The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Reading 1570750416

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-'a'YXVLO"ee1.,,) compassion, heals the man, but then sternly dismisses him with the naive advice that, even after having shown himself to the priest and making the proper offering, public acts to be sure, he should say nothing to anybody about his healing. The passage is unintelligible on the story-level, if Jesus is really trying to keep his act secret. In Leviticus 14: 2-8, it is explained that a declaration of purification from leprosy (any serious skin disorder) by the priest entails the priest's going 77. The Heart Scripture, in Buddhist Wisdom Books, 81, declares: "Here, 0 Sariputra, fonn is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from fonn, fonn does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is fonn." 78. Following RSV translation of ~IL~P~ILT)(J(iILEVO..6-yov more as the divulging of the meaning of the story, than as a simple telling of the story, for, as Mark presents the passage, that is not much of a secret.

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outside the encampment of the people to perfoon the purification and declaration. Only then is the cleansed one allowed to return to the encampment of the people. This makes good sense, for the encamped people do not want to take chances on catching the disease. Mark introduces Jesus both as the healer of the disease and as an outsider to the declaration. He is not part of the "insider encampment," but a marginal figure to the priestly establishment and their legal procedures. The man is cleansed on the outside, i.e., his skin, but, by divulging the affair, remains diseased on the inside. Outwardly cleansed, he reenters the conventional world of the people, while Jesus himself . must remain outside the towns in deserted places, i.e., wilderness places (45: 'E~W E.7r' Epilj.LOL~ 'T01TOL~). Mark constructs the passage not to signify that Jesus has a secret that he does not want to reveal, but to begin to construct a theme of inner-outer. Those who externalize their understanding of the gospel message, by clinging to false conventional expectancies, become progressively alienated from the outsider Jesus, in fact proclaiming a different gospel. The cleansed man goes out and begins to proclaim such a gospel with intensity (0 OE. E.~EAeWV 'ilp~a'To KTJpU32

Jesus was accustomed to dine; in that sense, it simply means ·commoners'." Ahn, "Jesus and the Minjung in the Gospel of Mark," 139. 149-50, argues that Mark understood the more generic term "the crowd" (6 '6XAO--21, 31-35 with 3: 22-30. He has also added in 'sister' in 3: 35 to connect with the following equally inimical encounter in 6: 3. But apart from that addition, both Gospel of Thomas 99 and Mark 3: 31-35 agree on 'brothers and mother' twice in the fanner case and on 'mother and brothers' three times, with ·brother ... and mother' once, in the latter case. They agree on excluding the father. The exclusion might be interpreted

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without authority, stays outside the circle ('E~W "6:). Yet, Mark seldom details the content of that teaching. The other gospels, especially John, often break the flow of the action to give Jesus an opportunity to discourse at length. 4 Some think that Mark moves his narrative so quickly through the constant flow of actions of Jesus, his disciples, and his antagonists that he has no time to halt the flow for extended discourses. Yet, there is perhaps a deeper significance, for in the above sentence the important thing is not what the "many things" Jesus taught were, but that he taught them in parables. The gospel Mark presents is not a specific set of teachings to be learned, but an invitation to reverse the unconverted structure of the mind. The constant interplay between the actors highlights the difference between the converted consciousness of Jesus and the unconverted consciousness of the others.s Jesus has distanced 4. Kertledge, "The Epiphanies of Jesus in the Gospel," 84: "Alongside the narrative material the speeches and sayings of Jesus in Mark are very modest in scope. Apart from the parables chapter (4: 1-34) and the Markan apocalypse (Chapter 13) and to some extent the instruction in 7: 1-23, this Gospel contains no large discourses, only individual pieces of debate, parables and sayings of Jesus." 5. Schweizer, "Mark's Theological Achievement," 46: "Jesus' speaking in parables is thus for Mark not simply a more or less chance form. These illustrations are neither a pedagogical tool nor are they optional. On the contrary, pure communication of facts can be taken over and handed on without active participation. But the pictorial saying challenges the hearer, because it can only be understood by someone who opens himself personally to the speaker, as the pictorial language of love shows. For that reason parabolic speech withholds the meaning from those who do not allow their hardened hearts to be opened in existential confrontation with the one who addresses them."

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himself from the crowd by getting into the boat and moving slightly offshore. They are on the land (l1TL 'Tftc; 'Yftc;), for they are the ground upon which the seed word is sown.6 None of the things Jesus taught have any importance apart from that interplay. The surface meaning of the parable is not difficult to understand. The image of the sower was frequently used in the ancient world to represent the teacher, as in Plato and in 2 Esdras, 7 and really needs no further explanation. All that is needed is for one to examine how the word has taken root in one's own consciousness. This is what Jesus means when he tells people to listen and hear with their ears, i.e., to hear directly without intellectualizing the parable. To hear (aKOlJEw) is a common Markan term and indicates more than verbal apprehension of ideas. Rather, it indicates a pattern of understanding open to the call to conversion.8 The same image of seeds implanted in the mind is a favored theme of the Yogacara philosophers. Hearing the doctrine of awakening implants seeds (irutavasana) in the mind which, countering the karmic seeds of passion and ignorance (kle§ajneyavar{JIJabfja), tum one toward a conversion of consciousness, toward awakening. Those seeds are not innate within the mind, but flow from hearing the doctrine of true awakening preached by buddhas, i.e., awakened persons. In permeating one's consciousness, such seed words transform the consciousness of the hearer, so that the very ground in which they are sown is gradually turned from passion and ignorance toward wisdom and awakening. The ground of consciousness is not set and unchangeable, for all conscious patterns are other-dependent, and thus empty of any set essence. What is in the first instance shallow, rocky, or entangled by passion can, in the second instance, break through those obstacles to become fertile ground for hearing, and thus for awakening.

Parable Teaching 4: 10-12

IOWhen he was alone, the Twelve, together with the others who formed his company, asked what the parable meant. IIHe told them, "To you is granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything comes in parables, 6. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 149: "In the parables that follow, those who hear the word that Jesus speaks may respond in one of the same four ways in which the four different types of earth ("If) respond to the seed sown in them. The huge crowds that listen to Jesus 'on the land' are types of the parabolic 'earth' about to be expounded." 7. Grant, Interpreter's Bible, 7: 695, "The figure of the sower scattering seed was frequently used in the ancient world for the teacher (Plato, Laws VI.777E; II Esdras 9: 31,33)." 8. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 150: "Forms of the verb 'to hear' (aKOlJEw) appear thirteen times in Mark 4: 1-34." Again, 45: 'To hear' means 'to understand'."

