And he said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? 14 The sower sows the word. 15 These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.
Ofcourse mark would need the women to follow but not go all the way.
He’s the guy who should be posting here about now.
Wait you were just telling me to ignore the scholars! (Perhaps you meant we should ignore the ones who disagree with you… heh heh heh) The truth is I think 16:8 is the original ending and I think you can show by literary analysis why this is probably so.
There must be something you find compelling about your point of view otherwise why bring it up? What do you find compelling about it? What problem does it solve?
Robert said
Yes, but clearly Peter does not fully understand who the Markan Messiah is as should be obvious from the immediately following (8,30-33):
And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
And, again here, they do not really understand (9,10): So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.
They questioned what rising from the dead meant, but they never question what being the son of god means. They understand Jesus is the messiah but don’t understand what his role will be or what needs to happen. The claim that Mark is constructing a clever narrative where no one understands who Jesus really is, and that this narrative went unappreciated by Matthew/Luke is completely wrong. The disciples are told by god who Jesus is.
Absolutely so. This is a climactic moment in the narrative.
It might be climactic but Mark abandons the messianic secret motif here. Its only consistently applied in Matthew. Mark’s Jesus openly declares himself to be the messiah
Completely irrelevant to my position. Why wouldn’t Mark want to name the final characters in his closing scene who witnessed such an extraordinary event?
Because they never told anyone. Maybe a generic group of unnamed women who ran from the tomb too frightened to tell anyone could be a device for giving a moral lesson to his readers. But to specifically say Mary Magdalene, James’ mother Mary and Salome all saw the empty tomb but never told anyone, can only be seen as criticism.
If Jesus were not raised to heaven, then why is it that Jesus himself says to the high priest, “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven.’”
He will eventually be raised to heaven but it doesn’t happen in Mark. Jesus is on earth in Mark’s ending, travelling ahead of the disciples to Galilee.
But Herod’s view about John the Baptizer is not Mark’s view of Jesus seated at the right hand of Power coming with the clouds of heaven.
But Jesus is not sitting at the right hand of power when the women enter the tomb and are told he is risen. He is going ahead of the disciples to galilee. The only way to get a sense of what Mark means by “risen” is to check how he uses it elsewhere. Herod thinks John the baptist is risen and is walking around as a man.
You’re assuming that Mark’s view of the resurrection is the same as that of Matthew, Luke, or John. That’s certainly possible, but there’s no indication in Mark’s text that this is so. Who’s to say that Mark’s view was not more akin to that of Paul? But regardless of Mark’s understanding of the nature of the appearances of the resurrected Jesus, that need not dictate his use of a well-known plot device to end his account here.
The indication is the language he uses. Paul would never have said, “Jesus went ahead of me into Damascus and there I saw him”
There is no well known plot device that has the story end with the witnesses to the core message of the story not telling anyone about it.
These are the ones on the path where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. 17 But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away.[** you do not have permission to see this link **]
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
30 Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” 31 But he said vehemently, “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you.” And all of them said the same.
And he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.” 35 And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 He said, “Abba,[** you do not have permission to see this link **] the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him. 41 He came a third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough!
But he denied it, saying, “I do not know or understand what you are talking about.” And he went out into the forecourt.[** you do not have permission to see this link **] 69 And the servant-girl, on seeing him, began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” 70 But again he denied it. Then after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them; for you are a Galilean.” 71 But he began to curse, and he swore an oath, “I do not know this man you are talking about.” 72 At that moment the cock crowed for the second time.
peters protrayal in the gospel of mark is very negative .
Thanks very kindly for the invitation to comment on John 21 and the ending of Mark. I have argued that John 21:1-19 contains a narrative that was originally composed by Mark as the finale to his gospel beyond 16:8. To me, there are numerous indicators that support this inference:
- Mark was written in discrete sections that are defined by complementary opening and closing brackets or parentheses. The most commonly recognized of these is the section that opens with the healing of the blind man in 8:22-26 and closes with another healing of blind Bartimaeus in 10:52. Immediately following 10:52, Jesus arrives at the Mt of Olives in 11:1. He returns to the Mt of Olives in 14:26. This opening/closing set of parentheses is also commonly recognized as denoting section boundaries. Immediately following 14:26 is the opening unit of the final section, 14:27-30, in which (a) the shepherd is struck down, (b) the sheep scatter, (c) Jesus will reunite with the disciples in Galilee, and (d) Peter will deny Jesus three times.
