Brothers:

Jeffrey Gibson of Chicago is a moderator of the GMARK internet study group 
and author of a study of Mark 14:38 printed below.  This paper was among 
those presented at this year's SBL conference in Toronto.  In event the full 
draft does not make it to your email box, you will find it posted on the 
internet at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/files/MK1438F.htm

Charles

------------------------------------------------
Mark 14:38 as a Key to the Markan Audience

by Jeffrey B. Gibson

A Paper Prepared for The Mark Group

2002 SBL Annual Meeting

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

At Mk. 14:38 Mark presents Jesus commanding Peter, James and John to 
petition God to be kept from "entering into" a phenomenon denoted by the 
term PEIRASMOS (PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON).(1) What, in 
Mark's eyes, is the object of this petition? What is it that according to 
Mark these three disciples are to pray for?

Since, according to most commentators, the PEIRASMOS referred to within Mk. 
14:38 signifies a "probing and proving of PISTIS"(2) and the expression 
PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON) means "do not encounter"(3) or 
"succumb to",(4) the standard answer is that for Mark the petition's object 
is either (a) the exemption of those who are to utter the prayer from 
experiencing an impending test of their own faithfulness(5) or (b) their 
preservation from yielding to the pressures of this test when it 
"arrives".(6)

Now I do not dispute that in Mk. 14:38 PEIRASMOS bears the sense "probing 
and proving of PISTIS". Nor do I disagree that, according to Mark, "a 
testing of faithfulness" is what Jesus urges Peter, James, and John to pray 
that they be kept from. But it seems to me that it is neither escape on the 
part of Peter, James and John from their experiencing a test of their own 
faithfulness nor protection from their yielding to it that Mark has in view 
as the petition's object. I believe -- and I seek to argue here -- that, 
contrary to the consensus view on this matter, what Mark presents Jesus as 
urging the disciples to ask for in praying PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE EIS 
PEIRASMON is help to avoid their perpetrating a "testing of faithfulness", 
and more specifically a particular "testing of faithfulness" -- namely, the 
one expressly forbidden to any who would be among the faithful of Israel: 
the "testing of the faithfulness of God".

I.

My first step in showing this must be, then, to demonstrate that 
PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON means "pray to be kept from 
subjecting anyone (or anything), let alone God, to a test of faithfulness", 
and not "pray to escape experiencing or succumbing to a PEIRASMOS aimed at 
you, the pray-er". Is there anything that indicates that this is indeed the 
case? There is, I think, one compelling and yet continually overlooked 
consideration. And this is the fact that in Biblical usage, when the 
construction MH + a form of ERCESQAI + EIS is used, as it is in Mk. 14:38, 
in a command the object of which is something other than a place, the 
resultant phrase does not mean "do not encounter or succumb to" but "do not 
commit or engage in" that something.(7) Consider, for instance, Ps. 142:2 
(LXX) where, as K. Grayston notes, the petition KAI MH EISELQHS EIS KRISIN 
META TOU DOULOU SOU in the Psalmist's prayer for deliverance from his 
enemies means, "do not engage in judging your servant".(8) Similarly, in 
Jer. 16:5 (LXX) the divine command MH EISELQHS EIS QIASON AUTWN given to 
Jeremiah prohibiting him from interceding on the behalf of doomed Israel 
obviously means "do not engage in mourning". And in Josh. 23:7 Joshua's 
final exhortation to the Israelites MH EISELQHTE EIS TA EHNH TA 
KATALELEIMMENA TAUTA, KAI TA ONOMATA TWN QEWN AUTWN OUK ONOMASQHSETAI EN 
hUMIN means "do not engage in the idolatrous practices which typify the 
"nations".(9)

Just as importantly, there is also the fact that the positive form of the 
construction, i.e., the construction absent µ, means "join in". This is 
evident in Dan 3:2--a royal command of Nebuchadnezzar to all his retainers 
and officers to "enter into" (ELQEIN EIS) the EGKAINIA, the dedication 
ceremony, of a golden image which he himself had "set up" to serve as a 
focal point for a cult common to all peoples of his empire and for 
expressions of fealty to his rule.(10) For ELQEIN EIS TON EGKAINISMON THS 
EIKONOS THS XRUSHS, NNESTHSE NABOUXODONOSOR hO BASILEUS is a command to 
participate in this dedication ceremony.

