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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264 NATHAN EUBANK
Moreover, the mockers at the cross call on Jesus to save himself,
whereas the mockers in the psalm call on God to save the sufferer 46.
As Marcus notes, “This discrepancy … makes a theological point:
the mockers do not realize that Jesus and God are so intertwined
that Jesus’ salvific power is the power of God and that Jesus’ king-
ship, far from being a joke, participates in that of God” 47. In other
words, the mockers unintentionally associate Jesus with both the
sufferer and the savior of Psalm 22. Similarly, the chief priests and
scribes ask Jesus to come down from the cross so that they might
“see and believe” that he is the Christ (15,32), but it is precisely by
being pinioned to the cross — not by performing works of power —
that his messiahship is demonstrated. And when the onlookers in-
terpret Jesus’ cry to God as a cry to Elijah, they unwittingly allude
to the fact that Elijah already came and met a violent end just as
Jesus does (cf. 9,11-13) 48. Again and again the flow of the narrative
asks the readers to see the reality behind the burlesque and confess
Jesus to be the crucified Christ.
Then, after Jesus dies with a loud cry, Mark writes ivdw.n de. o`
kenturi,wn o` paresthkw.j evx evnanti,aj auvtou/ o[ti ou[twj evxe,pneusen
ei=pen\ avlhqw/j ou-toj o` a;nqrwpoj ui`o.j qeou/ h=n. Given the fact
that the entire passion narrative is written on two levels, it would
seem sensible to read this comment accordingly: the centurion
flings one final insult at the man who, by his ignoble crying death,
has proven he was no divine man at all. Indeed, nearly every word
of v. 39 is dripping with double entendre, making it the pièce de
résistance of the entire passion narrative 49. At the story level, the
centurion sees that Jesus died crying out in fear or agony, and so
he quips, “Truly this man was a son of a god”. After all, no god res-
cued him, and he died without honor.
46
See Ps 22,8-9 (Ps 21 LXX): “All who saw me mocked me; they talked
with the lips; they shook their head [Mark 15,29]: ‘He hoped in the Lord; let
him rescue him; let him save him [Mark 15,30-32], because he desired him’”.
47
MARCUS, Mark 8–16, 1051.
48
Ibid., 1065.
49
Iverson (“A Performance-Critical Analysis of Mark 15:39”, 335) objects
to reading 15,39 in light of preceding taunts because it lacks explicit definition
of the intended force of the words unlike 15,20.29 passim. This argument is
based on Iverson’s dismissal of the possibility that evx evnanti,aj auvtou/ signals
opposition. As noted above, the phrase evx evnanti,aj frequently describes op-
posing parties, and it was frequently omitted by later interpreters of Mark.