In John 21:15-17, all four of these elements are resolved in another tightly composed unit: Jesus has reunited with them in Galilee as predicted, Peter is anointed as the new shepherd to replace the shepherd struck down, Peter is to feed the scattered sheep, and Peter is forgiven in threefold fashion for his denials. Since these four elements are tightly woven together in both Mark 14:27-30 and John 21:15-17, this appears to be intentional literary design that constitutes the original opening/closing brackets that defined the final section of Mark. - Mark opens with a dramatic clarion call, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” (1:17). This is promptly dropped in canonical Mark, never to be mentioned again. What was the point of this? Yet in John 21 we find the dramatic resolution—the miraculous catch of 153 fish symbolizes all souls saved in the act of redemption. In John 21, the disciples have become fishers of men.
Note also that 153 is a symbolic number. Mark loves his 3’s, 7’s, and 12’s. He routinely deploys numeric symbolism, while the author of John does not. The number 153 is the sum of the square of 3 and the square of 12, numbers which represent God and God’s chosen people respectively—thus 153 symbolizes the redeemed in union with God. So the “fishers of men” meme is reinforced. Given Mark’s passion for numerology, 153 fish is more likely to have been devised by Mark as a fulfillment of the fishers of men promise than by the author of John. Conversely, the fishing motif is nonexistent in John 1-20, and the story in John 21 relates to nothing in the rest of John.
Finally, the first words spoken by Jesus to disciples in Mark are “follow me.” They are spoken to Peter and Andrew. The last words spoken by Jesus in John 21 are also “follow me.” They are also spoken to Peter. This is no literary accident. The Greek grammar for “follow me” in 21:19,22 has been altered by the redactor of John 21 to conform to Johannine style (John 1:43), but the content/meaning is the same. Thus, “Follow me // I will make you become fishers of men” is a dual unit that is fully resolved in John 21. The entire mission of Jesus in Mark appears to have been defined by this grand thematic double bracketing.
- If Mark had continued the narrative beyond 16:8, the most likely scenario would be to have shown Peter, James, and John (possibly Andrew), as of yet unaware of the empty tomb since the women said nothing to anyone. All they know is Jesus is dead, the movement is over. What would they do next? They might have quite naturally decided to return to their fishing boats and take up their prior occupations, just like the disciples in John 21:1-2 decided to go fishing. The author of Mark would have needed to relocate the disciples back to Galilee for the predicted reunion, and this is an obvious literary device that he could have used to accomplish this.
However, “Peter, Andrew, James, and John” is a distinctive Markan signature. It would not have been possible to attach such a text to John. What do we have instead? John 21:1-2 is an absurd, heavy-handed string of uniquely Johannine names … Simon Peter, Thomas called the twin, Nathanael of Cana, fishing by the Sea of Tiberias. This is an obviously artificial and overtly cumbersome “Johannine signature.” But it would surely serve well to mask the original “Peter, Andrew, James, and John by the sea of Galilee.”
Almost all scholars recognize that the narrative in John 21 was originally composed as a “first appearance” of Jesus to the disciples. These disciples did not expect to see Jesus by the shore—“none of them dared to ask “who are you?” They knew it was the Lord” (21:12). Given that the story operates on the premise that they did not know Jesus was alive, the story fits perfectly as a continuation of Mark 16:8, where we are told the women said nothing to anyone.
In my view, Mark’s intent always was to end on a note of enthusiastic victory – the resurrected Jesus reunites with his disciples on the shore of the sea of Galilee, precisely where he had encountered and called them to begin with. The spiritual kingdom of God is established, death has been overcome, and the kingdom will continue to grow and flourish in Galilee. Mark’s intent was to finish with a resounding affirmation of the promise that Jesus declared at the outset — “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men!”
If Mark had continued the narrative beyond 16:8, the most likely scenario would be to have shown Peter, James, and John (possibly Andrew), as of yet unaware of the empty tomb since the women said nothing to anyone. All they know is Jesus is dead, the movement is over.
what then would be the reason for mark to have had women discover something they would say nothing about? mark is not bothered about witnesses to the tomb ? what does the tomb story do for his readers?
jakejones said
If Mark had continued the narrative beyond 16:8, the most likely scenario would be to have shown Peter, James, and John (possibly Andrew), as of yet unaware of the empty tomb since the women said nothing to anyone. All they know is Jesus is dead, the movement is over.
what then would be the reason for mark to have had women discover something they would say nothing about? mark is not bothered about witnesses to the tomb ? what does the tomb story do for his readers?
The reason is that Mark wants to affirm for the reader that the tomb was empty and the young man had proclaimed the resurrection. They say nothing out of fear, but it is key to the literary device required to get the disciples to relocate to Galilee. I don’t think there is any debate on whether 16:8 is authentic to the original gospel is there?