In the light of these observations, Jesus words PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE 
EIS PEIRASMON must surely mean not what they have usually been understood to 
mean, i.e., "pray that you, Peter, James and John, are spared from 
experiencing (or succumbing to once you have undergone) PEIRASMOS", but 
"pray that you might be kept from subjecting someone or something to 
PEIRASMOS". They constitute a command to Peter, James, and John, to petition 
God for help against becoming agents rather than victims of a "test".

II.

But what indicates that Mark intended the "testing" of God and his 
faithfulness to be what Jesus commands Peter, James, and John to pray 
against perpetrating? Here the answer becomes clear when we consider what it 
is according to Mark that prompts Jesus to command Peter, James, and John 
PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON. As Mk. 14:37 shows, Jesus' 
command is prompted by these disciples' refusal to be willing to "stay 
awake" and to "watch" as the "hour" finally arrives in which Jesus allows 
himself, in obedience to the divine will, to be "delivered up to suffer many 
things" and to die at the hands of his opponents. Notably this is a refusal 
which culminates in the disciples not only abandoning Jesus and his ways but 
also in their rejecting as "of God" how Jesus has called these disciples to 
follow him (cf. Mk. 14:50).

Now, as Mark indicates elsewhere,(11) being willing to "stay awake" and 
"watch" is, among other things, to refuse to succumb to any doubt that God 
will provide, especially when it seems otherwise.(12) And to "fall asleep" 
and to be unwilling to "watch" is equivalent to denying both that God is 
faithful and that his ways are adequate to what he claims are his 
purposes.(13)

The significance of all of this should not be overlooked or downplayed. For 
doubting that God will provide, especially when it seems otherwise, and 
denying that God is faithful and that his ways are adequate to what he 
claims are his purposes is something that -- in notable consonance with a 
topos prominent throughout the biblical and early Jewish tradition and 
illustrated in such texts as Ex. 17:1-7; Num. 14:22; Deut. 6-8; Pss. 78; 95 
(LXX); Is. 7:12; Wis. 1:1-3; Asump.Mos. 9:4; Matt. 4:1-11//Lk. 4:1-13; 1 
Cor. 10, Heb. 3:15-17 -- Mark holds to be the very essence of testing the 
faithfulness of God.(14) One need only recall Mark's story of Peter's 
"confession" at Caesarea Philippi -- with its portrayal of Peter as refusing 
to concede as "of God" what Jesus proclaims is the divine will regarding how 
agents of God are constrained to fulfill the divine purpose and the 
consequent labeling by Jesus of such a refusal as "Satanic" and as siding 
with "men" rather than God -- to see that this is so.

Accordingly, what Mark presents as the occasion and impetus for Jesus 
commanding Peter, James, and John to pray to be protected against becoming 
the agents of µ is the realization on Jesus' part that these disciples are 
on the verge of putting God to the test. And since it is because Jesus, 
according to Mark, sees Peter James and John as on the verge of putting God 
to the test that he [Jesus] commands these disciples to pray to be protected 
against becoming agents of PEIRASMOS, we may conclude with some certainty 
that in Mark's eyes the "testing" which Peter, James, and John are commanded 
by Jesus to pray against engaging in can be nothing other than the testing 
of God and his faithfulness.

This being so, it follows then that for Mark the object of the petition 
embodied in µ µ is the gaining of help to avoid putting God and his 
faithfulness to the test.

III.

Three things support this conclusion.

