Timothy Gray’s monograph on Temple in the Gospel of Mark, The: A Study in Its Narrative Role (now happily published in an affordable edition by Baker) is excellent. Gray pays close attention to intertextual and intratextual echoes as he examines Mark’s account of Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem and His temple action, the Olivet Discourse, and the role of the temple in Jesus’ trial and death. What follows is not a review but rather some fairly disconnected notes on parts that I found particularly helpful.

1) Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem brings together several primary themes and terms in Mark’s gospel: kurios , hodos (“way”), ho erchomenos (“the coming one”). In particular, these themes appear at the very outset of Mark’s gospel, in the combined quotation from Isaiah and Malachi, and thus Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is the climax of these opening themes. The Lord comes to the end of His “way,” and He comes into the temple, fulfilling Isaiah’s hope for Yahweh’s eschatological return to Zion and Malachi’s warning about the sudden “coming” of the Lord into His temple. Gray says, “Jesus’ actions in the temple demonstration seem to have been scripted by Malachi. For Malachi warns about the Lord’s coming to the temple (Mal 3:2) as he will come in judgment (3:5f), a judgment particularly focused upon the priests (3:3). The charge against them is that they are robbing God (Mal 3:8-9), a charge that resonates with the accusations Jesus will make against the temple authorities.” A step beyond Gray: It would be important to explore the nature of the “robbery” in Malachi to help determine what kind of robbery Jesus has in view.

2) Three times in Mark the temple is linked to the mission of Israel to the nations. When Jesus overturns the tables, He says that the temple was to be a house of prayer for all nations; in 13:10, the preaching of the gospel to all nations is linked to the destruction of the temple; and this all comes to a climax in 15:38, where the veil of the temple is ripped and a Gentile centurion confesses that Jesus is the Christ.

3) Gray finds the background for Jesus’ warning about the “abomination that makes desolate” (his translation) in Daniel (unfortunately, he doesn’t push back further to, say, the abominations of Eli’s sons). In the Daniel passages that use this phrase, he finds a consistent link with the cessation of sacrifices in the temple and the “end.” From the perspective of Daniel, “the end” simply means the destruction of the temple that has ceased to offer fitting sacrifice.

4) “Let the reader understand” - the puzzling aside in the Olivet Discourse - Gray connects to the repeated emphasis on “understanding” in Daniel and, equally importantly, in Mark. The Jews’ and disciples’ lack of understanding is strongly tied in with the doom that hangs over the temple.

5) The lesson of the fig tree’s budding is linked to the lesson of the fig tree’s withering earlier in the gospel. The fruitless fig tree withers, just as the fruitless temple will end up a desert, desolated. But in that desolation there is also a bud on the fig tree that portends a new temple.

6) Gray quoted Jacob Neusner’s observation about the connection of the temple tables, overturned by Jesus, and the table of the Supper: “table for table, whole offering for whole offering.” Gray adds that these two table incidents begin two major sections of Mark’s gospel: The end of the temple (chs. 11-13) begins with tables overturned, and the account of Jesus’ passion (chs. 14-15) begins with Jesus offering bread and wine at a new table, initiating a new temple. Obviously, but importantly, Gray notes that Jesus speaks of His death as having a “cultic efficacy” - it is a ransom for all, not merely a martyrdom.

7) Following Lightfoot, Gray notes the connection between the parable about “watching” that ends the Olivet Discourse and Jesus’ sufferings in Gethsemane. Four watches are mentioned in the parable, and the narrative that follows mentions three of the four (14:17, 72; 15:1). The one that goes unmentioned is midnight, and this is the watch during which Jesus prays. The tribulations in view in both passages are the Messianic tribulations that will bring in the kingdom, and these tribulations begin with Jesus’ sufferings in the garden. That is the eschatological “hour” for which the disciples need to be watching.

8) During Jesus’ trial, He is accused of saying He would destroy the temple “made with hands” and erect in three days a temple “not made by hands” (14:58). Gray notes that every use of “made with hands” ( cheiropoietos ) in the LXX has to do with construction of idols. The temple has become a graven image. On the other hand, “not made with hands” echoes the description of the stone that crushes the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2). Gray rightly recognizes that the stone has cultic overtones, citing Exodus 20:25). The stone is the beginning of a new temple that grows into a cosmic mountain, as temples are wont to do. To take a step beyond Gray: If the statue in the dream is (as Jordan has argued) an image of the Gentile empires as the protective cocoon around Israel, then Jesus’ talk about the coming of a temple made without hands is the beginning not only of a new temple but also of a new geopolitical context for the temple.

9) Once the charge about the temple is made in chapter 14, Mark changes his word from temple from hieron to naos . Gray takes hieron as “temple precincts,” and naos as the sanctuary proper. It seems that with Jesus’ conviction, we move symbolically from the temple courts to the Most Holy Place, to the ark throne where Jesus will shed His blood.