Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:33:56.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Fitting End? Self-Denial and a Slave's Death in Mark's Life of Jesus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2019

Helen K. Bond
Helen K. Bond*
Affiliation:
School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX, UK. Email: h.bond@ed.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present article argues that rather than look for a traditional Jewish model behind Mark's passion narrative (such as an account of the Suffering Righteous One), we would do better to understand the composition of the whole gospel – both the central body of teaching in 8.22–10.45 and the passion narrative – as influenced by the genre of ancient philosophical lives. After considering ways in which biographies tended to present the deaths of philosophers, the article examines the death of the Markan Jesus as an example of a shameful, humiliating end. What redeems it for Mark is the fact that Jesus dies in perfect conformity with his teaching. The carefully composed central section of teaching material (8.22–10.52), it is argued, was put together by the evangelist with the specific intention of showing that Jesus died in accordance with his teaching. Thus the crucifixion could become the perfect embodiment of Jesus’ counter-cultural message of self-denial and servanthood, and therefore a powerful symbol of its truth.

Keywords

MarkPassion Narrativebiographybiosdeath of a philosophercrucifixion
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 425 - 442
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article was given as a main paper at the SNTS meeting in Athens in August 2018, and again to the Oxford New Testament Seminar in November 2018. I would like to thank all of those who offered helpful advice and criticism on both of those occasions.

References

1 Memorable Doings and Sayings (‘On Deaths out of the Ordinary’) 9.12 praef. (LCL 493, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey).

2 Grau, S., ‘How to Kill a Philosopher: The Narrating of Ancient Greek Philosopher's Deaths in Relation to their Way of Living’, Ancient Philosophy 30 (2010) 347–81, at 348CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 This was initially proposed by Dibelius, M., From Tradition to Gospel (trans. Woolf, B. L.; London: Nicholson & Watson, 1934) 178–217Google Scholar and was given more impetus in recent times by G. W. E. Nickelsburg, ‘The Genre and Function of the Markan Passion Narrative’, HTR (1980) 153–84. The literature on the pre-Markan passion narrative is vast. For an excellent survey, see Collins, A. Yarbro, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007) 620–39Google Scholar (Collins herself proposes a source which simply told of the  ‘death of a famous man’, a teleutē in Greek, or exitus in Latin).

4 For a (largely inconclusive) attempt to bring order to scholarship on this ‘source’, see the analysis by Soards, M. L., ‘Appendix ix: The Question of a Pre-Markan Passion Narrative’, Brown, R. E., The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave, vol. ii (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 1492–1524Google Scholar; and also the discussion in Telford, W. R., ‘The Pre-Markan Tradition in Recent Research (1980–1990)’, The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift for Frans Neirynck, vol. ii (ed. van Segbroeck, F. et al. ; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992) 693–723Google Scholar. Those who doubt the existence of this source include Linnemann, E., Studien zur Passionsgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the contributors to Kelber, W. H., ed., The Passion in Mark: Studies on Mark 14–16 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)Google Scholar; Matera, F. J., The Kingship of Jesus: Composition and Theology in Mark 15 (Chico, CA: Scholars, 1982)Google Scholar; and more recently Arnal, W., ‘Major Episodes in the Biography of Jesus: An Assessment of the Historicity of the Narrative Tradition’, Toronto Journal of Theology 13 (1997) 201–26, esp. 209–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 This was apparent as long ago as the 1920s, in C. H. Turner's series of detailed analyses of Mark's Greek syntax and vocabulary; the original articles were published in various editions of JTS but are now conveniently gathered together in Turner, C. H. and Elliott, J. K., The Language and Style of the Gospel of Mark: An Edition of C.H. Turner's ‘Notes on Marcan Usage’ together with Other Comparable Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1993)Google Scholar.

6 See the discussions in Cancik, H., ‘Bios und Logos: Formgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu Lukians “Demonax”’, Markus – Philologie (ed. Cancik, H.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984) 115–30Google Scholar; Aune, D. E., The New Testament in its Literary Environment (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1987) 17–76Google Scholar; and Burridge, R. A., What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2018 3)Google Scholar.

