Bible Studies Jeanie C. Crain http://crain.english.missouriwestern.edu

The Gospel of Mark: A Study Based on the Old Testament

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Summary This chapter in Mark is known as the "little apocalypse." As the disciples and Jesus are coming out of the temple, one of the disciples remarks concerning the large buildings and large stones.  Jesus replies by saying that all will be destroyed. Jesus and his disciples cross the Kidron Valley in order to get to the Mount of Olives.  There, the disciples ask when the temple will be destroyed and ask for signs of this coming event.  Jesus mentions that many will come saying "I am" and will gain followers. Wars and rumors of war will signal the end. The disciples are told that before the end, nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. Birth pangs of the day of the Lord will be signaled by earthquakes and famines.

Next, the disciples hear probably what they do not want to hear: they themselves will be brought before councils and beaten in the synagogues; they will stand before governors and kings where they will be asked to testify of their commitments. Before the end, the Gospel must be proclaimed to all nations. The disciples are told, furthermore, not to try to prepare for the trials relative to what to say in their own defense; rather, the Holy Spirit will speak on their behalf. Brothers, fathers, and children will rise against each other with children having their own parents put to death. The disciples are told they will be hated but will be saved if they endure until the end.

The end will be signaled by "desolating sacrilege" in the temple itself, and the religious will flee to the mountains.  At this time of flight, people will not take time to take anything from their houses, including coats; those who are pregnant will be pitied for their condition; hopefully, they will be spared having this happen in the winder. The disciples are told the suffering will be more intense than any they've seen since the beginning of the world, and there will never be greater suffering. God himself will cut short mortal days for the sake of his elect; if, in fact, people hear others proclaiming themselves Messiah, they are not to believe them; for another sign of the day of the Lord will be false prophets and messiahs. The disciples, having been instructed, are to stay alert and not be led astray.

The suffering will be followed by a darkened sun and moon; stars will fall from the heavens, and the heavens themselves will be shaken. At this time the Son of Man will come in the clouds with great power and glory. He will send out angels and gather the elect from the four winds and the ends of earth and heaven.

Christ recalls the lesson the fig tree which he has earlier cursed for bearing leaves but no fruit.  Symbolically, once again, another sign, this time of summer, will be that the fig tree puts out leaves. When all these things have been seen, then the day of the Lord will be near; in fact, this generation, Christ tells his disciples, will not pass away until these things come to pass. He continues, heaven and earth will pass away but not my words.

The disciples are told to keep alert, for they will not know when the end is to come; this end, neither the angels nor the Son knows, but only the Father. The disciples are told to keep awake:

34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. 35 Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, 36 or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake."

The power of numbers!  Coincidentally, this apocalyptic chapter is thirteen, giving us an easy handle whereby to remember this troublesome chapter, probably one of the most often debated. When will the day of the Lord come! As the readers have been asked to know scripture before as they read Mark, it's probably most instructive to recall Old Testament passages which are very similar in tone and prediction to chapter thirteen of Mark. Recall first Isaiah 13.10 used to describe the judgment of God upon Babylon; in fact, these passages should be read in entirety.

9 See, the day of the Lord comes,

cruel, with wrath and fierce anger,

to make the earth a desolation,

and to destroy its sinners from it.

10 For the stars of the heavens and their constellations

will not give their light;

the sun will be dark at its rising,

and the moon will not shed its light.

Isaiah strikes a similar tone when he describes the judgment of God upon Edom:

34 Draw near, O nations, to hear;

O peoples, give heed!

Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;

the world, and all that comes from it.

2 For the Lord is enraged against all the nations,

and furious against all their hoards;

he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter.

3 Their slain shall be cast out,

and the stench of their corpses shall rise;

the mountains shall flow with their blood.

4 All the host of heaven shall rot away,

and the skies roll up like a scroll.

All their host shall wither

like a leaf withering on a vine,

or fruit withering on a fig tree.

5 When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,

lo, it will descend upon Edom,

One can't miss here the almost formulaic utterance: the day of the Lord, the Lord's rage against nations, the fleeing to the mountains; the earth, a desolation; the heavens, rotting away; the stars and constellations not giving light; the sun and moon darkened.

