronic disease, his affliction can wait. All of the rabbis agreed that saving a life overrides the Sabbath (see m. Yoma 8:6). They disagreed on the scriptural basis for this conclusion (see Mekilta Shabbata 1 on Ex. 31:12).

20. Josephus, J.W. 1.16.6 § 319; Ant. 14.15.10 § 450.

21. See Ps. 37:31–33; Isa. 29:20–21; Jer. 20:10–11.

22. For the various views of the Pharisees in contemporary debate, compare Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973); Elias Rivkin, The Hidden Revolution: The Pharisees’ Search for the Kingdom Within (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978); Anthony J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1988); E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law From Jerusalem to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990); idem, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992); and Günter Stemberger, Jewish Contemporaries of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).

23. See Origen, Against Celsus, 3.59–65.

24. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 117.

25. See Johannes Behm, “νῆστις κτλ.,” TDNT 4:929–31.

26. See the discussion of 9:29, below.

27. According to the Psalms of Solomon 3:6–8, the righteous one can atone “for [sins of] ignorance by fasting and humbling his soul, and the Lord will cleanse every devout person and his house.” In the Apocalypse of Elijah 1:21–22, fasting is said to release sin, heal diseases, and cast out demons, and is effective even up to the throne of God.

28. See 1 Sam. 31:13; 2 Sam. 1:12; 3:35; 12:21; 1 Kings 21:27; Est. 4:3; Pss. 35:13–14, 69:10; Isa. 58:5.

29. Mekilta Shabbata 1 to Ex. 31:13.

30. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 29.

31. George B. Caird and L. D. Hurst (New Testament Theology [Oxford: Clarendon, 1994], 386–87) comment, “The Sabbath was therefore the chief, almost the sole, safeguard against the lapse of Jews into beliefs and practices of their pagan neighbours, and to take away this safeguard meant the end of Judaism. The Pharisees believed they were fighting for the very existence of Israel.”

32. The strict observance of the Sabbath by Jews was so proverbial that the emperor Augustus said that not even a Jew fasts on the Sabbath as diligently as he did on a certain day (Suetonius, Augustus 76.2).

33. In “The Devil’s Dictionary,” Ambrose Bierce defines the Christian as “one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual need of his neighbor,” and the Christian version of the fourth commandment is, “Remember the seventh day to make thy neighbor keep it wholly.”

34. William H. Willimon, “Lord of the Sabbath,” Christian Century 108 (1991): 515.

35. For the debate on Sabbath and Sunday, see Donald A. Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982); and Tamara C. Eskenazi, Daniel J. Harrington, and William H. Shea, eds., The Sabbath in Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Crossroad, 1991).

36. Compare Ex. 20:11, which recalls God’s rest on the seventh day of creation, and Deut. 5:15, which connects the Sabbath to the exodus from Egypt.

37. Bill. J. Leonard, Way of God Across the Ages: Using Christian History in Preaching (Greenville, N.C.: Smith and Helwys, 1991), 51–53.

38. Tony Campolo, The Kingdom of God Is a Party (Dallas: Word, 1990), 3–9.

39. Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting Jesus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983), 74, citing Carlos Alberto Libanto Christo.

40. Thomas G. Long, Shepherd and Bathrobes (Lima, Ohio: C. S. S. Publishing, 1987), 68–69.

41. Philo, On the Special Laws 2.60.

42. Heschel, The Sabbath, 1.

43. Ibid., 10.

44. David T. Williams, “The Sabbath: Mark of Distinction,” Themelios 14 (1989): 98.

45. Lohmeyer, Markusevangelium, 68.

1. Swete (Mark, 54) contends that the open beach was safer than the narrow streets of a village.

2. Jesus must make take precautions to escape in a boat in case they mob him (3:9). They swarm around his house so that he is unable even to eat (3:20), and he is almost trapped in his own home.

3. The crowds “fall upon him” (epipipto) and the demons “fall before him” (prospipto).

4. See, for example, Swete, Mark, 57.

5. See Howard Clark Kee, “The Terminology of Mark’s Exorcism Stories,” NTS 14 (1968): 232–46; J. Kilgallen, “The Messianic Secret and Mark’s Purposes,” BTB 7 (1977): 60. This view is challenged by Guelich (Mark, 148–49), who contends that the demons are not in a power struggle with Jesus and that the problem stated by Mark is that they knew Jesus to be the Son of God (1:34; 3:11) and that he did not want them to make it known. The dramatic of revelation demons, no matter how doctrinally correct their confession might be, does not divulge who Jesus is. His self-giving death on a cross reveals him to be the Son of God (15:39).

6. See John 15:16; cf. Isa. 49:1; Jer. 1:5; Amos 7:15; Gal. 1:15.

7. See Num. 1:1–19, 44, where God commands Moses to take a man from each tribe “to help [him]” (1:4) as representatives of the “heads of the clans of Israel” (1:16). The men were registered according to their clans (1:18) to represent their ancestral house (1:44) in military service. The importance of the symbolic significance of twelve can be seen in the church’s felt need to replace Judas (Acts 1:15–26).

8. It was assumed in this culture that “as a man is named, so is he” (Hans Bietenhard, “ὄνομα,” TDNT 5:254). Boanerges means nothing in Greek and is probably a transliteration from Aramaic. It could mean “sons of feeling,” which implies that they are excitable, or “sons of anger,” which implies that they are angry young men (see Luke 9:54).

9. On the symbolism of the Twelve, see E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 106.

10. The origin of the term Beelzebub is vague, but Mark clearly understands him to be “the prince of demons.”

11. Other examples occur in 5:21–43; 6:7–31; 11:12–25; 14:1–11; 14:53–72. Paul J. Achtemeier (“Mark As Interpreter of the Jesus Tradition,” Int 32 [1978]: 346) writes: “By bracketing one tradition within another, he tells us he thinks that they share some point, clearer, usually, in one of them than the other.” It clarifies their message more sharply or has a rhetorical effect, such as heightening the dramatic tension, creating irony, or adding emphasis. See also James R. Edwards, “Markan Sandwiches: The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives,” NovT 31 (1989): 193–216.

12. Edwards, “Markan Sandwiches,” 210.

13. Mark implies that they are quite unable to drive out unclean spirits (1:27).

14. The same thing was said about John the Baptist (Matt. 11:18; Luke 7:33). The charge is ominous. According to later rabbinic tradition, Jesus was condemned to death for practicing sorcery and misleading the people (b. Sanh. 43a; 107b; b. Sota 47a; t. Sabb. 11:15; see also Justin, Dial. 69:7).

15. The emphasis is not on the strong man’s ability to plunder but on the certainty that he will plunder.

16. The verb “to tie up” recurs in 5:3, where Mark narrates the inability of the townspeople “to bind” the so-called Gerasene demoniac even with chains.

17. Geddert, Watchwords, 42.

18. Ibid., 44.

19. Ibid., 43. In 11:27–12:44, Jesus no longer even defends himself against charges by his opponents but goes on the offensive against them.

