Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 179:715 (Jul 2022)
Article: Resisting Evil In The Spiritual Realm: Prayer In The Gospel Of Mark
Author: William B. Bowes

BSac 179:715 (July-September 2022) p. 306

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

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.

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.

BSac 179:715 (July-September 2022) p. 307

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...