Mark 15:1-16:8: Opening-Middle-Closing Texture

The Gospel of Mark

Mark 15:1-16:8 is a span of text has such an interesting opening-middle-closing texture. One of the possibilities, for example, is that some endings really are simply new beginnings. In other words, some endings are really not endings at all. They do not really bring anything to a final conclusion. Rather, some endings simply introduce topics and events that provide resources for a new beginning when everything seemed to be coming to a dramatic, final end. Let us explore some of the opening-middle-closing texture in Mark 15:1-16:8.

The opening scene in Mark 15:1-15 features Jesus being handed over to Pilate and Pilate asking Jesus if he is king of the Jews. The effect of this scene reaches a conclusion in the death of Jesus on a cross, accompanied by a centurion's assertion that Jesus is son of God (15:33-39). As a result of Markan narration, the crucifixion of Jesus occurs in three steps. First, the soldiers mock Jesus as king of the Jews and hang him on a cross (15:16-24). Second, passersby mock Jesus as the Messiah king of Israel while he hangs on the cross (15:25-32). Third, Jesus dies on the cross, and a centurion declares that he is son of God (15:33-39).

With this sequence, the drama that began with Pilate reaches a dramatic conclusion. Yet, the nature of Markan narration, as we already hinted above, may be to present conclusions that simply create contexts for new beginnings. In this instance, the narration introduces women who observed all of the events from afar. The narration says that these women had followed Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, serving him (15:40-41). This is a fascinating digression back to the beginning of the story. Just before Jesus entered into Galilee, angels had served Jesus in the wilderness (1:13). When Jesus came into Galilee, four male disciples responded immediately to Jesus' call to follow him (1:16-20). Only now, at the very end of the story, does the narration assert that three women also became followers of Jesus, and they have followed Jesus all the way to Jerusalem. The women, the narrator tells us, saw Joseph put Jesus' body in the tomb (15:47). Therefore, after the sabbath they return to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body properly with ointments. This leads to a dramatic scene in which the women speak on the way to the tomb, the young man at the tomb makes a lengthy statement to the women while they are in the tomb, and the women flee from the tomb and say nothing to anyone (16:1-8). This means that there are three additional steps after the three steps that present Jesus' crucifixion. In other words, after three scenes that bring Jesus' life to an end (15:16-24, 25-32, 33-39), three more scenes introduce Jesus "going before the disciples to Galilee" (14:40-41; 15:42-46; 15:47-16:8). By observing the death and burial of Jesus, and by planning a visit to the tomb where Jesus is buried, three women provide a new beginning for a story that had come to a disastrous end. Yet the final scene itself is no real ending. Jesus has gone to Galilee, the young man in a white robe tell the women. Thus, the story goes back to where it began, namely to Galilee. And the reader already knows that going to Galilee simply means to go to a place where Jesus calls people to follow him. So, at the end the story begins all over again. And so it will continue to start again every time a person reads it through to the end.

In summary, three-step narration is a characteristic of storytelling in the Gospel of Mark (Robbins 1981, 1992a), and three-step narration concludes the story. The irony is that this three-step conclusion is simply a step into the future. This future recycles Jesus, his disciples, women who follow him, and the readers of the text back to Galilee where the initial story began. Analysis of opening-middle-closing texture, then, has taken us into yet other characteristics of the Markan account of Jesus' crucifixion, death, and resurrection.


From V. K. Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts, (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), pp. 19-20.

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