20. Ibid., 43–44.

21. Lane, Mark, 28.

22. Ernst Fuchs, Studies of the Historical Jesus (London: SCM), 129.

23. Contrast Jub. 15:34, where the unpardonable sin is the failure to circumcise one’s sons.

24. Alan Hugh McNeile, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (London: Macmillan, 1915), 179. Matthew Black (in An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts [3d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1967], 140 n.3) contends that the word “sin” derives from a mistranslation of the underlying Aramaic word, which means “condemnation.” See the critique of this view in Gundry, Mark, 183.

25. E. M. Blaiklock, The Young Man Mark: Studies in Some Aspects of Mark and His Gospel (Exeter: Paternoster, 1965), 31.

26. Achtemeier, “Mark,” 4:549.

27. Obviously, Jesus’ family came to a new understanding after the resurrection (see Act 1:14), and his brothers became leaders in the Jesus movement (see Acts 15; 21:17–26; 1 Cor. 9:5; and the letters of James and Jude). We therefore should not use this text to castigate Jesus’ immediate family but should read ourselves, as the latest additions to his family, into the story. If those closest to Jesus could have misunderstood him and tried to impede his mission, then we are no less vulnerable to the same failing, even after the cross and resurrection. We therefore should take care to guard against it.

28. Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus (A. L. Burt, 1897), 97–98.

29. Stephen G. Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew (SNTSMS 80; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 23–56, 220–21.

30. Louis Feldman (Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993], 196–99) observes that Christianity differs from Judaism “in its very essence.” “Jews historically have defined themselves as a people, a nation, a family, whence we can understand the Talmudic formulation [b. Qidd. 68b] defining the born Jew as one who has a Jewish mother (a biological rather than a credal definition); religion is an accoutrement of the nation.” Christianity, on the other hand, was the “first religion devoid of nationalistic connection” and was attacked for it by ancient critics.

31. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Fontana: 1960), 52–53.

32. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garrett (New York: Random House, 1929), 305.

33. F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts (NICNT, rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 77–78.

34. David P. Gushee, The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: A Christian Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 165.

35. Elinor J. Brecher, “Schindler’s Legacy: True Stories of the List Survivors (New York: Plume/Penguin, 1994), 64.

36. Martin Luther, “On the Councils and the Churches,” Works of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1931), 5:161.

37. Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1976), 38.

38. Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 106–31.

39. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 105.

40. As cited by Gilbert Meilaender, Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics (London: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 16–24.

41. See, for example, Sidney Cobb, “Social Support As a Moderator of Life Stress,” Psychosomatic Medicine 38 (1976): 300–14; N. D. Colletta and C. H. Gregg, “Adolescent Mothers’ Vulnerability to Stress,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 169 (1981): 50–54; James Garbarino, “Using Natural-Helping Networks to Meet the Problem of Child Maltreatment,” in Schools and the Problem of Child Abuse, eds. R. Volpe, M. Breton, and J. Mitton (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1979); B. H. Gottlieb, “Social Networks and Social Support in Community Mental Health,” in Social Networks and Social Support, ed. B. H. Gottlieb (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981); Marc Pilisuk, “Delivery of Social Support: The Social Inoculation,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 52 (1982): 20–31; Marc Pilisuk and Susan Parks, “Social Support and Family Stress,” Marriage and Family Review 6 (1983): 137–56; D. Scheinfeld, D. Bowles, S. Tuck, and R. Gold, “Parents’ Values, Family Networks and Family Development: Working with Disadvantaged Families,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 40 (1970): 413–25.

42. J. Henry and J. Cassel, “Psychosocial Factors in Essential Hypertension: Recent Epidemiological and Animal Experimental Evidence,” American Journal of Epidemiology 104 (1976): 1–8.

43. As he did on the cross with the beloved disciple and his mother (John 19:26–27).

44. For other work on the implications of this passage, see David E. Garland and Diana R. Garland, “The Family: Biblical and Theological Perspectives,” in Incarnational Ministry: The Presence of Christ in Church, Society, and Family: Essays in Honor of Ray Anderson, ed. Christian D. Kettler and Todd H. Speidell (Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1990), 226–40.; Diana S. Richmond Garland, “An Ecosystemic Perspective for Family Ministry,” RevExp 86 (1989): 195–207; idem, Church Agencies: Caring for Children and Families in Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare League of America, 1994); Rodney Clapp, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1993).

1. “Sowing” appears in 4:3, 4, 14, 15 [2x], 16, 18, 20, 31, 32 and is defined as “sowing the word” (v. 14). The noun “seed” appears in vv. 26, 27 and is referred to in vv. 4, 5, 7, 8, 15, 16, 18, 20, 31. “Word” appears in vv. 14, 15 [2x], 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 33 (see 2:2; 5:36), and “soil” (“earth”) in 4:2, 5, 8, 20, 26, 31.

2. Hooker, Mark, 125, drawing on the arguments of Birger Gerhardsson, “The Parable of the Sower and Its Interpretation,” NTS 14 (1968): 165–93.

3. Geddert, Watchwords, 82. The verb recurs in 6:11, 14, 20, 29; 7:25, 37; 8:18; 9:7; 12:29; 13:7.

4. An inverted parallelism or crossover of parallel ideas that are repeated in reverse order.

5. See Greg Fay, “Introduction to Incomprehension: The Literary Structure of Mark 4:1–34,” CBQ 51 (1989): 65–81.

6. Of the “many similar parables” (4:33) we get only five and only one interpretation. The term parable (parabole) is related to the Hebrew word mashal in the Old Testament, which could be used for short popular sayings, ethical maxims, oracles, wisdom discourses or short utterances, scornful, satirical sayings, allegories, riddles, and fables. See further, K. R. Snodgrass, “Parable,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992), 591–601.

7. Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (rev. ed.; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), 11–12.

8. Ibid., 150.

9. On the history of parable interpretation that challenges these assumptions, see Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1990). The parable is realistic in recounting Palestinian methods of sowing but is less than realistic in not mentioning any plowing of the field, the fact that some yield comes from even bad soil, or the fact that the good soil faces no hazards from the birds or thorns.

10. A textual variant occurs in 4:8, 20. The best reading is hen (one), which refers to each plant: One yields thirty grains, another sixty, and another one hundred. Pliny mentioned that wheat with branching ears yielded one hundred grains (Natural History 18.21.94–95; see also 18.40.162; Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants 8.7.4; Varro, On Agriculture 1n.44.1–3; Strabo, Geography 10.3.11; Columella, On Agriculture 2n.9.5–6). John H. Martin, Warren H. Leonard, and David L. Stamp (Principles of Field Crop Production [New York: Macmillan, 1976], 436) write that wheat “normally produce two or three tillers under typical crowded field conditions, but individual plants on fertile soil with ample space may produce as many as 30 to 100 tillers. The average spike (head) of common wheat contains 25 to 30 grains in 14 to 17 spikelets. Large spikes may contain 50 to 75 grains.”

11. Sib. Oracles 3:261–64: “For the Heavenly One gave the earth in common to all and fidelity, and excellent reason in their breasts. For these alone the fertile soil yields fruit from one-to a hundredfold, and the measures of God are produced” (cited by Marcus, Mystery, 42–43).

12. Some might argue that the losses help build tension before the mention of the climactic harvest.

13. Matthew Black, “The Parables as Allegory,” BJRL 42 (1959–60): 278.

14. Blomberg (Interpreting the Parables, 68–69) comments: “The parables of Jesus are sufficiently similar to other demonstrably allegorical works that many of them too must probably be recognized as allegories. The Gospel parables … are allegories, and they probably teach several lessons apiece. This does not mean that every detail must stand for something.”