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Commentary on the Gospel of Mark 12so

that they may look and look, but not perceive; listen and listen, but never understand; to avoid changing their ways and being healed. "

The above sentence includes a quotation from Isaiah 6: 9-10, where it constitutes the Lord's charge to Isaiah: "Go, and say to this people, 'Listen and listen, but never understand; look and look, but never perceive.' Make the people's heart coarse, make their ears dull, shut their eyes tight, or they will use their eyes to see, use their ears to hear, use their hearts to understand, and change their ways and be healed." The charge both in Isaiah and in Mark is strange, that the Lord would desire people not to understand, that Jesus would use parables to conceal his meaning. Some think that Mark here adopts the gnostic idea of a select, inner circle who alone have access to the mysteries. Yet, this very notion requires interpretative gymnastics that twist and tum Mark's words, rather than admit the literal, apparently obvious sense. 9 One commentator says that "Mark's theory can only be described as perverse."10 Attempts at interpretation often tum to redaction criticism, trying to ascertain the true Markan perspective from elements that preceded him, which he struggled to alter. Schweizer identifies verses 11-12 as coming from a pre-Markan tradition and not really compatible with the rest of Mark. 11 Such a critique contrasts Mark's source with his redacted treatment of that source, carried out in order both to identify Mark's opponents, the disciples who adhere to a "divine man" notion and think they have a special privileged position, as in verses 11-12, and to criticize that opinion, as Mark does the disciples throughout the gospel.1 2 The problem with such redaction critiques is that they are too facile, for one can find pre-Markan material wherever the spirit moves one to find it. If we base ourselves upon the narrative structure of the text as it stands, it soon becomes abundantly clear that even that inner circle of Jesus' company, although granted the secret of the kingdom, does not understand and in fact has no inner access to the mystery of the kingdom. They are the ones who do not understand the clear meaning of the parable of the sower and who immediately press Jesus to clarify it for them. They demand that the parable become a literal allegory, so that its meaning can be laid bare in objective 9. Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 257, describes the idea that Jesus' parables prevent understanding as "intolerable," while Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 63, deems it "repellent." Matthew, apparently to soften the impact of Mark's phrase "so that" ('C va), substitutes "because" ('on). 10. Grant, Interpreter's Bible, 7: 700. 11. Schweizer, "Zur Frage des Messiasgeheimmisses bei Markus," Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 56 (1965): 1-8. For a critique see Drury, "The Sower, the Vineyard, and the place of Allegory in the Interpretation of Mark's Parables," Journal of Theological Studies, 24 (1973): 367-79. 12. Weeden, Mark-Traditions in Conflict. 139-49.

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terms without engaging their own deeper minds at all. They insist that the parable must have some decipherable inner meaning, an inner referent not apparent to all. If, in fact, the referent of the parable is their own minds, and not a separate meaning, they have indeed listened but missed the point. That point is both subtle and simple. 13 The lack of understanding manifested by Jesus' hearers results not from the verbally esoteric nature of the parables themselves, but from the fantasy patterns of the unconverted minds of the hearers/readers, focused on meaning as a property of a graspable external reality. This is why the disciples request a further explanation. Yet, when Jesus gives that explanation in 13-20, he merely describes the deluded quest of those who function in the imagined pattern of consciousness without internalizing its meaning. '4 The point relates not to revealed content, but to the very act and pattern of understanding revelation as the manifestation of that which remains beyond any verbal manifestation. 15 In Barth's words, "All true know ledge of God begins with the knowledge of the hiddenness of God." 16 Mark's quotation from Isaiah follows Isaiah's use of irony,17 for although the secret is given to them, the disciples themselves remain on the outside, searching for water in the midst of the river. The point is how one listens to the parables. 18 The disciples grapple with the verbal meaning of Jesus' teaching, while Jesus' intent is "to change a person at the core of his or her being, 13. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel. 88, argues that "the story as a whole ought to be fairly obvious, straightforward, and repetitious rather than subtle and esoteric." Again, she argues, 96, that Mark pennits "no moral ambiguity to enter the story." Again, 130 explains that parables "ought to be readily apparent in the narrative itself, for the very nature of popular literature is to be available to a broad spectrum of readers with greatly varying degrees of knowledge or ~ophistication." And 183 repeats the notion: "Popular literature must be broadly accessible; so, its main points ought to be obvious and repeated." So also Crossan, The Historical Jesus. 349: "The enigmatic injunction 9 Who Has Ears (II 5) should be interpreted in the simplest possible way. It means, on the lips of the historical Jesus, 'You have ears, use them; what I say is as clear and obvious as I can make it; all you have to do is listen. It is not cryptic, hidden, mysterious; it is obvious, maybe that is its problem, it is too obvious. Listen!' " 14. Kelber, The Kingdom in Mark, 32: "... the crucial point is that Jesus is not said to speak in parables to outsiders, rather that everything is or occurs in riddles to the outsiders (ta panta ginetai)." No matter how he speaks, their pattern of understanding turns everything into a riddle precisely because they cling to imagined (parikalpita) meanings. IS. Schweizer, "Mark's Theological Achievement," 50: " ... at Mark 4: 12, it is the event of revelation, the gospel itself, which has to reveal the blindness of mankind and so bring the world under God's judgment." 16. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 211, 183. 17. Malbon, Mark and Method. 37: "This ironic allusion to Isaiah 6: 9-10, which is itself ironic, is an intertextual echo of the Septuagint." When irony is piled upon irony, one does indeed sense that in the deluded pattern of trying to gra~p meaning, we are thrust into a hall of mirrors, all of which reflect only illusions. 18. Achtemeier, "Mark as Interpreter of the Jesus Traditions," Interpretation, 32/4 (1978): 345, "explains that the parable of the sower and this section of listening to parables have the same point, how one listens to and responds to Jesus." See Via, The Ethics of Mark's Gospel. 184.

