Bible Study for Amateurs #67 – Elizabeth Shively’s “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,” part 1

Hey, everyone! I’m Ben – the Amateur Exegete, and this is episode sixty-seven of Bible Study for Amateurs. Today’s episode is, “Elizabeth Shively’s ‘Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,’ part 1.”¹

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The first miracle story in the Gospel of Mark takes place in the village of Capernaum. (You can find this pericope in Mark 1:21-28.) Capernaum was situated on the Sea of Galilee along the northwest shore and was, like so many towns and villages along the lake, known for its fishing industry.² The town appears frequently in the Gospel of Mark and to such a degree that for some scholars this suggests that the narrative’s author made his home there.³ According to Mark 2:1, Capernaum was “home” for Jesus,⁴ despite the fact that we are told in 1:9 that “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee” (NRSVue)⁵ and that Nazareth was, per 6:1, his πατρίς (patris) – “hometown.”⁶ While in Capernaum, Jesus did what any observant Jew of the period would have done on the Sabbath: he went to the synagogue.⁷ But he does not attend to listen to a sermon⁸ but to deliver one himself.⁹ What Jesus taught is not narrated but the reaction to it is: “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes” (v. 22). A scribe was one who enjoyed a measure of literacy that allowed him access to the sacred texts often in some official capacity.¹⁰ This note by the Evangelist anticipates the conflict Jesus would have at times with the scribes (e.g., Mark 2:6, 11).¹¹

“Just then,” the author continues in v. 23, “there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.”  The words rendered in the NRSVue as “just then” are in Greek καὶ εὐθὺς (kai euthys), a conjunction and an adverb that together in the Gospel of Mark can function as a way to express the immediacy of events or, simply, as ways to move a narrative along.¹² The translation offered by the NRSVue takes καὶ εὐθὺς to mean that this man appears somewhat suddenly,¹³ entering the scene as Jesus has finished teaching.¹⁴ The man is described in Greek as ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ (en pneumati akathartō), rendered in most translations as “with an unclean spirit.” While the preposition ἐν can certainly mean “with,” it often functions the way the English preposition “in” does: to indicate that something is subsumed by or contained within something else.¹⁵ Does it here? Joel Marcus entertains the possibility in his commentary, remarking that 

a literal interpretation has a great deal to commend it: the man’s personality has been so usurped by the demon that the demon has, as it were, swallowed him up. The fusion of the man’s identity with that of the demon is underlined by the grammar of the passage; in 1:23-24 it is the man who cries out, but in the next verse Jesus rebukes “him,” which now means the unclean spirit. Since normal human beings keep their distance from uncleanness or dirt, this picture of “a man in an unclean spirit,” enclosed by that which contaminates him, is horrifying.¹⁶

This identical construction of the preposition ἐν + the dative πνεύματι (pneumati) and the adjective ἀκαθάρτῳ (akathartō) appears in Mark 5:2 – “And when [Jesus] had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with [or, perhaps better, “in”] an unclean spirit met him.” In Mark 5, the idea that the demon has “swallowed up” the man (to use Marcus’s language) is clearer because of the possessed man’s behavior: living among tombs, superhuman strength, howling, and injuring himself (Mark 5:3-5). Writes Marcus, “[T]he man’s identity has been swallowed up by the demon’s, so that he speaks with the demon’s voice, tries to protect the demon from eviction from his own body, and becomes the demon’s instrument for his own torture.”¹⁷

Back in Mark 1, the demon confronts Jesus inside the synagogue: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” he asks in v. 24. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” The questions here are interesting for a number of reasons. For starters, why does the demon speak of “us”¹⁸ but then uses the first-person singular¹⁹ to say he knows who Jesus is? Why does he need to address Jesus as “Jesus of Nazareth” when questioning him? What does destruction²⁰ entail for this demon? These questions could easily take up their own episodes and so, for now, we will table them. What interests here is the statement the demon makes right before Jesus’s rebuke: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”²¹

