Mark

A Commentary

M. Eugene Boring

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781611645729
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblische Studien

The first New Testament Library volume to focus on a Gospel, this commentary offers a careful reading of the book of Mark. Internationally respected interpreter M. Eugene Boring brings a lifetime of research into the Gospels and Jesus into this lively discussion of the first Gospel.

The New Testament Library offers authoritative commentary on every book and major aspect of the New Testament, as well as classic volumes of scholarship. The commentaries in this series provide fresh translations based on the best available ancient manuscripts, offer critical portrayals of the historical world in which the books were created, pay careful attention to their literary design, and present a theologically perceptive exposition of the text.

16:1–8 EPILOGUE: RESURRECTION AND MISSION: BACK TO GALILEE

Just as calling 1:2–15 the “prologue” does not mean “optional introduction,” designating these concluding verses “epilogue” does not mean “appendix” or “optional supplement.” As the prologue gives the prospective framework within which the narrative as a whole is to be understood, so the epilogue provides the retrospective key to the whole.

16:1 And when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, they go to the tomb after the sun had come up. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 And when they looked up / recovered their sight^a they saw that the stone had already been rolled back—for the stone was very large. 5 And they went into the tomb and saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe. And they started to panic. 6 But he says to them, “Don’t panic! You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified One.^b He has been raised; he is not here. Look, here is the space where they placed him. 7 But go, tell his disciples, especially / even Peter,^c that^d he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and consternation^e took hold of them. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid …^f

a. The prefix ana-, when attached to the common word for seeing, blepō, may mean either “up” or “again,” so that the word may mean either “look up” (as 6:41) or “see again,” i.e., recover one’s sight (as 10:51–52). The ambiguity here is intentional, as in the similar case in 8:24.

b. The perfect passive participle indicates a past event whose reality continues into the present, differently from an aorist participle, which would simply point to an event of the past. For Mark as for Paul (cf. 1 Cor 1:23; 2:2; Gal 3:1), the crucifixion is not an episode in the past that is left behind at the resurrection. Even after the resurrection, Jesus’ identity continues as the Crucified One. The phrase has a formal, almost titular tone, communicated in the translation by initial capital letters.

c. Kai can here be understood either as “especially” or “even.” Peter has been the leader of the Twelve from the beginning; 1 Cor 15:5 likewise distinguishes Peter from the other disciples in the context of narrating resurrection appearances. But though Peter has disavowed any connection with Jesus, even he can be restored.

d. The translation of hoti is important but ambiguous. It may be hoti recitativus, a marker of direct quotation, in which case the “you” refers to the disciples and Peter (so, e.g., NIV, NJB, NAB, REB, TEV). Or it may indicate indirect discourse, so that it should be translated “that,” as in the translation above (with RSV, NRSV, CEV, ESV), in which case the women (and the readers) are also addressed. The Greek MS D and one MS of the Old Latin translation (k) have “clarified” the ambiguity by substituting the first person for the third (“I am going ahead of you … you will see me … as I told you”), but there can be no doubt that the ambiguous reading is original.

e. Ekstasis can mean “astonishment” in the positive sense, as in its only other occurrence in Mark (5:42, also in response to deliverance from death). Here, however, the word does not mean reverent amazement, but fear resulting in disobedience, as the next clause makes clear.

f. The Gospel concludes in six different ways in the various MSS, either ending at 6:8 or having some combination of three additional endings. On the basis of a, B and the testimony of Eusebius and Jerome that most MSS in their time ended at 16:8, critical editions of the Greek New Testament and most scholars regard this as the oldest attainable text.¹

