It has become a standard interpretation of Mark that when he records during his depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion the tearing of the temple’s veil, he is not recording a mere physical fact but a theological shift: all men now have direct access to God through Jesus’ death. This interpretation is based on the Jewish law that only the high priest, and only once per year, can remove the veil and gaze (though through a fog of incense) upon the most holy sanctum, the holy of holies, where once sat the ark of the covenant. Thus the interpretation goes: all who give allegiance to Jesus crucified now have equal access to the Jewish god, who is in fact God of heaven and earth.

I would like to challenge this interpretation. Though I believe the “gist” of the interpretation holds true–the point is universal union with God–the interpretation has got things a little backwards. The standard interpretation is that the torn veil symbolizes “man’s” movement towards God; it is my contention that Mark intended to convey God’s movement towards “man”.

But to do this, I must pedantically invoke a wide range of historical context and the greek of Mark. Please bare with me. We deal first with the historical context….

We must start with the temple. There are several texts, biblical and non, that depict the Jewish temple as a kind of microcosm–it was built so as to recall its worshippers to the universe, as conceived by ancient Jews. The outer court corresponded conceptually to the earth. we see this most clearly when Solomon’s temple called the washing basins “the sea”. The altar must made of stone and had four “horns” rising up from the four corners. Ezekiel refers to the altar as the mountain of God, an obvious geographical feature. Thus the court corresponds to all that lies beneath the sky. Moving laterally into the sanctum, we thus move conceptually upwards, into the heavens: there we meet a candlestick, incense, and are stopped by a curtain dyed in all the variations of the sky, from midday blue to evening scarlet. We have entered the heavens–stars, clouds, the sky in all its variations–even the “showbread” reminds Israelites of the days when mana came down from the heavens.

But lets move on, past the veil.

Beyond that, true heaven…what moderners might call “supernatural heaven”, but that distinction of course was probably foreign to the ancient Israelites. Since Genesis depicts God as placing “luminaries” in the heavens, they no doubt thought in spatial terms. True heaven, God’s domain, did actually exist “up there, and beyond there”. The main point for my thesis is that the holy of holies was the residency of God–non-created order. The curtain that split in the temple at Jesus’ death thus symbolically opened up the barrier between creation and non-creation.

So far nothing I’ve said challenges the conventional interpretation. VIP status to heaven is opened. But now for the Greek…

The word Mark uses for depicting the tearing of the veil…(I don’t know how to shift to Greek letters)…is the same word he uses earlier, in fact at the beginning of his gospel, at Jesus’ baptism, when the heavens are “torn”. It is the same Greek word. There, at the baptism, the spirit (of God, presumably) descends from somewhere “higher than the heavens” (since a tear is required in the heavens to make an opening) and then “comes down” towards Jesus. The supernatural has entered the natural and entered Jesus.

Put it all together: when Mark depicts the veil in the temple of tearing he does not signify “man’s” movement towards God but rather God’s movement towards “man”. God has “left the building” and come out into the world.

Just as in the prologue we see the heavens torn and the spirit of God come down into Jesus, so now, at Jesus’ death, the veil representing the division between uncreated heaven and creation (comprised of the heavens and earth) has been torn–the spirit now comes out from the holy of holies and into the world.

This interpretation sheds new light on the rest of the passage. We know (as historians) that when Mark wrote his gospel Gentiles were responding to the message more positively than Jews. the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians that Gentile worshippers are in fact the temple of God! In Mark, as soon as the veil is torn, a Gentile, a centurion, “confesses” Jesus as Son of God (I here ignore the historical quesitons of whether this ever happened or whether the centurion meant it sarcastically….I am dealing only with how Mark wants to tell it). Indeed (and here I am less confident) though Mark says nothing about the Spirit, he does use a word to describe Jesus’ death which we translate in English “when Jesus EXPIRED” or “breathed his last”. And in greek, breath and spirit are the same.

Thus, the veil is torn…the Spirit, because of Jesus’ death, now goes out into the world, and even Gentiles now confess the son and his god, the god of Israel.