Hey, everyone! I’m Ben – the Amateur Exegete, and this is episode seventy-six 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 10.”1
We have come to the end of our series looking at Elizabeth Shively’s 2020 piece “Purification of the Body and the Reign of God in the Gospel of Mark.”2 In this episode, we turn out attention to the ways in which, to quote Shively, “Mark both anticipates the bodily resurrection of Jesus and ties it to that of human beings by evoking the idea of bodily resurrection in healings and exorcisms throughout the narrative” (p. 83).
First up is resurrection as the means by which people may enter God’s reign. Jesus frequently describes God’s reign as something one may enter: “[I]f your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell,” Jesus declares in Mark 9:47.3 It should be noted that in vv. 43 and 45 the injunction against sinning is that one would rather cut off an offending limb than to sin because, says Jesus, “it is better for you to enter life” sans those members “than to have [them] and to be thrown into hell.” Thus, entering into “life” and entering into “the kingdom of God” are synonymous.4 Shively couples this language of “entering” with the nearness of God’s reign proclaimed by Jesus in Mark 1:15. From the perspective of the narrative, God’s reign is impending but not arrived; it was on its way.5 People can have access to God’s reign in various ways6 but, our author writes, “resurrection provides access to God’s powerfully implemented reign when it is consummated” (p. 83, emphasis author’s).
As evidence for this, she observes that there are three predictions about Jesus’s passion: Mark 8:31, 9:31, and 10:32-34. Following the first, Jesus tells the disciples in Mark 9:1 that some among them “will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” This leads immediately into the pericope about Jesus’s transfiguration which, Shively contends, “functions as a proleptic view of the power of God’s reign, anticipating both the resurrection and the Parousia” (p. 83). The significance of the transfiguration scene in Mark 9:2-8 is debated,7 but I think Shively is correct in her assessment in so far as we have the Markan narrative today. That Jesus is seen in clothing “dazzling bright” alongside Elijah and Moses and that a cloud overshadows them is surely influenced (in part) by apocalyptic material.8
Add to these two other texts: Mark 14:25 and Mark 15:37. In the former, Jesus tells his disciples that the wine he enjoys with them at his final Passover meal will be the last until he drinks it again in God’s reign. In the latter, Jesus cries out with a loud voice which, our author opines, recalls the cries of those from whom impure spirits were expelled, “suggesting a final confrontation with the impure spirits in his own body” (p. 84). He feels abandoned by God (Mark 15:34) but, Shively suggests, the audience might infer from Jesus’s words about drinking wine in God’s kingdom and his resurrection in ch. 16 that he is vindicated by God and brought into a pure state, cleansed of corpse impurity and able to enjoy life with God. In other words, it is by his resurrection from the dead that Jesus is made pure and is able to enter into God’s reign.
It is not only that Mark envisions resurrection as the means by which one may enter God’s reign. He also couches healings and exorcisms in his Gospel as evoking the resurrection. For example, Shively, drawing on the work of Joanna Dewey, sees a chiastic structure that begins with a healing in Mark 2:1-12, ends with a healing in 3:1-6, and has, at its center in 2:18-22, an allusion to Jesus’s death. The two healings evoke resurrection because of the conditions of the afflicted. The paralyzed man in 2:1-12 is brought in on his bed and is raised from it, much in the same way one rises from the dead. In their commentary on v. 11, John Donahue and Daniel Harrington write, “The verb for ‘rise up’ (egeire) is repeated in the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead in 5:41 and (in the passive) with regard to Jesus’ own resurrection (16:6). Thus release from paralysis is a form of restoration of life.”9 Similarly, the man with the withered hand suffers from a condition that renders his limb corpse-like. Jesus’s healing, therefore, “signifies movement from the sphere of death to life” (p. 85).10
In addition to this, our author notes the presence of resurrection-related themes and ideas. The verb egeirō (ἐγείρω), “I raise” or “I raise up,” is used multiple times in the Gospel of Mark: Jesus raises (ēgeiren [ἤγειρεν]) Peter’s mother-in-law in Mark 1:31; he commands the paralyzed man of Mark 2:11 to rise up (egeire [ἔγειρε]), take his mat, and head home; he takes Jairus’s daughter by the hand in Mark 5:41 and commands her to rise (egeire [ἔγειρε]); and so on. Jesus too is described by the young man at the tomb in Mark 16:6 as one who had been raised (ēgerthē [ἠγέρθη]). Writes Shively, “Mark has built a matrix of meaning around this concept of ‘being risen,’ so that upon reaching that climactic announcement in 16:6, the audience may understand from the whole narrative that God has raised Jesus to prevail over the dark power that holds human beings captive” (p. 87).
