The Origin of Satan (6 page)

explains to Simon, Andrew, James, and John, who gather around

him, “that is what I came to do” (1:38).

During his next public appearance, as Mark tells it, the scribes

immediately took offense at what they considered his usurpation

of divine authority. In this episode Jesus speaks to a crowd

pressed together so tightly that when four men came carrying a

paralyzed man,

they could not get near him because of the crowd; so they

removed the roof above him; and when they had made an

opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay.

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “My

son, your sins are forgiven” (2:4-5).

By pronouncing forgiveness, Jesus claims the right to speak for

God—a claim that, Mark says, angers the scribes:

“Why does this man speak this way? It is blasphemy! Who can

forgive sins but God alone?” (2:7).

According to Mark, Jesus, aware of the scribes’ reaction,

immediately performs a healing in order to
prove
his authority to

his critics:

And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus

questioned within themselves, said, “Why do you question

thus in your hearts? . . .
But so that you may know that the Son

of man has power on earth to forgive sins
”—he said to the

paralytic—“I say to you,
rise, take your pallet, and go home.
”

And he rose, and immediately picked up his pallet and went

out before them all, so that they were all astonished, . . . saying,

“We never saw anything like this!” (2:8-12, emphasis added).

When Jesus first appeared proclaiming “Repent: the Kingdom

of God is at hand!,” he must have sounded to many of his

contemporaries like one of the Essenes, who withdrew to the

wilder-

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ness in protest against ordinary Jewish life. From the desert caves

where they lived in monastic seclusion, the Essenes denounced

the priestly aristocratic leaders in charge of the Jerusalem

Temple—men like Josephus and those he admired—as being

hopelessly corrupted by their accommodation to Gentile ways,

and by collaboration with the Roman occupiers. The Essenes

took the preaching of repentance and God’s coming judgment to

mean that Jews must separate themselves from such polluting

influences and return to strict observance of God's law—

especially the Sabbath and kosher laws that marked them off

from the Gentiles as God’s holy people.25

But if Jesus sounded like an Essene, his actions violated the

standard of purity that Essenes held sacred. Instead of separating

himself from people who polluted themselves by “walking in

the ways of the Gentiles” (
Jubilees
1:9), Jesus chose for one of his

disciples a tax collector—a class that other Jews detested as

profiteers who collaborated with the hated Romans. Indeed,

Mark says, “There were many tax collectors who followed him”

(2:15). Instead of fasting, like other devout Jews, Jesus ate and

drank freely. And instead of scrupulously observing Sabbath

laws, Jesus excused his disciples when they broke them:

One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they

made their way, his disciples began to pick ears of grain. And

the Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is

not lawful on the Sabbath?” And he said to them, “Have you

never read what David did, when he was in need and was

hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the

house of God . . . and ate the sacred bread,. . . and also gave it to

those who were with him?” (2:23-26).

Here Jesus dares claim, as precedent for his disciples’

apparently casual action, the prerogative of King David himself,

who, with his men, broke the sacred food laws during a wartime

emergency.

Claiming divine and royal power while simultaneously

violating the purity laws, Jesus, at the beginning of his public

activity,

THE GOSPEL OF MARK AND THE JEWISH WAR / 19

outrages virtually every party among his contemporaries, from

the disciples of John the Baptist to the scribes and Pharisees.

The next time Jesus entered the synagogue on a Sabbath, Mark

says,

a man was there who had a withered hand. And they watched

him, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that

they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the

withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it

lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or

to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them

with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the

man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his

hand was restored (3:1-5).

Instead of postponing the healing for a day, Jesus had chosen

deliberately to defy his critics by performing it on the Sabbath.

Seeing this, Mark says:

The Pharisees went out, and immediately conspired against

him with the Herodians [the party of King Herod], how they

might kill him (3:6).

For Mark the secret meaning of such conflict is clear. Those

who are offended and outraged by Jesus’ actions do not know

that Jesus is impelled by God’s spirit to contend against the

forces of evil, whether those forces manifest themselves in the

invisible demonic presences who infect and possess people, or in

his actual human opponents. When the Pharisees and Herodians

conspire to kill Jesus, they themselves, Mark suggests, are acting

as agents of evil. As Mark tells the story, Jesus has barely

engaged Satan’s power before his opponents “conspired . . . how

they might kill him” (3:6).

Mark suggests that Jesus recognizes that the leaders who

oppose him are energized by unseen forces. Immediately after

this powerful coalition has united against him, Jesus retaliates by

commissioning a new leadership group, “the twelve,” presum-

20 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

ably assigning one leader for each of the original twelve tribes of

Israel. Jesus orders them to preach and gives them “power to cast

out demons” (3:13).

