Mark's "Provocative Use" of Scripture in Narration: "He Was with the Wild Animals and Angels Ministered to Him"

Abstract

The style of Mark's Gospel is to use the Hebrew Bible in a cryptic, enigmatic, and allusive manner that provokes the reader's imagination to uncover intertextual connections with those scriptures. It is a style that effectively draws the reader into Mark's narrative, but it also brings one to recognize that Mark has skillfully woven into his narrative many allusive words and phrases that subtly link the Jesus of his story with the Coming One of the Hebrew Bible. In particular, Mark's description of Jesus in the wilderness ("he was with the wild animals and angels ministered to him," 1:13) provokes the reader's imagination to discover that there is a strong verbal collocation of "the way," "the wilderness," and "the wild beasts" which focuses upon Isa 35:8–10 (in contrast to the study by R. Bauckham, who focuses upon Isa 11:6–9). Yet, the Isaiah text functions as a prism through which Ps 91:9–13 refracts. This psalm seems to be the principal text that informs Mark's narrative concerning Jesus' being with the wild animals while angels tended to him. It is significant that both of the other Synoptic Gospels explicitly bring Psalm 91 to the foreground in their temptation narratives (see Matt 4:6ff.; Luke 4:9ff.).