Resisting Evil In The Spiritual Realm: Prayer In The Gospel Of Mark

By William B. Bowes

[William B. Bowes is a PhD student in New Testament and Christian Origins at New College, the school of divinity at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.]

Abstract

Prayer plays a more significant role in the Gospel of Mark than previously assumed. Given that Mark and his readers understood the world in terms of a cosmic conflict between temporal and spiritual realms, I contend that prayer in Mark has a resistance-oriented focus. This article reexamines Markan prayer texts, evaluating them in the context of antiquity and Mark’s understanding of spiritual-temporal conflict.

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Jesus as one who both prayed and taught on prayer is a significant aspect of early Christian portrayals. This is especially true in the Synoptic Gospels. They present Jesus’s prayer practices as distinct in form and effectiveness, whether compared to the religious leaders or his disciples. For the earliest Christians, prayer related to their understanding of their engagement with God, as well as spiritual and physical forces. Such depictions in the Synoptics indicate that they considered the nature and purpose of their prayers to be distinct from the prayers of others.

While many scholars have published works on prayer in the Gospels and the New Testament broadly, few have published research about prayer within the Gospel of Mark. Some, such as O’Brien, suggest that the author “shows little interest in the subject.”[1] Similarly, few publications deal with how the evangelist’s characterization of prayer was shaped by significant, early Christian concern about spiritual evil and the interaction between the spiritual and temporal—a key aspect of the Markan worldview.

In this article I propose that prayer plays a more significant role in Mark’s Gospel than previously assumed. Specifically, I contend that an important aspect of prayer in Mark is its role as a means of resistance, apotropaically functioning against spiritual evil, natural evil, and temporal weakness. For Mark, prayer was central to the early Christians’ concerns about demonic powers and the nature of the relationship between the temporal and spiritual realms. Since Mark’s Gospel is the earliest of the Synoptics, this analysis will provide insight into the nature of early Christian spirituality and especially into the ways in which Mark’s audience would have understood the interaction and conflict between visible and invisible phenomena.

Mark describes Jesus’s prayers as a means of resistance against spiritual forces (9:29); resistance against temptation and physical or mental weakness (14:38); different from that of the religious authorities (12:40); a component of spiritual effectiveness or renewal (1:35; 6:46); and an appeal to God’s supernatural intervention in temporal circumstances (11:23–25; 13:18; 14:32–42). This article will examine how the evangelist used prayer language to inform his audience of what prayer meant for Jesus and his disciples and consequently the Markan community. This analysis will highlight 9:29 and 14:38, showing how these verses inform the other prayer texts in Mark. To set the stage, I will first examine the concept and practice of prayer in antiquity, with a special focus on the Second Temple religious and historical context from which Mark’s Gospel emerged.

Prayer As Ritual In The Ancient World

As in early Christianity, prayer was essential to ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion. Prayer has long been at the heart of religious experience, reflecting “the vitality of a person’s central convictions and controlling spirituality.”[2] As Longenecker observes, prayer is so indispensable to ritual systems that “one cannot know the religion of Israel . . . (and) one cannot understand Greco-Roman religions without some knowledge of the place and function of prayer within them.”[3] Even though prayer is a shared element among ancient religions, the form, content, and purpose of prayer varied widely. As Aune explains,

Prayer, like all human institutions and practices, is culture-bound and must be understood in light of the particular systems of religious beliefs and practices of which it is part. . . . There are striking differences between the role that prayer plays in modern monotheistic religious traditions (such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) compared with its role in ancient Graeco-Roman polytheistic religious traditions.[4]

This is important to note because the idea of a religion as a system of beliefs, rituals, and behaviors separable from other sociocultural institutions is a relatively recent concept that would have been unknown to ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans. Unlike people in the modern era, the ancients did not have a “religious identity” separate from their Jewish, Greek, or Roman identity. Thus, prayer must be understood in view of the broader system, culture, and worldview of those engaging in it. However, at the risk of imputing too much complexity to the concept of prayer, and given the influence of monotheistic Judaism on Mark’s Gospel, prayer will here be defined as “the operative medium for contact with God.”[5]

Understanding the unique role of prayer in the ancient world also necessitates an awareness of its importance as a ritual. If rituals are to be understood primarily as actions, then Collins rightly asserts that a prayer being “performed in the prescribed manner is more important than its overt content.”[6] While the content of prayers is of great significance in modern spirituality, a view of prayer as ancient ritual typically places a greater emphasis on factors peripheral to the words themselves, such as intent, situational context, frequency, or method. This is reflected in the fact that Mark’s Gospel, for example, reports little of the content of Jesus’s prayers and more often reports other aspects of his prayer practice. Additionally, such a view is supported implicitly by other sayings of Jesus outside of Mark, such as his caution about praying publicly, verbosely, or repetitively, like the ὑποκριταί and ἐθνικοί in Matthew 6:5–8.

This saying suggests that while Jesus taught the precise words of the Lord’s Prayer in the following verses, other aspects (such as the reverential private aspect) had primacy over precise content, given the nature of ancient rituals.

Recognizing prayer as ritual also takes into account that rituals functioned as a way to create “solidarity and social cohesion through common action, on the basis of implicit assumptions about how things are.”[7] That is, ritualistic prayer practices reveal beliefs and presuppositions about the world, others, and oneself and unite groups in their shared worldview and communal identity.[8] Mark’s Gospel makes this especially evident, sharing notable similarities with the apocalypticism of Second Temple texts like Daniel, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra. Prayers in these documents (and in the Dead Sea Scrolls) contain ritual and verbalized elements, demonstrating shared assumptions, like the belief that prayer can influence the spiritual realm and the outcome of future events.[9] As I shall illustrate, Mark highlighted these ritual elements in the life and teaching of Jesus to shape the communal identity of his audience.

