Re-reading the Gospel of Mark Amidst Loss and Trauma

Maia Kotrosits, H. Taussig

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349473649, 9781137365002
• eBook ISBN: 9781137342645
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Psicoanalisi

Examining contemporary films, sculptures, and graphic novels influenced by the Gospel of Mark, Hal Taussig and Maia Kotrosits break new ground in ways of understanding traditional religious texts. The authors avoid traditional dogmatic assumptions, and use the Gospel of Mark as a resource for coping and healing.

CHAPTER 1

MARK’S TRAUMA-FILLED ENDING

I t would be best if one could read the Gospel of Mark ­without ever having heard of Jesus. Its unpredictable characters, wild plot, and unflinching address to life falling apart would spring into the foreground much more readily if the reader did not have the burden of clearing away some other versions of Jesus’ story.

But this is basically a pointless suggestion, since almost everyone in the Western world knows Jesus. The story of Jesus, everyone knows, is of a great man, perhaps a god, at least the author of many people’s faith. Of course, one can quickly discover that “the story everybody knows” about Jesus is not really one story. In any case, even when “the story everyone knows” about Jesus is revealed to be multiple, almost everyone erases that consciousness and still thinks it is one and the same story, known to all—a story, at least, of miraculous deeds, a heroic death, and a triumphant resurrection.

It is this embedded certainty that has made reading the Gospel of Mark as a particular story almost impossible. Even when the Gospel of Mark’s story clearly differs dramatically from the Jesus story people know, it is almost impossible to recognize that the story is different and to let that story work on them.

Nevertheless, such a possibility might come into view if one set of striking differences between Mark and the story everyone assumes can be examined.

MARK’S ENDING

One of the most dramatic—although by far not the only—differences in Mark’s story is the way it ends. The beginning of Mark’s ending goes like this:

Jesus was crucified by the soldiers. The passers-by made fun of him, shaking their heads and saying, “Hey. So you said you would destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. In that case, save yourself. Come down from the cross.” The chief priests and scribes also jeered at him and shouted, “He saved others, but cannot save himself. Let the Anointed One, the king of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we can witness and believe it.” Even those who were crucified with him mocked him.

This part of Mark’s story is similar to the other stories told about Jesus’ crucifixion. It closely resembles Matthew and Luke, and a whole range of movies. What may be difficult to take in fully is that it is a story of anguish. Because our world is full of golden and bejeweled crosses, it is perhaps difficult for readers today to recognize this as a brutal, if standard, execution scene from the Roman Empire. Even if this story is familiar at this point, it has been so colored by the decorative crosses and devotional readings of our day that the violent impact of the Markan scene, with its torture and taunting crowd, fades. In its next stage, the story grows even darker, making the shock harder to avoid.

At noon darkness came over the whole land for three hours. Jesus spoke once, and it was a loud cry: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Some standing nearby heard this, and said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” Someone ran and soaked a sponge in vinegar, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Let’s wait and see if Elijah will come and rescue him.” But Jesus cried out loudly, and breathed his last. And the veil in the Temple’s sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.¹

Jesus speaks only once on the cross in Mark, and that is a cry of desperation and forsakenness—no calm Jesus forgiving thieves, comforting mother and friends, or deciding when it is time to die, as the stories of Matthew, Luke, and John would have it. Instead there is simply a howl of defeat and aloneness, then in the face of relentless mocking, death.

The commander of the soldiers who had killed him, who was standing in front of him, saw how he had died and he said, “This one. A son of god. Really?”

The last word in the crucifixion scene belongs to the conqueror. But what do the centurion’s words mean? The first problem is the shift from what most translations propose as the centurion’s acclamation of Jesus as the Son of God. Instead, careful translators note that there is no “the” in Greek, making the commander’s identification of Jesus less clear and less triumphant. The more one looks at the Greek and the context, the darker the shadows around the Roman commander’s words. Perhaps the most jarring point of grammar from the Greek of Mark’s original text is that none of the early manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark (or any other early Christian document) have punctuation marks. That is, the manuscripts do not have periods, commas, or question marks. From this curious aspect of writing in the first ­century, another possible reading of this part of the story emerges.

