An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 197: And The Ass You Rode In On. Plus: rendering unto Caesar and lots of mystery people (Mark 11-16)

Mark 11-16
And The Ass You Rode In On. Plus: rendering unto Caesar and lots of mystery people.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Mark 11

“And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him.”

Jesus entry into Jersusalem, as described here, only involves a colt, no ass, and there is no reference to this being event being in the prophecies. We also get the strange interlude where Jesus rather vindictively kills a fig tree for daring to not bear fruit (even more arbitrary since “the time of figs was not yet”. Jesus spins this into some parable about forgiveness, and that God will not forgive someone who does not themselves forgive others (which seems a reasonable concept, but not one I can relate to the fig tree).

Also in this chapter is the casting out of the moneylenders from the temple, and the dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees wherein Jesus refuses to tell them by what authority He speaks because they can’t tell Him by what authority John the Baptist was baptising without tripping themselves up either way. As is often the case in Mark, most of the incidents that are described in Matthew are given here in more brevity, but sometimes the different phrasing makes some incidents more clear (such as with the fig tree here).

Mark 12

“For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.”

This chapter looks at some of Jesus philosophical arguments, as the Pharisees and various others argue with Him over points of doctrine, and here some of the finer points of Jesus’ ideas are honed against the stone of opposition.

We get a repeat of the parable about the vineyard owner and his unruly tenants, (i.e. God and the hypocritical incumbents in the priesthood) who sends various servants and finally his own son (i.e. the prophets and Jesus) to treat with the tenants, but they end up beating and/or killing them all. Pretty straightforward, and the Pharisees get what it means. Doesn’t quite stand up to close scrutiny – if the vineyard owner truly believes that his son will be safe, if God doesn’t expect Jesus to die, then He shows a strange naivety for an omnipotent entity. Conversely, does this mean that Jesus’ death and resurrection were truly part of God’s plan to redeem mankind, or an (un)happy accident? Or if the death and resurrection were always part of the plan, then that means that the vineyard owner was knowingly sending his son to his death. Ech, well, you’re not supposed to look too closely at these things, or rather, you’re supposed to look closely in the “correct” way.

Moving on, we also get the “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s“ speech, and looking at it this time it seems not so much a decree to separate church from state, but almost that Jesus dismisses the Roman coin as irrelevant to him – “this bears the image of a man, it’s not a thing of God, it’s nothing to do with me”. This turning away from worldly things is displayed in other episodes given here – the poor widow who gives away a tiny amount of alms but are a larger portion of her income than the rich men’s largesse, for example, or the question from the Saduccee’s about who is married to whom if a widow marries her dead husband’s brother – Jesus’ answer is that marriage is irrelevant in the afterlife, which is a spiritual and not a physical state.

Mark 13

“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:”

Jesus’ prophecy of His return is given in this chapter, and is pretty much identical to Matthew, concerning signs and portents that the wise will be able to interpret and other won’t notice. This time I went back to the Book of Daniel to try to fathom out the verse here that reads “But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains”.

Well, consider me to not be one that readeth and understand. The prophecies of Daniel have a few multi-horned, multi-headed beasts looming over the horizon, but the only mention specifically of “abomination” is very vague. My memory of these prophecies were that they were more to do with the clash between the Persian Empire and Alexander the Great; I guess Jesus is going for the more metaphorical reading here, but I’m none the wiser.

Mark 14

“For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.”

This chapter covers the Last Supper and Jesus betrayal and arrest. It starts with the incident of the (un-named) woman who anoints Jesus with expensive oil, annoying some followers (disciples or otherwise, it’s not clear), but leading Jesus to defend the woman and ensure that her actions have a place in the gospels.