Mark may be fairly described as a polemic against Jesus’ inner circle. His family thinks he’s nuts in chapter 3. And Jesus complains about having no respect in his own home in chapter 6. Further, the Twelve are consistently portrayed as rather dense and feckless. They deny Jesus, fall asleep on guard duty, vie for positions of honor in the kingdom to come, fail to fully understand Jesus’ mission, and even need him to explain his parables.
evanpowell said
Thanks very kindly for the invitation to comment on John 21 and the ending of Mark. I have argued that John 21:1-19 contains a narrative that was originally composed by Mark as the finale to his gospel beyond 16:8. To me, there are numerous indicators that support this inference:
- Mark was written in discrete sections that are defined by complementary opening and closing brackets or parentheses. The most commonly recognized of these is the section that opens with the healing of the blind man in 8:22-26 and closes with another healing of blind Bartimaeus in 10:52. Immediately following 10:52, Jesus arrives at the Mt of Olives in 11:1. He returns to the Mt of Olives in 14:26. This opening/closing set of parentheses is also commonly recognized as denoting section boundaries. Immediately following 14:26 is the opening unit of the final section, 14:27-30, in which (a) the shepherd is struck down, (b) the sheep scatter, (c) Jesus will reunite with the disciples in Galilee, and (d) Peter will deny Jesus three times.
In John 21:15-17, all four of these elements are resolved in another tightly composed unit: Jesus has reunited with them in Galilee as predicted, Peter is anointed as the new shepherd to replace the shepherd struck down, Peter is to feed the scattered sheep, and Peter is forgiven in threefold fashion for his denials. Since these four elements are tightly woven together in both Mark 14:27-30 and John 21:15-17, this appears to be intentional literary design that constitutes the original opening/closing brackets that defined the final section of Mark.
- Mark opens with a dramatic clarion call, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” (1:17). This is promptly dropped in canonical Mark, never to be mentioned again. What was the point of this? Yet in John 21 we find the dramatic resolution—the miraculous catch of 153 fish symbolizes all souls saved in the act of redemption. In John 21, the disciples have become fishers of men.
Note also that 153 is a symbolic number. Mark loves his 3’s, 7’s, and 12’s. He routinely deploys numeric symbolism, while the author of John does not. The number 153 is the sum of the square of 3 and the square of 12, numbers which represent God and God’s chosen people respectively—thus 153 symbolizes the redeemed in union with God. So the “fishers of men” meme is reinforced. Given Mark’s passion for numerology, 153 fish is more likely to have been devised by Mark as a fulfillment of the fishers of men promise than by the author of John. Conversely, the fishing motif is nonexistent in John 1-20, and the story in John 21 relates to nothing in the rest of John.Finally, the first words spoken by Jesus to disciples in Mark are “follow me.” They are spoken to Peter and Andrew. The last words spoken by Jesus in John 21 are also “follow me.” They are also spoken to Peter. This is no literary accident. The Greek grammar for “follow me” in 21:19,22 has been altered by the redactor of John 21 to conform to Johannine style (John 1:43), but the content/meaning is the same. Thus, “Follow me // I will make you become fishers of men” is a dual unit that is fully resolved in John 21. The entire mission of Jesus in Mark appears to have been defined by this grand thematic double bracketing.
- If Mark had continued the narrative beyond 16:8, the most likely scenario would be to have shown Peter, James, and John (possibly Andrew), as of yet unaware of the empty tomb since the women said nothing to anyone. All they know is Jesus is dead, the movement is over. What would they do next? They might have quite naturally decided to return to their fishing boats and take up their prior occupations, just like the disciples in John 21:1-2 decided to go fishing. The author of Mark would have needed to relocate the disciples back to Galilee for the predicted reunion, and this is an obvious literary device that he could have used to accomplish this.
However, “Peter, Andrew, James, and John” is a distinctive Markan signature. It would not have been possible to attach such a text to John. What do we have instead? John 21:1-2 is an absurd, heavy-handed string of uniquely Johannine names … Simon Peter, Thomas called the twin, Nathanael of Cana, fishing by the Sea of Tiberias. This is an obviously artificial and overtly cumbersome “Johannine signature.” But it would surely serve well to mask the original “Peter, Andrew, James, and John by the sea of Galilee.”
Almost all scholars recognize that the narrative in John 21 was originally composed as a “first appearance” of Jesus to the disciples. These disciples did not expect to see Jesus by the shore—“none of them dared to ask “who are you?” They knew it was the Lord” (21:12). Given that the story operates on the premise that they did not know Jesus was alive, the story fits perfectly as a continuation of Mark 16:8, where we are told the women said nothing to anyone.
In my view, Mark’s intent always was to end on a note of enthusiastic victory – the resurrected Jesus reunites with his disciples on the shore of the sea of Galilee, precisely where he had encountered and called them to begin with. The spiritual kingdom of God is established, death has been overcome, and the kingdom will continue to grow and flourish in Galilee. Mark’s intent was to finish with a resounding affirmation of the promise that Jesus declared at the outset — “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men!”
