05_Eubank_247_268 15/07/14 12:19 Pagina 247 Dying with Power Mark 15,39 from Ancient to Modern Interpretation The Gospel of Mark is punctuated by a series of pivotal moments in which Jesus is called the son of God, beginning with Jesus’ baptism when the voice from heaven tells him, “you are my son, the beloved” (1,11) 1. The scope widens at the Transfiguration when the voice from the cloud declares to all who were present, “This is my beloved son. Listen to him!” (9,7). The third and final confession comes, not from the mouth of God, but from the centurion who was standing opposite Jesus as he died: avlhqw/j ou-toj o` a;nqrwpoj ui`oj. qeou/ h=n. While it is clear that the centurion’s remark is a climactic moment in the Gospel, its precise significance is obscured by three related ambiguities. First, the centurion is said to make this remark because he saw the way Jesus died: “Seeing that thus he expired, he said …” (ivdw.n… o[ti ou[twj evxe,pneusen ei=pen). There is no indication that the centurion saw the temple curtain rip. Why would the manner of Jesus’ death as described by Mark inspire such a comment? The second ambiguity is the meaning of ui`o.j qeou/. According to Colwell’s rule, a predicate nominative which precedes a copulative verb may be definite even if it is anarthrous, so a possible translation would be “the son of God” 2. On the other hand, “a son of God” or even “a son of a god” remain possible construals 3. Moreover, the use of the past tense (h=n) would seem to indicate that the centu- 1 All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Mark may also call Jesus the son of God in the superscription (1,1), but these words are missing from a number of early and weighty manuscripts (e.g., ‫ *א‬Q sams). B.D. EHRMAN (The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. The Effect of Early Christo- logical Controversies on the Text of the New Testament [New York 1993] 72-75) has argued that transcriptional evidence favors the shorter reading be- cause scribes are unlikely to have omitted these words intentionally, or — in the very first line of the Gospel — unintentionally, but T. WASSERMAN (“The ‘Son of God’ Was in the Beginning (Mark 1:1)”, JTS 62 [2011] 20-50) has shown that accidental omission in the opening of a book is a possibility. 2 “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament”, JBL 52 (1933) 12-21. 3 E.g., A. PLUMMER (The Gospel according to St. Mark [Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges; Cambridge 1914; repr., Grand Rapids, MI BIBLICA 95.2 (2014) 247-268