THIS Gospel is not sensible unless we recall last Sunday’s sending out of the Twelve “apostles”; for that’s the event that King Herod has heard of (known as “it”, in verse 14). Even so, the story of John the Baptist’s execution stands proud of Mark’s narrative like Uluru (Ayers Rock) bulging out of the Australian plain. It has no reference to what precedes and follows it, and might be cut from the Gospel without leaving a trace.
The telling of John’s death seems to have been prompted by the concept Jesus could also be one other Baptist, one other Elijah-figure. If we had Mark’s Gospel only, we’d not know that the 2 men were related (Luke 1.36), and the link between them can be spiritual somewhat than genetic. Either way, John is first and elder, while, at this early stage, Jesus seemed to be an imitator.
What follows reads like a folk tale. Describing it in this fashion isn’t meant to diminish its value. On the contrary, it reminds us of the wisdom to be present in pre-literate and non-literate cultural material, in addition to in written records. The American folklorist Stith Thompson (1885-1976) compiled a monumental six-volume catalogue of such motifs and kinds, categorising them across a large number of societies, times, and contexts, including those present in scripture. According to him, this story is an example of the “rash promise” motif, which he classifies as M223.
M223 is found elsewhere, even within the Bible (within the story of Jephthah, for instance, Judges 11-12), in addition to in other European literature. The story of Esther and Ahasuerus is more necessary still; for Mark — or, more precisely, his source — clearly has it in mind. For one thing, Herod is known as “king” (he was actually a tetrarch, Matthew 14.1), to strengthen the Esther parallel with King Ahasuerus: only a king can have a kingdom to present away. For one other, Mark 6.23 is quoted word for word from the Greek version of Esther 5.3.
Why Mark or his source? Because there are features of the Greek which indicate that Mark is reproducing the story (somewhat than reshaping and retelling it) from one in all the source-documents he used to compile his Gospel. One indicator is the proven fact that Mark 6.17-29 doesn’t follow the Evangelist’s liking for the historic present tense: as a substitute, the story is told within the imperfect and aorist tenses.
How blest we modern Bible-readers are to have commentaries to tell our study! They disclose to us elements of the text which we may not notice for ourselves. Because I dislike reading novels written within the historic present, I feel that I’d probably notice if, for a single short section, a text written in English switched for no apparent reason to a unique verb tense. But, when grappling with ancient Greek, plus various translations (a few of which obscure Mark’s historic present by making it an English past tense), this oddity about Mark 6.14-29 had escaped my notice.
Like pre-Pauline formulae (that are at all times exciting), passages like this carry us back from the composition of Mark’s Gospel (within the mid-’60s AD) to an earlier stage within the formation of Christianity, one which we will now only hypothesise, as we reconstruct the earliest beginnings of our faith.
One further intriguing element to this story, pointing towards its being reproduced by Mark somewhat than rewritten in his own idiom, is that his version is — unusually — longer than either Matthew’s or Luke’s.
John’s death by the hands of Herod, through the malice of vengeful individuals affronted by having their failings thrown into sharp relief, comes with rumours of a resurrection. Those rumours were to prove unfounded — which ought, incidentally, to reassure us that folks in Bible days could tell fact from fiction when it got here to rumours of miracles. Some commentators point to affinities with Christ’s death. But I feel of John more as a pre-protomartyr, before Stephen (Acts 7).
Ancient folklore teaches wisdom in a way that’s different from the teachings about salvation, grace, and righteousness which come to us through the New Testament writers. But this Gospel gives us much more by recording the last of the old covenant’s prophetic martyrdoms, which can be the primary within the catalogue of the Kingdom. That martyr list still goes on being added to, and at all times will, until this earthly realm is not any more.