First, 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". This is apparent in the fact that 
in such stories as (a) the Rebuke of the Disciples about Bread (Mk 8:14-21 - 
in which the disciples are by castigated by Jesus for having become infected 
with the "leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod", for having "hardened 
hearts" and a culpable lack of "understanding" and "perception", and for 
stubbornly refusing to "see", "hear" and "remember"), (b) Peter's confession 
at Caesarea Philippi (Mk. 8:27-33 -- in which Jesus rebukes Peter and the 
disciples for "thinking the things of men"), and (c) the Dispute about 
Greatness (Mk. 9:33-37) as well as in (d) the Request of James and John (Mk. 
10:35-45 -- in which the disciples reveal their desire to be hOI DOUKOUNTES 
ARXEIN TWN EQNWN and hOI MEGALOI), the disciples, according to Mark, are 
showing themselves as becoming increasingly aligned with those whom Jesus 
has labeled members of the "wilderness generation".(15) Notably, the major 
characteristic of the "wilderness generation" was its propensity to "put God 
to the test" (cf. Ex. 17:1-7; Num. 14:22; Deut. 6-8; Pss. 78; 95 [LXX]).

Second, there is the consideration arising from the fact that securing 
divine aid to avoid putting God to the test is what Mark presents Jesus 
himself as praying for immediately before Jesus urges the command 
PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON upon Peter, James, and John. Set 
as it is within a portrayal of Jesus being consumed with, and on the verge 
of giving way to, a soul destroying doubt that the ways that God had given 
him to accomplish his appointed task of "ransoming the many" are in any way 
sufficient to this end (Mk. 14:35-36a),(16) how else should Jesus' anguished 
words ending with "[but] not my will but yours", be interpreted except as a 
prayer for divine aid to avoid putting God to the test?

Now if, according to Mark, securing divine aid to avoid putting God to the 
test is the theme of Jesus' own Gethsemane prayer, it is reasonable to 
conclude that it is also the theme of the prayer that Jesus urges Peter, 
James, and John to pray.

Third, that the disciples are on the verge of "testing God" is the specific 
import of the saying that Mark has Jesus utter immediately after Jesus urges 
them to "keep awake", "watch", and pray MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON, namely, the 
saying that the "the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (TO MEN PNEUMA 
PROQUMONH DE SARC ASQENHS, Mk. 14:39). It should be noted that in its 
conjunction of the terms "flesh" (SARC), "spirit" (PNEUMA) and "testing" 
(PEIRASMOS) not only with each other but with the theme of the "weakness" 
(ASQENHS) of those purportedly dedicated to God, the saying is an allusion 
to Ps. 78 (LXX) -- especially vv. 39-41 where the same terms appear (in 
reverse order) in conjunction with the theme of the weakness and the 
disobedience of nominal Israel.(17) Now this Psalm not only recites the dark 
events during and after Israel's wilderness wanderings when Israel doubted 
the efficacy of God's ways to deliver them from "the foe" (cf. vv. 17-31 
[compare Exod. 16-17]; 26-32 [compare Num. 11:31-35]; 56-66). It defines 
itself, and was intent to be used as, as a warning to "coming generations" 
within Israel not to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors who "did not 
keep in mind [God's] power or the day when he redeemed them from the foe"(v. 
42) and thereby "put God to the test" (cf. vv. 18; 41; 56). Given this, the 
question arises: Why would Mark have Jesus allude to this Psalm unless those 
to whom the allusion is addressed are in need of hearing what the Psalm has 
to say?

Accordingly, in the light of these three observations, it seems impossible 
to escape the conclusion that what Mark presents Jesus as urging the 
disciples to ask for in praying µ µ is not, as is usually supposed, succor 
from their being themselves tested, but divine aid to avoid their following 
the example of the faithless wilderness generation and subjecting God to a 
testing of his faithfulness.

IV.

But what is the import of all with respect to the issue of Mark's audience? 
What bearing do these conclusions have on determining to whom Mark wrote? 
Before this can answered it is first necessary to explore the question of 
what it was that, in Mark's eyes, "putting God to the test" actually 
entailed. What, according to Mark, would be its actual behavioural 
expression?

