Mark 14
Mark 14 is the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It contains the plot to kill Jesus, his anointing by a woman, the Last Supper, predictions of his betrayal, and Peter the Apostle's three denials of him. It then begins the Passion of Jesus, with the garden of Gethsemane and Judas Iscariot's betrayal and Jesus' arrest, followed by Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin and Peter's denials of Jesus.
Having 72 verses, this is the longest chapter in Mark's Gospel. The Gospel of Matthew's chapter which covers the same material, Matthew 26, has 75 verses. This chapter's material is presented somewhat differently in Luke 22, which has 71 verses. Jesus' arrest at Gethsemane, his trial, and Peter's denials are found in John 18:1–27.
Text
The original text was written in Koine Greek.Textual witnesses
Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:- Codex Vaticanus
- Codex Sinaiticus
- Codex Bezae
- Codex Alexandrinus
- Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus
Old Testament references
- :
- : Psalm
Timescale
The plot to kill Jesus and his anointing in Bethany
Mark states that the chief priests were looking for a way "by craft", or "by trickery" to arrest Jesus. They determine not to do this during the feast, because they were afraid that the people would riot. Some translations emphasise the proposed subtlety or trickery in the priests' approach; others emphasise that they were looking for secrecy, to avoid popular knowledge of his arrest. Meanwhile, Jesus was in Bethany at the home of Simon the Leper, who has not appeared in this gospel until now. Simon's relationship to Jesus is not explored, but they must have been friends as this appears to have been a social visit. According to the Markan narrative, Jesus is arrested on the following evening.An unnamed woman, who has a very expensive jar or box of perfume, made of "pure", "expensive" or "genuine" nard, or nard from some specific place, comes and breaks the alabaster jar containing the perfume, and pours it on Jesus' head. Theologian Albert Barnes suggests that she broke the seal of the box, not the actual container. Augustine, in reviewing how this incident fits with John 12:3, where the feet of Jesus were anointed, suggests that both his head and his feet were anointed, and that a person "of a more pious spirit will contend that it was not broken so as to pour out the whole, or else that the feet were anointed before it was broken, so that there remained in the unbroken box enough to anoint the head".
Some unnamed people gathered in the house become angry and say that this is a waste: the perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii and the proceeds given to the poor. Jesus, however, is pleased with her and rebukes her critics:
This story may originally have had a setting independent of the passion narrative: Luke, for example, places a similar story much earlier in Jesus' ministry, in, where a sinful woman anoints Jesus' feet during a dinner with a local Pharisee. Some writers have objected to the statement that the poor will always exist, although Jesus also says you can help them any time you want.
The anticipation of widespread audiences might mean the book was intended for wide distribution and not written solely for a single community.
This begins the final section of Mark, which probably originally ended at Mark 16:8 with the two Marys going to anoint Jesus' dead body and finding that they could not, because he had risen from the dead, an anointing by God. There is no time to anoint him when he is taken down from the cross and his body is not there for the women to anoint three days later.
Jesus foreshadows his death and this is the last anointing, an expensive one at that, that he will receive. Mark states in Mark 1:1 that his book is "the good news of Jesus the anointed one", the word Christ meaning "anointed". The woman understands Jesus' importance more than do the other people there. It is also a signal to the reader that as Jesus is being anointed for burial the plot against him will succeed.
According to John Jesus' feet were anointed by Lazarus' sister Mary on the previous Saturday before he entered Jerusalem and that it was Judas who objected to her using the perfume because he was stealing from the money they used for the poor. The website "Catholic Online" states that this incident occurred "six days before" the passover, at Simon the Leper's house.
Judas then leaves and goes to the priests and gives up Jesus. The priests are so grateful that they pay Judas for his service. Mark then says that Judas looked for the right time to betray Jesus. The planning for Judas' betrayal of Jesus "is told starkly and briefly here. It is elaborated considerably in the other gospels". According to Matthew, the payment was thirty silver coins. Mark does not state Judas' reason for betraying Jesus, but has this occur immediately after the anointing, perhaps showing a causal link.
According to Luke's account, Satan took possession of Judas and caused him to do these things. John says Satan "prompted" Judas to do this.
''The Last Supper''
The next day, Jesus' disciples ask him where they should go to prepare the Passover meal. Passover is the celebration of God "passing over" the houses of the Israelite slaves but killing the firstborn son of every Egyptian house in Exodus during the Ten Plagues. It was celebrated in tandem with the feast of Unleavened Bread. The disciples ask where Jesus will eat the passover, whereas in Luke's parallel text they ask where "we" will eat it.Mark says this is on the first day of the Feast and the day the Jews sacrificed the Passover lamb. The lamb was killed on the fourteenth day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, making Jesus' death the following day on the fifteenth, Passover. Mark states that the lamb was sacrificed on the first day of the feast, having the dinner on the same day as the sacrifice of the lamb. This would be correct from our modern notion of a day beginning at Midnight, but the Jewish day began at sundown and so the Passover dinner from their point of view occurred the day after the sacrifice. Either Mark is using a non-Jewish reckoning of time or is using his method of double time chronology, such as , where two temporally separated events are sandwiched together. The other synoptic gospels agree with Mark on this chronology. John however has Jesus' death occur during the slaughter of the Passover lamb, making his death the fourteenth and thus the Last Supper on the thirteenth and so not the Passover meal.