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to rewrite the heart (2 Cor 3:3). It is the power of this language, written or spoken, to remove the veil from the mind (2 Cor 3: 16-17),"19 to soften the hardness of hearts of those who fix meanings in an external realm of supposed truths. That softening is itself a turning around or changing of one's way (E1TLU1'peljJwo'LV) that leads to healing the deluded mind. What then is the secret or the mystery of the kingdom of God (1'0 ~oo"1'fJpLOV ... 1'f]c; l3auLA.€Lac; TOU O€oo)? This is the only instance where Mark employs the tenn "secret" or "mystery." And its meaning in context is not that of a special, messianic secret, but the clear and obvious significance of the parable itself: that the seed of God's word must take root in the depths of our minds. That rooting is the hidden mystery about the kingdom, not the status of Jesus as messiah, or any other piece of privileged information. It is hidden, because language itself can only cover it up in fabricated meaning, projecting its significance out there into a realm of detached truths. Kermode speaks of the simultaneous function of parable as proclamation and concealment: "Parable, it seems, may proclaim a truth as a herald does, and at the same time conceal truth like an oracle."20 Such an understanding of parable parallels the Mahayana notion of conventional truth (saf!lVrti), which is interpreted to signify both a revelation (from the root sam-vrt, to arise, the coming about of truth in the world) and a covering over and hiding (from the root sam-vr, to conceal).21 Language in Mahayana reflects deluded misunderstandings and occludes truth to unawakened persons, yet at the same time reveals to the awakened that which can never be grasped by language. And so Jesus teaches in parables to break through language itself and reveal the deep mind of conversion. He talks a language of enigma so that the literal meanings of his words may be heard but not understood (aKOUoV1'EC; aKOlJWULV Ka'i. ~TJ (J'UVLWULV), for Jesus' teaching is not accessible to the imagined pattern of understanding (parikalpita).22 The enigma simply highlights the impasse such attempts are bound to reach. The parable, for all its simplicity, is opaque for the mind that imagines meanings to be outer essences to be grasped. While functioning in such a deluded pattern, one cannot be converted, one cannot be healed or forgiven. No revelation of the kingdom can be understood by this fantasy pattern of consciousness, for it immediately externalizes meanings and projects them into manipulative ideas. Thus, every revelation remains hidden and concealed. Mark 4: 1-34 is "the harshest and most extreme expression of the concealed 19. Via, The Ethics of Mark's Gospel, 17. 20. Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy, 47. 21. Nagao, The Foundational Standpoint of Madh'lamika Philosophy, 39-42. 22. Schweizer, "Mark's Theological Achievement," 49: "Everything that Jesus has to say is a mysterion (a 'mystery' or 'secret,' 4: 11) as regards its significance, incomprehensible for mankind.... Matthew and Luke ... changed the singular, to mysterion, which descrihes the mystery of revelation itself, namely the word of the cross, into a plural and so find all kinds of individual mysteries behind the parables, which we then unveil in allegorical fashion."

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revelation motif."23 Hidden, not as a privileged piece of special information, but as that which, in its bare simplicity, is beyond the understanding of the mind which is focused upon the unquestionable reality of the self and its patterns of understanding. Those who are outside (EKELVOL,> BE TOL'> 'E~W) do not then constitute a particular, identifiable group of people, but are those who externalize the meaning of the parables, and this includes, as becomes apparent, all of Jesus' inner circle of disciples. No matter how close they are physically to Jesus-whether his mother (3: 31) or his constant companions-to them, everything becomes muddled and opaque. Fowler explains, "What has not been grasped is that here is a moment of opacity in the discourse. It is the first time in the Gospel that any mention has been made of the giving of the secret of the Kingdom of God. Typically critics have flipped back through the early pages of the Gospel to seek when and where this might have taken place in the story. The thought has not occurred to such critics that the secret of the Kingdom of God might be intended to be a secret that excludes them. The notion that this episode is an intentionally opaque moment in the narrative has been unthinkable to many.... For the reader of the Gospel, the giving of this secret lies behind an opaque veil. We are not privy to it. Until 4: 11 we did not even know that the secret existed. Mark 4: 11 confronts us with our own blindness as readers, a blindness to which most critics have been blind.... troubling is the realization that must come to every reader at this juncture, if only unconsciously, that because the reader does not possess this touted 'secret of the Kingdom of God,' the reader must therefore be an outsider."24 The parables are then presented in order to (,Lva,4: 12) counter that pattern of grasping after meaning, whether on the part of the story-level disciple or the discourse-level reader. They are presented so that one might not understand, and, not understanding, experience heightened tension between true and false patterns of understanding.2s 23. Via, The Ethics of Mark's Gospel, 183. 24. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand, 168-69. 25. Thus I disagree with Tolbert, Sowing the GospeL, 163: "For the Gospel of Mark, it is simply the hard and painful truth that some people are in essence good and others are not." There is, I think, an essentialist philosophy at work in Tolbert's literary analysis that leads her to dichotomize the typology presented in the parable of the sower. She identifies the gospel as a concrete universal, explaining that "in ancient thought, the moral significance of literature was derived from its ability to indicate the universality of the types of events, responses, or experiences depicted in it. Thus, Aristotle, for example, argued that poetry was closely related to philosophy in its presentation of the probable and necessary in accordance with universal laws. And although Plato himself ultimately decided to banish poets from the ideal republic, the force of the Platonic view that the tactile world was only a pale copy of the spiritual realm of essences, which alone was real was to define the serious didactic task of the writer as the revelation of universal, spiritual reality in seemingly particularized, individual experiences .... Mark not surprisingly would stand closest to Wimsatt's arguments about Aristotle: the particular action with agents that forms the story line of the Gospel illustrates universal principles" (129 and 129.7). The philosophy adopted in the present Mahayana commentary rejects essentialism and sees Mark not as a representative of ancient Greek essentialism, but as doubling

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Commentary on the Gospel of Mark

Note that 4: 1-20 is a chiastic structure, moving from the parable of the sower (1-9) on to the disciples' request for explanation (10), and then on to the high point of the ring structure about how parables prevent understanding (11-12). It turns again to a reproof of the disciples, implying that they should indeed understand the parable (13), and then ends with Jesus' exposition of the parable (14-20). Only in the middle passage is the parable characterized as a mystery, riddle, or enigma. Elsewhere the parable is meant to be understood, as Jesus insists to the disciples. 26 The middle passage is warning the reader not to allegorize the parable into a simple typology, for that information leads nowhere. A parable not only opens up its meaning to those who are able to hear, but also conceals meaning from those who externalize their consciousness in the cultural symbols and codes of understanding available to them.27 "Mark ... has taken what is essential to the parable, the doublemeaning effect, and made it the starting point of a theological theme concerning the audience's resistance to hearing the word,"28 and that audience includes everybody, even the skilled exegete.