Now, consider Ezekiel 32.7 describing God's judgment upon Egypt:

7 When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens,

and make their stars dark;

I will cover the sun with a cloud,

and the moon shall not give its light.

8 All the shining lights of the heavens

I will darken above you,

and put darkness on your land,

says the Lord God.

Also, consider Joel 2; Joel is talking about God's judgment upon Israel:

2 Blow the trumpet in Zion;

sound the alarm on my holy mountain!

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,

for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—

2 a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of clouds and thick darkness!

Like blackness spread upon the mountains

a great and powerful army comes;

their like has never been from of old,

nor will be again after them

in ages to come.

3 Fire devours in front of them,

and behind them a flame burns.

Before them the land is like the garden of Eden,

but after them a desolate wilderness,

and nothing escapes them.

This is the day of the Lord, much like Isaiah 19: 1-3; this time, the prophecy is relative to Egypt:

19 An oracle concerning Egypt.

See, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud

and comes to Egypt;

the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence,

and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.

2 I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians,

and they will fight, one against the other,

neighbor against neighbor,

city against city, kingdom against kingdom;

3 the spirit of the Egyptians within them will be emptied out,

 

What should be obvious by now is that the Old Testament supplies ample evidence of such apocalyptic expectation.  John Shelby Spong, following through upon his hypothesis that the order of Mark is really an order of liturgical reading, says the following:

As we noted previously, the annual reading of the Torah had begun anew on the first Sabbath of Nisan with the

book of Genesis, so the Torah lesson for that Sabbath would be the early Genesis story of Noah and the flood.

There the theme being expressed was that of God's judgment on the wickedness of human life.  It was a total

judgment, reminiscent of Armageddon, when all the world would be destroyed.  This Torah reading on that Sabbath

was supplemented, at least in the earliest Jewish lectionaries that we can locate, with a reading from the early

portion of the Jewish scriptures known as the former prophets, namely, the story of Joshua cross the Jordan river.

In that text, the Kingdom of God was about to dawn for the desert-wandering Jews.  They were entering the Promised

Land.  Again, following the earliest known lectionaries, the lesson for that Sabbath, taken from the prophetic cycle of Isaiah,

was about the coming day of the Lord at the end of time.  So, from a variety of angles, the theme among the Jews

of this pre-Passover Sabbath was the end of the world (Liberating the Gospels, 77).

What we do know about Mark 13 is that Jerusalem is to fall in 70 CE, not unlike events upon the horizon in the old testament, certainly close enough at hand to suggest that this generation (a generation being forty years) would not pass away until all had been fulfilled. An intelligent person could have surveyed first-century events and have predicted the probability of a Roman show of power.  Certainly, after the fall of the temple in 70 CE, Christianity moves forward into increased world-wide evangelism. 

God's judgment upon earth follows both a contemporary and absolute time: that is, Babylon, Edom, Egypt, and Israel were judged.  Each cycle repeated itself with a renewal and subsequent fall away from commitment.  God's absolute judgment when the Kingdom of God would be definitively established is, perhaps, always a matter of future event at the same time that it is being currently realized.  Jesus, perhaps, did not set out to do more than reform the legalistic and ritualistic "Jewish" religion of his day; the outgrowth, however, was Christianity.

What we do recognize in Mark 13 is that it records the last week. We have already observed the cleaning up of the temple in chapter eleven; this is followed by the cursing of the unproductive fig tree, also in eleven. Prior to these events, we have observed Jesus approach Jerusalem from Jericho, approaching the Mount of Olives. Did Jesus go to Jerusalem to die?

The purpose of the trip is stated in Mark’s three passion predictions (Mark 8.31; Mark 9.31; Mark 10.33–34). It is generally agreed that these predictions in their present form are prophecies after the event and therefore reflect a knowledge of the passion story (stage II). But they may well contain an authentic nucleus (stage I), such as "the Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men" (Mark 9.31), where we have an Aramaic play on words (Son of man/men). Jesus hardly went up to Jerusalem in order to die; that, it has been suggested, would be tantamount to suicide. But he may well have realized that death would be the inevitable outcome of his mission (Oxford Companion).

