Mark 10:35-45

The Request of the Sons of Zebedee. The Christian Standard of Greatness. In spite of anticipation of ill, the disciples continued to hope for a kingdom of worldly power, and to dispute as to their places in such a kingdom. Wellhausen claims that the reference to glory in Mark 10:37 is apocalyptic in character, and that the disciples may have been expecting a brief period of trial before the final splendour. If so, they have some dim idea that the cup and the baptism [75] mean suffering. They claim to be ready for it. The assurance of Jesus that they shall share His cup is held to point to the martyrdom of the two brothers. Perhaps it strengthens the tradition that John was martyred early in the Church's history, like James (p. 744; also Acts 12:2 *). But the passage might have been retained though John were still alive. The seats of honour are at God's disposal. The suggestion that this sentence is intended to leave room for Paul to take the highest place is probably mistaken. In the following discussion with the disciples, we have one of the great transmutations of values wherein Jesus dethroned Alexander the Great and Napoleon. The last phrase, to give his life a ransom for many has been attributed to the evangelist for the following reasons: (1) the parallel in Luke 22:26 stops short at this phrase; (2) the words suggest the Pauline doctrine of redemption, and may be derived from it; (3) vicarious sacrifice is here an unexpected and unnatural development of the idea of service. On the other hand, the actual phrase is not Pauline, and the reference to many is best interpreted by Isaiah 53:11 f. (See the penetrating discussion in Scott, The Kingdom and the Messiah, p. 221.) If Jesus anticipated His death He must have interpreted it as service and as redemptive service. Paul was not the earliest Paulinist.

[75] Moniten and Milligan, Vocabulary, p. 102, quote an illiterate papyrus of 2nd cent. B.C., where the passive of baptize must mean flooded or overwhelmed by calamities. Epictetus similarly uses it to mean sink.