back to question such a mind-set at many points in his narrative, just as Jesus returns again and again to the task of instructing the crowds and the disciples. 26. Dewey, Markan Public Debate, 149. 27. Against Camery-Hoggatt, Irony in Mark's Gospel, 129: "As the narrative later turns against the disciples, as the reader with Jesus is called upon to judge the disciples themselves for their blindness (cf 14-21), he becomes closer than the disciples, closer even than the inner circle." And 130: "Mark's rhetorical strategies therefore come close to the surface here. By use of the rather sharp word of judgment he has reinforced and deepened the reader's sense of superiority over the story's characters and has done so in such a way that the reader identifies his deeper insight with the 'mystery of the Kingdom of God'." In disagreement, I hold that Mark has brought to the surface the reader's blindness, for she also is without a clue about the kingdom, knowing only that the disciples in the story do not understand it either. Mark has, I think, snookered the reader into a forced identification with those disciples/characters by teasing her into adopting a reified viewpoint. much as the disciples request in the story. I agree with Fowler, Let the Reader Understand, 169: "In retrospect, the verses immediately preceding 4: 13 begin to take on a new tone. Jesus may now appear to have been toying with the disciples all along, playing a cat-and-mouse game with them, or perhaps more to the point, the narrator has been playing with us." One may have to reevaluate the rhetorical sphere open to a narrator in Gospel times, for although it is held that the "unreliable narrator" came into existence only in the sixteenth century and therefore can be read back into a gospel text only as an unfounded anachronism (Boomershine, Mark, the Storyteller, 4.7, quoted in Dowd, Prayer, Power, and the Problem of Suffering, 31), yet here the narrator is indeed a tricky fellow! Bowker, "Mystery and Pamble," 302, asks, "Would Jesus trick his listeners?" In a Mahayana context, the Buddha preaches through the employment of skillful means (upaya), sometimes leading his listeners on by promises and explanations not literally "true," yet effective for encouraging the practice of the path to awakening. See the parables in Hurvitz, tr. The Lotus Scripture. An entire hermeneutic developed to deal with the doctrine of scriptural validity expressed by such siltras, for which see Asailga, The Summary of the Great Vehicle, tr. John P. Keenan, 46-47, and more broadly the essays in Buddhist Hermeneutics, ed. Donald Lopez. 28. Boucher, The Mysterious Parable, 83.

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Explaining the Obvious 4: 13-20 13He said to them. "Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables? 14What the sower is sowing is the word. 15Those on the edge of the path where the word is sown are people who have no sooner heard it than Satan at once comes and carries away the word that was sown in them. 16Similariy. those who are sown on patches of rock are people who. when first they hear the word. welcome it at once with joy. 17But they have no root deep down and do not last; should some trial come. or some persecution on account of the word. at once they fall away. ISThen there are others who are sown in thorns. These have heard the word. 19but the worries of the world. the lure of riches and all the other passions come in to choke the word. and so it produces nothing. 20And there are those who have been sown in rich soil; they hear the word and accept it and yield a harvest. thirty and sixty and a hundredfold. .. Jesus begins by criticizing the disciples. He has just said that to them "is granted the secret of the kingdom," yet they refuse to interpret the parable within the context of their own lives. Jesus provides an interpretation that may assist them, but that does not excuse them from the task of appropriating it for themselves.29 In their defense, it can be noted that Jesus' criticism precedes his interpretation of the parable of the sower. 3D But Jesus' criticism is not simply that they do not have the proper interpretation. Rather, in their pattern of nonunderstanding-refusing to internalize the parable-how could they understand anything? In that pattern of looking for the objective meaning of words out there, apart from the inner mind, they will always avoid the import of the parable. This parable constitutes Mark's hermeneutical key,31 for it insists 29. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand. 184: "In keeping with the rhetoric of indirection, note that the interpretation of the parable in 4: 14-20 is far from clear: it too needs to be interpreted. The sower is said to sow 'the word' (ho logos). What on earth is that? 'The word' figures very nicely both the teaching of Jesus at story level and the narrator's discourse, and therefore 'the sower' might be taken as a metaphor for Jesus. for both simultaneously, or for still other sowers of words. Interpreting the sower metaphor by saying that the sower sows 'the word' merely introduces another metaphor that requires yet another effort at interpretation. An interpretation requires its own interpretation, especially if metaphor is used to interpret metaphor. The move from the parable of 4: 1-9 to the interpretation of it in 4: 14-20 is a paradigm of an endless reading and rereading process." 30. Fowler. Mark and Method. 71-72: "We observe that 4: 11 reveals a gap in the discourse of the Gospel. There Jesus says that his followers have 'been given the secret of the kingdom of God,' but the giving of that secret was never narrated." 31. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 129: "The Sower, coming first in the narrative [before the other major typology of the Tenants] and additionally tagged by the character Jesus as the guide to understanding all the other parables (4: 13), offers a fairly generalized and universal typology of four different responses to hearing the word."

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that parables cannot be understood simply by decoding their language. 32 Rather, one must interiorize their meaning in concrete practice. The parable of the sower focuses not on the seed, which remains constant, but on the ground that receives that seed, i.e., on the consciousness that hears the word of the gospel. This is what Jesus' exposition of the content of the parable of the sower emphasizes. In order to germinate, a seed must be planted in good and deep soil, and likewise, the word must be planted in the depths of the minds of Jesus' followers. The presence and activity of the seeds that flow from awakened discourse, one of the principal Yogacara metaphors for the hearing of doctrine, counter a consciousness which is occluded by karmic seeds, sown in the mind through the performance of deluded activity (karma) and structuring the pattern of its misunderstanding. These karmic seeds constitute the two obstacles to awakening. One is the obstacle of the passions (kle§avaral]a), the worries of this world and the lure of passions and riches. The other is the obstacle to knowledge (jiieyavaralJa) , which prevents one from understanding that all meaning is empty of essence and in the end unobtainable. If doctrine is clung to as a set of ideas deemed to be true, it can scarcely withstand the attacks of Satan or the trials of persecution, for it has taken root only in shallow soil. Yet, the imagined pattern can be converted into the perfected pattern. One can gain deep insight into the emptiness of all doctrine, and thus into its dependently co-arisen meaning. Such a conversion takes place upon hearing the teaching, which itself plants seeds of awakening within the mind. The Yogacara master Asanga speaks of this seed as a hearing [of doctrine] that flows from the realm of reality (dharmadhtitu-ni~yanda-sruta-vasanabfja). Such a hearing permeates (vasaTJa) consciousness, leads toward the practice of the middle path, and issues in wisdom (prajiia), with its fruitful harvest of compassion (karulJa). It is this deep structure of consciousness that Mark presents in the parable of the sower, not a secret lore that can be known through imagined clinging to words, for the gospel is not a viewpoint (dr-Hi) gained by intellectual manipulation. One must hear and receive the word within oneself (nKOlJo\JO"LV TOV AOj'OV KaL 7rapa8€xovTaL) for it to bear fruit. Among the four types of people depicted, the first are those whose practice is marginal, for they are at the edge of the path (OL 7rapa Tilv oMv). Examples

