‘From the earliest age, children beginning their studies are nursed on Homer’s teaching. One might say that while we were still in swathing bands we sucked from his epics as from fresh milk. He assists the beginner and later the adult... In no stage of life, from boyhood to old age, do we ever cease to drink from him.’1
Over the last few months, many of us flocked to see Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of the Odyssey. For a lot of viewers here in England, where Homer is not part of the national curriculum, this might have been their first encounter with the poet.
In ancient Greek culture and education, however, Homer was ubiquitous. As the quotation above from a contemporary of the gospel writers indicates, Homer was a sine qua non of Greek schooling. To be taught was to be taught Homer. To learn to read and write was to do so with Homer as a constant companion and guide.
According to Plato and Xenophon, the most exceptional students would memorise the whole of the Iliad and the Odyssey.2 Yet even for those who could not achieve such feats of memory, Homer’s presence was unavoidable. In a catalogue of papyri preserved from Graeco-Roman Egypt, over six hundred of the manuscripts were Homer. The next best-attested authors, Demosthenes and Hesiod, did not even come close (with seventy-seven and seventy-two manuscripts, respectively).3
What though did this ‘Homeric’ education involve? One of the striking differences between modern and ancient schooling lay in the emphasis placed by the latter on imitation – what the Greeks called imitatio and the Romans mimesis. In part, this involved paraphrasing Homer’s words, so much that they would become part of one’s own mental furniture. As the first-century BC rhetorician, Philodemus, asks: ‘Who could claim that the writing of prose is not reliant on the Homeric poems?’4
A brief perusal of Graeco-Roman literature reveals that the answer to Philodemus’ question was very few. Just as our English language bears the mark of Shakespeare and the KJV, so Homeric allusions were abundant in classical literature. While other works consciously worked with the Homeric epics – most famously, Virgil’s Aeneid.
All of this raises an unavoidable question: did Homeric influence extend to the gospels? Did the gospel writers also pepper their works with Homeric allusions?
Though most scholars find only little – if any – influence of Homer upon the gospels, there are a few scholars who have argued that Homer’s presence is felt strongly in the gospels and Acts. Of these, the most ambitious is Dennis R. MacDonald, whose tome, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (Yale, 2000), argues that Homer heavily shaped the composition of Mark’s gospel.5
In this piece, I want to explore MacDonald’s theory with a closer look at the Odyssey. Where does he see points of contact with the Odyssey and Mark? Why do many scholars today remain unconvinced that Mark constructs a Homeric mimesis? And what – if anything – can a student of the gospels learn from reading Homer today?
Mark as Homeric Epic
MacDonald sets out a vast number of parallels between Mark’s gospel and Homer’s Odyssey. Here I sketch the bare outline of these comparisons. (For those who haven’t read or seen the Odyssey, this may be where you want to check out!)
Woodworking: In Mark, Jesus is presented as a tektōn, someone who works with hard materials including wood. Similarly, Odysseus is explicitly described as a skilled tektõn, who had built his own palace and designed the Trojan horse.
Hometown reception: Both Jesus and Odysseus receive a negative reception in their hometown. In Mark, the people of Nazareth refuse to believe him or accept him for who he is, while Odysseus is met with opposition by his wife’s suitors.
Supernatural opposition: Both Jesus and Odysseus face opposition from supernatural forces. In Mark, these are demons and the wild demoniac. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is continually frustrated in his plans to return home by his lover Calypso, the witch Circe, the god Poseidon and the cyclops, Polyphemus.
Foolish companions: Jesus journeys to the cross with twelve foolish companions, who repeatedly misunderstand his mission and finally abandon him. Similarly, Odysseus travels with foolish companions who eventually die together. In both cases, the disciples start out promising, only to fail in their mission.
Suffering: Mark’s Jesus is marked by suffering, particularly towards the end of the gospel. In a similar way, the Odyssey emphasises the suffering of Odysseus.
Plot to Kill Jesus: In Mark, there is a plot from the outset of the gospel to kill Jesus, which heightens towards his passion, where Jesus talks of the Jewish authorities as tenants of a vineyard who kill the son of the vineyard owner. In the Odyssey, there is a plot from Penelope’s suitors to kill, Telemachus, Odysseus’ ‘beloved son’. They too have taken over Odysseus’ home while he is away.
