The Women at the Empty Tomb as Continuation of the Persona and Failures of the Twelve (15:40-16:8)

We now turn to another passage in Mark, also concerned with women, but as I shall argue, one that offers a strikingly contrasting characterization. After the crucifixion, with none of the Twelve to be found, Mark mentions for the first time at this very late point in his narrative women who observe from a distance Jesus’s suffering and place of burial and who later discov­er the empty tomb.^[247] Since ultimately their failure is every bit as spectacu­lar as those of the Twelve, I shall argue that, like the Twelve, these women are to be distinguished from the (usually) anonymous individuals whose examples the Gospel of Mark lauds.^[248] That is to say, different from the woman who anointed Jesus’s body for burial and Simon of Cyrene (14:3­9; 15:20b-24), among others, Mark ultimately does not offer these three (named) women depicted in 15:40-16:8 as positive models of discipleship.

At the start of this section, however, Mark does offer affirming charac­terizations of these women who had “followed” Jesus and “served” (aKoXou0eM, SiaKovew, 15:41) as his benefactors in Galilee.^[249] Such ini­tially positive attributes merit comparison with the Twelve, who likewise toward the beginning of Mark had received Jesus’s call to “follow” him (aKoXou0EM, 1:17; 2:14; cf. 8:34; 10:21) prior to their numerous blunders. Yet at the end of Mark’s narrative the women entrusted with the message of Jesus’s resurrection and imminent appearance in Galilee^[250] fail to an­nounce it (16:6-8), just as the Twelve had fallen short many times earlier in Mark. Terrified and amazed, the three women are silent (16:8b).

This culmination of Mark’s narrative invites the inference that, at least in Mark’s account, these women cannot serve as a “bridge” from the risen Jesus to the Twelve,^[251] who stumbled only temporarily in Gethsemane be­fore being quickly restored by Jesus shortly after the resurrection.^[252] Rather than leading directly to a reunion with, let alone a reinstatement of, the Eleven, Mark’s empty tomb scene presents the angelic^[253] young man whom the women met there as distinguishing between the (now) ten disciples and Peter (ύπαγετε ει'θατε τοι? μαθηταί$ αύτου και τώ Πετρω, 16:7a).^[254] This distinction in effect absolves Peter of his earlier calling to “follow” Jesus (1:16-17), unless at some future point he should start acting like a true disciple along the lines reported in 1 Cor 15:5 and John 21:15-19 but not in Mark.

In such an ominous context, the prediction that Peter and the Ten will “see” the risen Jesus in the Galilee (16:7b) could just as easily bespeak the disciples’ judgment by Jesus, rather than their reconciliation with him, should they choose to meet him there. The earlier, and parallel, statement by Jesus himself (14:28; cf. 16:7) that after the resurrection he will be in Galilee does not denote that any of the Twelve will, in fact, actually “see” him.^[256] This initial prediction occurs before the disciples abandon Jesus in Gethsemane and Peter’s denials. Between 14:28 and 16:7, Mark has in ef­fect taken the succession narrative of 1:14a - after John the Baptist’s ar­rest, Jesus arrives - and, when the time comes for Jesus to be succeeded, concluded instead with a rhetorical question mark. That is, Mark is silent about how a transition to the preaching of the apostles took place: after the resurrection the apostles do not necessarily immediately pick up where Je­sus left off.

Yet as Mark concludes his narrative, it is a moot point whether the Eleven’s could choose to face Jesus, since the women never convey to the Eleven Jesus’s invitation and promise that they will “see” him.^[257] At Mark’s conclusion what endures from Jesus’s associations with the Twelve is an empty tomb, the women’s silence, and the imminent expectation of the Son of Man’s appearance (cf. 8:34-9:1; 13:26; 14:62). Until the manifestation of this anticipated end,^[258] the Markan community must be prepared to suffer as Jesus’s faithful followers (cf. 13:14-37).^[259]

The present essay therefore calls into question Craig Evans’s conclusion that after 16:8 “the mission of the disciples, chosen and commissioned ear­lier in the ministry, may now continue with renewed vigor and vision.”^[260] At the very least, one would have to replace the word “continue” with “re­commence” or something to signify the utter break in the disciples’ con­sistently inept behavior between Mark 6:30 (after they return from their mission; cf. 6:6b-13) and 14:50 (abandoning Jesus at his arrest).

In addition to the fate of the Eleven following 16:8, Mark’s characteri­zation of the three women toward the end of his narrative has likewise been the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Elisabeth Schussler Fio­renza, for example, construes Mark 15:40 as indicating four,^[262] rather than three, women and draws a parallel to Jesus’s initial call of four male disci­ples in 1:16-20. On this basis, she states that these four women and four men are “preeminent,” respectively among Jesus’s female and male disci­ples.^[263] Moreover, Schussler Fiorenza maintains that by virtue of their cour­age these four women disciples supercede their cowardly male counter­parts.^[264] Craig Evans similarly construes the characters in 15:40 as “three brave women.”^[265] Evans also draws a contrast between Joseph of Arima- thea, who buried Jesus and “is no devoted disciple” since he did this “with dispatch... but not with devotion,” and “[t]he women, who were devoted to Jesus [and] now hope to complete the process.”^[266]

Yet even if one were to construe these women as initially “brave,” it is not at all clear that, for the author of Mark,^[267] they constituted unambigu­ously positive models of discipleship. It is likewise uncertain how positing such an unqualified characterization of their role as laudable could be rec­onciled with their later reaction of becoming overwhelmed with astonish­ment (eK0aqPew, 16:5b-6a) and ultimately remaining silent although commanded to report that Jesus is raised (16:8). Indeed, Victoria Philips in her essay for the volume, A Feminist Companion to Mark, calls attention to this “blind spot” in what she nonetheless acknowledges as an “important feminist strategy” for interpreting Mark.^[268]

In Mark 16:5b-6a the verb £K0apPew could portray a range of emo­tional reactions, including being overwhelmed, alarmed, distressed,^[269] trou­bled - or any combination of these.

Attempting to mitigate this difficulty that Mark’s concluding verses pose to her interpretation,^[271] Schussler Fiorenza differentiates between the­se women’s failure and those of Jesus’s male disciples because in her view “[t]he women’s fear was well founded.”^[272] This distinction, however, is ar­guably a case of special pleading, since the Twelve likewise had reason to fear, for example, when Jesus - and they - were approaching Jerusalem (cf. e0apPonvTO oi 8e aKoXou0ouvTe$ e^oPouvto, Mark 10:32).^[273] Nor is it persuasive to construe positively the women’s silence, as David R. Catchpole argues, in terms of an “awe-inspired reaction to a heavenly epiphany.”^[274] A reaction that may be typically human but that nonetheless falls short of a divine command - in this case, delivered by the angelic young man to “go, tell his disciples and Peter” (16:7) - by no means cor­roborates a positive Markan characterization of these three women.^[275]

D.