Jesus' Wilderness Temptation According to Mark

Abstract

This paper challenges the critical consensus that Mark's version of the story of Jesus' wilderness temptation (here taken to include Mk 1.9-11) says nothing concerning that temptation's nature, content or outcome. While Mark's version is admittedly brief and spare of detail, its brevity should not be confused with vacuity nor its relative lack of detail taken as an indication that Mark was content to assert only the fact that Jesus was tempted. When read against the background of the religious and cultural assumptions of the milieu in which Mark wrote, the details contained within the story are both sufficient in number and sufficiently resonant descriptively to give the information purportedly not contained there. Mark was indeed intent at Mk 1.9-13 to speak concretely about the nature, content and outcome of Jesus' wilderness temptation. An unwarranted and methodologically unsound concentration on what is not in Mark has prevented this from being seen.