Interestingly here in the Last Supper, when Jesus says that “One of you which eateth with me shall betray me”, He doesn’t then pin it on Judas as happens in Matthew. We still get the origins of the bread and wine sacrament, then the time in the Garden of Gethsemane where Peter, James and John keep falling asleep while Jesus prays for the cup to pass from Him, betrayal with a kiss and one of the disciples cutting off a man’s ear. Here, Jesus doesn’t upbraid him for this, but instead asks the mob arresting Him why they are doing this. And the strange little vignette – “And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him. And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked”. Who is this mysterious young streaker? Crazy conspiracy theories abound – is it the real Jesus making a getaway and leaving some patsy to take the rap? Is it Jesus’ son, off to found the basis for the Da Vinci Code? A strange event to include if there were no further purpose, it seems to me, even if it’s not anything as dramatic as those ideas.

Jesus is questioned by the priests, and flat out tells them that He is the Messiah (unlike Matthew where His reply is a bit more circumspect – “so people say” kind of thing). So despite conflicting and unreliable witness reports He condemns himself for blasphemy with His own words. Oh, and Peter betrays Him thrice.

Mark 15

“And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified”

It has to be said, Jesus suffers a terrible reversal in public approval, one worthy of the tabloid press. One minute He’s being lauded as a saviour, the next everyone’s clamouring for His death. You can’t trust the public vote.

There’s a little more about Barabbas in Mark – he was an insurrectionist who killed somebody whilst , er, insurrecting. Maybe his popularity was equivalent to Jesus, but his contribution has been reduced to being the alternative option, who knows.

In this version, Jesus refuses the sop of wine and myrrh (the sedative drug). Notably last chapter He foreswore all wine, perhaps this is Him being dedicated to His vow. Some other little snippets that I found interesting – there are a large number of women followers watching the crucifixion. Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of James and John (or Joses) are named, but also “many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem”. I don’t know what the significance of this is, but I thought it bore mention. Also, when Joseph of Arimathea goes to ask Pilate for Jesus’ body (because it is the evening before Sabbath and he won’t be able to perform the burial work the next day), Pilate expresses surprise that Jesus is already dead. Apparently it is possible to survive for three days of crucifixion, although I’d hate to think what kind of condition you’d be in afterwards; I doubt you’d be able to walk around happily after a mere three days of rest (let alone virtual imprisonment in a stone tomb). Potentially, then, Jesus wasn’t really dead after all and so the resurrection is entirely feasible in medical terms but in a way I feel that reaching for logical explanations is kind of missing the point of the story.

Mark 16

“And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.”

I’m not sure if Salome was one of the women coming to attend to Jesus, or if she is a daughter of Mary mother of James; the same formula is used to list the women watching the crucifixion and it wasn’t clear then. However, I can’t help but feel that if the “Jesus was only mostly dead” theory were to be correct, then “We’re coming to anoint His body” is a very good cover for “We’re coming to feed and water and tend to wounds”. Even if the tomb was guarded (which isn’t described in Mark) I’d bet the guards would overlook women as a credible threat because sexism.

Instead of Jesus they find another young man in a white robe – not specifically stated as an angel here, but later identified as one I think – telling them that Jesus is already gone. Jesus later appears first to Mary Magdalene (out of whom he had cast seven devils), then to pairs of disciples and then finally all the remaining eleven at which point they finally believe that it’s Him. He gives them magic powers of casting out devils, speaking “with new tongues”, healing the sick and immunity to venom and poison, telling them to go out and preach the gospel to “every creature” and to baptise them so that they might be saved. “So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God”, a very perfunctory summation of a fundamental element of Christian belief.

So that was Mark. I read that it was originally thought that Mark was an abbreviated version of Matthew, hence its position as second book of the NT, but since then discovered that it’s more commonly assumed that Matthew is an expanded version of Mark, and I can see this quite clearly. Matthew has a lot more directly reported speech from Jesus which I wondered about at the time. It makes sense if Matthew was a better and more creative writer than Mark that he might decided to put down what Jesus ought to have said (or even that he managed to gather some more eye-witness reports). At the same time, there are little snippets of information or turns of phrase in Mark that aren’t in Matthew that make some elements more clear or add more mysteries. Let’s see what Luke has to add.