Mark now brings the reader to the explicit scene of the resurrection, which is integrally related to the preceding narrative as a whole, not a postscript. The scene is a strange climax to the Gospel, for the story is only briefly recounted, and the resurrection event itself is not pictured.² There are neither accounts of Jesus’ appearances nor sayings of the risen Jesus, just as there is no speculation about where Jesus was between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Mark shows no awareness of or interest in the idea of Jesus’ descent to the world of the dead, trip to Paradise, or foray into the realm of demonic powers, reflected in such early Christian texts as Luke 23:43, Eph 4:8–10; 1 Pet 3:18–22; Gos. Pet. 9:35–10:42, and the “descended into hell” of the Apostles Creed. Like the other canonical Gospels, he is concerned to affirm the reality of the resurrection, but not to narrate it in a way that requires fitting it into a conceptual and chronological framework. The other Gospels themselves have differing conceptions of the “chronological stages” of Jesus’ exaltation to be with God (including variations within the same Gospel). That they uninhibitedly adopt more than one image shows that they too (implicitly) reject the identification of any particular way of imaging the reality with the thing itself. By not narrating resurrection appearances, Mark almost entirely avoids this problem.³ The resurrection faith existed long before Mark; whether and to what extent the Markan account of discovering the empty tomb rests on pre-Markan tradition is a disputed point.⁴ The interpretation below focuses entirely on the Markan meaning.

[16:1–4] In the Markan narrative, the plot too rests on the Sabbath. Just as there is no picture of Jesus between burial and resurrection, so the narrator is silent about the activities of both enemies and followers. When the Sabbath is over at sunset on Saturday, the three women (cf. 15:40–41, 47) purchase spices. No reference had been made to washing and anointing the body in the hasty burial of 15:42–47, in which the women had not been involved. They presumably intend to complete the procedures of a decent burial and achieve some kind of closure to their relationship with Jesus, described as “following.” They approach the tomb to anoint a corpse, not proclaim a resurrection.

The scene calls to mind 1:35–38, including its specific vocabulary, already a subliminal call to return to “Galilee” (Sabbath is over, early morning, seeking Jesus, misunderstanding, mission elsewhere). The reference to the “first day of the week” is not mere chronology—what other day could it be after the Sabbath?—but reflects the Christian practice of meeting on this day (1 Cor 16:2; Acts 20:7) as the Lord’s Day. Though this is also the “third day” Jesus had predicted (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34), and the day of God’s help predicted in the prophet (Hos 6:2), Mark makes nothing explicit of this.

The women’s question, “who will move the stone?” (which the narrator points out was “very large”)—makes little sense historically or psychologically, as though the two Marys who had seen the stone put in place only now ask the practical question of how they can actually enter the tomb. The narrative moves on a level other than logic or psychology. The comment is for the readers’ benefit, emphasizing both that the women have no expectation of finding the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, and that such a stone, large as it is, will not finally seal Jesus in the tomb. Nor is it merely a reminder that the men disciples, presumably capable of handling the stone, have disappeared. The statement does not contrast absent men and present women,⁵ or strong men and weak women, but functions on another level, standing in the same series as 1:10, in which God’s hand splits the heavens, and 15:38, in which God’s hand splits the temple curtain. The resurrection will be the divine finale of removing barriers that separate God and the world. They see that the stone has been rolled away, expressed in the Greek perfect tense (apokekylistai), which is analogous to the perfect participle “the Crucified One” of verse 6 (see note b). The stone was not only once-upon-a-time-rolled-away, but once-for-all-time-rolled-away; the past act of God definitively affects the present, and cannot be undone.

The women “look up” and “see”—or perhaps they “have their sight restored” and then “see” (cf. note a on anablepsasai above). The usual translation seems rather pedestrian, as though Mark wants us to picture the women walking along, looking at their feet or the path, and then they “look up” and see the tomb. Mark has given no indication the tomb is on some sort of rise or hill. But this author, for whom blindness and recovery of sight is a powerful metaphor (see on 4:10–12; 8:14–20) has used precisely this word in 8:24 to signify the divine healing of blindness—which turns out to be preliminary and partial. So in this scene, devoted followers of Jesus who have nonetheless been blind to what God was doing in the life and death of Jesus—they are, after all, coming without hope to anoint a dead body—recover their sight, but only in a preliminary way. In contrast to the man of 8:26 who will be sent forth (apesteilen) as one whose sight has been restored so that he sees everything clearly, this semi-recovery of sight is as far as the women get in the plotted narrative. Whether they, and the readers, will get past the semi-blindness to true following in the way (10:46–52) must happen, if at all, beyond the plotted narrative in the readers’ own world.