As seems clear from a number of passages in Mark -- not the least of which 
is the Gethsemane story itself, but also, and chiefly, the story of Peter's 
"confession" of Jesus at Caesarea Philippi and its aftermath (Mk. 8:27-9:1) 
and the stories which are the "confession's" explications (the Request of 
James and John and the Dispute about Greatness)(18) -- one expressly puts 
God "to the test" by "denying" or "being ashamed" to confess that the 
particular hODOS KURIOU that, according to Mark, God through Jesus has 
called Israel to follow if Israel is truly to be his people, namely, the 
"way of the cross", is "of God" and is therefore obligatory for any who seek 
to be worthy of the BASILEIA TOU QEOU.

Now for Mark, to "deny" or "to be ashamed" of something is not solely, and 
certainly not principally, an intellectual or emotional enterprise. It is to 
do something. More specifically, it is to act in conscious opposition to 
what one "denies" or is "ashamed of" while claiming divine warrant for one's 
actions. And since, for Mark, the "way of the cross" entails endurance 
rather than infliction of suffering on one's opponents (cf. Mk. 8:34-37; 
9:35; 10:43), service to, rather than being served by, "sinners" (2:17; 
10:45), a refusal to engage in or accept as paradigmatic, let alone divinely 
sanctioned, the dominating and imperial behaviour characteristic of hOI 
DOUKOUNTES ARXEIN TWN EQNWN and hOI MEGALOI (10:43) toward subject peoples, 
and the willingness to give up one's life in a way that brings benefit 
rather than destruction upon the "lawless and the ungodly" (10:45)(19), then 
to "deny" or "to be ashamed of" the "way of the cross" involves advocating 
as "of God", and therefore something incumbent upon all who would be 
faithful to him, the adoption of a pattern of behaviour which in effect is 
the opposite of Mark's vision of the hODOS KURIOU -- one which in the name 
of God sanctions the infliction of suffering on one's opponents, the 
domination of "sinners", the acceptance of the lordly and "imperialistic" 
ways in which hOI DOUKOUNTES ARXEIN TWN EQNWN and hOI MEGALOI typically 
conduct themselves when dealing with those they consider their subjects as a 
legitimate model of governance, and the willingness to give up one's life in 
the service of bringing devastation and destruction upon the "lawless and 
the ungodly".

Given this, to "put God to the test" is, then, to believe that the hODOD 
KURIOU that will bring Israel to its destiny, the way that the God of Israel 
really calls those who would be faithful to him to employ to show their 
devotion to him to him, is, ultimately, the holy war.

V.

It is now generally acknowledged that the situations in which Mark places 
the disciples when they are warned by Jesus about straying from or 
misunderstanding the nature and demands of the way of God that they are to 
follow, are situations which, in Mark's eyes, mirrored those in which the 
community to which he writes were enmeshed. Accepting this as so, then the 
situation of Peter, James, and John in Gethsemane -- namely, a situation in 
which they are on the verge of putting God to the test by going over to the 
view that the ways God calls his faithful to take upon themselves are in 
form and content the opposite, and the repudiation, of the "way of the 
cross" -- was also that of Mark's community. To put this another way: if we 
accept that the situation that Mark places the disciples in at Gethsemane is 
parallel to what Mark's community was facing when Mark wrote, then the 
audience to which Mark writes was one that was being seduced into thinking 
that God authorized his faithful to embrace the ideology and the praxis of 
holy war.

But when and in what circumstances during the time in which the Gospel of 
Mark was most likely produced (i.e., the 60s-70s CE) was such a way of 
"putting God to the test" not only a live option for members of a movement 
that seems originally to have been grounded in "pacifist" principles, but 
one which was so persuasive in its implied or explicit claims truly to be 
the way of God for Israel and to have God on its side that it could sway 
those who were once fully committed to the "way of the cross" from their 
original confession to one which was its opposite?