Jesus has just died, screaming his protest that God has abandoned him. The person who headed up the execution, the centurion, has seen how Jesus died, defeated and desperately alone. In this situation, which is the better translation of the commander’s words: “Truly this was the Son of God!” (the conventional translation of the Markan Greek) or, “Is this one really a son of God?” The commander standing in front of Jesus and hearing the agonizing cry of his victim may well be more in character with the mocking question about Jesus being a son of God than the conventional pious profession of faith. Such taunting by the centurion fits also, of course, with the mocking of Jesus, which had already been portrayed earlier in the scene. Even if one might see the military commander of the crucifixion affirming something about Jesus, the scene is still full of irony, since in such a case the centurion would have more “faith” than Jesus, who has just lashed out against God and died.

At this point, it is important to consider two dimensions of this storytelling seriously. First, this is a very skillfully drawn scene. It does not present Jesus in control or even in a good light. But it is a dramatic composition full of violence, passion, and irony. Second, this highly composed story aches with loss and trauma. The main character, Jesus, who throughout much of the story, had proclaimed a sneakily available “realm of God” and faced the misery of others with a certain healing power, now dies in disgrace and powerlessness. The story is not full of love and light but seems rather committed to looking intensely at mockery, pain, violence, and loss, while not giving up on a tenuous way forward.

Some women watched from a distance. There was Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and Joset, and Salome. They had been his followers and supported him financially when he was in Galilee. And many other women who had come to Jerusalem with him were also there.

In this climactic and desperate scene, Mark’s story is very interested in other characters at the edge of society. The final two scenes of the story focus not on Jesus but on some version of this band of women at a distance. Almost modern in its minimalist style and its avoidance of any heroic ending, Mark pursues the shadows.

On the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, an important member of the Jewish council and someone interested in the reign of God, obtained Jesus’ body from Pilate, who was surprised that Jesus has died so quickly. This Joseph wrapped the body in a shroud and put it in a rock tomb with a rock placed against the entrance. Mary of Magdala and Mary, the mother of Joset, notice where Jesus has been put.

If one has not heard this story a hundred times in church (or, if one can look beyond such hearings), its jaggedness persists. The governor himself is portrayed as caught in the same surprise the reader is. Can this Jesus—allegedly so strong—have died so soon? Another figure, Joseph of Arimathea, emerges briefly from the shadows to carry Jesus and the story toward the grave. The audacity of this Joseph in going to the governor to ask for Jesus’ body is noted. Joseph is also an enigma in how he is characterized: a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin Council that—at least in Mark’s story—has just unanimously condemned Jesus to death. But he is also someone eagerly anticipating the reign of God, which Jesus has been announcing throughout Mark’s story. Then the gospel’s final scene:

After the Sabbath, early in the morning three named women brought spices to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. They had been wondering who would roll the stone away, but found it already rolled back. They entered the tomb and find a young man in a white robe seated on the right side, and they were very surprised. The young man told them that Jesus has risen and has gone ahead to Galilee, where they will be able to see him, just as he had predicted. The young man instructed the women to go and tell the disciples and Peter this same news. But the women ran away, frightened, and said nothing to anyone.

Crammed with surprises, almost all of it unwanted, ­unanticipated, and puzzling, this unexpected and demanding climax of Mark’s story has many curious elements to it. First of all, the main characters are women. For the ancient world, women are not the most reliable witnesses, yet here they are the only ones the story has. Second, the tomb is not as they expected it—it has been opened. They have access they did not expect. Next, the figure these women encounter at the tomb is a very haunting one. It is a young man, described in terms very similar to another young man who appears out of nowhere in the scene portraying Jesus’ arrest prior to his crucifixion. In both scenes, this young man is described in terms of what he is wearing (simply a linen cloth) and—although anonymous—is associated with (or mistaken for) Jesus. Who is this?

What the young man has to say to the women is also surprising: Jesus is not here. He is alive and in Galilee, where he had done most of his teaching. How confusing and confirming! The young man gives the women directions for what to do next: “Go and tell Peter and the other followers that Jesus is in Galilee, where they can find him, and where Jesus had said they could find him.” But the women do not do what they are told. Terrorized by the news and full of fear, they run away and tell no one. This is the end of Mark’s story about Jesus. He is risen, but in the end no one knows it, except the terrorized women, who do not follow the strange young man’s directions to go and tell Peter and the other followers of Jesus.

For twenty-first century readers, it is almost impossible to stay with the story at this point. It is both too puzzling and too clever. How, says the twenty-first century reader, could this be the ending? Everyone knows that Jesus is risen from the dead. Mark’s story must be wrong, since it says in the end no one—except the seemingly befuddled women—knows. The reader of our day knows the other stories in Matthew, Luke, and John, where Jesus himself is encountered after his death. There must be some mistake, since Jesus (in other gospels) ate fish with his disciples, walked on the road to Emmaus with them, met Mary in the garden, appeared to them behind closed doors, and had them touch his wounds.