32. Against Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, 87: "The reason why three quarters of the hearers of the parable and readers of the Gospel do not understand and accept the word is that they are in thrall to the Sacred and its mythology, which can be decoded only in the light of the cross." To regard the sacred as an essentially fixed ideology serving only to justify scapegoating and violence leads one to imagine an opposing decoded ideology of the cross as only the rejection of that sacred violence. Violence is indeed to be rejected and any notion of the sacred that serves tojustify it is to be abandoned. Yet, the tensive interplay is not between competing ideologies, but the dynamic tension of living in the middle path.

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are perhaps Judas or the authorities. They indeed hear the word, but dismiss it forthwith, for they do not practice the path at all. Those symbolized by the patches of rock welcome the word, but their minds are occluded by the obstacle to understanding. Their awareness of the implications of the word is shallow, because it is rooted only in their own defiled thinking. They believe in the word because it is a path toward glory and power. And so when that glory and power is threatened, they immediately fall away (EMue; TJV 'YUvatKa), as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?" Crossan proposes "that a 'sister wife' means exactly what it says: a female missionary who travels with a male missionary as if, for the world at large, she were his wife. The obvious function of such a tactic would be to furnish the best social protection for a traveling female missionary in a world of male power and violence. Was that the original purpose and focus of the 'two by two' practice, namely, to allow for and incorporate safely the possibility of female missionaries ?"22

Herod's Fear 6: 14-16 14King Herod had heard about him, since by now his name was well-known. Some were saying, "John the baptist has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him. " HOthers said, "He is Elijah;" others again, "He is a prophet, like the prophets we used to have." 16But when Herod heard this, he said, "It is John whose head I cut off; he has risen from the dead. " Mark inserts this account of Herod's fear and his subsequently related murder of the Baptist to highlight and contrast the mind of converted wisdom with the mind of delusion and fantasy. The conventional opinions about the identity of Jesus look forward to those repeated in 8: 27-30, where Jesus himself poses the question of his identity to the disciples. Here Herod is moving entirely in the conventional world of real poiitics. 23 That conventional world does admit, however, miraculous happenings as breakthroughs of the beyond into this usually ordinary life. Mark records no skepticism about the miracles and powers that worked through Jesus. Herod assumes them to be true, and then accounts for them by imagining John the Baptist to have returned, perhaps to seek revenge. Herod's own actions, his karma, had engendered in him a deep-seated fear about the results of his deed,24 which is recounted in the next passage. And so he thinks that John has arisen. In the Chinese translations of Mahayana scriptures, the deluded realm of transmigration (sarrzsara) is translated as life-and-death, the encircling world in which humans pass from one lifetime to another in constant delusion, and it is no great victory to be reintroduced back into sarrrsara. 22. Crossan. The Historical Jesus, 335. 23. Camery-Hoggatt, Irony in Mark's Gospel, 145: "Herod was no king, but a tetrarch. Is Mark intending ridicule? Josephus (Antiquities XVIII.vii,2) indicates that Herod was deposed by Caligula for monarchical pretensions." 24. Schweizer, The Good News, 134: "Herod ... stands under the terrible pressures of the consequences of a wrong decision made previously."

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Herod interprets John's return in this fashion, and, driven by his karmic past, imagines John to have actually come back to get him. His delusions will lead him to eliminate the imagined threat of the Baptist. "As John's death coincided with the sending out of the disciples-apostles, so will Jesus' death usher in the mission."25 The very proclamation of the need for conversion, just undertaken by the twelve, engenders the hatred of the deluded. The sufferings of Jesus and his disciples do not proceed from any divine fiat or plan, but from the complex chain of the dependently co-arisen actions of those who hear and begin to fear and feel threatened. 26 But Herod is wrong and John has not come back. Note that the verb used for rising from the dead (EYTnepTaL EK VEKPWV, T)'Yep9l]) also means to awaken, to rise from sleep. Resurrection in Mark is not a literal reconstitution and revivification of inert bodily structure. In Mahayana Buddhism, transmigration is not a reclaiming of one's personal selfhood, but a sinking further into the delusions that follow upon any belief in such a personal selfhood. True resurrection is an awakening from the dead world of samsaric sleep into the final victory of awakening (buddha tva) , sovereign over both life and death.

The Head of the Baptist 6: 17-29 17Now it was this same Herod who had sent to have John arrested, and had had him chained up in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip s wife, whom he had married. 18For John had told Herod, "It is against the law for you to have your brother wife." 19As for Herodias, she was furious with him and wanted to kill him,· but she was not able to, 2%ecause Herod was in awe of John, knowing him to be a good and upright man, and gave him his protection. When he had heard him speak he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to hear him speak. 21An opportunity came on Herod's birthday when he gave a banquet for the nobles of his court, for his army officers and for the leading figures in Galilee. 22When the daughter of this same Herodias came in and danced, she delighted Herod and his guests; so the king said to the girl, "Ask me anything you like and I will give it to you." 23And he swore an oath, "I will give you anything you ask, even half of my kingdom. " 24She went out and said to her mother, "What shall I askfor?" She replied, "The head of John the Baptist.;' 25The girl at once rushed back to the king and made her request, HI want

s

25. Kelber, Mark's Story of Jesus, 34. 26. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 198: "The story of John's death in Herod's court is the most shocking, graphic, and frightening description of the deadly nature of tribulation on account of the word to be found anywhere in the Gospel except at the crucifixion itself." The content of that word, however, is not specified, for it urges not a teaching to be accepted, but a change of heart and orientation to be effected.