The answer, I contend, is 68-69 CE, when, after the Temple had for the third 
time been delivered -- twice in notable consonance with the miraculous 
salvation of Jerusalem recounted in 2 Kings 18:17-19, 36 -- from assaults by 
mighty Roman forces, it appeared to Jews and Romans alike that the Zealot 
movement, with its call to take up arms to liberate Israel from its 
oppressors, its ideology of holy war, and its conviction that righteous 
violence against "sinners" was the true expression of faithfulness to the , 
had been divinely vindicated and openly and decisively shown to be "of 
God".(20)

It was in this time and in these circumstances that what Mark regarded as 
"putting God to the test" mightily reared its head. It was in this time and 
in these circumstances that what Mark regarded as "putting God to the test" 
seemed not only to be God approved, but something which, in contrast with 
the way of the cross, was actually succeeding in achieving what, according 
to Mark, following the "way of the cross" was supposed to achieve but had 
not - namely, the return of Yahweh to Zion and the release of Israel from 
exile (cf. Mk 1: 1-8). It was in this time and in these circumstances -- 
indeed because of them -- that many Jews who had originally also thought 
that what Mark regarded as "putting God to the test" was a way that would 
lead to ruin for Jerusalem, and who had rejected the Zealot cause and their 
means for implementing it as "not of God", were persuaded of its truth and 
rushed to join it.(21)

But is there anything elsewhere in Mark that would lead us to believe that 
this contention is sound? Here I turn to Mk. 13 for support. One notable 
thing about Mark 13 is that all of its characteristic exhortations -- 
ostensibly given by Jesus to the disciples but more accurately given by Mark 
to his readers (cf. Mk. 13:14) - to "take care" to avoid being deceived by 
the course of events that are outlined within 13:4-23 into thinking that the 
Day of the Lord and God's deliverance of Jerusalem is at hand, is that they 
are set within a framework of an anti-Temple polemic that not only is 
contextualized by Jesus' pronouncement in Mk 11:17 that the Temple had been 
turned into a den of LHSTAI and therefore would be destroyed not saved,(22) 
but is rife with language and imagery taken from Jeremiah's denunciations of 
his contemporaries' declarations that the Temple guaranteed them safety 
from, and victory over, any pagan forces arrayed against it (cf. Jer. 7). 
Another is that in 14-23 we find Mark , through Jesus, striving mightily to 
counter an apparently deeply seated belief on the part of his readers - one, 
notably that was engendered by false christs and false prophets who make the 
Temple their focus and the center of their operations -- that flight from 
Jerusalem when the Temple is besieged is not only unnecessary but something 
that represents apostasy. The background and occasion for all of this is 
surely the time and circumstances in which Zealot beliefs regarding the 
inviolability of the Temple, the righteousness of their cause, and the 
divine sanctioning of the means by which they sought to implement it seemed 
most assured even to those who had originally been skeptical of their truth. 
And this was only in late 68 or early 69 CE, when Jerusalem was basking in 
the glow of a third Sennacherib like salvation.

Mk 14:38 is then a crucial key in unlocking the secret of Mark's audience. 
It strongly suggests not only that they were a Kingdom Movement group in or 
near Palestine but that they were among those professing loyalty to the God 
of Israel who were sufficiently caught up in the revolutionary fervor of the 
years 68-69 to be drawn over or severely attracted to to the Zealot cause.

1. Given that hINA sometimes has a telic force, the command of Mk. 14:38, 
PROSEUXESQE, hINA MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON is sometimes taken in such a way 
that hINA MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON specifies only what Jesus intends to be 
the result of the act of praying that he urges upon the Peter, James, and 
John (cf. C.S. Mann, Mark [New York: Doubleday, 591 n. 38 ] 591). But as 
R.E. Brown (The Death of the Messiah, 2 Vols. [New York: Doubleday, 1994], 
Vol. 1, p. 197), following H.G. Meecham ("The imperatival use of hINA in the 
New Testament", JTS 43 [1942], 179-80) correctly notes, hINA in Mk. 14:38 is 
epexegetical and therefore signifies that the phrase MH ELQHTE EIS 
PEIRASMON) is the content of what Jesus commands his disciples to pray. On 
this, see also C.E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel according to St Mark 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959) 434; R.H. Gundry, Mark: A 
Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) 872.

