Mark 15 Footnotes

15:1 Jn 18:13 has Jesus first examined before Annas, the father-in-law of the reigning high priest, Caiaphas. The meeting appears to have been brief. After it, Jesus was sent to Caiaphas (Jn 18:24), whose house may have been on the same premises as Annas’s. Mk 14:53-65 and Mt 26:57-68 describe the examination before Caiaphas. This meeting either continued into the morning (Mt 27:1; Mk 15:1; Lk 22:66-71), with a review of the case and summary judgment, or else a third, more official meeting was held in the morning before sending Jesus to Pilate. Each Gospel writer summarized this sequence and focused only on the parts that were important for the narrative.

15:6 That Mark and John independently related the story of the release of Barabbas points to the historicity of the event, especially since it could easily have been refuted in the first century and makes no particular contribution to the theology of the narratives. Slight evidence from outside the Bible exists for the practice of releasing a prisoner at Passover (m. Pesah 8:6), though more exists of Roman governors releasing prisoners to appease unruly crowds.

15:15 Luke and especially John gave added detail to the short, summary accounting by Mark and Matthew. John noted that the flogging of Jesus was an initial punishment (presumably the least severe type, termed fustigatio) intended by Pilate to appease the Jewish authorities. Verse 15 may indicate a second flogging (the more severe flagellatio or verberatio) after the verdict of crucifixion, or it may refer back to this initial punishment (“[already] having [him] flogged”).

15:26 There are minor variations among the four Gospels as to the wording of the charge on the placard placed on Jesus’s cross. Probably the charge read, “Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews,” and each Gospel writer summarized it slightly differently while retaining the basic point. A placard noting the prisoner’s name and offense often accompanied those condemned to death by the Romans.

15:27 Crucifixion was reserved for dangerous criminals and was especially employed for treason. Mark used the Greek term lestai for those crucified with Jesus. The term means “thugs” and could be applied not just to robbers but also to those agitating against the authorities. It may be that the men were associated with Barabbas and thus were crucified along with Jesus as insurrectionists.

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.