One Cry or Two? Mark’s Composition of Mark 15:34-37

Abstract

15:34-37 describes the moment of Jesus’ death. In these verses, Jesus cries out twice, in v. 34 and in v. 37. In v. 34, his cry is a quotation of the first half of Psalm 22:2a (Ελωι ελωι λεμα σαβαχθανι) while in v. 37, his cry is an unspecified shout (ἐβόησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς φωνῇ μεγάλῃ). In many translations of Mark’s gospel, the words in v. 37 are rendered in such a way as to suggest that Jesus’ cry in v. 37 is a second utterance, but in the literature on Mark 15, opinions are divided. The parallel in Matthew (27:45) indeed allows for the interpretation of two distinct utterances because Matthew’s gospel uses an explicit πάλιν in the second case (n v. 50). However, there are two reasons to understand Mark’s gospel as narrating the event in a different way, with only one utterance intended in vv. 34-37. The first reason is that even though πάλιν (“again”) is frequently used by Mark, it is not used in v. 37. As such, it is not made explicit in v. 37 that a second cry is intended. This is indeed all the more remarkable because in other cases, Mark uses πάλιν explicitly to emphasize the repetition of an event in the same chapter. The second reason for assuming why Mark reports only one cry is that the transition from vv. 34-36 to v. 37 is awkward and seems to indicate a redactional intervention of Mark. In this article, I will argue that in vv. 34-36, there is sufficient evidence to assume Markan redaction, while v. 37 is most likely original. My conclusion is that vv. 34-36 are a Markan addition to an original v. 37, resulting in the typically Markan style feature of “duality”. In other words, v. 37 does not recount a second cry but resumes and repeats the cry in v. 34.