He tells two unnamed disciples to go to the "city": although Mark does not state which city, it was clearly Jerusalem, about two miles from Bethany, as after the meal they go to the Mount of Olives. According to tradition the meal took place in the Room of the Last Supper on Mount Zion just outside Jerusalem. This was an area with a large Essene community, which has led some scholars to speculate about a link between Jesus and that group.
Jesus tells them they will be met by "a man carrying a jar of water" and that he will lead them to another man's house. They are to ask the house's owner where "the teacher" has a guest room and that the man will show them the upper room in the house and that is where they are to have dinner. They do as he said and everything happens as he said it would and they "...prepared the Passover." This episode shows Jesus' power over the situation. The owner of the house seems to know Jesus as "teacher", perhaps indicating that he was an unnamed disciple.
Jesus and the Twelve Apostles arrive. Mark says it was evening. As the new Jewish day began at sundown, this is now the Passover and this is the Passover meal. This is the day of Jesus' death, Good Friday. Jesus tells the group that one of the Apostles eating dinner with him will betray him. The Apostles are saddened and all of them say one at a time that it is not them. "'It is one of the Twelve,' he replied, 'one who dips bread into the bowl with me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.'" In Mark, Jesus does not state who will be the betrayer. According to Matthew, Judas denied it was him, to which Jesus replied that Judas is indeed the one he is talking about. According to John, Jesus gave Judas some bread as a signal that Judas was the betrayer and that Judas was possessed by Satan and that Jesus told him to leave to go and betray him.
No passage of the Old Testament speaks of the Son of Man's suffering, so Jesus might be saying his death is somehow the glory predicted for the Son of Man. Jesus also predicted his betrayal in Mark and By predicting this Jesus says that Judas' betrayal is preordained, but that he will be punished for his behavior nevertheless. This has raised issues of determinism and the justice of God. If Judas had no choice in what he was to do, why should he be punished? What exactly his punishment is not stated, and it does not say in any of the Gospels if Judas is in hell. Both John and Luke have Judas possessed by Satan. The recently released, and still largely unstudied, Gospel of Judas also has Judas betray Jesus to the priests for payment but has this as much more of the divine plan.
Later Jesus takes some bread and divides it up and gives thanks and gives the pieces to the disciples. He tells them "Take it; this is my body." He then does the same with a cup of wine and passes it around to everyone. "'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,' he said to them. 'I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.'"
This might be related to Isaiah in his description of the suffering servant. The original covenant was a blood sacrifice Moses made to God to seal God's deal with the Israelites before Moses went up to receive the Ten Commandments in Exodus . Blood was a symbol of life in the Jewish culture. Jesus does not state that the bread and wine are like him, but are his body and blood. Jesus is asking his disciples to take part in his sacrificial death. Mark uses the term hyper pollōn, based on the Hebrew of Isaiah 53:12 with "many" being all people, not just the disciples. This episode in contrasted with the predictions of his betrayal and Peter's denials, showing the sacrificial nature of his offering. Taking Jesus' body as food shows him as sustainer and a source of strength. They then sing a hymn, "in all probability the concluding portion of the Hallel", and leave and return to the Mount of Olives. The singing of hymns on Passover was a way of giving thanks. According to Luke, Jesus told everyone to take a purse, a bag, and two swords with them.
During the Passover meal the wine was usually consumed during the eating of the bread, but here it occurs after, probably the third cup of wine, known as the "Cup of Blessing", which the head of the household handed round to each person. Brown suggests this might indicate this is not the official Passover dinner and more in line with John's chronology.
On the Mount of Olives, Jesus predicts his abandonment by the Apostles: "'You will all fall away,' Jesus told them, 'for it is written: 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.'" This is what the man dressed in white tells the two Marys when they find him in Jesus' opened tomb in. The writing that Jesus is quoting is Zechariah 13:7.
Peter, "ardent and impulsive as ever", then says he will not desert Jesus, even if all the others do. Jesus tells him that on that very night Peter will disown Jesus three times before the rooster crows twice in the morning. Peter refutes it and says he will follow Jesus even if it means his own death, and the other Apostles do the same.
Mark only has the straightforward, unexplained, eucharistic section sandwiched between two predictions of betrayal. This simplicity might indicate Mark's audience already knew the story of the Last Supper in greater detail than Mark relates. Matthew has almost the same details, but Luke and John give longer accounts of the meal.
John has the longest account of the Last Supper in chapters 13–14. John also has Jesus' predictions of his betrayal and Peter's denials but no eucharistic ritual and has Jesus washing his disciples feet and much more of what he told them at dinner. John then has a lengthy prayer and discourse after the dinner in John , , and .
Paul also gives a description of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians , stating that Jesus gave bread as his body and wine as his blood on the night he was betrayed. This is one of the few details of Jesus' life, apart from his crucifixion and resurrection, that Paul gives in his letters.