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‘The Fearful Silence of Three Women (Mark 16:8)’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Gerald O'Collins SJ
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Abstract

This article aims at reinstating an older interpretation (offered e.g. by R. H. Lightfoot) of the astonishment, fear, and silent flight with which three women responded to the message they heard from the angel in Jesus's open and empty tomb. It was an appropriate reaction to the astonishing revelation of the resurrection. The article argues that this reaction is not to be reckoned as an unexpected failure on the part of the women. Throughout Mark's Gospel they proved exemplary in their following of Jesus, right through to being present at his crucifixion. Mary Magdalene and her two companions remained temporarily silent until they could deliver the angel's message to the appropriate audience, the male disciples.

Keywords

fearflightMarkresurrectionrevelationsilencewomen
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 102 , Issue 1099 , May 2021 , pp. 310 - 317
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 On variant endings (and theories of lost endings) of Mark, see Marcus, Joel, Mark 8–16 (Newhaven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 1088-96.Google Scholar

2 Lightfoot, R. H., The Gospel Message of St Mark (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 88.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., pp. 90-91.

4 Nineham, D. E., Saint Mark (London: Penguin, 1963, reprinted 1992), pp. 447-48.Google Scholar

5 Pesch, R., Das Markusevangelium, vol. 2 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1977), p. 536Google Scholar; see also p. 522; trans. mine.

6 Lightfoot, Gospel Message, p. 87.

7 Pesch, Markusevangelium, vol. 2, p. 528Google Scholar; emphasis mine.

8 Ibid., p. 535.

9 Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy, trans. Harvey, John W. (London: Penguin, 1959).Google Scholar

10 Pesch, Markusevangelium, vol. 2, p. 541Google Scholar; emphasis mine.

11 Perrin, N., The Resurrection Narratives: A New Approach (London: SCM Press, 1977), pp. 31-32.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., pp. 32-33.

13 Hooker, M. D., The Gospel according to St Mark (London: Continuum, 2001; orig. 1981), p. 392Google Scholar. It is worth remarking that the evangelist does not state that the women ‘disobeyed’ and were ‘culpable’, but only that, after receiving the message from the angel about the resurrection and a rendezvous in Galilee, ‘they said nothing to anyone’ (Mark 16:8). He states what happened without passing a moral judgement on it.

14 Hooker, St Mark, p. 387.

15 Ibid., p. 393. But do the male disciples's flight from arrest and the women's flight from the tomb stand in parallel? The men flee from danger at the hands of human beings; the women flee when ‘confronted with the power of God’. Faced with ‘the mightiest act of all’, they flee. This is ‘precisely how many other characters in the [Mark's] story have reacted when confronted’ with the divine power (ibid., p. 387). Here Hooker herself recognizes that the flight of the men and that of the women are differently motivated; they should not be explained in the same way.

16 Moloney, F. J., The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), p. 348.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 348-52.

18 Ibid., p. 352.

19 Marcus, J., Mark 8–18 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 1081-82.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., p. 1087.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid., p. 1093.

23 Ibid., p. 1095.

24 Boring, M. E., Mark: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox), p. 449, n. 16.Google Scholar

25 Dwyer, T., The Motif of Wonder in the Gospel of Mark (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), p. 189.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 191-92.

27 Magness, J. Lee, Sense and Absence: Structure and Suspension in the Ending of Mark's Gospel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), p. 100.Google Scholar

28 O'Collins, G., Easter Faith: Believing in the Risen Jesus (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2003), pp. 72-73.Google Scholar

29 Marcus, Mark 8–16, p. 1082.

30 O'Collins, G., Interpreting the Resurrection (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 53-58Google Scholar; O'Collins, Easter Faith, pp. 66-71; O'Collins, Believing in the Resurrection (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012), pp. 80-91.Google Scholar

31 Magness, Sense and Absence, p. 102.

32 Foçant, C., The Gospel According to Mark: A Commentary, trans. Keylock, Leslie Robert (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), p. 661.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 662.