The third episode of the fourth season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (February 26, 2020). You can listen to the episode right now and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:

Show Notes

This podcast is based on Mark 11:12-25. Any direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

The meme plays off of Westboro’s offensive slogan

(which I won’t post here.)

The “God hates figs” meme has become rather popular in certain circles in recent years. It arose as a humorous way to counter the offensive and hateful “God hates fags” rhetoric of the Westboro Baptist Church. It suggests, in a tongue in cheek way, that that church’s stance is based on a typo — a misunderstanding of Mark 11:12-25

I do not object to people making fun of Westboro. If it helps to marginalize their position, all the better. The meme is also sometimes used as a general criticism of the Bible — a way of saying just how ridiculous the Bible is.

The story does indeed seem pretty crazy on a first read. Jesus’ reaction to seeing a fig tree with no figs when it’s not even the season for figs seems over-the-top. A closer examination of the Gospel of Mark, however, leads to the conclusion that there is something else going on in this passage

Intercalation in the Mark’s Gospel

The Gospel of Mark was written in very basic Greek, but that does not mean that it was not a sophisticated document. Mark uses some complex literary techniques to get his message across. One of these techniques has been called intercalation.

In an intercalation, the gospel writer starts telling one story which he then interrupts in the middle with a second story. He completes the second story before coming back to complete the first one. Now, if this was something that happened just once, we might not pay much attention to it. But it is something that happens six easily identifiable times in the gospel. Here are the examples that most everyone agrees with:

The story of the woman with a flow of blood interrupts the story of the daughter of Jairus.

Mark 3:20-35: Jesus’ family sets out to restrain him because they have heard that he’s out of mind. This is interrupted by a discussion with the scribes who accuse Jesus of being possessed by demons. This discussion is resolved and then the story of the attempted intervention of Jesus’ family continues.

Mark 5:21-43: Jesus is asked to heal a twelve year-old girl. While he is on the way, he’s interrupted by a woman who’s had a flow of blood for twelve year. Her case is resolved and the story of the girl continues but, in the meantime, she has died and Jesus has to raise her from the dead.

Mark 6:7-34: Jesus sends the twelve disciples out to preach and heal. This is interrupted by an account of the death of John the Baptist. The disciples then return and report on their work.

Mark 14:1-11: A plot to arrest and kill Jesus is hatched. This is interrupted by the story of a woman who anoints Jesus for his burial. Judas then meets with those plotting against Jesus and agrees to betray him.

Mark 14:54-72: Simon Peter enters the courtyard of the High Priest’s house. This is interrupted by and account of the trial of Jesus that is taking place inside and then, back out in the courtyard, Peter is interrogated and denies knowing Jesus.

A close study of these intercalations leads to the conclusion that Mark did not do this randomly. There is always a connection between the two stories and the author seems to be inviting the readers to find deeper understanding concerning Jesus by examining that connection.

With that in mind, it seems pretty clear that Mark used the story of the fig tree in order to illustrate something important about what it was that Jesus did when he caused a disturbance in the temple. In the podcast, I simply retold Mark story in a way that made the connection between the two episodes much harder to miss.

How Mark might have constructed the story

It is possible, of course, that Mark had a story about Jesus cursing a fig tree in the traditions about Jesus that he had received. But if he didn’t have such a story in that form he wouldn’t have hesitated to create a story that fit the bill.

There are, in fact, a number of sayings and parables of Jesus concerning fruit trees faith and prayer that have much in common with this story:

Luke 17:6: In that saying, Jesus uses another tree, a mulberry tree that is cast into the sea, to illustrate the power of faith.

Luke 13:6-9: In this passage, Jesus basically tells the story of the fig tree in Mark’s Gospel in parable form.

Matthew 7:15-20: Jesus speaks of another fruit tree threatened with destruction for its failure to produce good fruit.

It is not very hard at all to imagine Mark taking some or all of these traditions — stories and sayings that he knew reflected themes that were important to Jesus — and turning them into a living parable in order to illustrate something about what Jesus was really doing when he caused that disturbance in the temple.

What Matthew did with this episode

So, it would seem, Matthew very carefully constructed the sequence of events with the story of the disturbance at the temple sandwiched between the two parts of the story of the fig tree. One good reason why we miss the subtlety of what Mark did, however, is because of what the gospel of Matthew did with this story. Most scholars would argue that the gospel of Matthew used the gospel of Mark as a literary source. (This is a very long argument that I won’t try to cover here. The Wikipedia article on the two Source hypothesis would be a good starting point if you’d like to understand the argument.) Therefore it seems likely that Matthew lifted this episode from the gospel of Mark, but in doing so, he seems to have missed all of the subtlety of what Mark was doing. The way Matthew tells the story, there is no connection with the story of the disturbance of the Temple. The fig tree incident happens all at once with Jesus cursing the tree, the tree immediately withering and Jesus launching directly into the lesson about faith.

So, it would seem that whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew kind of missed the point of what Mark was doing in his gospel account. But just because Matthew missed it doesn’t mean that we should.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

“AhDah” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Heavy Heart by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3865-heavy-heart

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/