15. John W. Sider, “Proportional Analogy in the Gospel Parables,” NTS 31 (1985): 18–19; see also his recently published book, Interpreting the Parables: A Literary Analysis of Their Meaning (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).

16. See also 2 Apoc. Bar. 70:2; 1 Enoch 62:8; Ignatius, To the Ephesians 9.1.

17. Bearing fruit is a rich image in Scripture; see Isa. 27:6; Ezek. 17:23; John 15:8, 16; Rom. 7:4; Phil. 1:11, 22; Col. 1:6, 10; Titus 3:14; Heb. 6:7; 12:11; 2 Peter 1:8.

18. Marcus, Mystery, 46. Behind this concept (and also here) is the Old Testament idea of God’s secret (Job 15:8; Ps. 25:14; Prov. 3:32; Amos 3:7). Cranfield (Mark, 152) writes: “The idea that God’s thoughts and ways are not men’s, but that they are his secret, which is not obvious to human wisdom but which he may reveal to those whom he chooses, was familiar to everyone who listened attentively in the synagogue.”

19. R. T. France, Divine Government, 36–37.

20. Cranfield, Mark, 153.

21. Geddert, Watchwords, 154.

22. The passive voice refers to God, who gives the secret. It “is not something which men discover by their own insight: it can only be known by God’s revelation” (Cranfield, Mark, 154).

23. Geddert, Watchwords, 76; see also Marshall, Faith As a Theme, 62.

24. Joel Marcus, “Mark 4:10–12 and Marcan Epistemology,” JBL 103 (1984): 566.

25. James R. Edwards, “Markan Sandwiches: The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives,” NovT 31 (1989): 215.

26. C. F. D. Moule (“Mark 4:1–20 Yet Once More,” Neotestamentica et Semitica, eds. E. E. Ellis and M. Wilcox [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1969], 99–100) argues that Isa. 6:9–10, in spite of the purpose clause, was not God’s instruction to the prophet to make his message unintelligible. “It is only reasonable to take the final clauses as, at most, a vigorous way of stating the inevitable, as those by a very forceful indicative clause.” Hooker (Mark, 128) comments: “Jewish thought tended to blur the distinction between purpose and result; if God was sovereign, then of course what happened must be his will, however strange this appeared.”

27. B. Hollenbach, “Lest They Should Turn Again and Be Forgiven: Irony,” BibTrans 34 (1983): 320.

28. The prophet Ezekiel also had to endure a people who had eyes to see but did not see, and ears to hear but did not hear (Ezek. 12:2–3). They did not listen to his announcement of judgment because they believed that it only applied to distant times (12:27). He laments that the people think his preaching is unclear, only riddles and allegories (17:2; 20:49).

29. Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979), 27–29.

30. At Qumran a similar idea is expressed. According to 1QS 5:11–12, the wicked ones who are outside the covenant are those who have not “sought nor examined his decrees in order to know the hidden things in which they err by their own fault and because they treated revealed matters with disrespect.”

31. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “Echoes and Foreshadowings in Mark 4–8: Reading and Rereading,” JBL 112 (1993): 225.

32. France, Divine Government, 40.

33. James G. Williams, Gospel Against Parable: Mark’s Language of Mystery (Sheffield: Almond, 1985), 63.

34. For some time scholars have argued that Jesus did not use allegory and that parables do not need interpretation. Therefore, they have assumed that when a parable includes an interpretation, the early church added the interpretation. One can make a case that the interpretation of the parable of the sower does go back to Jesus.

35. (1) The version of the parable in the Gospel of Thomas does not include an interpretation, and some scholars assume that it is an independent witness to early tradition. This assumption is doubtful, and the interpretation could have been omitted because this work intentionally deletes explanations to keep Jesus’ teaching arcane. (2) Some argue that the allegorical interpretation of the parable misses the supposed eschatological point, which has to do with the miraculous harvest at the end of time. This argument begs the question if that is not the key point of the parable. The interpretation is not out of balance with the parable. If the emphasis is on the abundant harvest, the interpretation gives it the same amount of attention that it receives in the parable. It also gives the same amount of attention to the losses that they receive in the parable. (3) The interpretation supposedly contains the vocabulary of the early church, which has applied the parable to its own setting to describe what typically happens in mission situations. This judgment is based on a limited statistical basis and assumes that Jesus did not reflect on the response of the people to his mission; that was something that only the later church did. It is conceivable that Jesus’ parable affected church terminology or that the language in the interpretation was influenced by terms in use at the time it was translated from Aramaic into the Greek. (4) Finally, the interpretation of the fates of the seed is not inconsistent with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere in the Gospels, and a parallel in m. ’Abot 5:10–15 contains six paragraphs, each analyzing four different types of people, including four different types of hearers (5:12). W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr. (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991], 2:376) conclude from this parallel: “It is not inconceivable that already in Jesus’ time it was conventional to make a point by referring to four different classes of people (see ’Abot R. Nat. A 40), and this might be part of the background of the parable of the sower.”

36. Jewish literature also identifies Satan with a bird or birds; see Jub. 11:5–24; 1 Enoch 29:5; T. Ben. 3:4; Apoc Abr. 13; b. Sanh. 107a.

37. Gundry, Mark, 206.

38. France, Divine Government, 30.

39. F. C. Synge, “A Plea for the Outsiders: Commentary on Mark 4:10–12,” Journal of Theology of South Africa 30 (1980): 55.

40. Geddert, Watchwords, 255.

41. Ibid., 256.

42. David McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, Story and Offense (New York/ Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994).

43. One can see an example of this in all the attempts to explain away the hina, “in order that,” in 4:12.

44. J. Dominic Crossan (in “Parable,” ABD, 5:152) goes so far as to say, “It is a parable’s destiny to be interpreted and those interpretations will be diverse. When the diversity ceases, the parable is dead and the parabler is silent.” Walter Wink (Transforming Bible Study [Nashville: Abingdon, 1980], 161) says: “The fallacy of the one-point theory should have become manifest the moment it became clear that scholars themselves could not agree on what the one point was—though each was certain that he knew!”

45. C. Peter Wagner, Church Growth and the Whole Gospel: A Biblical Mandate (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 77–78.

46. C. Peter Wagner, Strategies for Church Growth (Ventura, Calif.: Regal 1987), 88–89.

47. Henri Daniel-Rops, Daily Life in the Time of Jesus (Ann Arbor: Servant, 1980), 233.

48. The Divine Comedy, “Paradise” 29.115–17, trans. H. R. Hulse (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1954), 462.

49. Marsha G. Witten, All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), 3–4.

50. Minear, Mark, 70.

51. J. Dominic Crossan, Cliffs of Fall: Paradox and Polyvalence in the Parables of Jesus (New York: Seabury, 1980), 47.

52. Compare Søren Kierkegaard, “The Instant, No. 7,” Kierkegaard’s Attack Upon “Christendom” 1854–1855, ed. W. Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1944), 208–11.

53. Note Deut. 11:13–17, which commands single-minded obedience to God if the land is to produce a physical harvest. The same is required for a spiritual harvest.

