Iliad 22 and 24 As Mark S Model for the Death and Burial of Jesus

2/3/19Iliad 22-241

Iliad 22 and 24 as Mark’s Model for the Death and Burial of Jesus

Dennis R. MacDonald

As members of this SBL program unit likely know, I am convinced—and have repeatedly tried to demonstrate—that the Markan Evangelist created most of this narrative by imitating Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Perhaps nowhere is this dependence on Homer more obvious than in his depiction of Jesus’ death and Joseph’s rescue of his corpse. Instead of reframing the argument once again, I ask permission to offer a truncated version of my presentation of the evidence in The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts (NTGL 1; Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 91-130. Ibegin just after Hector’s taunting of Achilles.

Iliad 22.289-363

The Death of Hector

When Hector’s spear missed its target, he turned to his brother Deïphobos for another,

but he was nowhere near him.

Then Hector knew in his mind and said,

“Alas! Surely the gods have summoned me to death,

for I thought that the hero Deïphobos was next to me,

but he is inside the wall; Athena has deceived me!

Now indeed wicked death is at hand, no longer far off—

no escape! For this was a longstanding inclination

of Zeus and far-shooting son of Zeus [Apollo] who in the past

gladly rescued me. But now at last my fate has arrived!” (22.295-303)

Hector fought bravely, but fell to Achilles’ spear. “The end of death engulfed him, / and his soul, flying from his limbs, went to the house of Hades, / lamenting its fate” (22.361-363).

The Death of Jesus (Mark 15:33-38)

. . . When Jesus dies he quotes the first verse of Ps 21 (MT 22) in Aramaic (though Mark’s translation of it reflects the LXX/OG). “And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani,’ which interpreted means, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’” (Mark 15:34). The quotation in Aramaic allows for a misunderstanding from Greek-speakers, who interpreted the cry “Eloi, eloi” to be an appeal for Elijah. “And some who were standing by, on hearing this, said, ‘Look! He is calling Elijah!’” (15:35). Mark may be alluding to Mal 3:22 (MT 4:5): “I am sending to you Elijah the Tishbite before the coming of the great and manifest day of the Lord.”

Even though Jesus’ dying words are a quotation of Ps 21 (MT 22), they also imitate Hector’s recognition that Apollo and Zeus had abandoned him.

Jesus’ cry for rescue parallels Hector’s call for Deïphobos.

Neither Deïphobus nor Elijah arrived to help.

The portent of the ripped temple curtain “from top to bottom [ἀπ᾿ ἄνωθεν ἕωςκάτω]” apparently anticipates the destruction of the temple and suggests that by killing Jesus those who had accused him of wishing to destroy it were the ones who doomed it. In the Iliad, too, the death of Hector anticipates the destruction of Troy. When Priam saw his son die, he and all of Troy wept, for it felt to them that “majestic Ilium as a whole / was burning with fire from top to bottom” (Il. 22.410-411). The expression “from top to bottom” is κατ᾿ ἄκρης, and whenever it appears in the epic it refers to the fall of Troy. For example, Andromache predicted that now that her husband was dead, “from top to bottom the city / will be sacked” (24.727-728). Hector had left the city vulnerable by dying.

Iliad 22.364-404

Achilles’ Gloat

After Hector died, Achilles and his comrades gloated.

No one stood over him without inflicting a wound,

and looking at his comrade someone would say,

“Truly Hector is softer to handle now

than when he burned our ships with blazing fire!”

Thus someone would speak and stab him as he stood over him. (22.371–375)

Achilles himself boasted, “We have won great fame, for we have killed noble Hector, / whom the Trojans in the city prayed to as to a god” (22.393-394).

The Centurion’s Gloat (Mark 15:39)

Mark next narrates the centurion’s commentary on Jesus’ death, perhaps the most misunderstood statement in the entire Gospel and one on which many scholars have hung their interpretations of Mark as a whole. “Now when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘ἀληθῶς οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος υἱὸς θεοῦἦν’” (15:39). Nearly all interpreters have taken this statement as a straightforward confession of Jesus’ true identity and translate it “Truly this man was God’s Son” (NRSV). According to this view, the disciples did not understand the necessity of Jesus’ death, but the centurion did. He somehow saw Jesus’ death as evidence of his divine sonship.. . .

The utterance of the centurion is not a confession but a gloat.[1] Nothing in the narrative provides motivation for the centurion’s so-called confession. . . .

The Roman centurion viewed his death as proof that his victim “was”—notice the past tense of the verb ἦν!— a mortal (ἄνθρωπος) and not a son of a god, not like the sons of Zeus, many of whom were deathless. Perhaps one should translate the centurion’s statement as follows: “Oh sure, this mortal was a son of a god!” By dying, Jesus fell short of his billing; his lofty claims were hollow. The reader, of course, understands the irony of the situation: Jesus truly (ἀληθῶς) was a son of a god.

Further proof that the centurion’s utterance is a gloat comes from a comparison with Achilles’ gloating over Hector.

A few lines later, Achilles bragged to his comrades: “We have won great fame, for we have killed noble Hector, / whom the Trojans in the city prayed to as to a god [θεῷ]” (Il. 22.393-394).[2]

Iliad 22.405-515

The Weeping of the Trojan Women

The Trojans watched the death of their hero from behind the walls. Priam was overwhelmed with grief and lamented his loss, it was as though “majestic Ilium as a whole / was burning with fire from top to bottom” (22.410-411).

His mother

tore her hair, cast her shining veil

far away, and at the sight of her child uttered a loud cry.

And his father groaned pitifully, while the people around them

Were given to wailing and groaning throughout the city.

*****

And Hecuba led the shrieking lament among the Trojan women.