2. There is, however, a division among commentators regarding whether or not 
the PEIRASMOS spoken of in our text is viewed as "eschatological" in nature; 
that is, whether, according to Mark, the "probing and proving of PISTIS" 
that Jesus there designates as something that is to be petitioned against is 
(a) the so-called "final testing", the great tribulation, that according to 
some apocalypticists' scenarios of the "end times" (cf. Dan. 12 [LXX]; Rev. 
3:10) was expected to beset and afflict the people of God at the dawning of 
the end of the age or (b) one that can occur or be engaged in at any time in 
the life of those who are to pray MH ELQHTE EIS PEIRASMON. On this, see 
Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 1:159-162 (Brown himself favours the former 
view). On the use and meaning of PEIRASMOS in biblical and related 
literature, see H. Seesmann, "PEIRA, KTL.", TDNT 6 (1968) 23-36, and 
especially J.H. Korn, PEIRASMOS: Die Versuchung des Glaubigen in der 
greischischen Bible (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1937).

3. Cf. e.g., D.M. Stanley, Jesus in Gethsemane: The Early Church Reflects on 
the Suffering of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1980) 141.

4. Cf. e.g., Gundry, Mark, 873. J. Carmignac, ""Fais que nous n'entrions pas 
dans la tentation'", RB 72 (1965) 218-226.

5. Cf. e.g., Stanley, Jesus in Gethsemane, 141; Brown, The Death of the 
Messiah, 1: 158-159; D. Senior, The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark 
(Wilmington, Del.: Michale Glazier, 1984) 78.

6. Cf. Carmignac, ""Fais que nous n'entrions pas dans la tentation'", 
218-226; Gundry, Mark, 873; W.H. Kelber, "The Hour of the Son of Man and the 
Sparing of the Hour", in The Passion in Mark, ed. W.H. Kelber (Philadelphia: 
Fortress, 1976) 41-60, esp. 48. For a contrary assessment which anticipated 
the contention that I will argue here, see C.B. Houk, "PEIRASMOS, the Lord's 
Prayer, and the Massah tradition [Ex 17:1-7]", SJT 19 (1966), 216-225.

7. Contra Carmignac, "Fais que nous n'entrions pas dans la tentation'", 
218-226; Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:159.

8. K. Grayston, "The Decline of Temptation -- and The Lord's Prayer", SJT 46 
(1963) 279-295, esp. 292

9. See also 1 Sam. 25:26 and 25:33 where µ µ (µ) means "not committing 
murder".

10. On this, see Andre Lacocque, The Book of Daniel (Atlanta: John Knox, 
1979) 60.

11. Cf. especially Mk. 13:33-37. See also Matt. 24:42; 25:13; Mk. 13:34-37; 
Lk. 21:36; 1 Peter 5:8.

12. On this, see T.J. Geddert, Watchwords: Mark 13 in Markan Eschatology 
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989). W.L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark 
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 520.

13. Lane, Mark, 520; K.G. Kuhn, "New Light on Temptation, Sin, and Flesh in 
the New Testament', in The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. Krister 
Stendahl (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1957) 94-113.

14. On denying that God is faithful and that his ways are adequate to what 
he claims are his purposes this as the defining characteristic of "testing 
God", see Korn, PEIRASMOS , 32-43; Seesemann, "PEIRA, KTL.," 27-28; B. 
Gerhardsson, The Testing of God's Son (Matt. 4:1-11 and Par.) (Lund: 
Gleerup, 1966) 28.

15. According to Mark, being infected with the "leaven of the Pharisees and 
of Herod", having "hardened hearts" and a culpable lack of "understanding" 
and "perception", stubbornly refusing to "see", "hear" and "remember", 
"thinking the things of men" and attempting to be like hOI DOUKOUNTES ARXEIN 
TWN EQNWN and hOI MEGALOI are the defining characteristics of those whom the 
Markan Jesus calls "this (wicked and adulterous) generation" (.hH [MOIXALIS 
hAMARTOLOS] GENEA hAUTH). That this label is a reference to the post Exodus 
dor , the "wilderness generation", see E. Lovestam, Jesus and "This 
Generation" (Lund: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1995) 8-20.