1. See above, p. 152.

2. Lane, Mark, 165; Hooker, Mark, 133. See the statements about the coming of Jesus in 1:7, 24, 38; 2:17; 10:45.

3. See Job 12:22, “He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings deep shadows into the light.”

4. In Jesus’ day, items were not purchased in prepackaged amounts but were measured out in standard-sized vessels. The merchant could be generous or could try to short customers. The saying reflects the consumer’s wish that God (using a divine passive) would reward the generous and punish the chiseler.

5. This is the only parable peculiar to Mark, but parallels can be found in 1 Clem. 23:4; Gos. Thom. 21; Ap. Jas. 12:22–31.

6. This order reflects a Palestinian perspective of time where the day begins in the evening, not in the morning. In 14:30, Mark recognizes his audience does not tell time this way. He clarifies Jesus’ announcement that Peter would deny him three times “today,” by adding, “yes, tonight.”

7. He can hardly cause what he does not know, and this detail makes difficult any interpretation that allegorizes the farmer to represent Christ or God. Consequently, these options will be eliminated in the discussion.

8. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Last Days, 439. Nils Dahl (“The Parables of Growth,” in Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976], 147) writes: “To Jews and Christians organic growth was but the other side of the creative work of God who alone gives growth.”

9. The two main Greek words are akmazo (Rev. 14:8) or pepeiros (Gen. 40:10).

10. See Claude N. Pavur, “The Grain Is Ripe: Parabolic Meaning in Mark 4:26–29,” BTB 18 (1987): 21.

11. John W. Sider, “Proportional Analogy in the Gospel Parables,” NTS 31 (1985): 18–19.

12. Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (rev. ed.; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963), 153. The problem with this interpretation is that in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has met with astounding success with the crowds. Things look quite promising.

13. Geddert, Watchwords, 76.

14. The nesting of the birds in its branches is an eschatological image that symbolizes the incorporation of the Gentiles in the people of God in Joseph and Asenath 15:6: “And no more will you be called Asenath, but your name will be ‘City of Refuge,’ for in you many nations will take refuge and will lodge [same verb as in Mark 4:32, which means “nest”] under your wings, and many nations will find shelter through you.” See also Ps. 104:12, 16–17; Ezek. 31:3, 6; Dan. 4:9–12, 21–22.

15. Lane, Mark, 171.

16. Pliny commends mustard as something “extremely beneficial for the health,” but notes that it grows entirely wild. “Though it is improved by being transplanted: but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once” (Natural History 19:170–71). One could ask if Jesus might also be likening the kingdom to a weed that tends to take over where it is not wanted. Is he saying that it is like kudzu? The image should not be interpreted negatively, however. Mark understands it to refer to the great success of the church’s worldwide mission.

17. Because the mustard bush is mostly hollow, it hardly provides a suitable place for the nesting of birds, and many translations choose to translate the verb kataskenoo as “perch” or “roost.” The verb, however, means “to nest,” “dwell,” “lodge,” or “live.” The noun form, kataskenosis, is used in Matt. 8:30 and Luke 9:58 for nests.

18. N. T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? (London: SPCK, 1992), 98–99. He goes on to say that it is no wonder that Jesus employed parables to convey his views of the kingdom: “If too many people realized the doubly revolutionary implications, he would not have lasted five minutes.”

19. Mark has not pictured Jesus’ movement as small. Everywhere Jesus goes he is surrounded by huge crowds that come from all over and are so large that Jesus cannot eat and is in danger of being crushed.

20. A. B. Bruce, The Parabolic Teaching of Christ (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1882), 120.

21. A popular interpretation deriving from Bruce, Parabolic Teaching, 125–43.

22. Bilezikian, The Liberated Gospel, 74.

23. H. L. Mencken, “Arnold Bennett,” in Prejudices: First Series (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919), 46.

24. Marcus, The Mystery of the Kingdom, 151.

25. F. C. Grant, The Earliest Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon, 1943), 85–86.

26. Ruth A. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biography of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), 144–45.

27. Ibid., 373–74.

28. Dahl, “The Parables of Growth,” 154.

1. James G. Williams, Gospel Against Parable: Mark’s Language of Mystery (Sheffield: Almond, 1985), 100.

2. Marshall, Faith As a Theme, 216–17.

3. See also Ps. 69:1–2.

4. B. F. Batto, “The Sleeping God: An Ancient Near Eastern Motif of Divine Sovereignty,” Bib 68 (1987): 153–77.

5. See also Ps. 44:23–24.

6. The translation in the KJV, “Peace, be still,” hardly captures the forcefulness of Jesus’ word. Jesus uses the same rebuke when he tells the demons to shut up (Mark 1:25; 3:12; 9:25). See 2 Enoch 40:9; 43:1–3; 69:22; 4 Ezra 6:41–42; Jub. 2:2.

7. Hooker, Mark, 140. Gundry (Mark, 245–46) argues that “Mark uses the OT by way of analogy” and points out significant differences between the accounts in Mark and Jonah. Jesus is not fleeing the presence of the Lord, and there is no hint that the Lord sends the storm as some warning (Jonah 1:3–4, 10). Jesus is asleep in the stern, not in the hold (1:5). The disciples do not battle the storm as the sailors did or cast lots to see who caused the calamity (1:5, 7). The calm comes when Jonah is thrown overboard, not when he speaks (1:15). Jesus does not pray to God but addresses the sea directly, and his word creates the great calm. The differences in the stories, when read together, make it clear that something greater than Jonah is here (see Matt. 12:41; Luke 11:32).

8. Anderson, Mark, 142.

9. Raoul Syx, “Jesus and the Unclean Spirits: The Literary Relation Between Mark and Q in the Beelzebul Controversy (Mark 3:20–30 par),” Louvain Studies 17 (1992): 180.

10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 76.

11. Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1992), 304.

12. To Jews, the Exodus was a great miracle of deliverance, but Josephus describes one Egyptian explanation of it as “the expulsion of rebellious lepers and criminals who had been expelled and pursued to the frontiers of Syria” (Ag. Ap. 1:26–27).

13. Buechner, Listening to Your Life, 305.

14. James Kallas, The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles (London: SPCK, 1961), 78.

15. Paul J. Achtemeier, “Person and Deed: Jesus and the Storm-Tossed Sea,” Int 16 (1962): 176.

16. Marcus, The Way of the Lord, 76.

17. James Kallas, The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles, 91.

18. Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972), 391.

1. Gerasa, modern Jerash, was thirty miles from the lake. The text allows it to be a reference to territory controlled by Gerasa. Possibly the original reference was to a town on the eastern shore that is now called Kersa or Koursi, which was later mistaken for the better-known Gerasa, a member of the Decapolis. The distance of Gerasa from the sea may have prompted the textual variants, locating the incident at Gadara or Gergesa.

2. Minear, Mark, 73.

3. Tombs were frequently located in caves and were known as haunts for demons, and the mountains were considered to be places of danger.

4. Waetjen, Reordering of Power, 114.

5. He is clearly one who would have been regarded as a demented soul screaming in his tortured isolation. The imbecile was one who went out alone at night, slept in burial places, ripped his clothes, and lost what he was given (t. Ter. 1:3; y. Ter. 1:1, 40b; b. Hag. 3b); but if these things were done in an insane manner, such a person was considered deranged.