Greco-Roman And Jewish Conceptions In The Second Temple Era

In Greek religion, prayer occurred most commonly in the form of invocation and request (or petition), as popularized in texts like the Iliad.[10] Pagans of the early Imperial period would generally pray for health, beauty, relief, protection, safety, rescue, daily needs, and the defeat of enemies.[11] The prevailing worldview at the time made space for the notion that prayer effected contact between the temporal and spiritual realms. But the precise nature of this contact and the context in which such prayer would be offered would have been understood differently by pagan and Jewish or Christian contexts. For example, Greeks and Romans often prayed in sacrificial contexts. Prayer accompanied sacrifice as a gift to a god, in hopes that the supplicant would receive a positive response.[12] Because they were associated with ritual activity, Greco-Roman prayers were typically public, while private prayer was associated with magic, especially when it occurred at night.[13] Prayers for spiritual aid to resist deleterious forces are not readily present in pagan parallels.

For Jews, prayer similarly involved elements of petition but incorporated thanksgiving, praise, and penance more than pagan prayer.[14] The Qumran documents are a rich source for understanding ancient Jewish prayer as they contain many examples of prayers and blessings, as well as petitions for defense and protection.[15] Prayers in these documents are especially relevant for the study of eschatological and apotropaic elements in Mark, since many Qumran texts suggest that the community understood prayer to be an effective method of spiritual resistance against evil. For example, 11Q5 19:12–16 contains petitions such as “May Satan not rule over me.”[16] Several portions of the War Scroll (1Q33 10–12; 13–14; 16.6–16) and related texts (4Q491 8–12 I.s–16 and 4Q285 10) detail eschatological prayers to be utilized during a future time of spiritual conflict between light and darkness.[17] As Bazzana notes, specifically apotropaic or resistance-oriented ritual and linguistic features “were not a marginal matter as far as the community of Qumran was concerned. On the contrary, it seems that prayers designed to repel demonic influences and even possessions were a regular part of the liturgical activities.”[18]

The importance of such Jewish antecedents of the early church’s view of prayer should not be underestimated, as “the earliest Christians prayed at the times and according to the forms established by Temple and synagogue practice.”[19] This is evident in Paul’s writings as he frequently used fixed liturgical prayers, “which he probably took over from the earliest (mostly Jewish) community.”[20] Thus the worldview underlying such practices serves as a background and foundation to analyze similarities and differences in Mark’s depiction of prayer. Bazzana writes regarding the nature and purpose of prayer: “In all likelihood both Mark and the apotropaic texts from Qumran are re-elaborating, independent of each other, widespread Second Temple Jewish traditions.”[21] In other words, Mark’s resistance-oriented view of prayer has some precedent within the broader environment from which his Gospel emerged. Before analyzing Mark’s prayer language in detail to see how it incorporates these apotropaic, resistance-oriented themes, it will be necessary to understand Mark’s presuppositions regarding the relationship between the temporal and the spiritual.

Powers And Spiritual-Temporal Conflict In Mark

Many scholars have argued convincingly that Mark views the world in light of cosmic conflict.[22] According to Shively, Mark’s Gospel reveals 

a world in which cosmic and earthly conflicts intersect, like planes intersecting in a line. . . . Mark imagines a world in which Satan is the strong ruler over a united kingdom of demons that fights against the Spirit. According to Mark, this cosmic battle is carried out in the ministry of Jesus.[23]

Both Jesus and his followers engage in this conflict. If Shively is right to characterize Mark’s Gospel as an apocalyptic narrative, this focus comes into view through Mark’s characterization of Jesus as “the Spirit-filled one who struggles against Satan and his hosts to liberate people in order to form a new community that does God’s will.”[24] Parallels between Mark’s rhetoric and that of other apocalyptic texts bear this out, such as in the language of Jesus interacting with unseen forces in the early chapters, subduing the sea in 4:35–41 (the chaos of such elements being a common apocalyptic feature in texts like 4 Ezra 13), and speaking of his heavenly parousia in 13:62 and 14:62.[25] Such language points to Mark’s assumptions about a conflicted world. The evangelist’s portrayal of Jesus’s teaching and prayer practices indicates that he imagined a significant amount of interaction between the temporal and the spiritual realms. It also shows he understood humans—and preeminently Jesus—to be capable of exerting some form of influence in that conflictual overlap.

This conflict motif aligns Mark with apocalyptic Jewish literature composed roughly during the same era. Both “share a characteristic outlook that includes both a vertical-spatial dimension (cosmic forces involved on the earth) and a temporal dimension (movement towards imminent eschatological salvation).”[26] One could point to pseudepigrapha such as the Testament of Solomon, which assumes that demonic beings are responsible for inciting violence, causing natural evils, and inflicting pain on humans. Similarly, one could again point to the Qumran community and specifically 1QM, which depicts the community’s struggles in conflict with oppressive temporal and spiritual powers.[27] It can also be argued that Mark’s spiritual worldview (as well as that of the Qumran community) was highly influenced by the book of Daniel, which clearly assumes a supernatural dimension affected by and affecting human activity, with invisible powers at work in a struggle between good and evil.[28] If Mark saw a central element of Jesus’s mission as releasing humans from destructive cosmic powers, then prayer can and should be understood as part of this dynamic.[29]

The overall structure of Mark’s Gospel and its differing emphases from the other Gospels attests to the importance of his view of temporal-spiritual interaction in the shaping of his narrative. Structurally, Mark’s Gospel follows several series of conflicts throughout Jesus’s ministry, reflecting again Mark’s conception of a conflicted world for Christians, whether due to temporal resistance, spiritual resistance, or both. Further, his emphasis on Jesus as an exorcist, in contrast to different emphases in other Gospels, points to his and the earliest Christians’ assumptions about reality as well as Jesus’s place in the spiritual order.[30] Mark’s idea of conflict, as evidenced by his exorcism language, applies not only to the spiritual but extends to the temporal. Mark employs the language of exorcism for Jesus’s calming of the storm in 4:39 and uses the same language to describe the actions of Jesus’s opponents and the activity of Satan and demons.[31] Thus, Mark’s idea of spiritual conflict overlaps with and is implicit within instances of temporal conflict. Mark intended to illustrate Jesus facing and resisting opposing powers so that he might offer his community “a strategy of resistance” to their own spiritual and temporal conflict.[32] Again, this forms a framework for conceptualizing prayer’s role in Mark’s Gospel as part of that apotropaic effort.

