Haunting Empty Tombs: Specters of the Emperor and Jesus in the Gospel of Mark
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This paper employs theories of spectrality and haunting to read the Gospel of Mark alongside textual and archaeological materials representing the Roman emperor. I argue that the relationships between the figures of Jesus and the emperor are both more subtle and complex than is typically seen by empire-critical scholarship. I show how both the Roman emperor and the Gospel of Mark’s Jesus are constructed in undecidable negotiations of life and death, absence and presence, and past, present, and future. Scenes like Jesus walking on water, the transfiguration, and the empty tomb display the spectrality of Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Ghost stories and the globalizing logic of the imperial cult do the same for the emperor. The common spectrality of the emperors and Jesus in Mark’s Gospel signals how they are both haunted by the systemic violence of Rome’s empire.
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2
For example, W. Carter, Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity International, 2001); R.A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003); W. Carter, John and Empire: Initial Explorations (New York: T&T Clark, 2008).
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7
T.-S.B. Liew, Politics of Parousia: Reading Mark Inter(Con)Textually (Leiden: Brill, 1999); T.-S.B. Liew, “Tyranny, Boundary and Might : Colonial Mimicry in Mark’s Gospel,” JSNT 73 (1999), pp. 7-31; Moore, Empire and Apocalypse, pp. 24-44; A.J. Droge, “Ghostlier Demarcations: The ‘Gospels’ of Augustus and Mark,” EC 2 (2011), pp. 335-55.
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8
H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 2005), esp. pp. 121-31.
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10
A.P. Wilson, Transfigured: A Derridean Rereading of the Markan Transfiguration (Library of New Testament Studies; New York: T&T Clark International, 2007), esp. pp. 52-125.
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11
See, for example, P.M. Fullmer, Resurrection in Mark’s Literary-Historical Perspective (New York: T&T Clark, 2007); D.A. Smith, Revisiting the Empty Tomb: The Early History of Easter (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), esp. pp. 83-98; R.C. Miller, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity (Routledge Studies in Religion, 44; New York: Routledge, 2015).
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12
See, for instance, J.E. Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition: A History-of-Tradition Analysis with Text-Synopsis (Calwer Theologische Monographien. Bibelwissenschaft, 5; Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1975), esp. pp. 139-44; P.J. Madden, Jesus’ Walking on the Sea: An Investigation of the Origin of the Narrative Account (Beihefte zue Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älte Kirche, 81; New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997).
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20
See, for example, B. Dufallo, The Ghosts of the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Rome’s Transition to a Principate (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007), esp. pp. 1-12, 123-28.
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24
D. Felton, Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), p. 11.
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25
For more on this, see D. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 128-48.
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27
Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, p. 153; V.M. Hope, Roman Death: Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome (New York: Continuum, 2009), p. 118.
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36
A.Y. Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), p. 792.
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38
A.F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004), p. 241.
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39
M. Erasmo, Reading Death in Ancient Rome (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008); Dufallo, Ghosts of the Past.
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43
Miller, “Mark’s Empty Tomb and Other Translation Fables in Classical Antiquity,” p. 768.
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44
P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (trans. A. Shapiro; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), pp. 40-41.
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47
See, for example, S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus; S.J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 23-132; J. Brodd and J.L. Reed (eds.), Rome and Religion: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the Imperial Cult (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011).
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50
Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire, pp. 131, 407.
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58
J.R. Combs, “A Ghost on the Water? Understanding an Absurdity in Mark 6:49-50,” JBL 127.2 (2008), pp. 345-58.
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59
W.F. McInerny, “An Unresolved Question in the Gospel Called Mark: ‘Who Is This Whom Even Wind and Sea Obey?’ (4:41),” PRSt 23.3 (1996), pp. 255-68 (259).
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63
M. Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1935), p. 71.
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64
R. Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition (trans. John Marsh; New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 215-16.
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65
G. Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), p, 97.
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67
Collins, “Rulers, Divine Men, and Walking on the Water,” p. 214.
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71
Combs, “A Ghost on the Water? Understanding an Absurdity in Mark 6:49-50,” p. 358.
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72
B.P. Reardon (ed.), Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), p. 241.
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73
G.W. Young, Subversive Symmetry: Exploring the Fantastic in Mark 6:45-56 (Ledien: Brill, 1999), p. 127.
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76
J. Wolfreys, Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. x.
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79
See, for example, Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition, pp. 140-41.
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81
R. Strelan, “A Greater Than Caesar : Storm Stories in Lucan and Mark,” ZNW 91.3-4 (2000), pp. 166-79.
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84
C. Moss, “The Transfiguration: An Exercise in Markan Accommodation,” BibInt 12 (2004), pp. 69-89 (74-85).
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88
J. Marcus, Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries, 27A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 631.
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91
Collins, Mark, p. 422; Smith, Revisiting the Empty Tomb, pp. 49-53.
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93
J.A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Garden City: Doubleday, 1981), vol. 2, p. 793.
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94
Derrida, Specters of Marx, pp. 44-45. Here Derrida is reading Maurice Blanchot and “The End of Philosophy.”
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96
R.H. Stein, “Is the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2-8) a Misplaced Resurrection-Account?,” JBL 95.1 (1976), pp. 79-96.
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97
J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci übersetzt und erklärt (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1903).
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98
W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus (trans. J.E. Steely; Nashville: Abingdon, 1970).
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101
M. Smith, “The Origin and History of the Transfiguration Story,” USQR 36.1 (1980), p. 39-44 (41); Moss, “The Transfiguration,” pp. 70-72.
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102
C.E. Carlston, “Transfiguration and Resurrection,” JBL 80.3 (1961), pp. 233-40.
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103
Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition, pp. 141-44.
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113
J. Derrida, “Différance,” Margins of Philosophy (trans. A. Bass; Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 1-27; Wilson, Transfigured, p. 123.
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120
For example, Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, pp. 616-31.
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122
R.M. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Harrisburg: Trinity International, 1996), esp. p. 263.
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125
For example, M.D. Litwa, Iesus Deus: The Early Christian Depiction of Jesus as a Mediterranean God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), p. ix.
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130
For example, Fullmer, Resurrection in Mark’s Literary-Historical Perspective, pp. 163-77, 190-96, 211-19.
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Haunting Empty Tombs: Specters of the Emperor and Jesus in the Gospel of Mark
In: Biblical InterpretationSearch for other papers by Matthew James Ketchum in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This paper employs theories of spectrality and haunting to read the Gospel of Mark alongside textual and archaeological materials representing the Roman emperor. I argue that the relationships between the figures of Jesus and the emperor are both more subtle and complex than is typically seen by empire-critical scholarship. I show how both the Roman emperor and the Gospel of Mark’s Jesus are constructed in undecidable negotiations of life and death, absence and presence, and past, present, and future. Scenes like Jesus walking on water, the transfiguration, and the empty tomb display the spectrality of Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Ghost stories and the globalizing logic of the imperial cult do the same for the emperor. The common spectrality of the emperors and Jesus in Mark’s Gospel signals how they are both haunted by the systemic violence of Rome’s empire.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 652 | 38 | 5 |
| Full Text Views | 241 | 8 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 338 | 24 | 1 |