6. Gundry, Mark, 251.

7. Minear, Mark, 74.

8. T. Sol. 5:11 pleads: “Do not condemn me to water.”

9. Some commentators provide a rationalistic explanation for the stampede by claiming it was caused when the demoniac began to scream and run frantically among the pigs, causing them to scatter. But in Mark, demons never leave quietly (1:26); and they bring about self-destruction to whatever they inhabit. Lane comments (Mark, 186): “It is their purpose to destroy the creation of God, and halted in their destruction of a man, they fulfilled their purpose with the swine.” Some commentators also argue that the demons destroyed the pigs in a vengeful bid to turn the town against Jesus. If that is the case, they were successful.

10. Some have tried to make the account into a revolutionary moral tale about the Romans. Paul Winter (On the Trial of Jesus [Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1974], 180–81) pointed out that the standards of the tenth Roman legion, which destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70, bore the image of a wild boar. He suggested that the story derived from some Roman legionnaires taking a swim in the lake and drowning. J. Dominic Crossan (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography [San Francisco: Harper, 1994], 89–91) broadens this theory by arguing that the story derives from the colonial oppression of the Romans, which was incarnated individually as demonic possession. True, many felt keenly the shackles of the Roman army and would have liked nothing better than to see the Roman legions driven into the sea. It is unlikely, however, that this story was invented to convey such a point. If the striking parallel to this account in the Testament of Solomon 11:1–6 is influenced by the account in the Gospels, then the encoded political message was missed. If that parallel is independent of the Gospels, then it provides evidence for the concept of a legion of demons without any hint of reference to Rome. For Mark, the evil that God’s people face is far more serious than the oppression of Roman legions.

11. Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 93.

12. Minear, Mark, 74.

13. Perhaps Mark would have us assume that the man is a Gentile, living in the tombs and surrounded by pigs. As a Gentile he does not yet fit into Jesus’ plans for his mission to Israel, just as Jesus, the Jew, does not fit well in Gentile territory and is asked to leave.

14. In Mark, Jesus never asks anyone he heals to follow him as a disciple.

15. The list of cities in the Decapolis is inexact but most include Damascus, Raphana, Dius, Canata, Scythopolis, Gadara, Hippos, Pella, Gerasa, and Philadelphia. They were under the administrative control of the Roman governor of Syria and were distinguished from their surrounding environment by their Greek way of life, in culture and religion. Passages in Josephus suggest that their relations with Jews was one of hostility (Life 65 §§ 341–42; 74 § 410).

16. Marcus, The Way of the Lord, 40.

17. See Franz Annen, Heil für die Heiden (Frankfurt: Joseph Knecht, 1976), 182–84.

18. C. Peter Wagner, Warfare Prayer: Strategies for Combatting the Rulers of Darkness (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1992).

19. F. Leenhardt, “An Exegetical Essay: Mark 5:1–20,” in Structural Analysis and Biblical Exegesis (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1974), 91.

20. Daniel Day Williams, The Demonic and the Divine, ed. Stacy A. Evans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 9.

21. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York/London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955), 226.

22. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 314.

23. See Everett Ferguson, Demonology of the Early Christian World (New York/Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1984), 170–71.

24. The following five points are taken from his book Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan and Demons (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 269–70.

25. Noted by Gail R. O’Day, “Hope Beyond Brokenness: A Markan Reflection on the Gift of Life,” Currents in Theology and Mission 15 (1988): 250. The citation comes from p. 359 in Faulkner.

26. Eugene L. Lowry, “Cries From the Graveyard: A Sermon,” in The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story, eds. Robert Detweiller and William G. Doty (Atlanta: Scholars: 1990), 30–31.

27. Cited by Leenhardt, “An Exegetical Essay: Mark 5:1–20,” 95.

28. C. Douglas Weaver, A Cloud of Witnesses (Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 1993), 139–40.

1. Blood was the only detergent for the altar in the temple and cleansed from sin, but it was also a major pollutant for people (Lev. 12:7; 15:19–24; 20:18). Ezekiel 36:17 describes the sinfulness of the people, “Their conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness in my sight.” In the Greco-Roman world, the touch of a menstruating woman was considered harmful (see Pliny, Natural History 7.64). On purity issues in Judaism, see Hannah Harrington, The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (SBLDS 143; Atlanta: Scholars, 1993).

2. The question is often asked how others would know about her condition. In a small village society, word would have leaked out from friends and family, from the doctors, or even from divorce proceedings.

3. See Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1991), 745.

4. The Mishnaic tractate on the menstruant is entitled Nidda, which means “banished.” Josephus, J. W. 5:5.6 § 227, reports that the temple was closed to women during their menstruation (see also Ag. Ap. 2:103–4; Ant. 3.11.1 § 261).

5. Milgrom (in Leviticus 1–16, 1002) points out that the laws on bodily impurities focus on four phenomena: death, blood, semen, and scale disease. “Their common denominator is death. Vaginal blood and semen represent the forces of life; their loss—death.” “The wasting of the body, the common characteristic of all biblically impure skin diseases, symbolizes the death process as much as the loss of blood and semen.”

6. One can see a listing of physician’s remedies for the women’s condition in b. Sabb. 110a.

7. The belief that the power of a person is transferred to what one wears or touches can be seen also in Acts 5:15 and 19:12. M. Hutter (“Ein altorientalischer Bittgestus in Mt 9:20–22,” ZNW 75 [1984]: 133–35) claims that this woman’s gesture does not reflect a belief in magic but means to pray fervently (1 Sam. 15:24–27).

8. This detail suggests that the power is something beyond his control; God controls it. Cranfield’s comments (Mark, 185) are helpful:

The power residing in, and issuing from, Jesus is the power of the personal God. Though Jesus himself does not himself make a decision (at least so it seems) in this case, nevertheless God does. God controls his own power. He knows about the woman and wills to honour her faith in the efficacy of his power active in Jesus, even though her faith is no doubt very imperfect and indeed dangerously near to ideas of magic. The cure does not happen automatically, but by God’s free and personal decision.

See also Gundry, Mark, 270.

9. Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly (The Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994], 94) puts it well: “The act of faith was to reach out from the crowd and touch Jesus, and then at his behest to stand forth and be identified.”

10. A woman who suffered her affliction was supposed to bring a sacrifice in the temple when she was healed (Lev. 15:29–30), but Jesus makes no mention of this as he did for the leper (Mark 1:44). Someone with a hemorrhage did not have to go through the same public procedure before he or she could be reintegrated into society.

11. See T. J. Geddert, “Peace,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1992), 604; P. B. Yoder, Shalom: The Bible’s Word for Salvation, Justice and Peace (Newton, Kans.: Faith and Life, 1982).

12. Camery-Hoggatt, Irony, 138–39.

13. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Volume Two: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 2:786.

14. Possibly Jesus addresses her by name, “Talitha, stand up!” See Max Wilcox, “Talitha Cumi,” ABD 6:309–10.

15. Hooker, Mark, 151.

16. F. Watson, “Ambiguity in the Marcan Narrative,” Kings Theological Review 10 (1987): 11.

17. Gundry, Mark, 277.

18. See comments on 3:20–35, where this stylistic feature of Mark was first observed.

19. Marshall, Faith As a Theme, 104.

20. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2:844, n. 26.

21. W. H. Vanstone, The Stature of Waiting (New York: Seabury, 1983), 17–18.

22. As Tolbert (Sowing, 169) puts it well, “One does not have faith because one was healed; one has faith so that one can be healed. The miracles in Mark are not intended as signs to induce belief; they are, instead, the visible tangible fruits of faith.”

23. David Aune, “Magic in Early Christianity,” in ANRW, vol. 2, pt. 23 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 1536.

24. Hisako Kinukawa, “The Story of the Hemorrhaging Woman (Mark 5:25–34) Read From a Japanese Feminist Context,” Biblical Interpretation 2 (1994): 292.

25. Tal Ilan (Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into Image and Status [Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 44; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1995], 102) notes that menstruation was viewed by the rabbis as punishment meted out to Eve for her sin in Eden.

26. Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988), 105.

27. Ibid.

1. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1:281.

2. Other texts read “son of the carpenter and of Mary” or “son of the carpenter.” It is likely that these readings issued from an assimilation to Matt. 13:55 (see also Luke 4:22; John 6:42).

3. Meier (A Marginal Jew, 1:222–27) provides strong arguments against any interpretation that this “flip comment” suggests any moral scandal associated with Jesus’ birth. It only conveys a sense of familiarity.

4. Richard Bauckham (“The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus: An Epiphanian Response to John P. Meier, CBQ 56 [1994]: 698–700) argues that the brothers and sisters listed were the children of Joseph’s first wife. The locals would have made a distinction between a man’s children from two different wives. Outside of Nazareth, where the family was unknown, Jesus would have been identified simply as the son of Joseph.

5. Marshall (Faith, 192) writes: “Their unbelief lies not in a failure to perceive the quality of Jesus’ words or the reality of his miracles; it lies rather in a refusal to admit the true source of this wisdom and power (v 2) and to accept the unique identity of the one who manifests them (v 3).”

6. Cranfield, Mark, 193.

7. The word “synagogue” is only mentioned again in Mark as the location where scribes hanker after the status of having the first seats (12:39) and where his disciples will be flogged (13:9).

8. Kingsbury, Christology, 86–87.

9. Gundry, Mark, 292.

10. Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1992), 36.

11. See Cicero’s comments that there is nothing genteel about the vulgar work of a craftsman (An Essay About Duties 1.42; 2.225).

12. Juel, Mark, 91.

13. Anderson, Mark, 161.

14. Joel Gregory, Too Great A Temptation: The Seductive Power of America’s Super Church (Fort Worth: The Summit Group, 1994), 38.

15. L. W. Countryman, “How Many Baskets Full? Mark 8:14–21 and the Value of Miracles in Mark,” CBQ 47 (1985): 652.

1. G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 361.

2. Luke 15:22; b. Besa 32b; b. Shabb. 152a.

3. The command parallels the one given Israel before they set out into the desert (Ex. 12:11). The Israelites were commanded to eat the Passover “with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste.” As Israel was sustained in the desert by God’s provision, so the disciples will be.

4. Minear, Mark, 80.

5. Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (Mt 8–17) (Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament; Zurich: Benziger/Neukirchener, 1990), 2:97.

6. Jews shook the dust from their feet when they returned to Israel from Gentile territory (see m. Ohol. 2:3; m. Tohar. 4:5).

7. So Pesch, Das Markusevangelium, 1:329; Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus, 1:240.

8. Oil had medicinal value (see Isa. 1:6; Luke 10:34; James 5:14–15).

9. Herod Antipas, identified only as Herod by Mark, was the son of Herod the Great and Malthace, a Samaritan, and was tetrarch of Galilee and Perea from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39. “Tetrarch” literally means “ruler of a quarter of the country.”

10. Perhaps Herod was manifesting a guilty conscience working overtime, combined with a superstitious nature (Cranfield, Mark, 207; cf. Macbeth, “Out, damned spot!”). His conclusion reinforces the fact that Herod Antipas witnessed John’s actual head being delivered on a platter, and though he may be terrified to think that he is alive again, he does nothing.

11. Josephus, Ant. 17.18.1 § 188; 17.9.4 §§ 224–271; 17.11.4 § 318; J. W. 2.2.3 §§ 20–22; 2.6.3 §§ 93–95.

12. Josephus, Ant. 18.7.1–2 §§ 240–56; J. W. 2.9.6 §§ 181–83.

13. Lane, Mark, 211.

14. Mark does not say where John was imprisoned and beheaded. Josephus says that it was in Machaerus—the fortress-palace that served as the military headquarters in southeastern Perea, east of the Dead Sea, thirteen miles southeast of Herodium. Josephus described the citadel as luxurious (J. W. 7.6.2 §§ 171–77). Archaeologists have uncovered a large triclinium (dining room) that would have been suitable for a banquet and a small one where the women would have eaten during the banquet (Gundry, Mark, 313–14).

15. Chapman (The Orphan Gospel, 186) summarizes well Herod Antipas’s unpopularity as a monarch:

The Jews hated his father. Antipas had close ties with Rome, and the Jews hated Rome. His mother was a Samaritan, and the Jews hated Samaritans. He built or rebuilt towns or cities naming them after Roman royalty. To populate Tiberias, he forcibly relocated his subjects (today’s Palestinian controversy should cast light on how popular that move must have been). In Tiberias, he built a royal palace and adorned it with a frieze of animal figures, in violation of the Second Commandment.

16. Herodias was the daughter of Herod Aristobulus, one of the sons of Herod the Great (half brother of Antipas), and Mariamne, and is therefore the half niece of Herod Antipas. On the issue of the confusion with Herod Philip, see Harold W. Hoehner, Herod Antipas (SNTSMS 17; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), 131–36.

17. Josephus Ant. 18.5.1 §§ 109–15.

18. m. ‘Abod. Zar. 1:3.

19. Anyone aware that Herod Antipas lost all of his kingdom when he was sent into exile and that it was given to Agrippa would find this rash promise ironic.

20. Minear, Mark, 80.

21. James R. Edwards, “Markan Sandwiches: The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives,” NovT 31 (1989): 196.

22. Geddert, Watchwords, 157.

1. Hooker (Mark, 165) comments: “Jesus has compassion on the crowd and cares for the leaderless people of Israel by giving them first an abundance of teaching, then an abundance of food.” One can translate 6:34 that Jesus taught them “at length” instead of “many things” (see the use of polla in 5:23, 43; 6:20; 9:26).

2. John Bowman, The Gospel of Mark: The New Jewish Christian Passover Haggadah (Studia postbiblica 8; Leiden: Brill, 1965), 155.

3. A later rabbinic tradition describes a current belief in the time of Jesus: “As the former redeemer [Moses] caused manna to descend, as it is stated, Behold I will cause to rain bread from heaven for you [Exod 16:4], so will the latter redeemer cause manna to descend …” (Eccl. Rab. 1:9).

4. Jesus does not provide the elaborate feast anticipated in Isa. 25:6 but simple nourishment.

5. Jews did not bless their food but instead gave thanks to God as the provider of food.

6. In 2 Chron. 31:10, the prosperity and the great supply left over are attributed to the people’s great generosity in giving to the temple. In the desert feeding, the people have contributed nothing to earn God’s gracious bounty.

7. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 328–29, citing Pierre Nahor (Emilie Lerou), Jesus.

8. William Barclay, And He Had Compassion on Them (Edinburgh: The Church of Scotland, 1955), 163.

9. Albert Schweitzer, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 103–6.

10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 224.

11. Cited in Salt of the Earth 15 (July/August, 1995): 34.

12. Bruce Chilton, Feast of Meanings: Eucharistic Theologies from Jesus Through Johannine Circles (NovTSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 128.

13. Marian E. Doyle, “Loaves and Fishes,” cited by Hillyer Hawthorne Straton, Preaching the Miracles (New York/Nashville: Abingdon, 1950), 53.

1. Harry Fleddermann, “‘And He Wanted to Pass by Them” (Mark 6:48c),” CBQ 45 (1983): 389–95. Fledderman interprets the verb “to pass by” (NIV, “spare”) in Amos 7:8 and 8:2 to express God’s intention to avert catastrophe and argues here for Mark: “A free, but accurate, translation would be: ‘And he wanted to save them.’”

2. John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus; vol. 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracle (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:996, n. 118.

3. In the Septuagint, the verb parerchomai is used to refer to an epiphany. In Gen. 32:31–33, the face of God “passed by” Jacob when he was wrestling with the angel (see 2 Sam. 23:3–4). Job 9:8, 11 reads, “He … treads on the waves of the sea.… When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him.” See also Dan. 12:1, which refers to the glory of the Lord passing by; Amos 7:8; 8:2.

4. The fourth watch becomes significant when one remembers that God delivers his people early in the morning. Barry Blackburn (Theios Aner and the Markan Miracle Traditions [WUNT 2/40: Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) 1991], 146) writes: “Thus Jesus, like Yahweh in the O.T. (and the New), manifests his saving power proi [early]” (see also Ex. 14:24; Ps. 46:5; Isa. 17:14).

5. See Ex. 3:14; Deut. 32:39; Pss. 115:9; 128:5–6; Isa. 41:2–14; 43:1–13 [v. 2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you”]; 44:1–5; 46:4; 48:12; 51:9–16; 52:6; John 8:58.

6. Minear, Mark, 84. Lane (Mark, 238) comments that they failed “to grasp that this event pointed beyond itself to the secret of Jesus’ person. Because they were not truly open to the action of God in Jesus they had missed the significance of the miracle of the loaves for them, and saw only ‘a marvel.’”

7. Bethsaida was a town on the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee; Gennesaret was a densely populated plain on the northwest side of the sea, between Tiberias and Capernaum.

8. Gundry (Mark, 346) argues that before Jesus joins the disciples, they have been blown off course too far to make landing in Bethsaida practicable or desirable.

9. See Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, “The Jesus of Mark and the Sea of Galilee,” JBL 103 (1984): 363–77; “Echoes and Foreshadowings in Mark 4–8: Reading and Rereading,” JBL 112 (1993): 226–37.

10. So Schweizer, Mark, 143.

11. Fleddermann, “‘And He Wanted to Pass by Them,” 395.

12. A. E. J. Rawlinson, St. Mark (Westminster Commentaries; London: Methuen, 1925), 88.

13. C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy (London: Penguin, 1965), 182; cited by Richard A Burridge, Four Gospels: One Jesus? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 35.

14. See Best, Following Jesus, 232.

15. From “We, O God, Unite Our Voices” (The Crescent Hill Hymn), by Grady Nutt and Paul Duke, used with permission.

1. These huffy inspectors “from Jerusalem” probably inspired the same contempt that bureaucrats who come from Washington, D. C., do in some quarters today.

2. A similar complaint about Jesus’ own failure to wash hands is raised when he eats in the home of a Pharisee (Luke 11:37).

3. The feelings about this issue could be strong. As one rabbi expressed it according to a later tradition in b. Sota 4b, “Whoever eats bread without previously washing the hands is as though he had intercourse with a harlot.’”

4. Later rabbinic tradition insisted that it did have a biblical basis. According to b. Ber. 60b, “When he washes his hands he should say, ‘Blessed is He who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us concerning the washing of hands.’”

5. The explanation, “the Pharisees and all the Jews…,” drops a hint about the implied audience of the Gospel. Referring to them as “all the Jews” suggests that Mark envisions a Gentile audience only vaguely familiar with Jewish traditions. One does not explain for Jews what every Jew does.

6. Rabbinic traditions, codified in the Mishnah in the second and third centuries and expanded in the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds in the fourth and fifth centuries, cover regulations concerning valid and invalid ways of washing the hands, the quantity of water, the position of the hands, and the type of vessel to be used.

7. The issue is clearly expressed by Barnabas Lindars (“All Foods Clean: Thoughts on Jesus and the Law,” Law and Religion, ed. B. Lindars [Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1988], 65): “Transgression of the taboo not only constitutes a formal disqualification for worship, requiring the proper procedure to restore the situation, but also stains the inner conscience, creating a barrier in personal relationship with God.”

8. The explanation in 7:3 that the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash, literally, “with a fist” (pugme) is a difficult phrase. Its obscurity caused some texts to omit it, and some modern translations (such as the NIV) leave it untranslated. A number of textual variants arose in apparent attempts to interpret its meaning: “often,” “thoroughly,” “in a moment,” “first.” Some interpreters understand it to refer to the manner of washing, “to the wrist,” “with a fist” (rubbing the fist into the other hand), or with “a cupped hand” (in a fist-like fashion with fingers held slightly apart). Others interpret is as referring to the amount of water as well as the means: “with a handful (or fistful) of water.” The later rabbinic traditions that define the valid amount of water (m. Yad. 1:1–2, 2:3; b. Hull. 106ab) and the method of pouring (m. Yad. 2:1; b. Sabb. 62b) would suggest that this word refers both to the amount of water and the means of washing.

9. Similar charges went against the Pharisees in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The hymnist excoriates the teachers of lies and seers of falsehood, who have exchanged the law for smooth things (1QH 4:14–15).

10. b. Qidd. 31b.

11. From the time the vow is made, the property is set aside as sacred. See the explanation in Josephus Ant. 4.4.4 §§ 72–73; Ag. Ap. 1.166–167. It is assumed that the Pharisees would defend the position that fulfilling the vow, no matter how rash or unworthy, was a greater obligation than fulfilling the duty to parents. To the credit of the later rabbis, they allowed for leniency in annulling such a vow (see m. Ned. 8:1–9:1). But Z. W. Falk (in “On Talmudic Vows,” HTR 59 [1966]: 311) noted: “While Jesus considered the vow to be illegal and void, the Rabbis held it to be merely voidable.”

12. See Lev. 11; Deut. 14:3–20.

13. The distinction in the pronunciation of the long o and short o has disappeared in modern Greek, and it is likely that the two words would have been pronounced the same when texts of the Bible were being copied. Scribes could have easily made an accidental mistake if they were copying texts as someone read aloud from the master copy.