The gulf between the typical modern interpreter’s worldview and the worldview of early Christian communities makes it important to understand Mark’s assumptions when analyzing his prayer language. Specifically, “the writers of the Gospels do not share the modern division between the natural and the supernatural.”[33] Although applied and conceptualized in light of Jesus, Mark shared this notion of a conflicted universe with Jewish as well as pagan thought, especially as related to the demonic. For example, as Thiessen notes, not only did almost all ancient Jews affirm the existence of demons, they “thought that demons were malevolent and opposed to both God and humanity.”[34] Although the existence of demonic beings was generally affirmed outside Judaism, Greco-Roman thinkers thought of them as positive, negative, or neutral.[35] This widespread belief significantly contributed to “the background of the Gospel writers’ portrayals of Jesus,” since in the Roman world Christianity needed to prove successful in its promise of deliverance from spiritual evil.[36]

In Mark’s complex matrix of powers and resistance, he repeatedly understood the demonic as “a hostile force bent on physically tormenting and afflicting people,” focused on “the destructive and debilitating physical power that demons wield over human beings.”[37] In recognizing the role of such ancient apocalyptic tradition in molding the thought and context of the New Testament, an interpreter can avoid misunderstanding how a writer like Mark intended his readers to understand Jesus’s prayer activity. If Mark understood Jesus as dealing with people suffering from demonic oppression in a world system influenced by an unseen realm of forces, then Jesus’s superior power to these forces—his ability to defeat them and provision for his followers to do the same—would have been central to his message. This, as I will argue, directly relates to Mark’s understanding of prayer.

Prayer In Mark In Light Of Conflicted Realms

The Synoptics portray prayer as affecting both the determination of God’s will “so that he responds by doing what he otherwise would not have done” and as aligning the attitude of the petitioner with God’s will.[38] The latter may be somewhat clearer in Mark, as Dowd notes,

[The author] has a concern not only to emphasize Jesus’s dependence on God’s power, but also to remind his community that it has no power of its own. By connecting miracle working with prayer and by presenting Jesus as a person of prayer, the evangelist makes the point that the power of the community to heal and exorcise depends entirely on believing prayer.[39]

Rather than Mark neglecting prayer or underemphasizing it, Dowd rightly says that his portrayal of Jesus praying “is intended by the evangelist to serve as a model for his community. . . . Mark wants to blame a neglect of prayer for a diminution of spiritual power of his community.”[40] This power related to prayer is important because of the conflict between the spiritual and temporal that Mark saw as part of human experience.

These observations granted, the resistance-oriented or apotropaic element of specific prayer texts in Mark becomes clearer. For Mark, the praying person can resist spiritual and temporal forces through the ritual practice of resistance-oriented prayer—invoking God’s more powerful and authoritative presence over the presence of other forces, whether malevolent spirits or bodily weakness. In a milieu of spiritual assaults by which humans suffer from temporal and spiritual weakness, prayer becomes a weapon that invokes “God’s power to affect events in the world in ways that are impossible for humans and other natural agents.”[41] In the context of exorcism, Mark’s inclusion of Jesus’s prayer at key points illustrates the human component of this resistance, which seeks not to destroy demonic powers but relocate them, realigning the right order of the spiritual and temporal realms and setting free those oppressed or influenced by renegade powers.[42] Jesus’s successful counter-demonic maneuvers, illustrated most clearly in 9:14–29, show him to be the one with superior power (as supported by prayer).

The Prayer Of Power In Mark 9:29

Jesus’s posttransfiguration exorcism pericope contains Mark’s principally distinctive power-oriented prayer text and informs other Markan prayer texts. The reader is told that the afflicted boy’s father approached Jesus, described his son’s affliction by attributing it to a spiritual source, and incited Jesus’s exasperation by saying, “I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able” (9:18, ESV). Responding differently than in other exorcism accounts in Mark, Jesus did not immediately act but questioned the father. Jesus appeared to ascertain the significance of the boy’s malady, possibly implying that Jesus assessed the level of influence or power of this spiritual affliction. In apotropaic fashion Jesus commanded the spirit to leave and never return. The details Mark included (such as crying, convulsing, and catatonia) suggest that the process was not immediate, possibly due to the spirit’s power. Later, in response to the disciples’ question about their own lack of ability to resist the spirit, Jesus explained, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer” (v. 29, NASB).[43]

Jesus’s statement is remarkable because he clearly associated prayer (προσευχῇ, an instrumental dative) with the ability to resist the spirit and force it to return to its place, which was made possible by a superior source of spiritual power. This does not only refer to one act of prayer right before the instance but rather to a persistent, ritual practice of praying.[44] Mark’s inclusion of Jesus’s practice of solitary retreat and prayer before the transfiguration (as in 6:46) suggests that Jesus’s special practice in such times was intended to illustrate to Mark’s readers that they could have the faith-filled power to resist spiritual evil effectively, in contrast to the disciples’ ineffectiveness.[45]

Also remarkable, the synoptic parallels (Matt 17:14–19; Luke 9:37–42) omit Jesus’s statement in Mark 9:29. Matthew replaced it with a statement about the need for faith, and Luke excluded the final dialogue altogether. While many possible reasons for these differences may exist, it is clear that Mark perceived the role of prayer in this event differently than the other evangelists. The difference is important for establishing that Mark indeed intended to communicate a certain message about the nature and purpose of prayer, rather than neglecting the topic or communicating nothing unique about it.[46] In terms of the author’s message, highlighting the disciples’ failure (and subsequent correction) shows that Jesus was not the only one engaging in these conflicts between the physical and divine spheres; his followers (and by implication Mark’s community) were also engaged. It is as if Mark told his community through this pericope, “This is why prayer is necessary in your struggle against the spiritual and temporal conflict you are facing.”

Nygaard points out that “the power of Jesus is highlighted in this scene.”[47] While Matthew’s Gospel highlights faith as a source of spiritual efficacy in Jesus’s response to the disciples (and thus faithlessness as the explanation of the disciples’ relative impotence), Mark associates faith with prayer here (in his denunciation of the “faithless generation” and his call for the father to be “one who believes”) and in 11:23–24. Even so, in this instance there is an assumption that faith brings about efficacious prayer, which is a major component of effectively resisting other powers. As Nygaard observes, “the integrated worldview of Mark” reveals that “power is administered or even transferred through prayer.”[48] Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’s prayer practices suggests that this powerful prayer (or the faith that inspired it) does not arise precipitously but results from sustained practice.

Werline argues that verses like 9:29 not only show it is necessary to read Mark “within the matrix of demonic powers” but also to understand that Mark clearly and uniquely emphasizes prayer as “a prophylactic against demonic forces.”[49] Werline goes a step further than this, tying Mark’s language in verse 29 to his idea of a conflicted universe. He writes, “More than just simply depicting prayer as a one-to-one remedy for withstanding demonic forces, in Mark the act becomes a means through which the believer participates in and experiences the cosmic struggle between the kingdom of God and Satan.”[50] Likewise, I argue that this conflict motif is woven so thoroughly throughout the tapestry of Mark’s narrative that the mention of prayer as an effective means of resistance in verse 29 is exceptionally significant. For example, just as Jesus’s apotropaic pronouncement and spiritual power drive the spirit from the boy, his pronouncement and power calm the raging sea in 4:39. As the narrative continues after chapter 9, Mark casts both the Roman empire and Jerusalem’s religious leaders in a negative light, associating them with Jesus’s spiritual struggle against evil as he proceeds to Jerusalem (cf. 3:19–30). Thus the disciples learn the importance of prayer in this struggle, whether against an evil from the spiritual realm or against the evil authorities in the temporal realm. Either way, Mark’s rhetoric suggests that he saw both representing forces contrary to God’s kingdom and therefore to be resisted. Whether spiritual or temporal, the resistance of these forces requires spiritual power. Mark 9:29 provides a seminal text, illustrating prayer as a means of resistance.

The Prayer Against Constitutional Weakness In Mark 14:38

Jesus’s teaching on prayer in his distress in Gethsemane is the second-most significant of the Markan prayer texts, which clarifies the remaining prayer texts (and his general view of prayer). Distinct from 9:29, Jesus exhorted the disciples to pray for temporal power in their bodies to resist the weakness of the flesh instead of spiritual power to resist the demonic.[51] This illustrates Mark’s view of prayer in light of overlapping, conflicted realms—prayer in 9:29 assumes the reality of opposition from malevolent spiritual forces, and 14:38 assumes opposition from temporal sources of temptation arising from the weakness of one’s own faculties.

This teaching is also unique in that it is one of only two places in Mark’s Gospel where the evangelist has Jesus using σὰρξ (cf. 10:8). Mark’s use here suggests the idea of “two opposed faculties within humans, the ‘flesh’ and the ‘spirit.’ . . . The flesh is able to be tempted, leading them not to pray. However, the spirit is able to pray and display faith. On this account, prayer is a way of changing the human person.”[52] Just as the spiritual force overcame the boy in the earlier pericope and had to be resisted and driven out by a greater power, so also Mark portrays the spirit in conflict with and overcoming the physical nature through prayer. In these key instances, Mark’s Jesus teaches prayer as part of the essential response to both the cosmic conflict between the spiritual and temporal realms and the personal, constitutional conflict between flesh and spirit. In both contexts “prayer opens for the power of God to work for and in the pray-er.”[53]

Many scholars see a didactic purpose in the prayer texts in the Synoptics. Indeed, in the broader Gethsemane scene (14:32–42) Jesus’s prayers carry an exemplary function for the disciples.[54] While Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’s personal, solitary prayer retreats in 1:35 and 6:46 may have been instructive for his audience, these retreats did not involve the disciples. However, in the Gethsemane scene Jesus involved the disciples (most directly the inner circle), only withdrawing by himself a small distance. Although they failed to support him in his travail due to fatigue, it appears that Jesus intended for these disciples to pray as well. Mark 14:38 makes it clear that the earlier commands to “sit” and “watch” with him (vv. 32, 34) included praying. Werline correctly notes a connection between Jesus’s Gethsemane prayers and spiritual conflict, pointing out that Mark tends to associate the Romans (and the religious leaders) with spiritual evil. In Gethsemane the disciples’ failure to pray shows they “are not able to endure the time of trial, forsaking Jesus to face the empire alone.”[55] Therefore, while the larger scene incorporates different aspects of Mark’s view of prayer (including aspects shared in 1:35; 6:46; and 11:23–25), it more clearly elucidates Mark’s view of resistance-oriented prayer as formed by his understanding of spiritual and temporal conflict.

The Prayers Of Personal Preparation And Renewal In 1:35 And 6:46

Jesus’s evidently regular practice of retreating to solitary places to pray was a significant enough behavior for all the Synoptics to report it.[56] Mark’s inclusion of these instances is notable. First, he reported that the retreats tended to occur strategically—after sustained engagements with crowds, before significant acts of miraculous power, or before conflicts with religious authorities. Further, the events that follow each retreat in Mark’s Gospel were definitive enough to be reported in at least two other Gospels, suggesting a place of eminence in the early tradition.[57] For example, after Jesus’s first retreat in 1:35, he cleansed a leprous man and then healed a paralytic lowered through a roof in Capernaum. Resistance from the scribes followed because of Jesus’s statements on spiritual authority regarding forgiveness and due to his association with society’s lower strata. Likewise, after Jesus’s mountaintop retreat in 6:46, he walked on water and healed many infirmities. Then he found himself in a conflict with the religious authorities over ritual traditions.

The intentional arrangement of material (particularly prayer preceding powerful acts or conflicts) does not imply that Mark’s Jesus had less or no power apart from his ritual practice.[58] It would be incorrect to suggest that Mark saw Jesus’s prayer as the source of his power and authority. Mark’s Christology consistently pictures Jesus as one whose power and authority are inherent to himself, given his identity as confirmed by God, and not purely as a result of his practices.[59] For example, Mark reports powerful actions by Jesus that are not explicitly preceded by prayer, such as the raising of Jairus’s daughter in 5:35–43 and the feeding of the five thousand in 8:1–10. But the fact that these retreats are included at key narrative junctures related to the revelation of Jesus’s authority and power should not be seen as inconsequential. Rather these occurrences are better understood as having a didactic, exemplary function to Mark’s audience.[60] Mark’s rhetoric backs this up. His repeated focus on the prayerlessness of the disciples in 9:29 and 14:38 suggests that he is not arguing that Jesus would be spiritually inefficacious without prayer but rather that his audience would be spiritually inefficacious without it. Jesus, with his inherent spiritual power and his necessary physical limitations, illustrates in his own ritual practice the need for communion with God that produces the supernatural ability to withstand temporal conflict and resist spiritual powers. Jesus can overcome spiritual opposition because of who he is. That is not true for his disciples, whose power and authority are mediated and limited and who fail to understand prayer as an element of their resistance. Also, though secondary, these retreats correspond to the idea of prayer in 14:38, in that this solitary practice relates to Jesus’s need, in his humanity, to overcome physical weakness, fatigue, or overstimulation—all potentially leading to an inability to stand against opposition.