“O my child, I am so miserable! Why should I now live suffering cruelly

while you are dead? Night and day

you were my boast throughout the city, a help to all

the Trojan men and Trojan women in the city, who, as though you were a god,

used to welcome you.” (22.405-409 and 430-435)

Hector’s wife Andromache, however, was at home weaving.

She heard the wailing and lamenting from the tower;

her joints quivered, and her shuttle fell to the ground.

*****

[S]he rushed through the hall like a madwoman,

her heart pounding, and her maidservants went with her.

When she got to the tower and the crowd of men,

she stopped at the wall to take a look and saw him

being dragged around the city. Fast horses

were dragging him mercilessly to the hollow ships of the Achaeans.

Dark night engulfed her eyes;

she fell backward and gasped out her spirit. (22.447-448 and 460-467)

. . . The last, haunting line of book 22 is this: “Thus she spoke as she cried, and the women added their laments” (22.515).

Women Watching from afar (Mark 15:40-41)

Immediately after the centurion’s gloat, one reads: “Women were watching from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the short and Joses, and Salome, who had followed him and served him when he was in Galilee. Many other women, too, had come up with him to Jerusalem” (15:40-41). This passage is the earliest reference in history to Mary of Magdala, and every reference to her in later literature arguably flowed from it. For example, all references to her in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, John, and Peter are debtors to Mark, either directly or indirectly. . . . There is no reference to her in Paul, the Logoi of Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles, the so-called Apostolic Fathers, or Christian apocrypha other than Gospels and Gospel-like literature. Although it is possible that a woman by this name once existed, it is more likely that Mark created her to populate his narrative.

It was not Simon Peter who carried Jesus’ cross, as he had sworn (Mark 14:31), but Simon of Cyrene. It was not James and John who died at his right and left, as they had promised in 10:37-39, but two bandits. It will not be Joseph of Nazareth who buries him but Joseph of Arimathea. Mark’s penchant for creating characters to contrast with Jesus’ family and closest disciples applies also to the names of the women at the tomb. One might have expected Jesus’ mother, Mary of Nazareth, to have attended to the body and tomb of her son; instead, it was two other women named Mary and a Salome.

Nothing more is known concerning Salome, though later texts associate her with female sexuality. She shares her name with the daughter of Herodias, who, in Mark 6 (although she is not explicitly named) danced provocatively at a birthday party for her stepfather, Herod Antipas, and asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The name Salome in Mark 15:40 thus appears to be ironic.

According to Mark 6:3, Jesus was the son of Mary and the brother of “James, Joses, Judas, and Simon.” Surely it is no accident that one of the Marys at the crucifixion likewise had two sons with the same names as two of Jesus’ brothers: “James the short and Joses.” This woman appears again later as “Mary the mother of Joses,” and “Mary the mother of James,” as though Mark wanted to make a point of her maternal identification (15:47 and 16:1). . . . Mark here is making the point that it was not Jesus’ mother who cared for Jesus but another Mary who, like Jesus’ own mother, had two boys named James and Joses.

The only time that Jesus’ biological mother appears as a character in Mark is when she tries to take him home because she thinks he has lost his mind. When Jesus learns that she and his brothers are outside calling for him, he responds, “‘Who is my mother and my brothers?’ And gazing at those sitting around him, he says, ‘Look at my mother and brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’” (3:21 and 33-35). The women who watch him die from a distance play the role one might have expected for his mother.

The Introduction argued that by dubbing Mary “the Magdalene” the Evangelist associated her with a city not only known for its tower but whose name in Hebrew and Aramaic issued from migdal, “tower.” Magdala was “Towertown.” Mary thus seems to be an emulation of Homer’s Andromache, who, from Troy’s tower and with other women, watched in horror as Achilles dragged the corpse of her husband behind his chariot. Compare the following:

The density of the parallels, often in the same sequence, and their distinctive traits satisfy criteria 3-5 and thus provide hermeneutical bridges between the Gospel and the epic. The following similarities surely are not accidental.

Among the distinctive traits are calls for helpers who never came and recognitions of divine abandonment, motifs that are otherwise uncommon in scenes of heroic deaths.

Criterion 6, interpretability, also applies. Troy fell because Achilles, its archenemy, slew its champion; Jerusalem fell because its leaders killed Jesus, whom God then raised from the grave. The poets of the Homeric Centos and a Byzantine recension of the Gospel of Nicodemus renarrate the death of Jesus by independently imitating Homer’s account of the death of Jesus (criterion 7 . . .). Here the connections between the women at the tomb and Hector’s mourning women are unmistakable.

If one attributes the three women watching Jesus’ death to Mark’s imitation of the Trojan women watching the death of Hector, the presence of three women at the cross in the Gospel of John should be taken as evidence of dependence on the Synoptics. . . .

[For the purposes of this paper I skip over Li. 23 and the beginning of 24, where Achilles mutilates the corpse of Hector by dragging it behind his chariot and denies it a proper burial. The gods, however, keep it from corruption, and Zeus commands Hermes to guide Prima and his herald Idaeus through the night to Achilles’ camp to rescue the body. I pick up the story when Priam arrives chez Achlles.]

Iliad 24.443-801

The Rescue of Hector’s Corpse

. . . Immediately Priam “took Achilles’ knees in his hands and kissed his fearsome, / man-killing hands, hands that killed his many sons” (24.478-479), appealing for Hector’s body. He “wept, and collapsed at the feet of Achilles” (24.510). Achilles was amazed at Priam’s courage.

[Achilles] immediately rose from his seat and raised the old man by the hand,

taking pity on his gray head and gray beard;

he spoke to him, uttering winged words.