This escalation of spiritual conflict immediately evokes

escalating opposition—opposition that begins at home, within

Jesus’ own family. Mark says that when Jesus “went home ... his

family . . . went out to seize him, for they said, ‘He is insane [or:

beside himself]’ ” (3:21 ).26 Next “the scribes who came down

from Jerusalem” charge that Jesus himself “is possessed by

Beelzebub; by the prince of demons he casts out demons” (3:22).

Jesus objects:

“How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against

itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided

against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan

has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand,

but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man’s

house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong

man; then indeed he may plunder his house” (3:23-27).

According to Mark, it is apparently the “house of Israel” that

Jesus sees as a divided house, a divided kingdom. Jesus openly

contends against Satan, who he believes has overtaken God's

own household, which he has come to purify and reclaim: Jesus

wants to “bind this enemy” and “plunder his house.”

As for the scribes’ accusation that Jesus is possessed by the

“prince of demons,” he throws back upon them the same

accusation of demon-possession and warns that in saying this

they are sinning so deeply as to seal their own damnation (3:28-

30). For, he says, whoever attributes the work of God’s spirit to

Satan commits the one unforgivable sin:

“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven to human beings,

and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever

blasphemes against the holy spirit is never forgiven, but is

guilty of an eternal sin”—because they said, “He is possessed

by an evil spirit” (3:28-30).

THE GOSPEL OF MARK AND THE JEWISH WAR / 21

Mark deliberately places these scenes of Jesus’ conflict with

the scribes between two episodes depicting Jesus’ conflict with

his own family. Immediately after this, the Greek text of Mark

says that members of the family, who had previously declared

him insane and had tried to seize him (3:21), now come to the

house where he is addressing a large crowd and ask to see him.

Jesus repudiates them:

And his mother and brothers came, and standing outside they

sent to him, and called him. And a crowd was sitting about

him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are

outside, asking for you.” And looking around at those who sat

around him, he said, “Here are my mother and brothers! For

whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and

mother” (3:31-35).

Having formed a new family, and having appointed twelve

new leaders for Israel to replace the old ones, Jesus has, Mark

suggests, “re-formed God's people.” From this point on, Jesus

sharply discriminates between those he has chosen, the inner

circle, and “those outside.” He still draws enormous crowds, but

while teaching them, he offers riddling parables, deliberately

concealing his full meaning from all but his intimates:

Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd

gathered about him . . . and he taught them many things in

parables. . . . And when he was alone, those who were around

him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said

to them, “
To you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of

God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they

may indeed see but not perceive; and they may hear but not

understand; lest they should turn again, and be forgiven
” (4:1-

12, emphasis added).

Although he often criticizes the disciples—in 8:33 he even

accuses Peter of playing Satan’s role—Jesus shares secrets with

them that he hides from outsiders, for the latter, he says, quoting

Isaiah, are afflicted with impenetrable spiritual blindness.27

22 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

Criticized by the Pharisees and the Jerusalem scribes for not

living “according to the traditions of the elders” because he and

his disciples eat without washing their hands, Jesus, instead of

defending his action, attacks his critics as “hypocrites” and

charges that they value their own traditions while breaking

God’s commandments. Then he publicly calls into question the

kosher laws themselves—again explaining his meaning to his

disciples alone:

And he called the people to him again, and said to them, “Hear

me, all of you, and understand; there is nothing outside a man

which by going into him can defile him; but the things which

come out of a man are what defile him.” And when he had

entered the house, and left the people, his disciples asked him

about the parable. And he said to them, “Are you, too, without

understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man

from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but

his stomach, and so passes out of him? What comes out of a

man is what defiles him; for from within, from the human

heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, . .

. envy, pride, foolishness. . . . All these evils come from

within” (7:14-23).

Here Mark wants to show that although Jesus discards

traditional kosher (“purity”) laws, he advocates instead purging

the “heart”—that is, impulses, desires, and imagination.

Now that Jesus has alienated not only the scribes, Pharisees,

and Herodians, but also his relatives and many of his own

townspeople, he travels with his small band of disciples,

preaching to the crowds. Anticipating what lies ahead of him in

Jerusalem, where he will challenge the priestly party on its own

ground, Jesus nevertheless resolutely leads his followers there,

walking ahead of them, while “they were astonished, and those

who followed were terrified” (10:32). On the way he tells the

twelve exactly whom they are to blame for his impending death:

“The chief priests and scribes . . . will condemn [the Son of

man] to death, and hand him over to the nations, and they

THE GOSPEL OF MARK AND THE JEWISH WAR / 23

will mock him and spit upon him, and scourge him and kill

him” (10:33).

Opposition to Jesus intensifies after he enters Jerusalem.

Having prepared a formal procession to go into the city, Jesus is

openly acclaimed, in defiance of the Romans, as the man who

comes to restore Israel’s ancient empire: “Blessed is the kingdom

of our father David that is coming!” Then, with his followers, he

enters the great Temple and makes a shocking public

demonstration there:

He entered the Temple, and began to drive out those who sold

and those who bought in the Temple, and he overturned the

tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold