The Death of Jesus Video

Another Easter video on the Xian Theologist YouTube channel.

This is a reworking of the Stations of the Cross video Sandy and I both did for RBC.

The Transcript

WELCOME to the outrageously popular CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIST channel, where reason and sound exegesis are used to highlight faulty doctrine and practice in the contemporary, English-speaking Church. The title of this video is “The Death of Jesus in Mark 15,” and the underlying passage is found in Mark 15:33–39.

This passage is another of the so-called “Stations of the Cross,” and the script of this video is another one that I reworked from an Easter video I did for Church. For this reason, I’m not countering any particular misapplication of the text, but merely unpacking some lesser known elements in it. Okay, Let’s begin.

Here’s how the ESV translates this passage:

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Bible Scholars use the term “intertextuality” to refer to the literary and theological connections a specific text makes to other books of the Bible, particularly NT references to the OT. In nearly every line of this passage, we encounter a fascinating intertextual feature that is not easily seen by the casual reader.

The first of these concerns the three hours of “darkness over the whole land” (v. 33). The first thing to know is that “the sixth hour,” when the darkness began, refers to “12 o’clock, noon,” when the sun was at its highest point “in the heavens.” This fact highlights how the verse’s imagery parallels that used for the coming judgement on the “Day of the Lord” in Isa 60:1; Joel 2:10; Zeph 1:15, and especially Amos 8:9–10, “On that day, says the Lord Yaweh, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the Land in the light of day [a day which God will make] like the grieving for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.”

There is another similarly ominous and theologically significant OT reference here. Mark’s three hours of darkness being followed by the death of God’s firstborn son, Jesus, parallels the three days of darkness followed by the death of the firstborn sons of Egypt after the Passover in Exodus.

Jesus’ cry from the Cross also contains an intertextual reference. The words “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” are the first lines in Psalm 22. According to Jewish practice at the time, the citation of the first verse implies the whole psalm. So, since both the crucifixion and Psalm 22 start out with a cry of anguish and abandonment and end in “a note of triumph and serenity,” Jesus’ cry is, as one commenter puts it, “an affirmation of faith that looks beyond the despair and tragedy of the cross.”

The “sour wine,” or “wine vinegar,” of verse 36 echoes verse 21 of Psalm 69, “They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And, just like Psalm 22, Psalm 69 is a record of the suffering of a righteous man.

The sour wine brings us to the last intertextual reference I want to mention, which is between our passage, and the Gospel of Luke and John. Notice what happened at the cross in the last few verses of Mark. After receiving the sour wine, Jesus “uttered a loud cry and breathed his last,” then the centurion makes a rather unusual conclusion from “the way [Jesus] breathed his last.” He says, “Truly this man was the son of God!” (or, more likely for a pagan, “a” son of God – the Greek could be read either way). Just what was so supernatural about the way Jesus died that the centurion was convinced he was a divine being?

Well, let’s look at John 19:29–30; Luke 23:46, and then John 10:17–18. “When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” Notice that John tells us that Jesus decided when “it was finished” and gave up his own spirit.

Compare this with Luke 23:46: Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last.

Now here’s John 10:17–18:

For this reason, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

In the face of such an awesome, superhuman display of the power of God, the surprise is not what the centurion said, but that he was able to utter anything at all!

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