Cleansing the Temple: In Mark, Jesus purifies his father’s temple by driving out those who have corrupted it. At the end of the Odyssey, Odysseus arrives home and drives out Penelope’s suitors who have been living off his generosity.
The Messianic Secret: One of Mark’s most famous motifs is the so-called Messianic secret, in which Jesus repeatedly hides or obscures his identity. Similarly, Odysseus obscures his identity, most notably in the second half of the book, lest Penelope’s suitors kill him.
Sailing: In one book, Odysseus falls asleep at the ‘stern’ (prugmnés) of the boat, and a great wind (amenoi) afflicts them; his companions claim they were ‘lost’ (apōlothem’) and Oddyseus ‘wakes’. This is similar language to that which Mark uses, when Jesus falls asleep at the stern of the boat during a storm.
Swine: In Mark, Jesus sails to a region, where he sends swine (representing a ‘legion’ of soldiers) into the sea, after his encounter with the Gerasene demoniac, before sailing off. In the Odyssey, Odysseus requests that his own soldiers, who have been turned into swine by the witch Circe, turn back into soldiers.
Monstrosities: In Mark, Jesus encounters a wild demoniac who lives out among the caves and can’t be constrained with chains. In the Odyssey, Odysseus encounters the terrifying cyclops, Polyphemus, a creature of enormous strength. In Mark, Jesus asks for the demon’s name; in the Odyssey, Polyphemus asks for Odysseus’, and he famously tells him that he is ‘nobody’.
Deaths at Feasts: In Mark, the evangelist narrates a ‘flashback’ in which John the Baptist dies at a feast of Herod Antipas, for criticising Herod’s affair with his brother’s wife. In the Odyssey, Homer has a ‘flashback’ in which Agamemnon is killed during a feast, for posing a threat to Clytemnestra’s affair with her cousin. John’s death anticipates that of Jesus, Agamemnon’s that of Odysseus.
Feeding Stories: Mark tells the story of Jesus’ feeding 5000 men, who were seated in groups of hundreds and fifties. Telemachus and Athena find a great crowd of 4500 men on the shore, in nine companies of 500 men, sacrificing to Poseidon.
Transfiguration: In Mark, Jesus is transfigured (metamorphosised) before his inner ring of disciples, with clothes that become dazzling white, ‘such as no laundered on earth could whiten them.’ In the Odyssey, Athena transforms Odysseus, adorning him in a ‘well-washed cloak’. In both scenes, there is a refusal of gifts.
Hydropatetics: In Mark, Jesus walks on water. In the Odyssey, Athena hovers over the waters, with her ‘supple sandals… that wing her over the waves’ to Ithaca.
Blind Seers: In Mark, Jesus’ identity is revealed by the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, who proclaims his identity outside of Jerusalem as ‘the Son of David’. In the Odyssey, a blind man, Tiresias, recognises Odysseus’ identit as Son of Laertes.
Un-triumphal Entries: In Mark, Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, with clothes on the donkey In the Odyssey, Odysseus arrives to Ithaca with mules that have clothes placed in a wagon that carries them.
Anointed by a Woman: In Mark, when Jesus is very close to Jerusalem, he is anointed by a woman with oil, and Jesus tells us that ‘wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’ In the Odyssey, when Odysseus is near to Ithaca, Odysseus is anointed by a woman with oil, whose name is Eurycleia, which means ‘far flung glory’.
Is Mark another Odyssey?
This is quite a litany of parallels! Seen in isolation, they may seem inconsequential. But taken together, one can see why MacDonald’s work has sparked a considerable scholarly conversation. Whatever one makes of his ultimate conclusion – that Mark set out to emulate the text of the Odyssey – his monograph is a masterclass in seeing an argument through to the very end and pushing it as far as it can go.
Why, then, are many scholars unconvinced of MacDonald’s thesis? My doubts boil down to six points of contention, which I touch on briefly below:
First, it is unlikely that Mark had the training to imitate Homer in the way MacDonald proposes. We began by noting that Homer was an important part of ancient education. But there is a major question-mark over whether Mark, specifically, had the level of education to compose the wholesale imitation of Homer’s work that MacDonald imagines.6 For many scholars, Mark was a rather poor writer, whose education was “middle brow” at best. MacDonald may counter this by suggesting that Homer was known to everyone in Mark’s world. Yet this does not help MacDonald’s particular thesis, which is that Mark worked closely with Homer’s text.