These retreats are also notable because they differentiate the prayer rituals that Jesus practiced from the prayer rituals of the religious authorities, offering a backdrop to his statements about the ways that others pray. In his denunciation of the scribes in 12:38–40, Jesus noted that “for a pretense” they “make long prayers,” advising his disciples against such practices. Jesus opposed at least two things here: disingenuous prayer and prayer done publicly for the sake of being seen by others. Matthew’s parallel (6:5) associates such actions with hypocrisy because they are done with others (not God) in mind.

With the analysis of the prayers in Mark 9:29 and 14:38 in view, the importance of these solitary retreats begins to take a different shape. Assuming Mark understood prayer to have a resistance-oriented role in a world defined by spiritual-temporal conflict, I suggest that these regular times of prayer should be understood as displaying, in a didactic and exemplary fashion, a preparative quality. That is, Mark saw access to God and communion with God as a contributing factor in the ability to bolster faith, display spiritual power, and resist forces that others cannot. Although Mark reported only Jesus’s acts of retreating and not the details of his prayers, their strategic placement within his narrative suggests he intended his audience to see the apotropaic importance of this sort of ritual action in their own context. Just as Jesus turned to prayer before particular instances of opposition from spiritual forces, religious authorities, and the power of the empire, so also must Mark’s audience develop these regular practices of prayer for their spiritual empowerment.

The Prayer Of Faith To Change Circumstances In 11:23–25

While it appears 11:23–25 does not directly relate to conflict or resistance, it is just as much in line with these notions as any of the previous prayer texts, if not more.[61] Mark understood the Jerusalem temple as having come “under imperial and demonic influence . . . because the priestly elite have assisted in administering Roman rule in Judea.”[62] Since Jesus (presumably) referred to the temple mount as “this mountain,” he was actually arguing that “even the agent of imperial power in Judea may be brought down through the practice of prayer.”[63] A reorientation of verses 23–25 around this understanding of the temple would place this pericope in line with the resistance-oriented prayer language found in 9:29. While 11:24 appears to be a general saying or principle about prayer extrapolated from the previous verse, this view of verse 23 provides a way of viewing this passage in the context of powerful, resistance-oriented prayer.[64]

Even if this underlying connection is denied, this passage illustrates important aspects of the relationship Mark saw between the spiritual and temporal, aspects key to Jesus’s view of prayer and spiritual power. Jesus’s teaching here is different than in the previous passages because it seems to be more about the faith that underlies the prayer rather than the prayer itself. But the general similarity lies in the fact that the prayer still moves the spiritual realm to influence temporal circumstances.[65] Jesus’s saying affirms that the power to change circumstances belongs to God, but access to such power involves the person praying. This forms a basic assumption common to Mark’s various prayer texts and illustrates his understanding of the overlap between the physical and spiritual. As Dowd puts it, “the relationships established in the text between the power of God to do the impossible, faith as confidence in God’s power, and prayer as the practice which provides access to God’s power need to be understood if the theology of the evangelist is to be appreciated fully.”[66] This theology assumes that sufficient power does not reside in the temporal realm of the person praying, but that God’s power must be accessed from the spiritual realm by faith-filled prayer. Otherwise, the result will be a faith that is insufficient to bring about changed circumstances.

This idea that prayer accesses God’s power to change circumstances also appears in Jesus’s brief mention of prayer in the Olivet Discourse. In 13:18 Jesus exhorted the disciples to pray that the future tribulation “might not happen in winter,” which suggests that Mark’s Jesus saw future circumstances as not entirely fixed but rather open to alteration based on the intercession of Christ’s followers. This provides another example of the immense power Mark associated with prayer, suggesting that without it, present and future events would be worse than they would have been if no one had prayed. These verses provide more insight into Mark’s world, one in which a significant overlap between the spiritual and the temporal occurs, and in which spiritual power can be accessed or resisted through prayer.

Markan Prayer As Distinct From Matthew And Luke

Mark’s treatment of prayer has suffered neglect at the hands of scholars who prefer to focus on the Matthean and Lukan prayer material.[67] The absence of scholarship on Markan prayer language is due in part to neglect of the fact that the evangelists highlighted different points of view when they mentioned prayer. Scholars have generally grouped most synoptic prayer texts under an eschatological umbrella, presuming the evangelists had largely didactic concerns. That is, it is typically argued that Matthew and Luke were focused on instructing the earliest communities on living prayerfully during the delay of the parousia.[68] Some propose that for Luke prayer can be understood in light of the theme of self-denying discipleship; as for the author, “persistent prayer is proposed as a means for the disciples to live out this demand during the period between the two aspects of the kingdom of God.”[69] In Matthew there is still a sense of significant overlap between the spiritual and temporal, but the focus is more strongly theocentric, with prayer language involving “compliance with God’s will and a continued relation.”[70] While Mark narrated Jesus’s prayers for didactic and exemplary purposes, he did not do so in precisely the same way as the other evangelists.