7 There is a large literature on death in antiquity: see for example Kyle, D. G., Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Edwards, C., Death in Ancient Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Hope, V. M., Death in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ker, J., The Deaths of Seneca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On noble death traditions in particular, see Musurillo, H. A., The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs: Acta Alexandrinorum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954) 236–46Google Scholar; Ronconi, A., ‘Exitus illustrium virorum’, RAC 6 (1966) 1258–68Google Scholar; Seeley, D., The Noble Death: Graeco-Roman Martyrology and Paul's Concept of Salvation (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), esp. 83–141Google Scholar; Droge, A. J. and Tabor, J. D., A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992)Google Scholar; Collins, A. Yarbro, ‘The Genre of the Passion Narrative’, ST 47 (1993) 3–28Google Scholar; Sterling, G., ‘Mors philosophi: The Death of Jesus in Luke’, HTR 94 (2001) 383–402Google Scholar; van Henten, J.-W. and Avemarie, F., Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar; and Doran, R., ‘Narratives of Noble Death’, The Historical Jesus in Context (ed. Levine, A.-J., Allison, D. C. and Crossan, J. D.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) 385–99Google Scholar.

8 Such works are referred to by Pliny, Epistles 5.5.3, 8.12. On this literature, see Marx, F. A., ‘Tacitus und die Literatur der exitus illustrium virorum’, Philologus 92 (1937) 83–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ronconi, ‘Exitus’; J. Ker, Deaths, 41–62; and Hägg, T., The Art of Biography in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 236–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Barton, C. A., ‘Savage Miracles: The Redemption of Lost Honor in Roman Society and the Sacrament of the Gladiator and the Martyr’, Representations 45 (1994) 41–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 The story is in Livy 2.12–14; see also Seneca, Epistles 24.5; on Martial's poems about a gladiator playing the part of Scaevola, see Barton, ‘Savage Miracles’, 41–4.

11 Livy 8.9.1–8.10; see Doran, ‘Narratives of Noble Death’, 387–9. Van Henten and Avemarie link this story to Roman traditions of devotio, or dedication by a general of himself or the enemy's army (or both) to the Gods of the underworld: Martyrdom, 19–21.

12 On Suetonius’ account of Augustus’ death, see Toher, M., ‘The “Exitus” of Augustus’, Hermes 140 (2012) 37–44Google Scholar; on Suetonius’ death scenes more generally, see Ash, R., ‘Never Say Die! Assassinating Emperors in Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars’, Writing Biography in Greece and Rome: Narrative Technique and Fictionalization (ed. De Temmerman, K. and Demoen, K.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) 200–16Google Scholar.

13 See above, n. 2; similar sentiments are expressed by E. Kechagia, ‘Dying Philosophers in Ancient Biography: Zeno the Stoic and Epicurus’, Writing Biography, 181–99; also Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, 160–2.

14 See also Lucian, Alex. 59–60 and Philo, Mos. 2.288. On the extraordinary death of Moses, both in Philo and other roughly contemporaneous Jewish literature, see Feldman, L. H., Philo's Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007) 220–33Google Scholar.

15 Grau, ‘How to Kill’, 371.

16 Both are described by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Philosophers; on Zeno, see 9.26–7; on Anaxarchus, see 9.58–9.

17 Gill, C., ‘The Death of Socrates’, Classical Quarterly 23 (1973), 25–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a useful introduction to Plato's Phaedo, see Tarrant, H., Plato: The Last Days of Socrates (London: Penguin, 2003) 99–115Google Scholar. In the case of Livy's Decius Mus, mentioned above, it is not even clear that he took part in the battle at all! See Doran, ‘Narratives of Noble Death’, 385.

18 So Ash, ‘Never Say Die!’; for similar features in Diogenes Laertius, see Kechagia, ‘Dying Philosophers’.

19 J. M. Smith, ‘Famous (or Not So Famous) Last Words’, paper given to the Markan Literary Sources Section, SBL Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 2016.

20 See also the various accounts of the ends of Menedemus (2.17.142–3), Heraclides (5.6.89–91), Chrysippus (7.7.184–5), Pythagoras (8.1.39–40), Empedocles (8.2.67–75) and Zeno of Elea (9.5.26–8). Philostratus, too, indicates that there were differing accounts of Apollonius’ end (Vit. Apoll. 8.29–30).

21 See Hengel, M., Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Cross (London: SCM, 1977)Google Scholar; Chapman, D. W., Perceptions of Crucifixion among Jews and Christians in the Ancient World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cook, J. G., Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 On ridicule and spectacle (and also on the sociological question of what made executions compelling to the crowd), see Coleman, K. M., ‘Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments’, JRS 80 (1990) 44–73Google Scholar.

