Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter

5. Mark: When the Bridegroom Is Taken Away

84 Revisiting the Empty Tomb The saying’s evocative conclusion shifts the focus away from all this, however . It invites the hearer to imagine a scene in which a wedding cannot proceed because the groom has been “taken away” by some violent force, whether death, enslavement, or conscription, leaving behind a shocked and grieving bride with shattered hopes. Is this how Jesus will leave his followers? This suggests that when Jesus’ bereft disciples fast, it will be a sign of mourning (as in 2 Sam. 1:11-12), but another possibility is that Jesus in Mark foresees their fasting to be necessary as part of petitioning God for deliverance from eschatological troubles (see Mark 13:5-27). Fasting in early Judaism was commonly connected with corporate petitions to avert disaster (Joel 1:14-15), as well as with corporate or individual penitence and mourning.3 The contrast between the saying’s beginning and its conclusion is very stark, and as Joel Marcus points out, this is because “Jesus’ death . . . has created a new situation in which the original tradition can be preserved only by altering it radically.”4 This saying is the first hint in Mark’s narrative that Jesus will come to a violent end. It also foreshadows the shock and grief that Mark conveys in his story about the discovery of the empty tomb: there the story ends as the female disciples flee in fear, finding comfort neither in the restored presence of the risen Jesus nor in commiseration with any of his other followers. It is tempting to see in the bridegroom saying a reference to Jesus’ removal by assumption, the aftereffect of which Mark narrates in the empty tomb story: “He is not here” (Mark 16:6). The passive verb in Mark 2:20 (“the bridegroom will be taken away”) might suggest this; similar language is found in Wisdom 4:10-11, although with different verbs.5 Yet in Mark 2 the reader finds none of the associated motifs of assumption: there is no sense of divine favor or vindication, nor of any future eschatological role, nor the idea that the time between prediction and removal should be used for the instruction of the faithful. The focus of Mark 2:20 is entirely on the experience of those left behind by the violent removal of Jesus, which is the note on which Mark’s Gospel concludes (16:8). Additional endings (including “canonical” Ps.Mark 16:9-20) are best understood as attempts by early Christian scribes and copyists to alleviate the difficulties of the original ending.6 Mark’s other early readers—the authors of Matthew and Luke—did the same, just as many readers today fill in the blanks with pieces from the other canonical accounts.7 Once secondary additions to Mark 16 and hypotheses about lost original endings8 have been eliminated, however, readers must confront the problems posed by the text, which ends at verse 8. This chapter offers a reading of Mark 16:1-8 that attempts to resolve some of the narrative problems of the story, but also to describe how (and explain why) the author of Mark has combined the disappearance tradition with the appearance tradition in telling the story of the empty tomb as a “resurrection ” story. As already seen, there are several reasons for concluding that Mark 16:1-8 was based on a traditional story about the disappearance of Jesus. First, it is consistent with the genre: the body has disappeared, there is an unsuccessful search for the body, witnesses are overcome with fear and amazement, and someone offers a theological interpretation of the event.9 Second, there are Mark: When the Bridegroom Is Taken Away 85 indications that the author has edited source material. One such indication is verse 7, which repeats almost verbatim what Jesus tells the Twelve in Mark 14:28: “But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” Both verses are Mark’s own composition, and 16:7 in particular—which stresses the prominence of Peter as a resurrection witness—seems to have been influenced by an appearance tradition similar to that preserved by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:5.10 Without verse 7, the response of the women makes sense as a reaction to their meeting with the young man dressed in white.11 The description of this figure as a “young man” is also...