There is a contrast made between Jesus and this spirit: while the spirit is “unclean” (akathartos),²² Jesus is holy (ἅγιος [hagios]). In her commentary on the text, Adela Yarbro Collins sums it up poignantly: “The holiness of Jesus is the polar opposite of the uncleanness of the spirit,” she writes.²³ In his encounter with the entity, Jesus issues a rebuke, commanding it to shut up²⁴ and leave the man.²⁵ It does, but not without putting on a show: “And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him,” we read in v. 26. At this point, the narrative comes full circle, for just as those in attendance were astonished at his teaching (v. 22) so too are they amazed at his ability to control unclean spirits (v. 27). Later in the Markan narrative, Jesus’s foes will level the absurd allegation against him that his control of these spirits is done with the authority of Beelzebul (Mark 3:22). 

This pericope is part of what John Donahue and Daniel Harrington called a “paradigmatic day.”²⁶ From sunup to sundown, Jesus teaches with authority, expels demons, and heals the infirmed. These activities will characterize much of what Jesus does throughout the Gospel of Mark. Undoubtedly, the Evangelist included these stories to intrigue the reader, but is there more to it than just that? For example, why include exorcism stories at all? The author of the fourth Gospel felt no need to include any such incidents²⁷ and nevertheless concluded that while “Jesus did many other signs” the ones in his narrative “are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31; cf. John 21:25).²⁸

Over the course of the next several episodes, we are going to explore the connection many Markan healing and exorcism narratives have and what they might be communicating about the significance of Jesus. To guide us, we will be using Elizabeth Shively’s 2020 piece “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark” that appeared in The Journal of Theological Studies.²⁹ In the abstract to that paper, she writes, “The thesis of this study is that the Markan Jesus’ activities of healing and exorcisms are evocative of resurrection of the body” (p. 62). Why she thinks this and how it plays out in the Markan narrative is what we will begin to consider in the next episode.

That’s all the time we’ve got this week. See you next time! And remember, in the words of Richard Elliot Friedman, “One does not need to deny what is troubling [about the Bible] in order to pay respect to what is heartening.”³⁰ Thanks for stopping by. 

