Sandwiches might not be the first word which springs to mind when reading the Gospels. As a matter of context, it was Rabbi Hillel in the first-century BCE who is often credited with inventing the sandwich.1 Yet it is not Hillel’s literal sandwiches which I want to address in this piece, but Mark’s literary ones. What do I mean?
What is a Markan Sandwich?
In a bleak period for Markan studies in the early 20th century, Mark was often sidelined by scholars as a crude, unsophisticated work. Many went so far as to argue that Mark could not really be considered a work of literature at all. If it was literature, it was what K.L. Schmidt famously called Kleinliteratur – a common or low-brow work.
One influence on this position was the rise of form-criticism. The form-critics believed that Mark was comprised of a set of disparate oral traditions which share common sub-genres or ‘forms’. All that Mark had to do to compose his gospel, they believed, was to place these oral traditions side by side, like beads of a string. On this view, Mark was not an author but merely a chronicler of Jesus traditions.
There are certain parts of this portrait which are true. Mark was not a literary genius like Homer, and he probably did depend heavily on oral sources for his gospel. At the same time, the form-critical portrait of Mark as a chronicler of traditions, rather than an author who was shaping his sources creatively, is now completely bankrupt.
One reason why scholars abandoned this view of Mark as compiler was the rise of narrative criticism. This method applied the same sorts of analysis one finds in literary theory to Mark’s story, and showed that Mark employs a number of subtle literary techniques. These include foreshadowing, retrospection, type scenes, verbal threads, concentric episodes and progressive episodes in series of three.2
My favourite of these techniques is what scholars have come to call the ‘Markan sandwich.’ This occurs when Mark places one story within another (as the ‘filling’) – yet the filling is never random. Through a clever placement, Mark’s filling will somehow illuminate the meaning of the wider story going on, and vice versa. If we are not aware that Mark has done this, we might miss the meaning of the story.
By way of comparison, we might think of the ways in which movies often ‘nest’ one scene within another. By flicking between the primary scene and the cut scene, a juxtaposition is created which adds emotional depth or meaning to the scene. When a director pulls this off, it is a sign of cinematic artistry. So it is also with Mark.
My Favourite Markan Sandwich
Perhaps my favourite example of a Markan sandwich is the story of the Widow’s mite. This is the story of a widow who puts in just two small coins into the Temple treasury, while rich people are putting in much larger sums. Jesus draws out the lesson:
“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on’ (12:43-44)
Read on its own, this provides the pastoral lesson that we should give all that we are to God – it is not the amount that matters, but the heart with which we give.
But is this the meaning that Mark is trying to draw out? Note the two passages which come immediately before and after the passage. Jesus has just said this:
‘As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
Why does the widow have so little to give in the first place? It is precisely because of the scribes and religious elites, who ‘devour widow’s houses.’ In charging high fees for their services, taking over their estates, and encouraging the sorts of donations that we find in this very episode, the scribes exploited widows for their own financial gain.
Read with this background in mind, the Widow’s mite is transformed from a story about individual giving to a story of systematic oppression. As a result, the scribes will ‘receive the greater oppression.’ We see in the second part of the sandwich:
‘As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
We do not often see this condemnation of the Temple in connection to the previous story, because it is the beginning of a new chapter. But of course, the text was only divided by chapter and verse much later. In closing the Markan sandwich, we see the result of this kind of oppression: the Temple with its treasury will be destroyed.
There is then a kind of symbiotic relationship between these stories. On the one hand, the sandwich helps us understand why the widow is in the position she is in. On the other, we understand why the scribes and their Temple treasury will receive the fate that it does. Mark is showing us that there was a great cost to the exploitation of this widow to their religious economy which the scribes could not foresee.
Other Markan Sandwiches
These are not the only sandwiches with an A-B-A pattern which Mark serves us. While it is debated precisely how often Mark uses this technique, I want to draw your attention to two other sandwiches which are accepted by virtually all commentators.3
a. The Healing of Jairus’ Daughter
In Mark 5, our literary artist tells the story of a synagogue leader, Jairus, who falls at Jesus’ feet, begging Jesus to heal his daughter who is at the point of death. Jesus promptly follows Jairus (A), but is interrupted by a woman with a flow of blood, whom he heals (B) and then goes on to raise Jairus’ daughter, who is now ostensibly dead (A).
