The Origin of Satan (7 page)

pigeons; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything

through the Temple (11:15-16).

Now Jesus invokes the words of the prophets Isaiah and

Jeremiah, as if to speak for the Lord himself against those who

permit financial transactions in the Temple courtyard:

And he taught, and said to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house

shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you

have made it a den of robbers.” But the chief priests and the

scribes heard it, and sought a way to destroy him, for they were

afraid of him, because the whole crowd was astonished at his

teaching (11:17-18).

When the chief priests and scribes, joined by members of the

Jewish council, demand to know by what authority he acts, Jesus

refuses to answer. Instead he retells Isaiah’s parable of God’s

wrath against Israel (12:1-12) in a way so transparent that even

the chief priests, scribes, and elders recognize that he is telling it

“against them” (12:12). The following scenes show Jesus

contending first against the Pharisees and Herodians, who fail to

trick him into making anti-Roman statements (12:13-15), and

then against the scribes (12:35). Finally he warns a great crowd:

24 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

Beware of the scribes, who like to go around in long robes, and

to have salutations in the marketplaces, and the best seats in

the synagogues, and the places of honor at feasts, who devour

widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They

will receive the greater condemnation (12:38-40).

Then, as Jesus comes out of the Temple, Mark says, he

responds to his disciples’ awestruck admiration for the sacred

precincts by predicting the Temple’s destruction: “There will not

be left one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down”

(13:2). When Peter, James, John, and Andrew privately ask what

he means, Jesus sits with them on the Mount of Olives opposite

the Temple and explains. He predicts a series of horrifying

catastrophes (these are events in which Mark’s contemporaries

would recognize their own times, especially the events of the

war between 66 and 70): “wars and rumors of war,” famine,

public enthusiasm for false messiahs. Jesus warns in veiled

language that when they see “the desolating sacrilege set up

where it ought not to be”—the pagan desecration of the

Temple—they should flee into the mountains (13:7-14).

Mark intends Jesus’ followers, living in terrible times, to take

comfort in knowing that their leader had foreseen how they

would suffer, out of their loyalty to him (“for my sake”),

ostracism and reprisals, hatred and betrayal, even—perhaps

especially—from their family members:

“Take heed to yourselves; for they will deliver you up to

councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will

stand before governors and rulers for my sake . . . and brother

will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and

children will rise against parents and have their parents put to

death; and you will be hated by all for the sake of my name”

(13:9-13).

What is the believer to do, facing betrayal, isolation, and

mortal danger? Mark says that Jesus enjoined his followers to

“endure to the end.” Now Mark has to tell how Jesus himself

THE GOSPEL OF MARK AND THE JEWISH WAR / 25

“endured to the end,” through arrest, trials in both Jewish and

Roman courts, torture, and execution, thus giving his

endangered followers an example of how to endure. Two days

before Passover, Mark says, “the chief priests and the scribes

were seeking how to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him, for they

said, ‘Not during the festival, lest there be a tumult among the

people,’ ” since so far the people remained on Jesus’ side. Shortly

afterward, Judas Iscariot, obviously aware of the hostility his

master had aroused among influential people, “went to the chief

priests in order to betray [Jesus] to them, and when they heard it

they were glad, and offered him money” (14:1-11).

At night, Mark says, Judas led “a crowd with swords and clubs

from the chief priests and the scribes and Temple officers” to

Gethsemane, a garden on the Mount of Olives, to capture Jesus.

One of his men fought back with a sword, injuring the high

priest’s slave, and Jesus protested at being treated “like a robber”

(the term that Josephus and others commonly use to characterize

an “insurrectionist”). But the rest of his followers abandoned

him and fled; Jesus was taken. The armed men “brought him to

the high priest,” apparently to his residence. Although the San-

hedrin traditionally was not allowed to meet at night, Mark tells

us that on the night of Jesus’ arrest, “all the chief priests and the

elders and the scribes were assembled” at the high priest’s

residence to try his case in a formal proceeding.

Now Mark presents the first of two trial scenes—the “trial

before the Sanhedrin,” which he follows with the “trial before

Pilate.” Most scholars assume that even if these events occurred,

Jesus’ followers could not have witnessed what went on at either

his appearance before the Jewish council or his arraignment by

the Romans.28 But Mark is not concerned with reporting history.

By introducing these scenes, Mark wants to show above all that

the well-known charge against Jesus—sedition—not only was

false but was invented by Jesus’
Jewish
enemies; further, Mark

says, the Roman governor himself realized this and tried in vain

to save Jesus! According to Mark, the Sanhedrin had already

prejudged the case. The trial was only a pretense in order “to put

him to death” (14:55). After hearing a series of trumped-up

26 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

charges and lying witnesses, some accusing Jesus of having

threatened to destroy the Temple, the chief priest interrogates

Jesus, demanding that he answer the charges against him. Jesus,

however, remains silent. Finally the chief priest asks, “Are you

the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One?” (14:61). Here, for the

first time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus publicly admits his divine

identity to people other than his disciples, and goes on to warn

his accusers that they will soon witness his vindication: “I am;

and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of

power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (14:62). Then,

Mark continues, the high priest, tearing his robe, says, “ ‘You

have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?’ And they all

condemned him as deserving death” (14:64).