23 For the association of the cross and mockery, see Josephus, J.W. 5.51; Seneca, Dialogue 6: On the Consolation to Marcia 20.3; Philo, Flacc. 73–85; and Suetonius, Galb. 9.1. On parody more specifically, see Marcus, J., ‘Crucifixion as Parodic Exaltation’, JBL 125 (2006) 73–8Google Scholar and Bond, H. K., ‘“You'll Probably Get Away with Crucifixion”: Laughing at the Cross in the Life of Brian and the Ancient World’, Jesus and Brian (ed. Taylor, J. E.; London: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2015) 113–26Google Scholar.

24 So Cicero, Rab. Perd. 16; more generally, Hengel, Crucifixion, 37–8. For Jews, the victim brought a curse on the land: see Martens, P. W., ‘“Anyone Hung on a Tree is under God's Curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23): Jesus’ Crucifixion and Interreligious Exegetical Debate in Late Antiquity’, Ex auditu 26 (2010) 69–90Google Scholar.

25 On the cross in Paul, see Dunn, J. D. G., The Theology of Paul the Apostle (London: T&T Clark/Continuum, 1998) 207–33Google Scholar.

26 On Jesus’ death in Q, see Kirk, A., ‘The Memory of Violence and the Death of Jesus in Q’, Memory, Tradition and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity (ed. Kirk, A. and Thatcher, T.; Atlanta: SBL, 2005) 191–206Google Scholar.

27 For fuller discussion, see A. J. Dewey, ‘The Locus for Death: Social Memory and the Passion Narratives’, Memory, Tradition and Text, 119–28.

28 So also Goodacre, M., ‘Scripturalization in Mark's Crucifixion Narrative’, The Trial and Death of Jesus: Essays on the Passion Narrative in Mark (ed. Van Oyen, G. and Shepherd, T.; Leuven: Peeters, 2006) 33–47, at 34Google Scholar. The length of Mark's Passion Narrative has sometimes been seen as incompatible with identifying the work as a bios – see, for example, Edwards, M. J., ‘Gospel and Genre: Some Reservations’, The Limits of Ancient Biography (ed. McGing, B. C. and Mossman, J.; Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2006) 51–75Google Scholar. However, Burridge's detailed comparison of the gospels with contemporary bioi has shown that while Mark's work is certainly at the extreme limits of what might be thought acceptable, it is by no means without parallels: What are the Gospels?, 162, 192.

29 So Luke: see Kloppenborg, J. S., ‘“Exitus clari viri”: The Death of Jesus in Luke’, TJT 8 (1992) 106–20Google Scholar; Sterling, ‘Mors philosophi’; Scaer, Luke's Passion and the Praiseworthy Death (Sheffield: Phoenix, 2005)Google Scholar; Iverson, K., ‘The Present Tense of Performance: The Immediacy and Transformative Power in Luke's Passion’, From Text to Performance: Narrative and Performance Criticisms in Dialogue and Debate (ed. Iverson, K. R.; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014) 131–57Google Scholar.

30 Collins, A. Yarbro, ‘Mark's Interpretation of the Death of Jesus’, JBL 128 (2009) 545–54, at 553–4Google Scholar.

31 See Tannehill, R. C., ‘The Gospel of Mark as Narrative Christology’, Semeia 16 (1979) 57–95, at 80–1Google Scholar. S. S. Elliott also notes parallels with the Life of Aesop, which similarly depicts a character ‘swallowed up by the narrative plot that created him’ (though Aesop's death is much less central to his bios than that of Jesus): ‘“Witless in your Own Cause”: Divine Plots and Fractured Characters in the Life of Aesop and the Gospel of Mark’, Religion and Theology 12 (2005) 397–418, at 407CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 On masculinity in the ancient world, see Wilson, B. E., Unmanly Men: Refigurations of Masculinity in Luke-Acts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) 39–75, and 190–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Jesus’ crucifixion (Wilson is discussing the Lukan version, but her comments are even more pertinent with respect to Mark). See also Liew, T. B., ‘Re-Mark-able Masculinities: Jesus, the Son of Man, and the (Sad) Sum of Manhood’, New Testament Masculinities (ed. Moore, S. D. and Anderson, J. C.; Atlanta: SBL, 2003) 93–135Google Scholar.

33 See Bond, H. K., Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 99–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On mockery more generally in the ancient world, see Neufeld, D., Mockery and Secretism in the Social World of Mark's Gospel (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) 36–77Google Scholar.

