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patrick457
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The evangelists, in trying to create accounts of the life of Jesus, were also faced with this dilemma. I’ll use Mark’s gospel as an example here. It is often said that Mark depicts a Christology of power (dynamis). His Jesus is very clearly and distinctly human, but at the same time, Mark’s Jesus is someone full of dynamis, divine ‘power’ and ‘authority’, which He uses to heal the sick and exorcise demons (the two things Mark’s Jesus often does). But Mark will find himself in a difficulty as he proceeds with the story: how will he reconcile his image of a powerful Jesus with a Jesus who died a shameful, dishonorable kind of death - a Christology of power versus a Christology of suffering?
Mark, as it turns out, has a few tricks up his sleeve. He tried to soften the ‘shame’ and offensiveness of crucifixion by showcasing Jesus’ prophetic power - as someone who knows exactly what will happen to Him (8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34; 12:1-12; 14:8, 18-21, 26-31). Mark’s Jesus also attaches a significance to His death: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (10:45) Such acts of service by a powerful ruler were not seen as symptoms or weakness or shame for a Greco-Roman audience; such actions were rather considered the behavior of an ideal ruler. So the saying removes the sting out of Jesus’ crucifixion by presenting it as a noble act by the true Ruler of the world.
Some scholars postulate that Mark had cast the crucifixion itself in terms of a Roman imperial triumph (ritual parades held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievements of a successful army commander): Jesus’ crucifixion wasn’t a shameful event, Mark is implying. No: it’s a celebration, an act of triumph; Jesus’ death is not a sign of shameful weakness (as people in that culture might have expected it) but of power.
And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the praetorium); and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck his head with a reed, and spat upon him, and they knelt down in homage to him.
Mark’s use of the word praetorium at once evokes (on a literal level) the Roman military headquarters in Judaea, and at the same time, the Praetorian Guard - the emperor’s personal bodyguards who would have been part of the triumphal procession. (Mark’s reference to “the whole cohort” is also something that has puzzled people, since a full cohort consisted of about 600 soldiers - one tenth of a legion! Is Mark again, by using the term loosely or poetically exaggerating, trying to draw a connection between Jesus’ mocking and a Roman triumph?)
During the procession, the triumphant general (labelled the triumphator or the vir triumphalis, “man of triumph”) wore a laurel crown and an all-purple, gold-embroidered triumphal toga, regalia that identified him as near-divine or near-kingly, regalia that identified him as near-divine or near-kingly. Guess what happens to Jesus: He is also decked with a purple garment and crowned with a stephanos, a wreath-crown (in this case, of thorns). During the procession, the triumphator was showered with praise, with shouts of acclamation and acts of homage being given to him (cf. the mock ‘homage’ offered by the soldiers to Jesus). These and other elements in the crucifixion narrative are seen as Mark’s attempt to portray the event as an ‘anti-triumph’ that works to suggest that the seeming scandal of the cross is actually an exaltation of Jesus.
Mark also makes use of the supernatural phenomena at Jesus’ death (the darkness at midday, the tearing of the temple veil) to divert his audience’s attention away from the shame of the cross itself by making it is clear that Jesus’ death is not ordinary, but rather the death of a powerful and significant figure. All in all, Mark crafted his passion narrative to deal with the scandal of the cross by turning the cultural expectation on its head. Like what St. Paul did, what is deemed to be horrific and shameful is turned by Mark into something positive and glorious.
