Haunting Empty Tombs: Specters of the Emperor and Jesus in the Gospel of Mark

Abstract

This paper employs theories of spectrality and haunting to read the Gospel of Mark alongside textual and archaeological materials representing the Roman emperor. I argue that the relationships between the figures of Jesus and the emperor are both more subtle and complex than is typically seen by empire-critical scholarship. I show how both the Roman emperor and the Gospel of Mark’s Jesus are constructed in undecidable negotiations of life and death, absence and presence, and past, present, and future. Scenes like Jesus walking on water, the transfiguration, and the empty tomb display the spectrality of Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Ghost stories and the globalizing logic of the imperial cult do the same for the emperor. The common spectrality of the emperors and Jesus in Mark’s Gospel signals how they are both haunted by the systemic violence of Rome’s empire.