Shively also notes the sequence of events in Mark 9 that begins with the Transfiguration and the statement in v. 9 that Jesus ordered his disciples “to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” The disciples, per v. 10, are unsure what to make of Jesus’s words but, our author notes, “[t]he next episode answers their question” (p. 87). In vv. 14-29, Jesus exorcises an unclean spirit and when the boy appears to be dead after the spirit leaves, we read in v. 27 that “Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand.” What is rendered in the NRSVue as “lifted him up” is in Greek ēgeiren auton (ἤγειρεν αὐτόν), “he raised him.” And this scene is followed up with a passion prediction in vv. 30-32!
One cannot help but read these texts together, as Shively does. She points to the fact that the exorcism of the spirit from the boy seems to fail. “He is dead,” say some onlookers in v. 26. But appearances are deceiving, and the boy is raised up; he is alive and well. Similarly, writes our author,
Jesus’ suffering and death will make it appear that those very forces he has overcome repeatedly during his ministry have now hopelessly overpowered him. Just as the boy appeared to be dead by the work of the impure spirit, the Son of Man will appear to be defeated and destroyed when he is crucified. Just as the lifeless boy rises from ‘death’, Jesus has predicted that the Son of Man, after he is killed, will rise after three days. This narrative connection suggests that the meaning of resurrection is found in the rectification of the defiling and degenerating power of illness and disability, impure spirits, and death itself. (Pp. 87-88)
The power at work in Jesus to heal and cast out demons is a divine power, derived from God who declares time and again that Jesus is his son. It is the same power that raises Jesus to life again after he is mercilessly crucified by the Roman authorities.
To close her article, Shively points to the marginalization of not only the healing stories in Mark’s Gospel or the account of the empty tomb but also human bodies themselves. She writes, “The implication of my study is that bodies matter: healings from disease and disability, exorcisms of impure spirits, and being raised from the dead reflect Mark’s thoroughgoing concern with the purification of the body at the turn of the ages. Thus, Mark presents not only a theology of the cross, but also a theology of resurrection as the purification of God’s people” (p. 89).
This series on Elizabeth Shively’s article has perhaps gone on longer than I originally anticipated, but I have found it to be nevertheless refreshing and enlightening. It is certainly an interesting way to read the Gospel of Mark, one that is in so many respects convincing. The Gospel of Mark remains my favorite work in the canonical New Testament, and I find myself returning to it frequently as I think over its importance and meaning. Works like Shively’s are helpful interpretive tools, and I hope my listeners have benefited from this analysis of it.
That’s all the time we’ve got this episode. I’ll 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.”11
- 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.” ↩︎
- 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. ↩︎
- Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of biblical texts are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. ↩︎
- Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27 – 16:20, WBC 34B (Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001), 71. ↩︎
- See Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Fortress Press, 2007), 454. ↩︎
- Shively writes, “One has access to the reign of God by repenting and believing the good news (1:15); receiving the ‘secret’ of the kingdom/reign (4:11); hearing the sown word with open ears (ch. 4); having a childlike disposition (10:14-15); and selling all one’s goods, giving to the poor and following Jesus (10:1-31)” (p. 83). ↩︎
- For an overview, see Mary Ann Beavis, Mark, Paideia (Baker Academic, 2011), 135; L. Michael White, Scripting Jesus: The Gospels in Rewrite (HarperOne, 2010), 154-157. ↩︎
- For an extended discussion, see Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27A (Yale University Press, 2009), 1108-1118. ↩︎
- John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, SP 2 (The Liturgical Press, 2002), 96. ↩︎
- Cf. Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 (Yale University Press, 2000), 252. ↩︎
- Richard Elliot Friedman, The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters (HarperOne, 2017), 214. ↩︎
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