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you to give me John the Baptist's head, immediately, on a dish." 26The king was deeply distressed but, thinking of the oaths he had sworn and of his guests, he was reluctant to break his word to her. 27At once the king sent one of the bodyguard with orders to bring John's head. 28The man went off and beheaded him in prison; then he brought the head on a dish and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. 29When John's disciples heard about this, they came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. Mark here gives Herod's kannic past, describing in grisly detail how he kills the Baptist and why.27 It paints Herod as saddened by the request but at the same time driven by his fear of appearing stingy to his assembled guests. 28 He was saddened, because he was evidently interested in what the Baptist had to say, since he believed in the supernatural world. When he listened to John, he was "greatly perplexed" ('TrOhha fj'TrOPEL), for John spoke of a repentance that would overturn the very world that gave Herod meaning. This is why he thought Jesus was John resuscitated and come back to preach repentance and trouble his world again. He is troubled by his actions of servility before the dancing girl and his newly acquired wife, and his cruelty in severing and presenting lohn's head on a dish. Jesus' disciples are to share table with the common people, Herod's guests are served the grisly head of a prophet on a platter. His grotesque table manners highlight his own personal mind-set, caught in lust, delusion, and anger, the three poisons that in Mahayana doctrine constitute salJlsara. Poisoned in mind, he is gripped in fear about Jesus, for he sees Jesus, falsely, as a supernatural breaking-through into his world of power and control. Mark also links this banquet account, with its assembled guests, to the first miracle of the loaves, to follow immediately, for he describes that banquet as similarly arranged in the style of a Roman banquet, with neatly arranged rows of men in order. 29 Note also that Herod's gruesome party takes place in Galilee. The establishment opposition to John's and Jesus' calls for repentance are not confined 27. The description perhaps alludes to the story of Queen Esther (Esther 5: 3f), where the king over his wine says that he will give to Esther whatever she asks, even up to one half of his kingdom. See Kerrnode, The Genesis of Secrecy, 161.10. Also Anderson, "Feminist Criticism," Mark and Method, ed. Anderson and Moore, 128, who presents the parallels that King Artaxerxes offers one half of his kingdom to Esther, and that Esther is also referred to as KopaaCa, as is Herodias' daughter in v. 22. Anderson concludes that Herodias' daughter, "Salome (so identified by Josephus, not by the Bible) is the dark obverse of Esther-Esther's shadow sister." 28. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 158, sees Herod as a type of that seed sown among thoms, for the cares and desires of the world lead him to murder the Baptist, whom he rather enjoyed spending time with, for Mark portrays him as somewhat interested in the Baptist's words. 29. Klosinski, Meals in Mark, 119: "Herod's banquet (6: 14-29) ... can be understood as an anti-type of the subsequent feeding of the five thousand (6: 30-44). Herod's guests constitute three groups (6: 21), while Jesus divides his guests into three groups (6: 39-40). Only men attend each banquet (6: 21-22,44)."

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to Jerusalem. John "is arrested or handed over 0: 14 paradothenai); he is killed at a gathering of persons from Galilee (6: 21)."30 The undennining of spatial boundaries by Jesus' voyaging across the Sea of Galilee from his Jewish homeland to foreign gentile regions, as well as the collapse of defined boundaries between profane and holy land signaled by the disciples' shaking off the dust from their feet against Galilean towns, is repeated once again, for Jesus' Galilean homeland neither accepts him nor spares the head of the Baptist. Despite Jesus' promised return to Galilee after his resurrection, Galilee is hardly a privileged locale in Mark's portrayal of Jesus' life and career. There is perhaps a further allusion here to the story of the raising of Jairus' daughter. She is addressed by Jesus in 5: 42 as "little girl" (TO KOpaIT~ov), the same term used in 6: 22 when the king addresses the little girl (d1T£V TOO KOPQITLW) who will bewitch him. Jairus' daughter signals resurrected life a~d vitality,' while Herodias' daughter is the agent of murder and mutilation. 31

First Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes 6:30-44 laThe apostles rejoined Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. 31And he said to them, "Come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest a while;" for there were so many coming and going that there was no time for them even to eat. J2So they went off in the boat to a lonely place where they could be by themselves. llBut the people saw them going, and many recognized them; and from every town they all hurried to the place on foot and reached it before them. 34S0 as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length. 15By now it was getting very late, and his disciples came up to him and said, "This is a lonely place and it is getting very late, 36S0 send them away and they can go to the farms and villages round about, to buy themselves something to eat. " 37He 30. Malbon, Narrative Space, 23. 31. Kennode, The Genesis of Secrecy, 132-33: "When Jesus approaches her supposed corpse she is called 'the child,' but in healing her he addresses her as 'little girl' (korasion, the same word used of Salome). The word is still a neuter, but it can only mean 'little girl,' the change distinguishes her as approaching, from the other side, the condition of the cured woman, a healthy sexual maturity. The name 'Jairus' (missing from some manuscripts) is said to mean 'awakener,' and it occurs in the book of Esther, which Mark knew well and on which he drew in the Salome episode." The name Jair occurs in Esther 2: 5: "Now in the citadel of Susa there lived a Jew called Mordecai son of Jair, son of Shumei, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin." Mann, Mark, 283 concurs that "the sense of the name itself in Hebrew means 'he who enlightens.' " If these allusions are correct, then Mark weaves a contrast between the "awakened and enlightened" daughter of Jairus-he who awakens-and the death-dealing daughter of Herodias, within a context of allusions to the story of Esther.