34 For a fuller argument, see Bond, H. K., ‘Paragon of Discipleship? Simon of Cyrene in the Markan Passion Narrative’, Matthew and Mark Across Perspectives: Essays in Honour of Stephen C. Barton and William R. Telford (ed. Bendoraitis, K. A. and Gupta, N. K.; London/New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016) 18–35Google Scholar.

35 See Koskenniemi, E., Nisula, K. and Toppari, J., ‘Wine Mixed with Myrrh (Mark 15:23) and crurifragium (John 19:31–32): Two Details of the Passion Narratives’, JSNT 27 (2005) 379–91Google Scholar.

36 On the flight of the naked young man as a contrast to Jesus’ calm acceptance, see Fleddermann, H., ‘The Flight of a Naked Young Man (Mark 14:51–52)’, CBQ 41 (1979) 412–18Google Scholar.

37 Christ-followers tried to make sense of his death from the earliest days and would naturally have been drawn to the psalms, with their strongly emotional language and themes of rejection and vindication. On the use of the psalms in Mark, see Ahearne-Kroll, S. P., The Psalms of Lament in Mark's Passion: Jesus’ Davidic Suffering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

38 Useful discussions can be found in Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1455–65 and O'Brien, K. S., Use of Scripture in the Markan Passion Narrative (London: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2010)Google Scholar.

39 Much has been written on this verse, with a sizeable body of scholars arguing that Mark intends his audience to understand the cry in the light of the ending of the psalm, which seems to finish on an optimistic note. There is, however, nothing in the Markan text which would seem to warrant such a view, and Mark could not be sure that even a Jewish-Christian audience would be sufficiently familiar with the psalm to make the connection. Moreover, S. P. Ahearne-Kroll has recently argued that the ending of LXX Ps 21 is not a new situation of thanksgiving, but is still pleading with God to intervene: ‘Challenging the Divine: LXX Psalm 21 in the Passion Narrative of the Gospel of Mark’, Trial and Death of Jesus ed. Oyen & Shepherd, 119–48.

40 So also Hooker, M. D., Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretations of the Death of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994) 64Google Scholar.

41 For example, the deaths of Pompey and Julius Caesar following the assassins’ stabs (Plutarch, Pomp. 79.1–4; Suetonius, Jul. 82.2).

42 See Malbon, E. S., ‘History, Theology, Story: Re-Contextualizing Mark's “Messianic Secret” as Characterization’, Character Studies and the Gospel of Mark (ed. Skinner, C. W. and Hauge, M. R.; London: Bloomsbury, 2014) 35–56Google Scholar.

43 On slavery in Greco-Roman society, see Combes, I. A. H., The Metaphor of Slavery in the Writings of the Early Church: From the New Testament to the Beginning of the Fifth Century (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) 21–48Google Scholar.

44 On these central chapters, see especially Kaminouchi, A. D., ‘But It Is Not So among You’: Echoes of Power in Mark 10.32–45 (London: T&T Clark, 2003)Google Scholar and Watson, D. F., Honor Among Christians: The Cultural Key to the Messianic Secret (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010)Google Scholar. On Paul's rather similar use of slavery metaphors to describe the new status of Christian believers, see Combes, Metaphor, 77–92.

45 Origen, Contra Celsum 2.24. M. D. Hooker argues it is unlikely that Jesus’ followers would have invented a scene such as this one, and that the pull would have been towards crafting a calmer, more serene narrative: A Commentary on the Gospel according to St Mark (London: Black, 1995) 346Google Scholar. In my view, it is difficult to know what the earliest Christians would have found useful, and Mark's note that the disciples were sleeping does not inspire too much faith in the historical accuracy of his account at this point! For a similar reading to the one taken here, see Collins, A. Yarbro, ‘From Noble Death to Crucified Messiah’, NTS 40 (1994) 481–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 On the concept of the appointed ‘hour’ or divine sign, see Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death, 31–5, 37, 41–2.

47 Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. 8.28; Lucian, Demon. 65.

48 So Julius Caesar (Plutarch, Caes. 69) and many of Cornelius Nepos’ generals (Themistocles, 2.8; Chabrias, 3; Datames 5; Timoleon, 20.1; and Hannibal, 23.3). The author of 1 Clement puts the deaths of Peter and Paul down to envy (5.2.5), though this was no doubt inspired by the death of Jesus.

49 Although the term ‘envy’ does not appear until 15.10, it is clearly what drives Jesus’ Jerusalem opponents from the start (see 11.18 and 14.1–12).