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1. Throughout the endnotes readers will find various abbreviations. For a list of what abbreviations I use and the works to which they refer, please see the page “Commonly Used Abbreviations.” ↩︎
2. Douglas E. Neel and Joel A. Pugh, The Food and Feasts of Jesus: Inside the World of First-Century Fare, with Menus and Recipes, Religion in the Modern World (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2012), 215; Mary Ann Beavis, Mark, Paideia (Baker Academic, 2011), 50; James H. Charlesworth, “Jesus Research and Archaeology,” in The World of the New Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, edited by Joel B. Green and Lee Martin McDonald (Baker Academic, 2013), 454. Richard Bauckham (“Magdala and the Fishing Industry,” in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period, edited by Richard Bauckham [Baylor University Press, 2018], 191-193) notes that the northern areas of the Sea of Galilee represent some of the best fishing on the lake, though those areas near the mouth of the Jordan River are better for year-round fishing. Even without the aforementioned secondary sources, the calling narratives of 1:16-20 are sufficient evidence of the importance of fishing to the region. As fishing was labor intensive in the ancient world, that Simon, Andrew, James, and John were fishermen suggests that they did so out of necessity and not for leisure. Their abandoning of it to chase Jesus around Galilee serves to heighten the drama of their calling. Additionally, the language of “fishers of people” (ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων [haleis anthrōpōn]) underscores the centrality of fishing as both sustenance and subsistence.  ↩︎
3. E.g., Christopher B. Zeichmann, “Capernaum: A ‘Hub’ for the Historical Jesus or the Markan Evangelist?” JSHJ 15 (2017), 147-165. Cf. H.N. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context, NovTSup 114 (Brill, 2004), 100-103. ↩︎
4. Mark describes Jesus as ἐν οἴκῳ (en oikō), literally “in [the] house” but colloquially/idiomatically “at home.” See Rodney J. Decker, Mark 1-8: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Baylor University Press, 2014), 45. Joel Marcus (Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 [Yale University Press, 2000], 215) posits that the home in question is that of Peter (cf. Mark 1:29) and that it functioned as a “base of operations” for Jesus and his entourage. The Matthean Evangelist connects the dots: “Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home [κατῴκησεν (katōkēsen)] in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali” (Matthew 4:12-13, NRSVue).  ↩︎
5. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of biblical texts are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. ↩︎
6. There is some measure of irony in Mark’s use of πατρίς in Mark 6. It is etymologically related to πατήρ (patēr = “father”) and, per BDAG, s.v. “πατρίς,” is the feminine of πάτριος (patrios = “of one’s fathers”). Yet conspicuously absent from the Gospel of Mark is any mention of Jesus’s father, and, therefore, the “father” of Jesus’s “fatherland.” Cf. Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3 f¹³ 33^vid P^45vid, etc.  ↩︎
7. M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary, NTL (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 63: “[A]s a faithful Jew Jesus attends the synagogue as a matter of course on his first Sabbath in town.” On the importance of the synagogue for ancient Jews, see Lee I. Levine, “The Synagogue,” in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, second edition, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford University Press: 2017), 662-665.  ↩︎
8. Cf. Luke 4:16-22. On the elements of synagogue worship in antiquity, see Avigdor Shinan, “Synagogues in the Land of Israel: The Literature of the Ancient Synagogue and Synagogue Archaeology,” in Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World, edited by Steven Fine (Oxford University Press/Yeshiva University Museum, 1996), 130-152. ↩︎
9. John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington (The Gospel of Mark, SP 2 [The Liturgical Press, 2002], 79) note that early in Mark’s Gospel Jesus attends synagogues regularly but following the rejection at Nazareth in ch. 6 he never steps in one again: “From then on the synagogue symbolizes hostility (12:39; 13:9) and Jesus teaches primarily in houses in which he gives private instruction to the disciples (e.g., 7:17; 9:28, 33-50; 10:10-12).”  ↩︎
10. Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Fortress Press, 2007), 164; Chris Keith, Jesus Against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict (Baker Academic, 2014), 27-29. On the relationship of scribes to the Pharisees, see Marcus, Mark 1-8, 523-524; Jens Schröter, “How Close Were Jesus and the Pharisees?” in The Pharisees, edited by Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2021), 231-233.  ↩︎
11. On this conflict, Chris Keith’s Jesus Against the Scribal Elite is perhaps the best treatment of the issue. ↩︎
12. See Nicholas A. Elder, Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024), 178-182. Elder prefers to think of euthys as a “discourse marker” rather than an adverb due to its “multifunctionality” in the Gospel. Decker (Mark 1-8, 26) concurs. ↩︎