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replied, "Give them something to eat yourselves." They answered, "Are we to spend two hundred denarii on breadfor them to eat?" 38He asked, "How many loaves have you? Go and see." And when they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish." 39And he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass, 4°and they sat down on the ground in squares of hundreds and fifties. 41Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing; then he broke the loaves and began handing them to his disciples to distribute among the people. He also shared out the two fish among them all. 42They all ate as much as they wanted. 4JThey collected twelve basketfuls of scraps of bread and pieces of fish. 44Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men. After breaking his account of the mission of the disciples with the story of John's murder, Mark takes up the thread, now referring to the twelve as the apostles, i.e., those who have been sent out. After their report, Jesus takes them apart into a wilderness place (Ked LoCav do; 'e.P'l1JJ.0v T01TOV), away from the crowd. This is the only time Mark calls Jesus' followers apostles (ot a1ToaToAoL), perhaps contrasting them with Herod who sent (a1ToaTE.LAapOVEt" TCt TOll 6EoU aAACt TCt TWV av6pw-rrwv), i.e., Peter clings (POVEL") to his human ideas without insight into their emptiness. The problem lies not in his confession, but in his way of thinking, affix.ed on the imagined realities of his religious world and not on God, who empties all things in the depths of silence. No titles, not even christ, provide a clear identification of Jesus. 65 And so, unaware of emptiness, Peter would have Jesus abandon his awareness of dependent co-arising and substitute the images of a deluded clinging to superstar dreams. In 1: 17 Jesus had called Peter to come behind him (8EUTe o7TLrrw ~0lJ), now he tells him to get behind him (U7TCl")'E O'Tl"LrrW ~O\J).66

The Practice of No-self 8: 34-9: 1

J4He called the people and his disciples to him and said, "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. J5Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. J6What gain, then, is it for anyone to win the whole world and forfeit his life? 37And indeed what can anyone offer in exchange for his life? 38For if anyone in courtyard, clinging to the kingdom as a separate, empirical reality. "He was turning Jesus into the last thing the prophet wanted to be: a hero and an idol, an obstacle to God-withman .... Simon erred not in abandoning Jesus but in not abandoning him enough." 63. Mauser, Christ in the Wilderness, 123: "The basic cause of their disbelief is their determination to run away from the desert." 64. Kelber, Mark's Story of Jesus, 48. Camery-Hoggatt,lrony in Mark's Gospel. 202.101, reports with reservations that: "In a recent article ("Peter: Stumbling block and Satan," 187-90), B. A. E. Osborne has argued that there is a subtle play on words underlying this condemnation of Peter: Peter is said to have aligned himself with the 'thoughts of men' (8.33). But the thoughts of men are themselves under the influence of the evil yetzer; and it is for that reason that they are set over against the 'thoughts' of God. In TB. Sukkoth 52a, one of the seven names of the evil yetzer is 'stumblingblock', and in Pesikta 165a, the yetzer is a rock which causes travelers to stumble at a crossroads. If this sort of thinking is in view in Mark 8.31-33, there is a subtle play on Peter's name: a moment ago Peter-the petros-was the cornerstone, here he has become a stumblingblock." 65. Tromce, in Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament, cited by Kealy, Mark's Gospel, 182: "None of the titles in Mark is used as a vehicle for his Christo logy. Neither Son of God, Son of Man nor teacher is used to give expression to a new image of Jesus. For Mark the right Christology is primarily an acceptance of suffering for the sake of Christ." 66. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel. 202.44.

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this sinful and adulterous generation is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. " 'And he said to them, "In truth I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power." Peter has just been told to get behind Jesus. Now Jesus calls a crowd together and invites people to follow behind him (E'L TL1TLaW ~01J a.KoA01J9ELV), and demands that they renounce all self and self-definition (a.1rapv1laaa9w emrrov).67 Without the realization of no-self (aniitman), no salvation is possible. 68 This means much more than not being selfish. It means that one must abandon the final validity of all the definitions of self which we construct in our coping with the world. 69 Personality is a construct, socially fabricated upon the dependently co-arisen basis of heredity and environment. It is not, as the Greeks thought, an inner essence of a person, an unalterable core of personal being. Such a definition is affixing one's mind to the things of man, to a convention deemed beyond convention. The Buddhists stress this notion in the doctrine of no-self (anatman), that there is no inner core to anything. We live moment to moment in a radical contingency, fearing to let go and live. And so Jesus says that to live, we must lose our lives. The emptying and abandoning of an imagined inner core to our lives frees one to engage in the true dependently co-arisen beauty and joy of human being. 70 Yet, this also means engaging in the world with an awareness of the silence of ultimate truth, and thus it means the cross, for all life involves suffering.71 67. Via, The Ethics of Mark's Gospel, 177: "Each indication of failure to understand who Jesus is is followed by a teaching on suffering discipleship and being servant of all (8: 34--37; 9: 35-50; 10: 42-45)." 68. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand, 189-90: "Note that the paradox is not 'Whoever would save his life will lose it; whoever loses his life will save it.' Apparently, for Mark saving one's life invariably means losing it ... " In Mahayana terms, without the realization of anatman, no salvation is attained, for awakening is blocked. It is not, however, that the path of Jesus is based on suffering as "the central and dominant feature of discipleship in Mark" (as Dowd, Prayer, Power, and the Problem of Suffering, 135, notes that some think), but that awakening to a consciousness of no-self transforms the mind into the mirror of the will of God. 69. Schweizer, "Mark's Theological Achievement," 53: "Only in following is that discipleship possible in which one becomes free from oneself, finds one's true life in no longer having to worry tensely about one's own life, and is able to find it truly in selfabandonment and self-giving (8: 35)." 70. Via, The Ethics of Mark's Gospel, 70: "The archetypal idea of fullness through emptiness comes to expression in Mark in the principle that one can find life only by passing through death ... (8: 34--37). But he does not just teach it; he enacts it for them (8: 31; 9: 31; 10: 33-34,45; 14:21), and this pattern of existence also takes on the specific content of an ethical demand." 71. Epictetus, Discourses 2.2.20: "If you want to be crucified, just wait. The cross will come. If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right, then it's to be carried through, and your integrity maintained." Cited by Crossan, The Historical Jesus, 353, who remarks: "There is, therefore, no need to take Jesus' saying as either retrojected

