The Centurion, Son of God, and Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles
Contesting Narrative and Commemoration with Mark
In: Horizons in Biblical TheologySearch for other papers by Danny Yencich in
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Against a longstanding tradition of ascribing religious conversion to the centurion who witnesses Jesus’s death in Mark 15:39, I argue that his acclamation of Jesus as υἱὸς θεοῦ is better understood within the narrative as the words of a conquered enemy. The centurion’s confession parallels the responses of unclean spirits and Legion, two other vanquished enemies who, in the moment of defeat, see and name Jesus υἱὸς θεοῦ. By framing the centurion as a defeated enemy, Mark contests the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion: rather than remembering it as a performance of Roman rule, Mark commemorates it as the summary victory of the rule of God. Turning from an ancient capital offender to a contemporary one, I recast the memory of Kelly Gissendaner, who was executed in Georgia in 2015, and attempt to narrate and commemorate her state-sanctioned death in light of the Markan Jesus’s.
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9
Richard A. Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 2.
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10
Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 25ff.
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13
Christopher W. Skinner, “Overcoming Satan, Overcoming the World: Exploring the Cosmologies of Mark and John,” in Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, wunt 2.417 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 102.
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14
Howard Clark Kee, Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel (Mercer: Mercer University Press, 1983), 75.
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15
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Anniversary ed.; Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008).
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19
Danny Yencich, “Sowing the Passion at Olivet: Mark 13-15 in a Narrative Frame,” Stone-Campbell Journal (forthcoming). Cf. R. H. Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St. Mark (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 48-59.
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30
Dennis Eric Nineham, The Gospel of St. Mark (London: Penguin, 1968), 430.
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31
R. H. Lightfoot, The Gospel Message of St. Mark, 57. Cf. W. R. Telford, The Theology of the Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 134; Rikki E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 324; Jerry Camery-Hoggatt, Irony in Mark’s Gospel: Text and Subtext (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 93; Christopher Stephen Mann, Mark: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, ab 27 (London: Doubleday, 1986), 189; Robert H. Stein, Mark, becnt (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 719; Iverson, “A Centurion’s ‘Confession,’ ” 336; R. Alan Culpepper, Mark (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2007), 564.
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33
Beavis, Mark, 232; cf. Brian J. Incigneri, The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 169; C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to St Mark: An Introduction and Commentary, cgtc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 460; Whitney T. Shiner, “The Ambiguous Pronouncement of the Centurion and the Shrouding of Meaning in Mark,” jsnt 22 (2000): 5-7. Cf. Augustine, Cons. 3.20.57.
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38
E.g. Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica, “Introduction,” in Jesus Is Lord, Caesar Is Not: Evaluating Empire in New Testament Studies, ed. Scot McKnight and Joseph B. Modica (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2013), 20.
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40
J. Ross Wagner and A. Katherine Grieb, The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
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45
James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 45ff.
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50
Martin Hengel, Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977), 34.
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The Centurion, Son of God, and Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles
Contesting Narrative and Commemoration with Mark
In: Horizons in Biblical TheologySearch for other papers by Danny Yencich in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Against a longstanding tradition of ascribing religious conversion to the centurion who witnesses Jesus’s death in Mark 15:39, I argue that his acclamation of Jesus as υἱὸς θεοῦ is better understood within the narrative as the words of a conquered enemy. The centurion’s confession parallels the responses of unclean spirits and Legion, two other vanquished enemies who, in the moment of defeat, see and name Jesus υἱὸς θεοῦ. By framing the centurion as a defeated enemy, Mark contests the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion: rather than remembering it as a performance of Roman rule, Mark commemorates it as the summary victory of the rule of God. Turning from an ancient capital offender to a contemporary one, I recast the memory of Kelly Gissendaner, who was executed in Georgia in 2015, and attempt to narrate and commemorate her state-sanctioned death in light of the Markan Jesus’s.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 391 | 87 | 16 |
| Full Text Views | 188 | 1 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 89 | 3 | 0 |