16. That this is what Mark means his readers to see as Jesus state of mind 
before he utters his prayer seems clear from several considerations. 
According to Mark (note the import of his preceding the Gethsemane story 
with the account of a double prophecy of Jesus (1) that his [Jesus'] own 
suffering and death would cause his disciples to loose all faith in him and 
(2) that, in fulfillment of Zech. 13:7, his passion would both scandalize 
and cause the break up of the little community of believers who at the end 
of his ministry alone had remained loyal to him [cf. (Mk 14:27-31]. Jesus is 
fully aware that should he carry on with his commission to suffer in 
accordance with God's decree on the exigencies of Messiahship, he will bring 
about the dissolution of the small band of followers whose response of 
loyalty and fellowship, however incomplete and varying, was in the end the 
only tangible result of his entire public ministry. Accordingly, to submit 
to the passion is apparently to acquiesce in the complete failure of that 
ministry (on this, see Stanley, Jesus in Gethsemane, pp. 138-39).

As Mk. 14:41 shows (compare Mk. 9:31), Mark also presents Jesus as aware, 
that in subordinating his will to that of God, he consents to being 
"delivered up (PARADIDOTAI) into the hands of sinners" and thereby to place 
himself, defenseless and powerless, at the mercy, whim, and disposal of the 
seemingly absolute and arbitrary power of the forces which are committed to 
doing all they can to set him and his mission at nought (Cf. Mk. 9:11. On 
the identification of the "sinners" of Mk. 14:41 with the forces of evil, 
see Holleran, The Synoptic Gethsemane, 14, 66-67, 204; Lane, Mark, 522; M.E. 
Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark (London: SPCK, 1967), 162; H.E. Todt, The Son 
of Man in the Synoptic Tradition (London: SCM Press, 1965) 200). So to 
accept God's will also means risking the fate of John the Baptizer who, like 
Jesus, was divinely commissioned to `restore all things' (cf. Mk 9.12), but, 
trusting in God, was also `delivered up' (cf. Mk. 1:14, PARADOQHNAI) only to 
suffer an ignominious end (cf. Mk 6.27-29) and have his mission defeated by 
those who opposed him (Mk 9.13). To all appearances, then, obedience 
produces nothing but a literal dead end (Barbour, "Gethsemane"', 249-50).

Accordingly, in Mark's view, the anguish and bewilderment, the hesitation 
and uncertainty to which Jesus is subject in Gethsemane arises out of a 
conflict between (a) Jesus' desire to be faithful to his calling and to 
accomplish the Messianic task and (b) the apparent irrationality of 
submitting in obedience to a divinely decreed plan of action when it seemed 
that to obey was to jeopardize God's worthwhile purposes.

17. And he remembered that they were but flesh (SARC) , a wind (PNEUMA) that 
passeth away, and cometh not again. [40] How oft did they rebel against him 
in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! [41] And they turned again 
and tempted God (EPEIRASAN TON QEON), and provoked the Holy One of Israel.

18. On these passages as explications of the "confession story", see my The 
Temptations of Jesus in Early Christianity (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic 
Press, 1995) 225-237.

19. On this as the meaning of the "many" at Mk. 10:45, see J. 
Jeremias,"POLLOI" TDNT Vol. 5 (1969) 540.

20. The first of the "Sennacherib like" deliverances of the Temple took 
place in the Spring of 66 CE after the Procurator Florus order cohorts from 
Caesarea to march against the inhabitants of Jerusalem when they openly 
showed displeasure at Florus' action of having removed seventeen talents 
from the temple treasury and his recent order, undertaken to have a 
deterrent effect upon the populace, to have the "upper market" in the upper 
part of the city plundered and a great number of the citizenry crucified. 
After encountering a crowd of protestors outside the city walls and driving 
them back into the suburb of these cohorts tried to force their way to the 
Temple. At the same time, the cohort in Herod's palace, called up as 
reinforcements, attempted to gain entrance to the Sanctuary through the 
Fortress of Antonia. Then, as Hengel notes,