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No one ever escapes the suffering that is entailed in simply being human, although we all try our best to do so. Jesus' recommendation is that, if one would be his follower, one must face life concretely, one must carry the cross of human transience and suffering. This is not meant to be a nihilistic despair, for nihilism occurs only when false dreams are frustrated. No delusions of wealth and power, even if realized, are worth the ruin of one's life. The words about Jesus being ashamed of those who are ashamed of his words are directed against Peter-like refusals to hear about Jesus' suffering, about our cross. They are directed against those who imagine a life free from the struggle that is entailed in reengagement and who become disillusioned when their false hopes are emptied. 72 It is difficult to accept no-self and impermanence, for the world constantly solicits us toward delusion, toward self-definitions of ourselves, our groups, our nations. That is why Jesus shocks his hearers. Jesus' saying in verse 35 "must shake our deep assurance that we know what saving life and losing life mean. It attempts this by taking the meaning of our words away from us ... Only this shaking of our deep, largely unconscious convictions can do this. On the other hand, if the saying fits within our lives as something reasonable, the possibility of bringing about significant change would be los1."73 So also Jesus speaks of this adulterous and sinful generation, for the term adulterous (/-LoLX(X~(8L) refers not merely to sexual transgression, but to the power of the world to entice and solicit one away from insight into no-self. In a world where everyone is protecting self, there can be no peace, but only mutual competition and struggle.74 But such is not the struggle of the cross, which offers no resistance precisely because one has realized no-self. And in that realization, one realizes resurrection.

or projected prophecy [about his actual crucifixion]. Jesus 'was discussing,' as Leif Vaage put it about Epictetus, 'the ... cost of adopting a particular way of life.' " The reference to Vaage is to "Ql and the Historical Jesus," 173. 72. See Kee, Community of the New Age, 133-34, where he argues that 'to be embarrassed' (E'TTa~(J)(\!Va;;, v. 38) has the sense of 'to become disillusioned.' " 73. Tannehill, The'Sword of His Mouth, 195. 74. Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, 7, offers a story about no-self: "The Zen Master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger the parents went to the master. 'Is that so?' was all he would say. After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed. A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth-that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket. The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again. Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: 'Is that soT"

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Jesus talks not only about the cross, but in verse 38 also about his coming in the glory of the Father.7s The last sentence, the first of chapter 9, follows logically upon Jesus' reference to his coming in the glory of the Father with the angels. What does he mean by his coming in the glory of the Father? Does he really mean that the kingdom of God is to come in the lifetime of some of his hearers? That is its obvious sense: that Jesus, and Paul after him, does indeed expect the end of the world to happen soon. There was such an expectancy at the time. 76 Yet, perhaps, another interpretation is possible and the reference is not to a corning of the kingdom in the linear future. Jesus has just been speaking about losing one's life and thereby gaining life. The life so gained is not merely physical continuity, but the life of the kingdom. When he speaks about the kingdom of God coming in power, it is not the power that conquers the world, for that has been rejected. Rather, the power is the paradoxical power of abandonment, and the kingdom is seen even now, during one's life span, by those who do in fact lose their lives, by those awakened to the truth of no-self. Jesus identifies himself both as the one who has to take the cross and the one who is exalted in glory. He is the conventional manifestation of ultimate truth, transparently mirroring the empty awareness of Abba in the dependently co-arisen conditions of life. In such a life and such a death, the kingdom comes in glory.

75. Kelber, The Kingdom in Mark, 74: "8:38 is the first explicit announcement of the parousia." 76. Donahue, Are You the Christ? 166: "Prior to 8:27 the kingdom is proclaimed as a present reality manifested in the ministry of Jesus (1: \5; 4: 11; 4: 26; 4: 30), after 8: 27 the kingdom takes on a future dimension: 9: 1, it is coming in power; all these sayings on entering the kingdom come after 8: 27 (9: 47; 10: 23-25)."

9

The Epiphany of Just Jesus Jesus Transfigured

9: 2-8 2Six days later; Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and led them up a high mountain on their own by themselves. There in their presence he was transfigured; 3his clothes became brilliantly white, whiter than any earthly bleacher could make them. 4EUjah appeared to them with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus. 5Then Peter spoke to Jesus, "Rabbi," he said, "It is wonderful for us to be here; so let us make three shelters, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." 6He did not know what to say; they were so frightened. 7And a cloud came, covering them in shadow; and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him. " sThen, suddenly, when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more but only Jesus. Mark's Jesus had just said that some (TLVe. ta)'OL) of the eschatological fruit of the fig tree, just as Jesus is about to wreak havoc in the Temple and proclaim it a house of prayer for all the peoples. And his disciples heard (KO't ''ii KOUOV ot j.LO'ellTCXL cxmoii). Jesus has been asking them to listen. Just what did they hear? What did they understand? Stayed tuned!

Jesus and the Temple Tradition 11: 15-19 ISSO they reached Jerusalem and he went into the Temple and began driving out the men who were selling and buying there; he upset the tables of the money changers and the seats of the dove sellers. 16Nor would he allow anyone to carry anything through the Temple. 17And he taught them and said. "Does not scripture say: My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples? But you have turned it into a bandits' den. " IBThis came to the ears of the chief priests and the scribes, and they tried to find some way of doing 29. Shibayama, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, 107-113.

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away with him; they were afraid of him because the people were carried away by his teaching. 19And when evening came he went out of the city. For the first time after his entry on the colt's back and his looking around, Jesus returns to Jerusalem and goes straight to the Temple area. He begins to throw out the vendors, overturning tables and chairs in the process. Mark only says that he began to throw ('1jp~o:'TO EKi3ciAAELV) them out, however, not that he succeeded in finishing the job. Jesus is then undermining the temple, but not in light of his new teaching, or on his own authority.30 Rather, he alludes to and draws his authority from Isaiah 56: 7, which describes the Temple as the Lord Yahweh's "house of prayer, ... for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples,"31 and to Jeremiah 7: 11, in which Yahweh warns that humans must not "take this Temple that bears my name for a robbers' den." The cultic practices in the Temple were supported by the availability of animals for sacrifice and the convenience of money exchangers to facilitate the purchase of such necessary elements for the cult. Jesus' action signifies that those cultic practices are all appearance, that those holocausts and sacrifices are not in fact acceptable on the altar of Yahweh, as in Isaiah 56: 7. Just as the fig tree is all appearance, with many attractive leaves but no reality, so the cult is all outward observance with no inner conversion. Jesus is here upholding the authenticity of the Temple traditions and castigating those who have reduced them to formal observances. 32 He is not trying 30. I think Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel. 249, overstates the case: "In driving out the merchants and money-changers, Jesus publicly asserts his jurisdiction over the center of Jewish religion, the temple." Public indeed are Jesus' actions. yet their source is identified in the text as deriving from Isaiah. 31. Mark alone includes the Septuagint phrase "for all the people" (1TQOW Tote; 'e6VE