The Gospel authors had different emphases and intentions in their inclusion of prayer texts. Matthew and Luke put forth the idea of prayer as resistance to opposition but without the same emphases as Mark. For example, Luke’s Jesus prayed for Peter that his “faith may not fail,” a prayer of resistance by intercession.[71] In fact, Jesus specified that his intercessory resistance was in response to the forces of spiritual evil, namely Satan, coming against the disciples.[72] Luke’s Gospel also follows Mark, reporting that “before Jesus faced opposition, he spent time with God” in prayer.[73] Lastly, the final portion of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:4), incorporated by Matthew and Luke, contains a clear element of prayer’s role in resistance—acknowledging that while “the power of sin and iniquity exist and buffet believers,” prayer can affect these forces.[74] Matthew’s version most clearly emphasizes resistance-oriented prayer in the final clause, “deliver us from evil” (6:13, ESV). Both the penultimate petition against temptation and the last petition of deliverance assume, as does Mark, that the early Christians primarily struggled against spiritual and temporal opposition stemming from the flesh and the devil. While the two later evangelists used Markan material and shared aspects of his worldview, their primary emphases and purposes in including prayer texts in their narratives were distinct from Mark’s, which reflects a more apocalyptic and apotropaic focus.

Conclusion

As Cullman observes, “Two facts about prayer in the New Testament are basic: that Jesus prayed and that Jesus taught his disciples to pray.”[75] However, not every evangelist’s understanding or portrayal of the nature and purpose of prayer was the same. This study has argued that spiritual and demonic opposition was of cardinal importance to Mark and his community so that opposition was uniquely emphasized. Mark’s prayer language shows that he and his readers understood the world in light of cosmic conflict, perceived a close connection between the temporal and spiritual realms, and understood resistance against spiritual and temporal forces to be a significant function of prayer. For Mark, Jesus’s actions and teaching on prayer uniquely illustrate how his early Christian community understood prayer’s role as an apotropaic ritual practice that was necessary in a world of spiritual and temporal forces, which required spiritual power to resist.

While the didactic purposes, apocalyptic concerns, and eschatological focuses of the Gospel of Mark must be recognized, I have contended that scholars have overlooked the particular ways in which Mark understood the nature and purpose of prayer and the nuances of his narrative portrayals. Prayer cannot just be understood as the spiritual practice of a disciple; it also needs to be understood in light of the practical outworking of Mark’s basic understanding of cosmic conflict and the action needed to militate against spiritual and natural evil, and temporal weakness, which all overlap and interconnect.

As it relates to prayer, such an analysis provides significant insight into the earliest Christian spirituality and how that differs from Christian spirituality twenty centuries later. Indeed, Mark’s community inhabited a conflicted and chaotic world. A unified sense of their ability to resist other forces and powers would have been necessary for the evangelist to highlight in his account of Jesus’s spirituality. While Mark portrays Jesus as victorious over the powers the early Christians faced, “victory is not seen as automatic. A choice must be made between faith on the one hand and destruction at the hand of Satan and demons on the other.”[76] Prayer played an essential role in resisting and claiming victory over those opposing forces.

