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Intercalation is not the only Markan framing device employed by the author of LGM 1 and 2. By adding these fifteen verses he managed to situate the final (Jerusalem) section of the gospel between two strikingly similar raising miracles. These stories share many distinctive features. Both take place at rock-hewn tombs. Both draw attention to a stone cover and its removal from the door of the tomb. And both narrate movements into and out from the tomb. In the first story Jesus rolls away the stone himself and, upon entering , raises an unnamed young man. In the second story three women followers of Jesus are wondering who will roll the stone from the door of his tomb, and, upon entering the open tomb, find an unnamed young man who tells them that Jesus has risen from the dead. The verbal contacts are quite close: …Jesus rolled the stone from the door of the tomb, and going into immediately where the young man was…going out from the tomb… (LGM 1:6–7, 9) “Who will roll for us the stone from the door of the tomb?”…And going into the tomb they saw a young man…going out they fled from the tomb. (Mark 16:3, 5, 8) The underlined words indicate where both passages use the same Greek words. Two different words meaning “from” (En and a@) appear in both narratives , but their orders are reversed, so they are not in parallel. More notable still is the presence in LGM 1 and 2 of words that occur in the canonical gospel only in Mark 14:51–52 and 15:40–16:8. The words “young man” (LGM 1:7, 8, 9, 10; 2:1) and “having put on” (LGM 1:11) occur only in 14:51 and 16:5. “Linen sheet” (LGM 1:11) is used only in 14:51 and 15:46. “Naked body” (LGM 1:11) appears only in 14:51. And “Salome” Notes to chapter 7 start on page 271 180 7 Longer Mark’s Use of Framing Stories brown_07.qxd 2005/04/26 12:23 PM Page 180 (LGM 2:1) occurs only in Mark 15:40 and 16:1. Interestingly, the references to a young man never give his name but always describe what he had “put on.” In LGM 1:11 he had put on linen of unspecified form—presumably a sheet wrapped into a sleeveless tunic. In 14:51 he has again put on a linen sheet, which he loses in a panic to escape (the women, too, run away in 16:8). In 15:46 Jesus’ corpse is wrapped in a linen sheet, whereas the young man in the tomb has put on a white robe. Like the open tomb story, LGM 2:1 includes a grouping of three women, the last of whom is Salome, a character not found in the other canonical gospels. Finally, there is a reference in 10:32 and 16:5–8 to Jesus “going before” his “frightened” and “amazed” followers (the same three verbs are used). In the former verse, Jesus is going before his disciples on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem; in the latter verses, he is reported to be going before them from Jerusalem back to Galilee. Clearly, many themes from the end of Mark’s story now occur together at an earlier point in the longer gospel. All of these derive from the longer gospel’s additions except the image of Jesus going before his frightened and amazed followers. Examination of this specific repetition will reveal that a literary “bracket” or inclusio already existed at this point in the canonical gospel. This bracket around the passion narrative is enhanced by the verbal parallels provided by the longer gospel. In longer Mark we find a story about Jesus raising a young man in a tomb as he leads his followers to Jerusalem and a story about this same young man appearing in Jesus’ tomb, announcing Jesus’ own resurrection and the message that Jesus is leading his followers back to Galilee. Thus, in longer Mark a relatively inconspicuous inclusio is supplanted by a more conspicuous pair of framing stories, which enhance the presence and effect of the canonical bracket.1 What Constitutes an Inclusio? The word inclusio refers to bracketing repetitions of words or phrases. Joanna Dewey offered a useful definition of the device: “The repetition of the same word or phrase at or near the beginning and ending of some unit...

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