Beyond Fear and Silence

Book excerpt: The Gospel of Mark ends in a curious way. Three women disciples go to the tomb and find it empty, save for a young man in a white robe who tells them that Jesus has been raised and they should "tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.'" The gospel concludes with the statement: "Then they went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." This downbeat ending was so unsatisfying to some early gospel editors that they added two other conclusions, the longer one drawn from Matthew and Luke, including post-resurrection appearances, the commissioning of the eleven apostles, and the ascension of Jesus. Focusing on the fear and silence of the women in the last verse, Joan Mitchell offers a brilliant interpretation and a powerful encouragement to Christian women. She uses the feminist hermeneutic developed by Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza to deal with the absence or presence of women in the text, but she also employs literary methods to provide a convincing and aesthetically satisfying interpretation of the gospel as a whole. Although the women in Mark may be few and mostly nameless, they play a powerful role in the narrative, as indeed they are called upon to do in every generation of the preaching of the gospel.