Translating the Triumph: Reading Mark’s Crucifixion Narrative against a Roman Ritual of Power

Abstract

Traces of the Roman triumph have been identified in the procession narratives in Mk 11 and 15, but how its themes should be understood to function in Mark’s telling has never achieved consensus. Reading these narratives alongside evidence for the Roman triumph demonstrates how the ritual logic of the triumph allowed Mark to exploit the degradation of Jesus’ passion, undermine the performance of Roman power and portray Jesus as a king, and a threat to Rome. The Roman triumph paradoxically magnified triumphal victims, presented kings as ideal victims, and drew a close parallel between the victim’s kingly status and the conqueror’s grandeur. Mark employs the logic of the triumph to transform Jesus’ status as victim into an assertion of his authority, so that Jesus’ execution by Roman agents emerges as a ritualized assertion of Jesus’ Davidic kingship. In this article, Mark emerges as a cultural bricoleur who co-opts Roman spectacle in order to naturalize Rome’s dominant language, symbols and practices, thereby translating them to the purposes of gospel.