Enjoyed your book on the topic, Evan.
Robert said
evanpowell said
They say nothing out of fear, but it is key to the literary device required to get the disciples to relocate to Galilee.
If the women do not say anything to anyone, how does this function to get the disciples to relocate to Galilee? And why do they even need to relocate? They were from Galilee and were only visiting Jerusalem with Jeaua for Passover. Wouldn’t the reader merely presume that after the disciples abandoned Jesus and fled, and their leader denied that he even knew Jeaus, that they had no reason to stick around in Jerusalem? Of course they would return to Galilee, right?
I think it just offers a smooth narrative transition. Jesus has said he will see them in Galilee (14:28). The young man says Jesus will “go before them” to Galilee, indicating they are in Jerusalem. Instructing the women to go tell Peter and the disciples indicates they must be nearby in Jerusalem. So if Jesus is going to meet them in Galilee, something needs to happen for them to get there. Deciding to return to their fishing occupation is a natural device to accomplish that, and the story in John 21 says they decided to go fishing for some unexplained reason. The J21 redactor just does not want to make it clear they were fishermen to begin with, as that is too much of a tip of the hand that the story came from Mark.
Robert said
evanpowell said
Thanks very kindly for the invitation to comment on John 21 and the ending of Mark.
Thank you for stopping by! We hope you will stick around andbcontribute to our discussions with your insights.
Mark was written in discrete sections that are defined by complementary opening and closing brackets or parentheses. The most commonly recognized of these is the section that opens with the healing of the blind man in 8:22-26 and closes with another healing of blind Bartimaeus in 10:52. Immediately following 10:52, Jesus arrives at the Mt of Olives in 11:1. He returns to the Mt of Olives in 14:26. This opening/closing set of parentheses is also commonly recognized as denoting section boundaries. Immediately following 14:26 is the opening unit of the final section, 14:27-30, in which (a) the shepherd is struck down, (b) the sheep scatter, (c) Jesus will reunite with the disciples in Galilee, and (d) Peter will deny Jesus three times.
But Jesus already returns to the Mount of Olives in 13,3. An alternative bracket for the final section of Mark’s gospel is the woman’s anointing of Jesus for his burial in 14,1-9 and the women’s attempt to anoint Jesus in his tomb in 16,1-8. At the exact center of this section is Jesus’ climactic declaration of ‘I am’ in 14,62. One might further argue that this anointing final section is bracketed with the very beginning of the gospel in which Jesus is anointed as Son of God in 1,1.11. One must also be attentive to the structure of the whole of the gospel.
I completely agree with all of your pregnant observations about how John 21 corresponds to what a reader of Mark’s Gospel might expect from Mark’s ending, but perhaps the reader of Mark’s Gospel is also the author or final reactor of the gospel of John.
Well, if I may, I think I might throw one more wrinkle into the mess. I am strongly persuaded that the original Mark did not include the three overtly apocalyptic elements … 8:38-9:1, 14:62 (in its present form), and ch. 13. These look like interpolations, not only in their literary form, but due to the fact that the author of Mark was desperate to make the Jesus movement look as pro-Roman as possible. The very last thing he would have done is place apocalyptic rhetoric on the lips of Jesus. Other than these three apocalyptic units, the rest of the gospel does not appear to have been written by someone anticipating an immediate apocalypse that it was vital to “watch” for (per ch 13). It is written by someone envisioning a newly revealed spiritual kingdom of God, one that he anticipated would flourish after the resurrection quite in harmony with Roman rule. Ch. 13 makes no mention of the kingdom of God–in ch 13 the kingdom that Jesus came to reveal becomes irrelevant because the world is about to end.
So that is a longwinded way of saying the Mt Olives reference in 13:3 compromises the original literary structure. Note also that the section brackets usually include an inner and outer set of brackets. In this case, the outer brackets are the Mt. of Olives references, and just inside those are the two pericopes that each begin with Jesus sending two specific unnamed disciples to prepare for the Entry and Last Supper respectively. I think this structure was intentional.
IMO, an original non-apolcalyptic Mark was written in the mid-60’s just after Peter’s death, and it was updated with the three apocalyptic inserts around 70 or soon thereafter to salvage the credibility of the new gospel in light of the events of 70.
Any thoughts on the significance of the witness to the resurrection in gMark? – the young man in dazzling white?
A “son of man” (angel)? A transfiguration of the elusive follower in gethsemane? -(who ended up naked as if a reversal of Adam)?
************
Why would the author expect the apocalypse to happen in Gallillee? – a remnant of Judas the Gallilean being the historical kernel for the plot?
BDEhrman
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