I think that I have found a new key of interpretation of the gospel of Mark: it is a story of redemption of a specific
sinner from his sins, through spiritual possession by the
real Jesus Christ.
The
sinful status of this specific sinner explains the particular form of the his death, too: a
Roman crucifixion.
A punishment reserved for
criminals,
sinners par excellence.
It is relatively easy, at this point, to recognize who is the concrete figure allegorized by this specific sinner: while his provenance from Nazaret makes him an earthly
davidic messiah, he is really the entire people of
Israel, in real need of a redemption from his tragedy of 70 CE, that already Josephus had attributed to his
sins.
Now a question that, basing only on Mark, I cannot answer, is the following:
Does the story of Mark talk about the crucifixion of only
one specific sinner? Or about the crucifixion of
two figures: the man possessed
AND his Spirit possessor?
Under a historicist paradigm, the answer would be: Mark talked about the crucifixion of Jesus possessed by Christ, therefore the crucifixion of
both the two figures.
But this paradigm has serious flaws:
1) Irenaeus says that the original readers of Mark thought that
only Jesus suffered on the cross,
not his possessor Christ.
2) in Mark himself, we have the confirmation from Jesus himself that he was
abandoned by the spirit that possessed him (the reference to Elijah pointing the reader to the Transfiguration episode, revealing that who has abandoned Jesus was the same mysterious figure proclaimed 'my beloved Son' on Tabor):
At noon darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Some of the bystanders who heard it said, “Look, he is calling Elijah.” One of them ran, soaked a sponge with wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to take him down.” Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. The veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. When the centurion who stood facing him saw how he breathed his last he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
(Mark 15:33-39)
See what provokes precisely the exclamation of the centurion: the emission of the
''his last'' by Jesus.
For a single instant, it
seems that the Son of God and the Son of Man are one and the same, in the mind of the centurion. But what he witnessed was really the final
separation between a man and his spirit-possessor.
“Look, he is calling Elijah” seems similar to the same idiot exclamation of Peter on Tabor:
“Rabbi, it is good that we are here! Let us make three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Under a mythicist paradigm, I am more inclined to think that the crucifixion in Mark is only of the Son of Man,
not of the Son of God.
The Son of God was
already crucified by demons in a sub-lunar realm (as witnessed by the ecstatic experience of the first apostles), therefore his only mission now, before the final apocalypse, is to save the Son of Man
on earth by possessing him and making him crucified by the Romans (in concrete history, in 70 CE, in the fiction, under Pilate).
What other remains to be explained in Mark? I don't know.
