Hi again, John.John2 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 31, 2018 8:03 amAnd I'm not sure I fully appreciate the significance of the Temple veil being torn and such at Jesus' crucifixion. I suppose these things are a "bookend' of sorts to the baptism, but the empty tomb scene also has an accompanying "bookend" in 16:4-7:
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ ”
That other thread was getting crazy. Josephus was being misread or misinterpreted, Mithras and the Tauroctony were suddenly under discussion, seemingly out of the blue, and things were just getting muddled in general. So I thought I would start afresh.
I think, based on the above, that we are using the term "bookends" in two different ways. I am using the term as a substitute for another, more technical term: the inclusio. And, if that term does not work for you, then please drop it and just focus on the concepts at play. You seem to be using it merely to mean the first and the last pericopes in the gospel.
But I believe that the baptism and death of Jesus, in our extant gospel of Mark, are set up to reflect one another conceptually. The death is supposed to remind one of the baptism. This belief of mine derives from an article by David Ulansey, the one which you have already read. My fivefold set of correspondences between the baptism and the death are as follows:
- At both events something descends; the holy spirit descends as a dove at the baptism of Jesus, and the veil rips in two from top to bottom at his death.
- At both events the spirit is moving; at the baptism the spirit enters Jesus, and at his death the spirit exits him (the word for expire or exhale in Mark 15.37, ἐξέπνευσεν, literally means "expire" or "spirit out" in etymological terms).
- At both events somebody claims that Jesus is a son of God (υἱὸς θεοῦ); at his baptism it is a voice from heaven, at his death a nearby centurion.
- At both events the eschatological figure of Elijah is symbolically present; at the baptism of Jesus it is in the person of John the baptist (whom Jesus himself affirms as Elijah in Mark 9.9-13), while at his death the bystanders mistake his forlorn cry for a call to Elijah.
- At both events something tears or rips; at the baptism of Jesus it is heaven that rips open (σχιζομένους), and at his death it is the veil that rips (ἐσχίσθη) in twain.
David Ulansey: Indeed, in his 1987 article, "The Rending of the Veil: A Markan Pentecost," S. Motyer points out that there is actually a whole cluster of motifs which occur in Mark at both the baptism (1:9-11) and at the death of Jesus (15:36-39). In addition to the fact that at both of these moments something is torn, Motyer notes that: (1) at both moments a voice is heard declaring Jesus to be the Son of God (at the baptism it is the voice of God, while at the death it is the voice of the centurion); (2) at both moments something is said to descend (at the baptism it is the spirit-dove, while at the death it is the tear in the temple veil, which Mark explicitly describes as moving downward), (3) at both moments the figure of Elijah is symbolically present (at the baptism Elijah is present in the form of John the Baptist, while at Jesus' death the onlookers think that Jesus is calling out to Elijah); (4) the spirit (pneuma) which descends on Jesus at his baptism is recalled at his death by Mark's repeated use of the verb ekpneo (expire), a cognate of pneuma.
My list has five items instead of four because I separate the concept of descent from the concept of something tearing or ripping. But the overall effect is the same. I always mention Ulansey in this context because I have not read Motyer's article.
At any rate, my point is and was that this list of correspondences implies, for me, that the spirit entering Jesus at his baptism is parallel to the spirit exiting Jesus at his death. In other words, the idea that Mark means more by ἐξέπνευσεν than merely that Jesus died or breathed his last is strengthened, to my mind, by the other items on the list. It is also strengthened by how the other evangelists treat this moment. Matthew 27.50 says that Jesus yielded up his spirit (ἀφῆκεν τὸ πνεῦμα), while in Luke 23.46 Jesus is said to have committed his spirit (παρατίθεμαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου) to his Father. John 19.30 says that Jesus gave up his spirit (παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα). Peter 5.19 has Jesus shouting out that his Power has forsaken him, and then he is "taken up" (ἀνελήφθη), even though his body was still on the cross to be taken down and buried. All of these evangelists seem to have gotten the point: something departed Jesus at his death, leaving his body behind. If that something in Mark 15.37 is the same spirit that had entered him at his baptism, then what we have is the makings of a separationist theology.
This is the extent of the argument that I have made: the gospel narrative seems to betray a separationist theology by the exit of the spirit from Jesus at his death after it had entered at his baptism. All of the other correspondences, so far as this argument is concerned, simply prop up this central contention.
Now, Ulansey actually argues that there is another correspondence between the death and the baptism (one which so far I have not discussed at all) for those who had known what the outer veil of the Jerusalem Temple looked like. He quotes part of Josephus in the body of his article and then another part in a footnote, but let me lay the entire passage out for convenience:
Josephus, Wars 5.5.4 §212-214: 212 Πρὸ δὲ τούτων ἰσόμηκες καταπέτασμα πέπλος ἦν Βαβυλώνιος ποικιλτὸς ἐξ ὑακίνθου καὶ βύσσου κόκκου τε καὶ πορφύρας, θαυμαστῶς μὲν εἰργασμένος, οὐκ ἀθεώρητον δὲ τῆς ὕλης τὴν κρᾶσιν ἔχων, ἀλλ᾽ ὥσπερ εἰκόνα τῶν ὅλων: 213 ἐδόκει γὰρ αἰνίττεσθαι τῇ κόκκῳ μὲν τὸ πῦρ, τῇ βύσσῳ δὲ τὴν γῆν, τῇ δ᾽ ὑακίνθῳ τὸν ἀέρα, καὶ τῇ πορφύρᾳ τὴν θάλασσαν, τῶν μὲν ἐκ τῆς χροίας ὁμοιουμένων, τῆς δὲ βύσσου καὶ τῆς πορφύρας διὰ τὴν γένεσιν, ἐπειδὴ τὴν μὲν ἀναδίδωσιν ἡ γῆ, τὴν δ᾽ ἡ θάλασσα. 214 κατεγέγραπτο δ᾽ ὁ πέπλος ἅπασαν τὴν οὐράνιον θεωρίαν πλὴν ζῳδίων. / 212 But before these doors there was a veil of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet, and purple, and of a contexture that was truly wonderful. Nor was this mixture of colors without its mystical interpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; 213 for by the scarlet there seemed to be enigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the earth, by the blue the air, and by the purple the sea; two of them having their colors the foundation of this resemblance; but the fine flax and the purple have their own origin for that foundation, the earth producing the one, and the sea the other. 214 This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens, excepting that of the [twelve] signs, representing living creatures.
So this great curtain bore four textures or colors: scarlet, linen, blue, and purple. I have no idea whether Josephus' matching these up with the four classical elements (fire, earth, air, and water) is his own preference or was current among his fellow Jews. But what is important for our purposes is what was actually depicted upon the veil: Whiston translates it as "all that was mystical in the heavens," but the Greek phrase is more literally rendered as "the entire heavenly spectacle" (ἅπασαν τὴν οὐράνιον θεωρίαν). The Loeb edition translates it as "a panorama of the heavens," as does Ulansey himself (though he adds "entire" to further capture the force of ἅπασαν). Josephus adds that the zodiac symbols were not present (the "zodiac" is literally a list of animals, and depictions of living creatures was forbidden in mainstream Judaism). But the curtain seems to have contained some kind of representation of the heavens, and this is the only thing which Josephus describes as actually depicted upon it.
If Ulansey is correct, then at the baptism the heavens ripped apart, while at the death a depiction of the heavens (on the veil) ripped apart. My argument does not require this point, and I have to this point never used it, but there it is: possible extra support for the thesis of correspondence between the death and the baptism.
Finally, I would add that I do not think that the gospel of Mark as it stands, as a whole, is necessarily separationist. Matthew and Luke preserve the departure of the spirit at Jesus' death, after all, and they can hardly be considered to be separationist (the infancy stories preclude such a contingency, for example). But my contention is that underneath the current gospel storyline there is another storyline which is (or was) separationist before additional details and layers got added.
What do you think?
Ben.