50 For Luke, it is important to stress that Jesus was ‘righteous’ (dikaios): see Luke 23.47.

51 Rhoads, D., Dewey, J. and Michie, D., Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012 3) 111Google Scholar.

52 On the careful composition here, see Perrin, N., What Is Redaction Criticism? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970) 41–63Google Scholar.

53 The literature here is extensive; besides the commentaries, useful discussions can be found in Hooker, Not Ashamed, 47–67; Barrett, C. K., ‘The Background of Mark 10.45’, New Testament Essays: Studies in Honour of Thomas Walter Manson (ed. Higgins, A. J. B.; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959) 1–18Google Scholar; Kaminouchi, ‘But It Is Not So among You’; Dowd, S. and Malbon, E. S., ‘The Significance of Jesus’ Death in Mark: Narrative Context and Authorial Audience’, JBL 125 (2006) 271–97Google Scholar; Collins, A. Yarbro, ‘Mark's Interpretation of the Death of Jesus’, JBL 128 (2009) 545–54Google Scholar; and Breytenbach, C., ‘Narrating the Death of Jesus in Mark’, ZNW 105 (2014) 153–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 1 Tim 6.12–14 similarly remembers Jesus’ trial before Pilate in terms of a prototype martyr for followers to emulate; see also 1 Pet 2.20–5, 4.12–14. Useful discussions can be found in Hooker, Not Ashamed, 47–67; Rhoads, Dewey and Michie, Mark as Story, 113–15; and G. van Oyen, ‘The Meaning of the Death of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark: A Real Reader Perspective’, The Trial and Death of Jesus, ed. Oyen and Shepherd, 49–68.

55 Leander, H., ‘With Homi Bhabha at the Jerusalem City Gates: A Postcolonial Reading of the “Triumphal” Entry (Mark 11.1–11)’, JSNT 32 (2010) 309–35Google Scholar.

56 On Barabbas, see Bond, H. K., ‘Barabbas Remembered’, Jesus and Paul: Global Perspectives in Honor of James D. G. Dunn for his 70th Birthday (ed. Oropeza, B. J., Robertson, C. K. and Mohrmann, D.; London: T&T Clark International, 2009) 59–71Google Scholar.

57 On the presence of triumphal allusions here, see Duff, P. D., ‘The March of the Divine Warrior and the Advent of the Greco-Roman King: Mark's Account of Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem’, JBL 111 (1992) 55–71Google Scholar; Schmidt, T. E., ‘Mark 15.6–32: The Crucifixion Narrative and the Roman Triumphal Procession’, NTS 41 (1995) 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Georgia, A. T., ‘Translating the Triumph: Reading Mark's Crucifixion Narrative against a Roman Ritual of Power’, JSNT 36 (2013) 17–38Google Scholar. On irony more generally, see Camery-Hoggatt, J., Irony in Mark's Gospel: Text and Subtext (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. 171–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 On the theatricality of Roman death, see Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades’; Barton, C. A., ‘Savage Miracles: The Redemption of Lost Honor in Roman Society and the Sacrament of the Gladiator and the Martyr’, Representations 45 (1994) 41–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harley, J., ‘The Aesthetics of Death: The Theatrical Elaboration of Ancient Roman Blood Spectacles’, Theatre History Studies 19 (1998) 89–97Google Scholar; and Edwards, C., ‘Modelling Roman Suicide? The Afterlife of Cato’, Economy and Society 34 (2005) 200–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. All of these themes will be explored further in my forthcoming book, Mark the First Biographer of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).

59 A series of prodigies occurred after the deaths of Julius Caesar (Plutarch, Caes. 69.4–5) and King Cleomenes (Plutarch, Cleom. 39), and before that of Augustus (Dio Cassius, Roman History 56.29.3–6). Lucian makes fun of both his protagonist and those he dubs ‘fools and dullards’ by mischievously inventing a series of wondrous events which he claims accompanied Peregrinus’ death (Peregr. 39 and 40).

60 See Pliny, Nat. 2.45–6, 53–8; Philo, Providence 2.50. Within the biographical tradition, they are linked with the death of Julius Caesar (Plutarch, Caes. 69.4–5; Virgil, Georg. 1.466–8; Diogenes Laertius 4.64), Augustus (Dio Cassius, Roman History 56.29.5–6), Herod (Josephus, Ant. 17.167) and the philosopher Carneades (Diogenes Laertius 4.64). Eclipses might also indicate the outcome of a battle (Herodotus, Hist. 7.37; Plutarch, Aem. 17.7–11, Pel. 31.1–3) or warn of coming treachery (Virgil, Georg. 1.461–5).