Notes

1. P. T. O’Brien, “Prayer in Luke-Acts,” Tyndale Bulletin 24.1 (1973): 116.
2. Richard N. Longenecker, ed., Into God’s Presence: Prayer in the New Testament, McMaster New Testament Studies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), xi.
3. Longenecker, xi.
4. David E. Aune, “Prayer,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual, ed. Risto Uro et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 246.
5. Esther G. Chazon and Moshe J. Bernstein, “An Introduction to Prayer at Qumran,” in Prayer from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology, ed. Mark Kiley et al. (London: Routledge, 1997), 10. This is a definition consistent with a Second Temple Jewish perspective.
6. John J. Collins, “Prayer and the Meaning of Ritual in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Prayer and Poetry in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honor of Eileen Schuller on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday, ed. Jeremy Penner, Ken M. Penner, and Cecilia Wassen, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 98 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 71.
7. Collins, “Prayer and the Meaning of Ritual,” 72.
8. Ritual is practice, and practice determines community identity. For more on how this relates to Mark and his community, see Elizabeth E. Shively, “What Type of Resistance? How Apocalyptic Discourse Functions as Social Discourse in Mark’s Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 37.4 (2015): 392.
9. For prayers in these texts that are oriented around apocalyptic themes and assume the efficacy of prayer in altering circumstances, cf. Daniel 9; 2 Baruch 48:2–24; and 4 Ezra 8:19–36.
10. An example is the Iliad I.445–57. For examples chronologically closer to Mark, see Cato the Elder, de Agricultura 141; and Valerius Maximus, Facta et Deicta Memorabilia 1.1.1. Many invocations were not dissimilar in form to the “come, Lord Jesus” of Revelation 22. In Greek texts spanning the Republican and early Imperial periods, there was a “narrative” part of prayer justifying the petition, but these are not always included in extant texts. Ritual prayer was significant enough that Pliny the Elder said, “A sacrifice without prayer is thought to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods” (Naturalis Historia 28.10).
11. Larry J. Alderink and Luther H. Martin, “Prayer in Greco-Roman Religions,” in Kiley, Prayer from Alexander to Constantine, 123–26.
12. Aune, “Prayer,” 260.
13. Alderink and Martin, “Prayer in Greco-Roman Religions,” 125.
14. Asher Finkel, “Prayer in Jewish Life of the First Century as Background to Early Christianity,” in Longenecker, Into God’s Presence, 48. Shamoneh Esrah is an example of a liturgical Jewish prayer with petitions and praise. The examples of Jesus’s pre-meal thanksgiving in Mark’s Gospel (8:6; 14:23) are consistent with Second Temple Jewish practice.
15. Eileen M. Schuller, “Prayer in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Longenecker, Into God’s Presence, 74–75.
16. This text is highlighted by Robert J. Karris, Prayer and the New Testament: Jesus and His Communities at Worship (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 28.
17. Eileen M. Schuller, “Prayer at Qumran,” in Prayer from Tobit to Qumran: Inaugural Conference of the ISDCL at Salzburg, Austria,5–9 July 2003, ed. Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 419.
18. Giovanni B. Bazzana, Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in the Early Christ Groups, Synkrisis 9 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 65.
19. Bonnie Thurston, “Prayer in the New Testament,” in Kiley, Prayer from Alexander to Constantine, 207.
20. Oscar Cullman, Prayer in the New Testament, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 71.
21. Bazzana, Having the Spirit of Christ, 68.
22. For example, see Sharyn Dowd, Reading Mark: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Second Gospel, Reading the New Testament (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2000), 1–8; Vernon K. Robbins, “The Intertexture of Apocalyptic Discourse in Mark,” in The Intertexture of Apocalyptic Discourse in the New Testament, ed. Duane F. Watson, Symposium Series 14 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 11–44; Marius Nel, “The Gospel of Mark in Light of Its Apocalyptic Worldview,” Journal of Early Christian History 4.1 (2014): 135–48; and Greg Carey, Apocalyptic Literature in the New Testament, Core Biblical Studies (Nashville: Abingdon, 2016), 73–79.
23. Elizabeth E. Shively, Apocalyptic Imagination in the Gospel of Mark: The Literary and Theological Role of Mark 3:22–30, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 189 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 1.
24. Shively, 2.
25. For a recent treatment of these apocalyptic features in Mark, see Grant Macaskill, “Apocalypse and the Gospel of Mark,” in The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought, ed. Benjamin E. Reynolds and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 53–77.
26. Shively, Apocalyptic Imagination, 21.
27. 1QM is important because it follows the idea that there is a spiritual war that parallels a temporal conflict, wherein angelic hosts aid the Sons of Light in victory over their oppressors that are paralleled with Belial and the Sons of Darkness. Victory in this conflict leads to God’s temporal blessing of the people and the restoration of their land and status. Related to prayer, 1QM 10:1–11:2 beseeches God to intervene in this conflict. Additionally, Jubilees 10:3 incorporates similar terminology, written in a similar period.
28. This perspective has been argued by Howard C. Kee, Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1983), 65.
29. Herman C. Waetjen takes this perspective in A Reordering of Power: A Socio-Political Reading of Mark’s Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 82–84.
30. Mark’s Gospel, for example, depicts Jesus as an exorcist, while John’s Gospel does not report his exorcistic activity. For an elaboration on the significance in the difference of these portraits, see Graham H. Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 101–208.
31. For example, Satan “tests” (πειραζόμενος) Jesus in the wilderness in 1:13; the Pharisees “test” (πειράζοντες) Jesus by asking for a sign in 8:11; demons try to “destroy” (ἀπολέσῃ) the boy in 9:22; and the religious leaders try to “destroy” (ἀπολέσωσιν) Jesus in 3:6.
32. Shively, “What Type of Resistance?,” 402.
33. April D. DeConick, “What Is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?,” in Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, ed. April D. DeConick, Symposium Series 11 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 6.
34. Matthew Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death: The Gospels’ Portrayal of Ritual Impurity within First-Century Judaism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 125. Long before Mark, the ancient Akkadian Udug-hul text (8.73–75) attests that even Israel’s neighbors had, in Thiessen’s words, a “robust demonology,” as well as apotropaic practices. There are affirmations of demonic activity in Josephus, Pseudo-Philo, and the Babylonian Talmud as well.
35. Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death, 126.
36. Thiessen, 129.
37. Thiessen, 133. In my view scholars overemphasize the possible allegorical meaning of evil or impure spirits. Various scholars attempt to render activities like exorcism as a sort of proxy for marginalization or oppression in the context of Roman imperialism. However the “otherness” of evil spirits is conceptualized today, it is clear that Mark and his community thought of demons as real, evil spiritual beings to be resisted by believers. Mark likely saw Rome as a spiritual evil, but it is an overreach to suggest that Mark invented stories involving spiritual powers simply for an allegorical purpose, although some may see them allegorically today.
38. I. Howard Marshall, “Jesus—Example and Teacher of Prayer in the Synoptic Gospels,” in Longenecker, Into God’s Presence, 130. The Gethsemane prayer (Mark 14:36), for example, holds both elements in tension.
39. Sharyn Echols Dowd, Prayer, Power, and the Problem of Suffering: Mark 11:22–25 in the Context of Markan Theology, SBL Dissertation Series 105 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 117.
40. Dowd, 120.
41. Dowd, 103.
42. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of the Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 184.
43. A famous text-critical question exists regarding the addition of καὶνηστείᾳ to the passage (τοῦτο τὸ γένος ἐν οὐδενὶ δύναται ἐξελθεῖν εἰ μὴ ἐν προσευχῇ). I concur with scholars who argue that the phrase is unoriginal and likely reflected Byzantine-era scribal attempts to harmonize Mark’s text with ritual practices of a later generation. Additionally, the absence of καὶνηστείᾳ from Clement’s citation of this passage in his eclogue propheticae 15.1 points to prayer alone being original to the saying. For further clarification on this view, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (New York: American Bible Society, 1994), 85.
44. Some scholars have suggested that this simply refers to the general necessity of prayer and not to a regular practice. For this perspective, see Eckhard J. Schnabel, Mark, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 219. For the view that this is indeed a sustained practice, see R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 369–70.
