Kata Markon

["Eric Eve" <eric.eve AT harris-manchester.oxford.ac.uk>]

Jeffrey Gibson's paper "Mark 14:38 as a Key to the Markan Audience" presents
an eloquent argument for understanding Mark 14:38 as meaning that the
disciples are instructed to pray that they should not embark upon testing
God. While I don't pretend to be able to meet all of Jeffrey's arguments in
this post, I'd like to float the idea that the object of the testing the
disciples are to pray to avoid embarking on may be not God, but Jesus.

The noun PEIRASMOS occurs in Mark only at Mk 14:38, but the verb PEIRAZEIN
occurs 4 times in Mark, on each occasion with Jesus as its object.

At Mk 1.13 Jesus is driven out into the wilderness to be tested by Satan.
At Mk 8.11 the Pharisees are said to be testing Jesus by demanding a sign
from heaven.
At Mk 10.2 the Pharisees are again said to be testing Jesus by asking him
the question about divorce.
At Mk 12.15 Jesus asks his interlocutors (Pharisees and Herodians) why they
are testing him.

Thus the audience of Mark, on hearing PEIRASMOS without an object specified
may well, on the basis of these four instances, most naturally be expected
to take the object of the testing as being Jesus.

Several of Jeffrey's own arguments could also be used to support this
conclusion. For example, as an example of the characters in Mark testing God
Jeffrey refers to "(a)the  Rebuke  of  the  Disciples  about  Bread  (Mk
8:14-21  -  in which  the disciples  are  castigated  by  Jesus  for  having
become  infected  with  the  leaven  of  the Pharisees  and  of Herod," but,
as we have seen, it is precisely the Pharisees and Herodians who are said to
test Jesus, so insofar as Jeffrey is correct in observing that "one of the
major themes of Mark's portrayal of  the  disciples  is  how,  from  the
time  of  their  calling  until  they  abandon  Jesus  at Gethsemane, they
are drawn increasingly  to side with others in Mark's cast of characters
who, according to Mark,  continually 'test God'" one might equally well say
that they are drawn increasingly to side with others in Mark's cast of
characters who are explicitly said to test Jesus. Likewise, when following
Peter's confession and Jesus' first passion prediction there is a mutual
rebuke between Jesus and Peter, Peter is likened to Satan, whose function at
Mk 1.13 was to test Jesus.

Even Jeffrey's points about the theme of the wilderness generation testing
God might in fact support this alternative reading. For, to cite Mk 1.13
again, in Mark it is precisely Jesus (not God) who is tested in the Markan
wilderness. Again one might see Mark's account of Jesus' walking on the sea
as ascribing to Jesus language that the OT ascribed to Yahweh (in making a
path through the waves, etc), so that if one extends references to the
wilderness experience to incorporate the exodus as well, one could see Mark
as being prepared to refer to Jesus language that the Hebrew scriptures he
alludes to refer to God. In that way the wilderness testing of God could,
perhaps, in Mark become a testing of Jesus.

In the context of Mark 14:38 the testing the disciples are to pray not to
embark upon might then be a testing that attempted to deflect Jesus from his
path by questioning his destiny as suffering Son of man - much as Peter
previously attempted at Mk 8:31-33.

Of course this alternative proposal is not nearly so well thought through as
Jeffrey's reading, but I thought I'd float it to see if anyone thinks it has
any merit - or to give people something to shoot down!

Best wishes,

Eric
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Eric Eve
Harris Manchester College, Oxford