Nathan Eubank, «Dying with Power. Mark 15,39 from Ancient to Modern Interpretation», Vol. 95 (2014) 247-268
This article examines the reception-history of Mark 15,39 to shed new light on this pivotal and disputed verse. Mark's earliest known readers emended the text to clarify the centurion's feelings about Jesus and to explain how the centurion came to faith. Copyists inserted references to Jesus' final yell around the same time that patristic commentators were claiming that this yell was a miracle that proved Jesus' divinity, an interpretation which was enshrined in the Byzantine text and the Vulgate. The article concludes that a 'sarcastic' reading is a more adequate description of 15,39 as found in B, NA28 etc.
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258 NATHAN EUBANK
alone in discerning hints of demonic activity in Mark’s passion
narrative 31. Yet, if Mark had wanted to suggest that the centurion
believed in Jesus because he saw a demon leave Jesus’ body, one
would expect him both to indicate that this was what the centurion
saw and to explain why this would lead him to say Jesus was ui`o.j
qeou/ 32. To be fair, Danker does go on to say that Mark does not
imply “awareness on the part of the centurion of the demonic di-
mension of the proceedings,” claiming that “The centurion’s re-
sponse is in fact Mark’s own clarification” 33. Yet, Danker here
creates more problems than he solves by confusing the story level
(i.e., the characters and events within the narrative) with the dis-
course level (i.e., the effect of the narrative on the readers) 34. The
centurion’s remark may indeed clarify things for the reader, but that
does not explain why, according to Mark’s narrative, the centurion
made this remark.
To sum up part I: the earliest interpreters of Mark had the free-
dom to change Mark’s text, which makes the early gospels and tex-
tual variants a record, not only of what these people thought Mark
was saying, but also of what they thought he ought to have said.
We have seen two very clear tendencies in these interpreter-redac-
tors. 1) Both gospels and scribes take pains to clarify the centurion’s
feelings about Jesus. The gospels do this by adding explanatory
phrases (Matt: “fearing greatly”; Luke: “glorifying God”; Peter:
“agonizing greatly”), whereas scribes of Mark made the centurion
stand “there” (evkei/) at the cross, or “with him” (auvtw/|) rather than
“against him” (evx evnanti,aj auvtou/). 2) Both gospels and scribes
provide something spectacular to prompt the centurion’s remark.
Matthew adds an earthquake; both Matthew and Luke claim it was
all “that had happened” that prompted the centurion’s confession.
31
E.g., J. MARCUS, “Identity and Ambiguity in Markan Christology”,
Seeking the Identity of Jesus (eds. R.B. HAYS – B.R. GAVENTA) (Grand Rapids,
MI 2008) 133-147.
32
Brown (Death of the Messiah, II, 1144) comments, “[E]ven if one were
to accept [Danker’s] theory, such a defeat of the forces of evil might cause
the centurion to exclaim that Jesus was good or innocent, but why would it
lead him to give to Jesus the highest christological evaluation in the Gospel?”
33
DANKER , “The Demonic Secret”, 69.
34
I borrow the story/discourse distinction from R. FOWLER, Let the Reader
Understand. Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Harrisburg,
PA 1996) 2.