61 Scholarly discussion has been preoccupied with which veil is meant here, though as M. de Jonge pointed out over thirty years ago, the fact that Mark does not specify which veil he has in mind suggests that the matter was of little concern to him. See Jonge, M. de, ‘Matthew 27:51 in Early Christian Exegesis’, HTR 79 (1986) 67–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and discussions in Chronis, H. L., ‘The Torn Veil: Cultus and Christology in Mark 15:37–39’, JBL 101 (1982) 97–114Google Scholar; Ulansey, D., ‘The Heavenly Veil Torn: Mark's Cosmic Inclusio’, JBL 110 (1991) 123–5Google Scholar; Collins, Mark,  760; Marcus, Mark 1–8,  1057; Gurtner, D. M., ‘LXX Syntax and the Identity of the NT Veil’, NovT 47 (2005) 344–53Google Scholar; Gurtner, D. M., ‘The Rending of the Veil and Markan Chrstology: “Unveiling” the ΥΙΟΣ ΘΕΟΥ (Mark 15.38–39)’, BibInt 15 (2007) 292–306Google Scholar; and Chance, J. B., ‘The Cursing of the Temple and the Tearing of the Veil in the Gospel of Mark’, BibInt 15 (2007) 268–91Google Scholar. Interestingly, tradition associates the veil with Rome (where it perhaps formed part of the Flavian procession); according to b. Gitt. 56b, Titus slashed the veil with his sword after the defeat of Jerusalem and used it to wrap up the temple vessels in the sanctuary: see Gurtner, D. M., ‘The Veil of the Temple in History and Legend’, JETS 49 (2006) 97–114, at 107 and 110Google Scholar.

62 On portents attending the destruction of the Temple, see Josephus, J.W. 6.288–331; Tacitus, Hist. 5.13; and y. Yoma 6.3 and b. Yoma 4.1 (for discussion of these texts, see Plummer, R. L., ‘Something Awry in the Temple? The Rending of the Temple Veil and Early Jewish Sources That Report Unusual Phenomena in the Temple around ad 30’, JETS 48 (2005) 301–16Google Scholar). Intriguingly, the first-century Lives of the Prophets predicts that the Temple will be destroyed by a western nation and that the curtain will be torn into small pieces (the relevant section is attributed to Habakkuk in Vit. Proph. 12.10–13). Those who see the torn veil as a sign of the destruction of Jerusalem include Donahue, J. R., Are You the Christ? The Trial Narrative in the Gospel of Mark (Missoula: SBL, 1973) 203Google Scholar; Hooker, Commentary, 377–8; Chance, ‘Cursing’; Marcus, Mark 1–8, 1066–7; and Dowd and Malbon, ‘Significance’, 296. A number of these scholars see the breaking down of barriers as a secondary meaning here.

63 For detailed discussion, see Miller, R. C., ‘Mark's Empty Tomb and Other Translation Fables in Classical Antiquity’, JBL 129 (2010) 759–76Google Scholar.

64 Several scholars have argued lately that the centurion's words here are to be taken as ambiguous or even ironic: see Juel, D. H., A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) 74Google Scholar; Shiner, W., ‘The Ambiguous Pronouncement of the Centurion and the shrouding of Meaning in Mark’, JSNT 78 (2000) 3–22Google Scholar; Goodacre, ‘Scripturalization’; and Eubank, N., ‘Dying with Power: Mark 15,39 from Ancient to Modern Interpretation’, Biblica 95 (2014) 247–68Google Scholar. The motif of the ‘converted’ executioner, however, is widespread in martyrological literature, and is likely to be what Mark had in mind: see Pobee, J., ‘The Cry of the Centurion – a Cry of Defeat’, The Trial of Jesus (ed. Bammel, E.; London: SCM, 1970) 91–102Google Scholar. For a similar reading to the one here, see Iverson, K. R., ‘A Centurion's “Confession”: A Performance-Critical Analysis of Mark 15:39’, JBL 130 (2011) 329–50Google Scholar.

65 On the funeral oration, see Kyle, Spectacles, 130–3; also Polybius 6.53–4.

66 Hope notes that the Latin word monumentum can mean both a material structure and a written text: Death, 71. Tacitus assumes that all undocumented lives are soon forgotten: ‘Many will be engulfed in oblivion as if they had no name or fame. But Agricola, whose story is told for posterity, will survive’ (Agr. 46).