Mark 15 Footnotes

15:36 All the Gospels record that Jesus was offered sour wine, or wine vinegar, on the cross (Mt 27:48; Lk 23:36; Jn 19:30). It is unclear whether what Luke and John related was parallel to Mark and Matthew. In the course of Jesus’s six hours on the cross, he might have been offered a drink several times, particularly since in the first three Gospels it seems to be related to the mocking of Jesus. On the other hand, it is not hard to imagine all referring to the same incident, with sympathizers attempting to comfort Jesus, while the soldiers, in concert with the Jewish scoffers, used the opportunity to ridicule Jesus’s messianic claims.

15:42-46 Victims of crucifixion were generally left as carrion for vultures and other wild animals to eat. But evidence indicates that a simple burial was more common in Palestine because of Jewish scruples about corpses. Joseph of Arimathea seems to have been an influential person since he was granted permission by Pilate to give Jesus a proper burial. This may support the portrayal of Pilate in the trial scenes as finding Jesus and his movement harmless to Roman rule. Otherwise, he probably would not have released Jesus’s body to his followers.

15:47 Mark reports that Mary Magdalene and “Mary the mother of Joses” were at the cross and they observed that Jesus was placed in Joseph’s tomb. Matthew’s account includes these two women at the cross and adds “the mother of Zebedee’s sons” (Mt 27:56). Luke’s narrative does not name any specific women at the cross but refers to them as “the women who had come with him from Galilee” (Lk 23:55). The Gospel of John indicates that Jesus’s mother was at the cross, as well as Mary Magdalene and “Mary the wife of Clopas” (Jn 19:25). This Mary was probably the same person as Mary the mother of Joses in Mark’s account.

The difference among these narratives may be disturbing to some people. But we must remember that the Gospels were not committed to writing until thirty to fifty years after the death of Jesus. They circulated as oral accounts for many years before finally being written down. The Gospel writers did not get together as a group to make sure their reports matched in every detail. They wrote from their recollections of the life and ministry of Jesus and the eyewitness reports from others who had known Jesus in the flesh. Just as the witnesses of an auto accident will remember different details of what they saw, the variation in these accounts is understandable and actually argues for the authenticity of the Gospels.