45. Mara Rescio, “Demons and Prayer: Traces of Jesus’ Esoteric Teaching from Mark to Clement of Alexandria,” Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 31.1 (2014): 70. Rescio rightly points out that Mark in his narrative skill casts Jesus’s actions in an exemplary light for the sake of informing the practices of his own community and the formation of their communal identity.
46. For example, Marshall states of Matthew’s Gospel that “no significant difference in the treatment of prayer, as compared with Mark’s treatment, can be detected” (“Jesus—Example and Teacher,” 114). In my view, in light of Mark 9:29, this opinion of prayer in Mark is incorrect. While similar language on prayer in Matthew or Luke is not absent, nowhere in either Gospel is spiritually apotropaic or resistance-oriented prayer language as clear as it is in Mark.
47. Mathias Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels: A Theological Exegesis of the Ideal Pray-er, Biblical Interpretation Series 114 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 83.
48. Nygaard, 81.
49. Rodney A. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer and Resistance to Demonic Powers in the Gospel of Mark,” in Experientia, vol. 1, Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Frances Flannery, Colleen Shantz, and Rodney A. Werline, Symposium Series 40 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 61.
50. Werline, 62.
51. Even though Jesus had just spoken to Peter, the second-person plural pronoun means this was intended for all the disciples.
52. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 106. I take this view in contrast to scholars who suggest that “spirit” here refers to the divine spirit and thus the passage does not involve inner conflict. For an example of this contrary perspective, see Cornelis Bennema, “Whose Spirit Is Eager? The Referent of Πνεῦμα in Mark 14:38 and the Intended Comparison,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 110.1 (2019), 104–14. For an overview of the scholarly debate on the reading of this phrase, see David E. Aune, “ ‘The Spirit Is Willing, but the Flesh Is Weak’ (Mark 14:38b and Matt. 26:41b),” in Reading Religions in the Ancient World: Essays Presented to Robert McQueen Grant on His 90th Birthday, ed. David E. Aune and Robin Darling Young, Novum Testamentum Supplement 125 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 123–39.
53. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 106.
54. See Larry W. Hurtado, Mark, New International Biblical Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989), 242; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermenia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 681; and Mary Healy, The Gospel of Mark, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 458; and Schnabel, Mark, 365–66. The wording in this passage probably gave rise to the widely attested variant καιπροσεύχεσθε in 13:33. Although the parallel passage in Luke 21:36 indicates that Luke understood prayer as the focus, the parallel passage in Matthew 24:42 does not have it. While it has a higher likelihood of authenticity than the variant in 9:29, it is still more likely the phrase was added later with a view to harmonization. Even if original, Mark’s intention would be similar to his intention in 14:38, except with a view to the future rather than the present.
55. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer,” 67.
56. See Matthew 14:23 and Luke 4:42; 5:16; 6:12. In Mark 1:35 the imperfect verb suggests a prolonged period of praying.
57. Matthew 8:2–4 and Luke 5:12–14 record Jesus’s cleansing of the leprous man. Matthew 9:2–8 and Luke 5:18–26 report the healing of the paralytic (and the subsequent controversies). Matthew 14:22–33 and John 6:16–21 recount Jesus walking on water. Only Matthew directly repeats the conflict over traditions (15:1–28), but Luke may have reformed this or a similar instance in 11:37–41, which follows an important time of prayer (v. 1), as well as significant prayer teaching (vv. 2–13).
58. Earlier form-critical approaches argued that Mark’s Gospel “is not a carefully planned literary composition” (Vincent Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark:The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indexes [London: Macmillan, 1966], 6). However, recent approaches such as narrative criticism have given more credit to the author for his strategic placement of pericopes in the organization of his narrative. For example, see David B. Peabody, Mark as Composer, New Gospel Studies (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 116–17; John Paul Heil, “The Narrative Strategy and Pragmatics of the Temple Theme in Mark,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 59.1 (1997): 100; Robert L. Humphrey, Narrative Structure and Message in Mark: A Rhetorical Analysis, Studies in the Bible and Early Chistianity (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2003), 242–43; Kelly R. Iverson and Christopher W. Skinner, eds., Mark as Story: Retrospect and Prospect (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 115–64; and Helen K. Bond, The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 90–120.
59. A recent monograph illustrates this relationship between Jesus’s power and identity: Andrew J. Kelley, Thaumaturgic Prowess: Autonomous and Dependent Miracle-Working in Mark’s Gospel and the Second Temple Period, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.491 (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2019).
60. Contra M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 68. Boring argues that this has no exemplary function but rather solely a christological one with Mark simply pointing to the humanity of Jesus. While Boring rightly notes that Jesus’s prayer here is not necessary for his power, that does not mean Mark intended for it to have no exemplary value. Boring asserts instead that Mark’s focus is christological, contrasting Jesus’s humanity with more exalted portrayals elsewhere as the Son of God. The retreats highlight his physical limitations, but the emphasis is not only (or even primarily) christological. For interpreters who see this as having an exemplary role, see Hurtado, Mark, 29; and Timothy J. Geddert, Mark, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottsdale, PA: Herald, 2001), 50.
61. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer,” 67. Another scholar who argues for this view is Kirk R. MacGregor, “Understanding ‘If Anyone Says to This Mountain…’ (Mark 11:20–25) in Its Religio-Historical Context,” Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics 2.1 (2009): 23–40.
62. Werline, “The Experience of Prayer,” 67.
63. Werline, 67. Karl-Heinrich Ostmeyer notes that much of this section in Mark—Jesus’s actions and teaching on prayer—should be understood as a rejection of temple practices. Kommunikation mit Gott und Christus: Sprache und Theologie des Gebetes im Neuen Testament, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 197 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 222.
64. This view is articulately defended by Heil, “The Narrative Strategy,” 96–100. The possible difficulty in assuming this meaning is that Jesus’s saying about the power of faith-filled prayer to move the mountain in 11:23 is followed by διὰτοῦτο in verse 24, meaning that verse 23 illustrates the broader principle of verse 24. If verse 23 merely illustrates verse 24, Jesus’s anti-establishment logic becomes less opaque. If reversed, the verse order strengthens this argument.
65. On the concept of faith in Mark’s Gospel, see Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Markan Faith,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81.1–2 (2017): 31–60.
66. Dowd, Prayer,Power, and the Problem of Suffering, 96.
67. Dowd, 2.
68. Kyu Sam Han, “Theology of Prayer in the Gospel of Luke,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 43.4 (2000): 692. Such a view follows Hans Conzelmann, who is credited as originally emphasizing this. Die Mitte der Zeit: Studien zur Theologie des Lukas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1954).
69. Han, “Theology of Prayer,” 693. Han argues that prayer for Luke is more focused on suffering than resistance, writing that “through prayer, Jesus not only copes with the present conflicts but also prepares himself for his destiny of taking up the cross” (681). For a scholar who incorporates both ideas, see O’Brien, Prayer in Luke-Acts, 112–21.
70. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 42.
71. Han, “Theology of Prayer,” 684. See Luke 22:31–32. One might also say that Jesus’s prayer for the disciples in John 17:15 fits within this category, suggesting that the issues of conflicted realms or kingdoms and spiritual resistance or protection by prayer also proved a significant issue for the Johannine community as they did for Mark’s community.
72. The second-person pronoun Jesus uses for the object of Satan’s attacks is plural.
73. Han, “Theology of Prayer,” 681. While Mark records two solitary retreats, Luke mentions both of these (5:16 and 6:12) as well as one additional time when Jesus specifically prayed alone (9:18). This does not include other times when he prayed but was not alone (as in 11:1 and 22:41).
74. Karris, Prayer and the New Testament, 28.
75. Cullman, Prayer in the New Testament, 7.
76. Nygaard, Prayer in the Gospels, 106.