[5–7] When the women enter the tomb they do not find the body of Jesus, but this does not generate faith in the resurrection, which in Mark’s view is not an inference from data but is the response to the divine word. As Mark’s earliest extant interpreter knew, and rationalistic interpreters have repeatedly reminded us, empty tombs can be explained in other ways than by God’s act in raising Jesus from the dead (Matt 28:11–15). Events in themselves are mute, and require an interpreting word. The “interpreting angel” frequently plays this role as a standard feature of apocalyptic literature (Zech 1–6; Dan 7–12; Rev 1:1; 19:9–22:16). Angels can be represented as young men (cf. 2 Macc 3:26, 33; 5:2). The young man the women encounter in the tomb has all the accoutrements of an angel who authoritatively represents this divine, interpreting word: he is seated in the position of an authoritative teacher; he is on the “right side,” the propitious side of authority; he wears a white garment as do angels and heavenly beings (e.g., Dan 7:9; Mark 9:3; Acts 1:10; Rev 4:4; 19:14); he has supernatural knowledge and gives authoritative commands; the women respond in fear, as regularly in biblical angelophanies (e.g., Gen 21:17; Matt 1:20; Luke 1:13, 30; 2:10); even the stone that has been inexplicably rolled back may be thought of as the angel’s deed. The figure is clearly an angel, and the other Gospels make this explicit (Matt 28:2, 5; Luke 24:23; John 20:12). Why does not Mark simply call him an angel? The most likely explanation accords with Mark’s reluctance to narrate appearances of the risen Jesus: he does not wish to open the door to post-Easter revelations from the risen Lord, including those mediated by an angel.⁶

The angelic figure identifies Jesus not in terms of christological titles, but only as from Nazareth, and as the Crucified One (see note b above); the Risen One, the Christ and Son of God, the Son of Man who is to come on the clouds, is not to be separated from the career of the crucified man of Nazareth. The resurrection does not mean that the earthly life and shameful death of Jesus are now made passé or obsolete. The story does not go forward, taking the gospel to all nations, apart from the narrative just told. The passive verb is here emphatic; Jesus does not “rise” but has been raised by God. The story is not christocentric in a way that keeps it from being finally theocentric. The story of the one who cried out to God as abandoned turns out to be God’s own story.

“He is not here” points primarily to the empty tomb: Jesus is not to be found there, but the stone has been rolled away and Jesus is out, “on the loose,”⁷ going before the disciples into the world. The narrative that began with address from God to the offstage Christ the Lord concludes with a reference to the offstage Jesus “out there” in the world ahead of the disciples. The Lord who from the opening words had “a way” (1:2–3) is the Jesus who has been constantly under way during the narrative. This Jesus does not now rest in peace, but is still under way, going ahead of the fearful disciples (cf. 10:32). In addition to this primary meaning, the messenger’s announcement has deeper overtones. As the Markan Jesus experienced the absence of God, so the resurrection faith of the suffering Markan community does not deliver it from experiencing the absence of Christ. The bridegroom has been taken away, and it is the time for fasting, not feasting (2:20). There is no promise at the Last Supper that Jesus will be present in the church’s eucharistic meals; they will eat and drink without him until the kingdom comes (14:22–25). Jesus will not make himself present in the miracles and oracles of prophets who speak in his name (13:5, 21–23). And yet “he is not here” does not sharply conceptualize where Jesus is now, in the readers’ own time. The absence of Jesus is an aspect of the community’s experience that is to be acknowledged over against glib claims of the presence of Christ, but it is not made into a dogma. The Markan Jesus is not “present” and available in the charismatic life of the church in which angels deliver new messages from the risen Christ. As the risen Lord, he is already with God, seated at the right hand of Power, whence he will come as Son of Man in the glory of his Father, and then angels will accompany him (8:38). In a way not to be conceptually combined with his heavenly session and future coming, Jesus is presently “out there” in the world ahead of the disciples, and there they will see him.⁸ At one narrative level, this encounter of the discipl...