14. So Bruce J. Malina, “A Conflict Approach to Mark 7,” Forum 4 (1988): 22–24.

15. An appeal to Jesus’ authoritative word would have been a knock-down argument in Acts 15; Gal. 2:11–14; and Rom. 14–15. Heikki Räisänen, “Jesus and the Food Laws: Reflections on Mark 7:15,” JSNT 16 (1982): 79–100, argues from the absence of the “effective history” of Jesus’ remarks on food that he never uttered them. He claims that these words were added to the tradition to provide “a theological justification for the practical step taken in the Gentile mission long before” (89). This supposed silence, however, may have been attributable to the ambiguity and arcane nature of Jesus’ argument.

16. m. Maksh. 6:7; t. Miqw. 7:8. R. Jose is said to ask: “Is excrement impure? Is it not for purposes of cleanliness?” (y. Pesah. 7:11). Even the excrement of the zab (a person suffering a flux) is not impure according to Sifra Mes. Zab. § 1:12–13. By contrast the Qumran sectarians, under the influence of Deut. 23:12–14 and Ezek. 4:12–15, considered it to be impure (see Josephus, J. W. 2.8.9 §§ 148–49; 1QM 7:3–7; 11QT 46:15–16). See further the discussion in Hannah K. Harrington, The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (SBLDS 143; Atlanta: Scholars, 1993), 100–103.

17. Lane (Mark, 254, n. 40) cites Jer. 17:9–10: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? ‘I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.’”

18. David H. Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary (Clarksville, Md.: Jewish New Testament Publications, 1992), 92.

19. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1984), 65.

20. Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary, 92.

21. Recent discussion of the Pharisees has centered around the debate between Jacob Neusner and E. P. Sanders, two influential scholars on Judaism. Neusner argues that the Pharisees insisted that food should be treated as though offered in the temple (in From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism [Englewood Cliffs, 1973]). Sanders counters his definition of the Pharisees as a “pure-food club.” He contends that “they did not for one moment believe that their own food was kept as pure as priests’ in the temple, and not even as pure as the food eaten by priests and their families outside the temple (heave offering)” (in Judaism: Practice & Belief 63 BCE–66 CE [Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992], 437). He contends that they only made “minor gestures that partially imitated priestly purity” (438; see further his Jewish Law From Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies [Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990], 184–236). Martin Hengel and Roland Deines (in “E. P. Sanders’ ‘Common Judaism,’ Jesus, and the Pharisees,” JTS 46 [1995]: 1–70) offer a middle way. They agree that “the Pharisees did not want to ‘imitate’ the various states of purity required of cultic personnel inside or outside the temple in the sense of being put on the same level with the priests.” Nevertheless, they argue: “… since the basic obligation to be holy applied to the entire people, the Pharisees wanted to deduce what was involved from scripture and tradition, and then live this out as an example for the rest” (47). See also the critique of Sanders by Bruce Chilton, Feast of Meanings: Eucharistic Theologies From Jesus Through Johannine Circles (NovTSup 72; Leiden: Brill, 1994), 159–68.

22. Harrington, Impurity Systems, 164.

23. See Jub. 22:16: “Separate yourselves from the nations …”; and Acts 10:28, “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him.”

24. Jacob Neusner, Invitation to the Talmud (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), 81.

25. We should recognize that what we derisively call legalism today was to the Pharisee a sincere effort to apply God’s will to everyday life. All law requires interpretation.

26. Jerome H. Neyrey, “The Idea of Purity in Mark’s Gospel,” Semeia 35 (1986): 92.

27. Ibid., 93.

28. Ibid., 92.

29. Cited by Luccock, “The Gospel According to St. Mark: Exposition,” 7:750.

30. Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Viking, 1985), 105.

31. Roy Pearson, “The Unangelic Mission of the Church,” Congregations 21 (July/August 1995): 25.

32. Donald W. McCullough, “Serving a Wild Free God,” Christianity Today 39 (Apr. 3, 1995): 17.

1. David Rhoads, “Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative-Critical Study,” JAAR 62 (1994): 352–53.

2. t. Zab. 2:1; m. Pesah. 8:8: “The school of Hillel says: One who separates from the circumcision is as one who separates from the grave.” See b. ‘Abod. Zar. 36b.

3. The verb “all they want” describes the results of the feeding of five thousand (6:42) and of the four thousand (8:8).

4. Deut. 32:6; Isa. 1:2; Jer. 31:9; Hos. 11:1; Rom. 9:4; Jub. 1:28; m. ’Abot. 3:15: “Beloved are Israel, for they were called children of God; still greater was the love in that it was made known to them that they were called children of God, as it is written: Ye are the children of the Lord your God [Deut. 14:1].”

5. Pirqe R. El. 29: “Whoever eats together with an idol worshiper is like one who eats together with a dog; as the dog is uncircumcised, so also is the idol worshiper uncircumcised.“

6. Alan Hugh McNeile, The Gospel According to Matthew (London: Macmillan, 1915), 231.

7. Richard T. France, Matthew (TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 247.

8. Taylor, Mark, 350; see also Cranfield, Mark, 247.

9. Cranfield, Mark, 248–49.

10. Lane (Mark, 262) contends that Jesus did not respond because, as a Gentile, she approached him from a belief in superstition and magic, which is not an appropriate context to release the power of God. Is this to say that the woman with the hemorrhage, who thought that healing would come from touching Jesus’ garment, does not reflect a magical view?

11. Anderson, Mark, 191.

12. Hooker (Mark, 182) astutely comments, “If ‘cleanness’ only depends on men’s attitudes, then the distinction between Jew and Gentile will also fall: Jews may produce evil thoughts and Gentiles good ones (cf. Rom. 2:13f.).”

13. Rhoads, “The Syrophoenician Woman,” 363.

14. Ibid., 370.

15. See Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress 1991), 72–80.

16. Gundry, Mark, 378.

17. The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, ed. Fred Metcalf (London: Penguin, 1986), 139.

18. H. Shelton Smith, In His Image, But …: Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910 (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1972), 11, citing The Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate, Suing for their Admission into the Church: Or a Persuasive to the Instructing and Baptizing of the Negro’s and Indians in our Plantations … To which is added, A Brief Account of Religion in Virginia (London, 1680), 61.

19. Sermon 34:1, in The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux. Volume Three. On the Song of Songs II, trans. Kilian Walsh (Cistercian Fathers 7; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1976), 160–61.

20. Ibid., 34:3 (p. 162).

1. Chapman (Orphan, 171–72) observes that Mark lived in a “pre-map culture” and may be intending to locate Jesus “culturally rather than coordinately.” He is culturally “in the midst of a foreign ethos even while on the shore” of the sea of Galilee.

2. A dead child is raised in private (5:37, 40), and another blind man is cured in private (8:23).

3. Cranfield, Mark, 252.

4. Hooker, Mark, 185.

5. Ibid.

6. The Greek word mogilalos, translated “could hardly talk” in 7:32, is a rare word that appears only here in the New Testament and in the LXX version of Isa. 35:6. It was chosen deliberately to echo that passage.

7. B. J. Malina, Biblical and Social Values and Their Meanings: A Handbook (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993), 95.

8. Lane, Mark, 266.

9. See also Jer. 5:21; 6:10; Ezek. 12:2; Zech. 7:11; Acts 7:51; Rom. 11:8.

10. Commentary on St. Luke, 4.5.