13. Cf. Elder, Gospel Media, 181: “Here εὐθύς [euthys] is not a time adverbial signaling how quickly a spirit-possessed person was present (ἦν[ēn]) in the synagogue. Rather, it works with the connective.” ↩︎
14.  Marcus, Mark 1-8, 187. Did the man enter when everyone else did and was therefore in the crowd as Jesus taught? Or did he enter after Jesus had already begun teaching and waited until he was finished to make his interjection? Did he enter after Jesus had finished and the people remark about how astonishing it all was?  ↩︎
15. See BDAG, s.v. “ἐν,” 4c.  ↩︎
16. Marcus, Mark 1-8, 192. ↩︎
17. Marcus, Mark 1-8, 348-349. See also Giovanni B. Bazzana, “Spirit World,” in The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus, edited by James Crossley and Chris Keith (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024) 438-440. ↩︎
18. Twice the demon uses the first-person plural pronoun ἡμεῖς (hēmeis), first in the dative and then in the accusative. ↩︎
19. Greek, οἶδά (oida). ↩︎
20. The demon uses the aorist infinite ἀπολέσαι (apolesai) from the verb ἀπόλλυμι (apollymi). ↩︎
21. The title “Holy One of God” has been the subject of considerable debate. For a recent take, see Max Botner, “The Messiah is ‘the Holy One’: ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ θεοῦ as a Messianic Title in Mark 1:24,” JBL 136 no. 2 (Summer 2017), 417-433. ↩︎
22. See also 3:11, 20; 5:2, 8, 13; 6:7; 7:25; 9:25. ↩︎
23. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 170. Robert Guelich (Mark 1 – 8:26, WBC 34A [Word, Inc., 1989], 57) noted that the demon’s announcement of Jesus’s identity “shows the demon’s awareness of who Jesus is and that Jesus is his superior…. In so doing he identifies Jesus for Mark’s audience or reader.”  ↩︎
24. Greek, φιμώθητι (phimōthēti). English translations typically render this imperative as “Be quiet” or something similar. I prefer the more forceful “Shut up!” ↩︎
25. There is an interesting parallel between Jesus’s treatment of the demon-possessed man here and the stilling of the storm in Mark 4:25-41. For example, Jesus “rebuked” (ἐπετίμησεν [epetimēsen]) the demon (Mark 1:25; cf. 3:12) and “rebuked” (ἐπετίμησεν [epetimēsen]) the wind (Mark 4:39). Moreover, the verb used to command the demon to “be quiet” and the sea to “be still” are both imperatives of the verb φιμόω (phimoō). Does Jesus exorcise the Sea of Galilee? See R. Alan Culpepper, Mark, SHBC (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2007), 155-156; Boring, Mark, 146. ↩︎
26. Donahue and Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, 82. ↩︎
27. See Jo-Ann A. Brant, John, Paideia (Baker Academic, 2011), 197-198. Craig Keener (The Gospel of John: A Commentary [Baker Academic, 2003], 715) writes that John does indeed fail to note any examples of exorcism, this is “not necessarily a disagreement with the Synoptic portrayal of Jesus as an exorcist.” Given that the Johannine Evangelist knows of other stories about Jesus and is doubtlessly aware of the Synoptic accounts, he must have known the tradition of Jesus as exorcist. Thus, he may have simply chosen to go a different way with his portrayal of Jesus. Though given his interest in darkness versus light, it does seem peculiar he does not use such stories to propel the theme. Ernst Haenchen (John 2: A Commentary on the Gospel of John Chapters 7-21, translated by Robert W. Funk, Hermeneia [Fortress Press, 1984], 30), pondering the Evangelist’s view of the world (i.e., κόσμος [kosmos]), notes that the absence of demons and exorcisms signifies the author’s interest in the problem of human unbelief as in enmity with God, represented by Jesus’s conflicts with the Pharisees, “the Jews,” and others. Haenchen is careful to deter any notion that John does not believe in demons: “Is one permitted to draw from this the conclusion that the Evangelist is a man of the Enlightenment, who ‘no longer believes in miracles and demons’? By no means!” ↩︎
28. Chris Keith (The Gospel as Manuscript: An Early History of the Jesus Tradition as Material Artifact [Oxford University Press, 2020,] 131-154) thinks that the Gospel of John is aware of the Synoptics and positions his own version of events as superior to the exclusion of his predecessors: “One does not need many written accounts of Jesus; one needs only this particular written account of Jesus” (p. 136). John seems to think earlier versions are inferior, insufficient to lead one to either continued or new faith in Jesus as the messianic son of God (cf. Mark 1:1). In fact, as Keith notes, there are places where the fourth Evangelist corrects issues he would have found in the Markan Gospel, including whether Jesus carried his own cross (John 19:17; cf. Mark 15:21 and parallels), the identity of John the Baptist as Elijah the prophet (John 1:21; cf. Mark 9:12-13 and parallels), and more. For Keith, the Gospel of John is a testament to the existence of competitive textualization in the Jesus tradition and its author sets itself apart from what has gone before and what may come.  ↩︎
29. Elizabeth E. Shively, “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark,” JTS 71 part 1 (April 2020), 62-89.  ↩︎
30. Richard Elliot Friedman, The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters (HarperOne, 2017), 214. ↩︎