There is more bragging here about the holy hero’s colossal ego
At 72 verses, Mark 14 is the longest chapter in this gospel. It also gives an account of many conversations, and this should prompt curiosity. How did the author of Mark’s gospel find out about these conversations? Any curious reader today would ask, “Was someone on hand to take notes—and were these notes preserved in an archive that the author of Mark, decades later—would have access to? There is major consensus in Christian academia that this gospel was composed after the disastrous war fought between the Jews and the Romans, during which, in 70 C.E. the Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed (as depicted in Mark 13). Would archives have survived, would detailed documentation have survived? Scholars have no idea, moreover, where this gospel was written, or by whom.
So, where/how exactly did the author of this gospel come to know about these conversations? This is now a fundamental rule of historians writing today, trying to preserve accurate accounts of events: let the reader know the sources of information used to construct the account, e.g., diaries, letters, and other archival materials that were contemporaneouswith the events. The author of Mark gives no clue whatever that he had access to such sources.
Devout Christians have been coached to believe that the gospels were divinely inspired—so they must be accurate. But exactly this same claim is made by so many other religions with respect to their own scriptures or holy writs: this information is a gift from their gods. Christian theologians can’t make this case for their Bible, for the simple reason that there are so many contradictions and errors in the gospels, as well as so much inferior, bad theology in so many of the other books of the Bible.
The author of Mark’s gospel had a major goal, which was to promote the new Jesus cult, hence his fertile imagination played a huge role in creating the stories we find in his work. To appreciate just how far he failed as a historian, see Richard Carrier’s 2024 essay, All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark.
This author was keen to portray Jesus as a god who was visiting the human world, so it’s no surprise that he went out of his way to describe the colossal ego of his hero.
Example Number 1:
In verses 3-9 we find the story of a woman who anointed Jesus with a very expensive “ointment of nard.” Some of those present scolded the women for wasting the ointment: it could have been sold, and the money used to help the poor. Jesus scolds them right back:
“Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish, but you will not always have me. (vv. 6-7)
You will not always have me. He wants those present to be aware of his superior status. They are so lucky to have him in their presence.
Example Number 2:
In vv. 17-21 we read that Jesus was eating the Passover meal with his disciples. He predicts that one of them will betray him, which causes a panic. Jesus adds: “…woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.” (v. 21) In other words, his importance is so great that his betrayer should not even have been allowed to live at all.
Example Number 3:
Here we see the stunningly colossal ego, vv. 22-25, when Jesus announces that the bread they’re eating is his body, and the wine is his blood. “He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.’” (vv. 24-25)
The author of Mark here was pushing the idea that eating and drinking Jesus was a key to salvation. We also find here Mark’s theme that the kingdom of God was on the verge of happening—when Jesus would again drink the fruit of the vine.
That master of theological exaggeration, the author of John’s gospel, would stress the importance of eating and drinking Jesus. He turns the flesh and blood of Jesus into full-blown magical potions. See John 6:52-58, especially vv. 54-55: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” The Christian church—the Catholic brand especially—has enthusiastically embraced this superstition.
Example Number 4:
This may seem like a stretch, but the Gethsemane scene (vv. 32-42), also qualifies as an expression of ego. The holy hero knows he is a divine being dwelling for a brief time among humans, but is distressed by the grim plan that god has designed for him. He had taken three disciples with him to Gethsemane, and asked them to keep watch as he withdrew by himself to plead with his god that he be spared his role as a human sacrifice:
“…he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, ‘Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me, yet not what I want but what you want.’” (vv. 35-36)
He returned to find the disciples asleep, but went back to his secluded spot to repeat his prayer to be excused from the painful, horrible fate that awaited him. It is not hard to grasp this as his ego taking over, that is, he knows that he is a superior being. Why does he have to put up with this horror, this indignity? This also is reflected in Jesus’ words (Mark 15:34) as he is dying: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Example Number 5:
In the betrayal/arrest scene (vv. 43-50), Jesus is offended that he is captured by stealth at night:
“Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a rebel? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled.” (vv. 48-49)
Let the scriptures be fulfilled. We can be sure this is Jesus-script invented by the author of the gospel—unless you’re okay with the holy hero seeing his fate as a fulfillment of ancient texts: “It’s all about me!” In other words, the colossal ego is on display.
Example Number 6:
When Jesus is on trial, being examined by the elite of the Jewish faith, they were frustrated that solid evidence against him was lacking—until Jesus himself spoke the fatal, egotistical words:
“…the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’ Jesus said, ‘I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.’” (vv. 61-62)
Obviously, this never happened, that is, those present at his trial never saw him “coming on the clouds of heaven.” The author of this gospel, with this bit of Jesus-script, got it dead wrong. So many different Christian brands have repeatedly predicted the arrival of Jesus on a given date—and they’ve all been wrong. For more on this, see Robert Conner’s book, The Jesus Cult: 2000 Years of the Last Days.
In a recent essay published by Richard Miller on Facebook, The Mythical Mind-Space of the Earliest Christians, he makes these points:
The New Testament “…resists dating because the earliest Christians were not trying to situate their stories in history at all. They were not thinking in terms of timelines, sources, or civic memory. They were thinking mythically—and the texts they produced reflect that mental world.”
“The earliest Christian texts resist historical reconstruction because they were composed within a mental and subcultural world whose aims fundamentally eschewed historiological concern. They do not fail to position to history; they decline to participate in the enterprise altogether.”
“Earliest Christianity operated within a mythological, cultic social space in which historiology—understood as the disciplined preservation of past events within linear, verifiable frameworks—was never a value to be cultivated…”
There is no harm in trying to determine when the gospels were written, but it is futile to hunt for bits and pieces that may qualify as history. The authors wanted to promote belief in their messiah, and giving him a colossal ego was not seen as a negative.
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes:
· Guessing About God (2023),
· Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available.
· Everything You Need to Know About Prayer But May Not Want to Admit (2025)
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.
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