But what would it be like to actually read Mark’s story in its distinctness? Mark may have something powerful for the reader who pays attention to this unlikely sequence. If the reader thinks twice, a smile—although perhaps a sardonic one—must follow such an ending of failed expectations. Clearly, the reader now realizes that she or he also knows what the women know and Peter and the other followers do not. If one stays with the story, the result is not so much confusion but a strange, if partial, affirmation.

This twist at the end is indeed confirmed by another astounding double take. If the reader dwells for a moment on the women telling no one, another ironic affirmation dawns. Throughout Mark’s story (after many healings, when Peter declares that Jesus is the anointed one, and after three followers of Jesus have seen Jesus shining on a mountain top, accompanied by Elijah and Moses), Jesus has instructed his followers “not to tell anyone.” And generally in Mark’s story, the characters have disregarded the instruction not to tell anyone. Finally, some people (the women at the tomb) have obeyed Jesus’ instructions not to tell anyone. But this is tumultuous. When Jesus asked people not to tell anyone, they disregarded him. Now when it is crucial for people to know that Jesus is risen and in Galilee, no one (except the women and the readers) ends up knowing.

The empty tomb scene is consistent, even as it is ­surprising. It is a picture of unreliable witnesses hearing powerful and hopeful news from a shadowy figure, then seeming to fail to relay that news even as a deceptive and incomplete promise dawns on the reader. The scene is neither triumphant nor tragic but rather insistently portrays an unsteady opening. Death no longer holds the scene hostage, nor does hope emerge clearly. There is resurrection, but it gets lost. The women’s failure to follow through is troublingly associated with Jesus’ prior power.

This last scene coheres with the other frightening and haunting dimensions of Mark’s ending. There is a disturbing consistency in the story. Jesus dies with a desperate cry. A triumphant executioner either mocks or complicates the possibility that Jesus is son of God. The only people present at Jesus’ demise are the marginal and the unknown. There is confusion about how the young man and his linen cloth relate to Jesus. The women’s response is completely disappointing. The story hints that this devastating response is actually just what had been commanded.

Yet this story—even as it is positioned in the world’s most famous book—is hard to accept by today’s readers. Even though most scholars are quite certain it is the earliest of the Bible’s gospels, the actual story of Mark is discarded, without any real attention to it. The later, more triumphant, stories of Jesus in Matthew, Luke, John, and the movies overwhelm this stark and uneasy story in Mark. If one reads this story of Mark to almost anyone today, the desperate death of Jesus, the irony of the executing centurion, the strangeness of the young man, and the desertion of the women at the most crucial moment all simply are not heard.

The resistance to this ending of Mark is actually not new. In the ancient world, where the differentness of Mark’s story was noticed more than it is today, there was some dissatisfaction with Mark ending so bizarrely or inconclusively. Indeed, so much so that most Bibles today do not have Mark ending this way. Beginning in the fifth century, some manuscripts have endings with a kind of summary of much more ­celebratory endings. Some fourth-century church leaders like Eusebius and Jerome are aware that people are trying to change the ending of Mark, but both Eusebius and Jerome insist that the ending discussed here is the correct ending.² Most Bibles today, however, have adopted the later endings, some with notes to the effect that the oldest manuscripts have only the ending discussed here. It is also significant that the other gospels in the Bible, which most scholars hold to be written after Mark, also have much more triumphal stories of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Although their stories do not agree with one another, Luke and John portray Jesus’ dying as much more controlled and less desperate. None of the other three gospels in the Bible even mention that the women in the empty tomb scene ran away frightened and told no one, and all of them have happier endings.

For this book, it is very important to see how different Mark’s en...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Mark’s Trauma-Filled Ending
• 2 Mark’s Carefully Crafted Story
• 3 Blood Relations: Pain and the Social Body
• 4 National Brokenness and Belonging
• 5 Brightness and Repair in the Face of Poverty
• 6 When the Inner Circle Collapses: Family and Betrayal
• 7 Disillusionment and the Allure of Destruction
• 8 Visions of the End
• 9 Suspense, Wonder, and Indirect Addresses to Loss
• 10 Following Mark’s Jesus toward Provisional Selfhood
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index