Most of the idealized teaching of Jesus that is contrary to a revolutionary portrait of Jesus is not found in Mark so I’d want to see more of your proposed thematic throughout the gospel before attributing this idea to Mark himself.

While Mark’s portrait of Jesus is a bit, shall I say, unrefined from this perspective, I think we can see that the transition from revolutionary to suffering servant has been made.

Jesus knows he will be betrayed and killed, he and goes to Jerusalem to fulfill that role (Mk 10:32-34, cf. Mk. 9:31 & Mk 8:31). Even at the last supper, he knows one of twelve the will betray him (Mk 14:18; cf. Mk 14:27 and Mk 14:30), but he does nothing to elude arrest. In front of Pilate, he makes no answer (Mk 15:5). He goes to Jerusalem *to die*, not gloriously on a battlefield, but rejected and betrayed on a cross.

So, while I agree that subsequent gospels will make Jesus even more a pacifist (in his teaching, his conduct , and his demeanor), already in Mark any explicit acknowledgement that Jesus planned to go down fighting–if, indeed, he planned to go down at all–has been scrubbed and substituted with the suffering servant who knew his job was to die and did not resist that fate.

But I do think there is something weird about Mark’s Christ–the transition has been made, but still, there are things–poignant things–that really only fit if Jesus was a revolutionary (or more generally, not planning to die betrayed on a cross). Bart pointed out that in Mark, Jesus is silent through the passion. The only thing he says is his final utterance, “why have you forsaken me?” The image is of one in shock. The last desperate cry of despair is heartfelt–he really doesn’t understand what was happening; how could it have come to this? I find that persuasive, but it also doesn’t really fit the image that Mark has painted of a Jesus who explicitly went to Jerusalem to die on a cross.

So I don’t know. I’m still piecing things together. I almost want to say Jesus the suffering servant lies lightly on the page, a few words added here and there that barely disguises the Jesus who had no intention of winding up on a cross. But that seems too sloppy for Mark.

Paul doesn’t seem to know much of Jesus’teaching either–though there are some hints he *might* have known some; either way it is pretty remarkable that for Paul, the gospel seems to be almost entirely about what Jesus did in the last week of his life, not what Jesus taught. That at least suggests that in the first decades Jesus teaching wasn’t universally seen as the core of Christianity. It’s almost the sort of gap a convert might feel the need to fill in.

When you say both strains of apocalypticism might have fight for control from the beginning, on which side would Jesus himself have been? Or are you suggesting that he was himself conflicted and unsure what part human agency would play?

The more I think about this the less sense I can make of my initial suggestion that Barabbas was some sort of alter ego of Jesus.

My suspicion is that Mark invents Barabbas simply to fulfill the substitutionary element of Is 53 (e.g., Is 53:5; Is 53:11-12)–Jesus literally took the place of an insurrectionist, he was crucified between two insurrectionists where a third insurrectionist should have been, and (presumably) would had Barabbas not been freed in place of Jesus. In fact, the very verse after Barabbas is freed is when Pilate has Jesus scourged, by his stripes we were healed– I’m still not sure what to do with the significance of his name.

As to the significance of Jesus’s silence; the simplest answer is that it was just to fulfil Is 53:7. So granted that is the symbolic meaning, what is the literal meaning? What was the cause, within Mark’s narrative itself, for Jesus to be silent? Was this the silence of fortitude and stoic resignation? Was it the silence of shock–not a shock of surprise (for in Mark’s narrative Jesus clearly expects to be crucified)–but of confronting the horrible reality face to face? Maybe Mark intends to show a very human Jesus who knew in his mind he had to die on a cross, but he still grew weak when he actually saw the instrument of his death: “my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast” which sort of fits with what we saw in Mark’s Jesus at Gethsemane, “my soul is sorrowful unto death”–he knew what was coming and his spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

And yes, I think you are right. Mark’s Jesus will have his revenge on the authorities, but only after they kill him.

One more think that has struck me as I’ve been going over this. Mark tells us that Barabbas was one of several rebels then in prison, and that he had committed murder in “the insurrection” (Mk 15:7) And he tells us that the two crucified with Jesus were “robbers” (lestas). Who were these rebels and what was the insurrection?

If we just take a subset of the plain facts that Mark relates and assumes that they had some historical basis–Jesus shows up in Jerusalem and does a bunch of stuff that looks like a direct challenge to the established authorities, he is crucified for claiming kingship, oh, and by the the way, there was an insurrection about that time and a number of rebels were arrested, and some of them may have been executed alongside Jesus, then top that off with the fact that Suetonius knew of Jesus as an instigator, and one starts to wonder: Maybe Mark was forced to explain away the known report that Jesus did instigate something that passover–perhaps a conflict in Gethsemane. Maybe some of his closest followers did get arrested with him and maybe some even die mocking him resentfully. After all, what are the odds that you could draw a sword on the temple guards, cut off the ear of someone acting as an agent of the high priest, and be left to scamper off in peace? Maybe some of them were even arrested but released–sort of like Barabbas. Maybe even some of them were released because others interceded for them, asked them to be treated with mercy, but threw Jesus under the bus.

I realize I’m letting my imagination run wild, so I’ll stop now.

If Mark had in mind here the Suffering Servant passage, the literal meaning and the symbolic meaning are the same, right?

Sorry, I was struggling to find the vocabulary to express the thought and what I settled on was deficient. What I mean is, presuming Mark makes his Jesus be silent because he wants him to conform to Isaiah’s description of the Suffering Servant, still to make his Jesus a coherent character, whose silence is plausible in the narrative Mark is telling, the silence needs to have a plausible explanation within Mark’s narrative world. Within Mark’s story, is Jesus silent as a passive protest, a rejection of Pilate’s authority? Is he silent because he is in shock and can’t believe what is happening?

As to the possibility you suggest, that Jesus was silent because he had no language in common with Pilate. I think that might work historically–and perhaps it occasioned the connection to Isaiah. But I’m not sure it fits well within Mark’s narrative as the explantation of Jesus’ silence: Mark has Pilate wonder at Jesus’s refusal to make answer; Presumably if the cause of Jesus’ silence in the narrative were a simple linguistic barrier, Pilate would not have been aware that Jesus couldn’t speak a common language, and so would not been amazed by Jesus’ perfectly natural inability to answer.