We know that he has ridden into Jerusalem in the manner prophesied and expected in the tradition of Zechariah.   The people have proclaimed  "Hosanna to the highest." This "hosanna" is interpreted as "Save now."  This cry may have been a plea to God to save the people now that the Messiah had appeared among them.

As they depart the temple, the disciples have been right to exclaim about the size of the buildings and the stones:

1: The temple, begun by Herod the Great, was as yet unfinished. What large stones, most of them were 37˝ feet long; Matthew 24.1 n. 13.18 feet wide, and 12 feet thick. 2: Luke 19.43–44; Mark 14.58; Mark 15.29; John 2.19; Acts 6.14. This temple was destroyed a.d. 70  (Oxford Annotated).

The desolating sacrilege well could define exactly what was happening within the temple, God's house intended to be a house of prayer:

13.14: Daniel 9.27; Daniel 11.31; Daniel 12.11. The desolating sacrilege, the intrusion of Gentile practices into the temple (Oxford Annotated).

It should be remembered that the Romans had permitted their taxes to be paid by the money coming into the temple; although Roman money was used as the medium of exchange throughout the land, this money had to be exchanged for Hebrew money within the temple.  This set up quite the scene for exploitation and abuse. What we know, too, is that these utterances concerning the destruction of the temple come just prior to the Passover with its set of expectations:

The tractate PesaPesaúimim in the Mishnah provides a description of the way that the rabbis (about 200 CE) understood Passover to have been celebrated before the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE). Many of the features reflected in PesaPesaúimimim are thus characteristic of the observance at the time of Jesus (See Lord’s Supper), and some have continued in Jewish tradition to the present. The following elements in the celebration are noteworthy.

The people brought their Passover animals to the Temple in the late afternoon and, because of the numbers of worshipers, were admitted to the sanctuary in three separate groups. The worshipers slaughtered their animals and the priests caught the blood and tossed it against the altar. The animals were flayed and cleaned in the Temple courtyard, with the required fat and internal portions being burned on the altar (Leviticus 3.3–4). While each group was performing these functions, the Levites sang the Egyptian Hallel psalms (Psalm 113–118) and repeated them if time allowed (Pesaú. 5.5–10).

The animals were carried from the Temple precincts and cooked for the Passover meal. Cooking was done by roasting so as not to break any bone in the animal (Pesaú. 7.1,11; see Exodus 12.46; John 19.36).

At the meal, everyone ate at least a portion of the Passover animal. The flesh was eaten along with varied herbs (Pesaú.ú.. 2.6), unleavened bread, a dip (ú‡rôset)rôset) composed of pounded nuts and fruits mixed with vinegar, and four cups of wine. After the second cup, a son asked the father, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" and the father instructed the son on the basis of Deuteronomy 26.5–11. Between the second and third cups, Psalm 113 (or Psalm 113–114) was sung. After the fourth cup, the Hallel was concluded. At the conclusion of the meal, the people departed but not to join in revelry (Pesaú. 10.1–8).. 2.6), unleavened bread, a dip (ú‡rôset)rôset) composed of pounded nuts and fruits mixed with vinegar, and four cups of wine. After the second cup, a son asked the father, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" and the father instructed the son on the basis of rôset) composed of pounded nuts and fruits mixed with vinegar, and four cups of wine. After the second cup, a son asked the father, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" and the father instructed the son on the basis of Deuteronomy 26.5–11. Between the second and third cups, Psalm 113 (or Psalm 113–114) was sung. After the fourth cup, the Hallel was concluded. At the conclusion of the meal, the people departed but not to join in revelry (Pesaú. 10.1–8).

The people sought to celebrate the meal as if they themselves had come out of Egypt—"out of bondage to freedom, from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning to festival day, and from darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption" (Pesaú.ú. 10.5) (Oxford Companion).

What follows in Mark is the plot to arrest Jesus, the betrayal agreement, the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden of Gethesamene, the examination of Christ by Caiphas, the high priest, Peter's denial, the trial of Jesus before Pilate, his mockery and crucifixion; this is followed by burial, resurrection, and post resurrection appearances.

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Last modified: October 27, 2005