Many scholars have commented on the historical implausibil-

ity of this account.29 Did the Sanhedrin conduct a trial that

violated its own legal practices concerning examining witnesses,

self-incrimination, courtroom procedure, and sentencing?

Although we know little about Sanhedrin procedures during

Jesus’ time,30 did this council actually assemble at night, contrary

to what seems to have been its precedent? If so, why does Mark

go on to add a
second
version of the council meeting to discuss

this case—a meeting that takes place the following morning, as if

nothing had happened the night before? For after Mark ends his

first, more elaborate account, he lets slip what now becomes a

redundancy: that “as soon as it was morning the chief priests,

with the elders and scribes, and the whole council, held a

consultation, and they bound Jesus, and led him away, and

delivered him to Pilate” (15:1).

We cannot, of course, know what actually happened, but

Mark’s second version, which agrees with Luke’s, sounds more

likely—that the council convened in the morning, and decided

that the prisoner should be kept in custody and turned over to

Pilate to face charges.31 The gospel of John, relying upon a source

independent of Mark’s, offers another reconstructed account that

gives a plausible interpretation of these events.32 According to

John, the chief priests, alarmed by the crowds Jesus attracted,

feared that his presence in Jerusalem during Passover

THE GOSPEL OF MARK AND THE JEWISH WAR / 27

might ignite public demonstrations, “and the Romans will come

and destroy our holy place and our nation” (11:48). The civil

strife that preceded the Jewish war, as John and his

contemporaries well knew, had verified the accuracy of such

concerns about possible Roman reprisals.

Many New Testament scholars who have analyzed the account

of Jesus’ appearance before the Sanhedrin agree that Mark (or his

predecessors) probably wrote the first version to emphasize his

primary point: that Pilate merely ratified a previous Jewish

verdict, and carried out a death sentence that he himself neither

ordered nor approved—but a sentence unanimously pronounced

by the entire leadership of the Jewish people.33

This does not mean, however, that Mark is motivated by

malice toward the Jewish leaders. Indeed, Mark stops far short of

the extent to which Matthew, Luke, and John will go to blame

the Jewish leaders for the crucifixion, although the tendency to

blame them had already begun before Mark’s time and had its

effect on his narrative. Nevertheless, Mark and his fellow

believers, as followers of a convicted criminal, knew that such

allegiance would arouse suspicion and invite reprisals. Roman

magistrates had already arrested and executed several prominent

members of the movement, including Peter and Paul. It is no

wonder, then, that, as one historian says, Mark wanted

to emphasize the culpability of the Jewish nation for the death

of Jesus, particularly of its leaders. . . . [Mark’s] tendency was

defensive rather than aggressive. He was concerned to avoid

mentioning anything that would provoke Roman antagonism

towards, or even suspicion of, the ideals for which he stood. . . .

The evangelist therefore contrived to conceal that Jesus had

been condemned and executed on a charge of sedition.34

Mark’s account also involves an important positive motive.

Mark intends the “trial before the Sanhedrin” to mirror the

precarious situation in which he and his fellow believers now

stand in relation to leaders of the Jewish communities during

and after

28 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

the war.35 In this account of Jesus’ courage before his judges,

Mark offers Jesus’ followers a model of how to act when they too

are put on trial.

Mark weaves into this account a contrapuntal story—the story

of Jesus’ chief disciple, Peter, who, in terror, denies Jesus, an

example of how
not
to act when on trial. For whereas Jesus stands

up to the Sanhedrin and confesses his divine mission, boldly

risking—and accepting—the death sentence, Peter claims not to

have known Jesus. Having surreptitiously followed Jesus to the

scene of the trial, Mark says, Peter stood warming his hands by

the fire when one of the household servants said to him, “You,

too, were with the Nazarene, Jesus” (14:67). But Peter denies

this (“I do not know what you mean; . . . I do not know the man”)

three times, with increasing vehemence, cursing and swearing,

and finally escapes. After recognizing what he has done, Peter

“broke down and wept” (14:72).

Mark knows that those who publicly confess their conviction

that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of God” (14:61) may put

themselves in danger of abuse, ridicule, even threats to their

lives. The terms
Messiah
and
Son of God
would probably have

been anachronistic during the time of Jesus; but many of Mark’s

contemporaries must have recognized them as the way

Christians of their own time confessed their faith. In this

dramatic scene, then, Mark again confronts his audience with the

question that pervades his entire narrative: Who recognizes the

spirit in Jesus as divine, and who does not? Who stands on God’s

side, and who on Satan’s? By contrasting Jesus’ courageous

confession with Peter’s denial, Mark draws a dramatic picture of

the choice confronting Jesus’ followers: they must take sides in a

war that allows no neutral ground.

Having tried to show that the whole affair concerning Jesus

was essentially an internal Jewish conflict that got out of hand,

Mark now offers his version of Jesus’ “trial before Pilate.” Many

scholars think that all Mark actually knew was that Jesus had

been crucified as a would-be king of the Jews during Pilate’s

administration as governor of Judea. While he takes account of

this indisputable fact, Mark intends to minimize its significance.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK AND THE JEWISH WAR / 29

Consider, then, how Mark tells the story. Pilate, apprised that

the prisoner was accused of political insurgency, attempts to

interrogate him. “Have you no answer to make? See how many

charges they make against you” (15:4). Mark says that when

Jesus refused to answer his questions, Pilate, instead of