When the inhabitants of Jerusalem. saw that the Sanctuary was threatened 
from two sides, they barred the troops' way in the narrow streets of the 
city and attacked them with missiles from the houses and roof-tops. The 
porticoes linking the Temple to the Antonia were also set on fire with the 
aim of making it impossible to approach and occupy the Sanctuary from the 
direction of the fortress. The Roman troops, surprised by this sudden 
resistance, withdrew into the royal palace. Florus, who had thrown almost 
his entire armed force into the encounter,"' was afraid that he would no 
longer be equal to the situation and, leaving one cohort behind, set off for 
Caesarea

quitting the field, in what was taken as an admission of defeat (M. Hengel, 
The Zealots [T & T. Clark, 1989] 357).

The second also occurred in 66 CE, when the Legate of Syria, Cetsius Gallus, 
attacked Jerusalem, breached its walls, but mysteriously turned away, after 
beginning an assault on the Temple Mount, from seeing his campaign through 
to the end, and retreated with his full force (which began with the 12th 
Legion, two thousand picked men from other legions, six cohorts and four 
alae of cavalry, as well as a sizeable number of auxiliaries) to the east 
only to see troops routed and decimated at a gorge near Beth-Horon by Zealot 
warriors (Josephus B.J 2.533-45).

The third "Sennacherib like" deliverance occurred in 68 CE when Vespasian, 
moving to carry out orders from Nero to bring Jerusalem to its knees, 
received news of the emperor's death and called a halt to his siege 
preparations (Josephus B.J. 4.9.2 (497-479).

That Jews saw all of this as divine confirmation of the Zealot movement is 
apparent from the following:

(a) the fact that members of parties who had hoped for an avoidance of armed 
conflict with Rome went over to the side of the war party (B.J. 2:556);

(b) the fact that the center of Josephus' great speech on the necessity and 
prudence of surrendering to Rome that he made to the Jews who had taken 
shelter in the inner Temple when the Romans had taken the Antonia and were 
occupying the outer forecourt (B.J. 5.362-419) is a series of arguments 
specifically designed to show how different the current situation was from 
the way that the miraculous salvation of Jerusalem from Sennacherib had 
played itself out ((on these, see Hengel, Zealots, 241);

(c) that during the last stages of Titus' siege of the Temple mount, even as 
the Jews were forced to cease offering the Tamid, the Zealot leader John of 
Gischala, speaking on behalf of the people, still called out to Josephus 
that he "could never fear a conquest, since the city belonged to God" (B.J. 
6.98);

(d) that when Titus' forces stormed the burning Temple on 10 Ab in 70 CE and 
entered the Sanctuary, they encountered 6000 people who had gone there 
eagerly in absolute confidence that, as a Zealot prophet had announced, God 
would show them there his "signs of redemption" and (to use the language of 
4 Ezra 13:37 ) "punish the nations that had marched against him" (B.J. 
6.283-285); and

(e) that after the Temple was taken by Titus, there was an almost complete 
collapse of the Jewish will to continue the insurgency.

That Romans also took these three "Sennacherib like salvations" of the 
Temple as a sign that the God of Israel was on the side of the Zealot cause 
is clear from the report of Dio Cassius that even when armies of Titus had 
succeeded in gaining the Temple's forecourt, they ".... did not penetrate at 
once [into the Sanctuary] because of a superstitious fear" (Dio Cassius 
66.6). On this, see Hengel, The Zealots, 221-222.

21. Cf. B.J. 2:556, 562. See also E. Schurer, The History of the Jewish 
People in the Age of Jesus Christ, G. Vermes and F. Millar, eds. (Edinburgh: 
T & T Clark, 1973) Vol. 1, 489.

22. On this, see Lane, Mark, 452.





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