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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Christology: now that Jesus’ messiahship and divine sonship have
been decisively qualified by his crucifixion, it is appropriate for
them to be revealed” 39. Marcus also notes that,
[T]he centurion’s confession is one of three architectonic acclama-
tions of Jesus as the Son of God, which are similar in form and seem
to structure the whole Gospel, appearing significantly at its begin-
ning, middle, and end; since the other two (1:11; 9:7) come from the
mouth of God, it makes sense that the third is revelatory as well 40.
In other words, given Mark’s concern to depict Jesus as one who
can be understood as Messiah only at the foot of the cross, how
could the centurion’s confession be anything less than revelatory,
especially when Mark seems to have structured the entire Gospel
around these three pivotal confessions? Given these considerations
it hardly seems possible that the centurion’s remark is merely an-
other indication of the cruelty of Jesus’ killers.
Marcus is surely correct to suppose 15,39 is a revelatory mo-
ment in the Gospel. But revelatory for whom? Throughout Mark’s
passion narrative Jesus’ enemies sarcastically laud him as king,
even while Mark’s readers know that these jibes are actually true.
To borrow Robert M. Fowler’s distinction once again, at the story
level Jesus is mocked as a royal pretender, but at the discourse level
Mark is claiming that Jesus is in fact a king. Fowler writes,
When readers argue that 15:39 is a grand denouement, they are re-
flecting their own reading experience and their own response to the
narrative’s discourse. Both what the centurion says (his locution)
and what he intends to accomplish by saying it (his intended illocu-
tion) remain ambiguous at story level. At discourse level, however,
no reader of Mark’s Gospel has failed to grasp that the wording of
the centurion’s utterance can be picked up and used as an appropriate
summary of the narrator’s own understanding of Jesus 41.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
41
FOWLER, Let the Reader Understand, 208. Fowler argues that 15,39 re-
mains ambiguous regardless of one’s preferred interpretation and cautions
against any attempt at resolution “because we can thereby forfeit the very
reading experience the author offers us” (208-209). See also the similar ar-
guments of W.T. SHINER, “The Ambiguous Pronouncement of the Centurion