Why does Mark insert or ‘intercalate’ the story of the women with a flow of blood into the healing of Jairus’ daughter? It is possible that the miracle just played out in this fashion. But there is a subtle clue that Mark is deliberately connecting the healing of the woman and the girl. For he tells us that the woman has been suffering for ‘twelve years’ and he later goes on to introduce that the girl as ‘twelve years old.’
Mark is therefore inviting his readers to make a comparison – but of what kind?
One clear contrast is the status of the two females. The first is a girl, the daughter of a Synagogue leader with an important religious role; the other is a women whose ‘flow of blood’ would have rendered her ritually impure (Leviticus 15:19-30). Yet both are embraced by Jesus into the Kingdom; both are offered the gift of his healing presence.
Yet the other connecting thread is the issue of faith. Jesus tells the women with the flow of blood that her faith has made her well. And even when Jesus stops to heal the woman, Jairus continues to follow him, despite the protestations of Jairus’ friends that the girl is now dead. Faith is therefore the connective tissue between the two stories: what is decisive for faith is not one’s social standing, but belief in the power of Jesus.
b. The Story of the Fig Tree
Our final example of a Markan sandwich is a curious story about a fig tree. This episode begins in Mark 11, when Jesus inspects a fig tree to see if it has any figs. But the fig tree was not in season, and he curses it: ‘May no one ever eat from you ever again.’ The next day, when he comes out of the Temple, he sees that it is withered.
Taken on its own, this story does not make a great deal of sense. It almost appears that Jesus, who had not had anything to eat, curses the fig tree out of anger. Shortly afterwards, the withering of the fig tree demonstrates the power of his curse. But is that all that is happening in this narrative – a demonstration of Jesus’ power?
By now, we should recognise that we have been served a Markan sandwich, and we should be careful to see what’s inside it. Immediately after cursing the fig tree, Jesus enters the Temple and starts to cause trouble. He turns over the tables, stops the selling of doves, and quotes from Isaiah: ‘Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers’ (11:17).
Once we read the fig tree in connection to the Temple, we find the key to Jesus’ temple action. Just like the fig tree was not bearing fruit and was therefore cursed, so now the Temple itself is cursed and will soon reach its demise. This reading is confirmed by the fact that Mark uses the image of a fig tree, for figs are an image of judgement in the very same book, Isaiah, which Jesus uses to critique the Temple:
‘All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll; all their host shall wither like a leaf withering on a vine, or fruit withering on a fig tree’ (Isa. 34:4).
Here, Mark’s fig sandwich is a sign of what is about to occur. Drawing on Isaiah’s image of reckoning, Mark has composed a subtle parable of the Temple’s demise.
Being Served a Markan Sandwich
In closing, it might be argued that Mark’s sandwiching technique seems a rather coy way of adding depth to his life of Jesus. Many modern readers of the gospel will easily miss them. How then do we know that these are not simply in the eye of the reader?
One aspect that convinces me of that Mark is using sandwiches – beyond the internal coherence they convey – is the fact that other writers around the same time employed the same technique. For example, Lawrence Wills finds sandwiches in the Life of Aesop, a popular Greek biography of the fabulist written around the time of the Gospels.4 So while the sandwiches may not be obvious to we who are used to hearing individual stories read aloud, they might have been more obvious in the first-century.
Yet more importantly, I think that technique of sandwiching – a method which nestles meaning within meaning – feels like exactly the kind of thing that Mark would do. After all, this is a gospel in which Jesus obscures his meaning in parables, so that only those with ‘ears to hear and eyes to see’ will uncover their meaning. Mark has buried meaning deep within the gospel. Sandwiches are a key to uncovering it.
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Further Reading
James R. Edwards, “The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narrative,” NovT 31 (1989): 193-216.
David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel, 3rd ed (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012).
See Mishnah Pesachim 10:3; cf. Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 115a.
For an accessible yet comprehensive overview of Mark’s literary techniques, see David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, Donald Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel, 3rd ed (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012).
For an overview and analysis of possible episodes, see James R. Edwards, “The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narrative,” NovT 31 (1989): 193-216.
See Lawrence M. Wills, The Quest of the Historical Gopsel: Mark, John and the Origins of the Gospel Genre (London: Routledge, 1997), 31.