Second, many of the parallels that MacDonald imagines are overly subtle. There are no instances in which Mark displays clear verbal dependence on Homer.7 This is not necessarily a problem – it is probable, for example, that John knew Mark – even though there are only a few places where these works overlap linguistically. To mitigate this problem, MacDonald develops a range of criteria, such as density and sequence, to determine dependence. Yet in practice, these criteria are not consistently applied, and the parallels he adduces are often tenuous.8 For example, Jesus walks on water, but Athena flies over it; Odyssey was on a floating island; Jesus on a floating boat. As David Litwa asks in his biting critique: “What else would a seaworthy boat do?”
Third, MacDonald presents puzzles that don’t need solutions. One of the ways that MacDonald sets up his parallels is by suggesting that there is a motif or theme in Mark which is unexplained. He then presents Mark’s imitation of Homer as the key to the puzzle. The problem is that very few of the alleged puzzles that MacDonald sets up require the solutions that he offers. Consider the well-known motif of the Messianic Secret. MacDonald thinks that Odysseus’ secrecy unlocks Jesus’ own. Yet the messianic secret in Mark takes on a very different form to the Odyssey. In the Odyssey, it is actually accompanied by typical secrecy language. But in Mark, such language is missing. This has led some scholars to see Mark’s motif as less about secrecy and more about honour, which requires a different solution to his puzzle.
Fourth, MacDonald’s parallels are sometimes better explained by Jewish influence. The most glaring example of this concerns the feeding of the five thousand. MacDonald thinks that Mark here is imitating the feast that takes place with four and a half thousand men on the shore, who are gathered in companies of 900. Yet the sources for Mark’s first feeding story are more obvious and sustained. Mark blends the miraculous narrative of Elisha’s feeding of 100 men with just 5 loaves with Jewish traditions about the Messiah, who will feast with companies of fifty and a hundred. There is simply no need for recourse to Homer’s own feeding narrative.
Fifth, one are often left wondering what would falsify MacDonald’s reading. Margaret Mitchell has described MacDonald’s methodology as a “have your cake and have it too” approach:9 when there are similarities between Mark and the Odyssey, MacDonald can claim a point of imitation; where they differ, MacDonald can say that that Mark is emulating Homer.10 He has just re-worked Homer’s text to surpass it, reverse or undo it. The problem is that ‘emulation’ often seems like a creative way of dismissing sharp differences, especially when the proposed similarities are slim.
Sixth, the Christian tradition missed Mark’s base text. MacDonald and others have done a good job in showing that ancient Christians were familiar with Homer.11 Yet this creates a kind of Catch-22 for MacDonald: either Mark’s vast reception history missed one of his foundational texts (until MacDonald), or Mark’s readers simply required an extensive level of Homeric awareness that they did not have. If it is the former, we are going to have have a hard time explaining how the Christian tradition could have missed Mark’s point. If it is the latter, then we arrive at the question: what’s the point? Why did Mark use Homeric text if his mimesis was going to be universally missed? An easy solution to this problem is to say that Mark did not actually imitate the Odyssey, but that Mark’s mimesis is ultimately in the eyes of MacDonald himself.
The Odyssey & the Gospels
While I join many scholars in remaining unconvinced of MacDonald’s thesis, I am persuaded that studying texts like the Odyssey is a hugely valuable task for biblical scholars. The reason for this is both practical and theoretical. Practically, it is important because few biblical scholars had their start in classics. I wasn’t able to study classics, Greek or Latin in school, but I grew up voraciously reading the Bible.12 This means that I’m far less primed to see the classical tropes in the New Testament than I am to see the inter-biblical allusions that have tended to dominate exegesis.
Yet there is also a theoretical reason: namely, that even if Mark did not directly adapt the Odyssey, the poem did furnish the Greek world with a number of techniques and themes that show up in many other texts – including our canonical gospels. For example, Homer’s theme of xenia (which becomes Nolan’s refrain of ‘Zeus’ law’) and techniques such as anagnorisis (in which a character is ‘recognised’) are profoundly important for understanding scenes in the gospels, such as Luke’s Emmaus Road.
But I want to close by considering another example of how this occurs. Take the Markan scene of blind beggar, Bartimaeus, and the episode in the Odyssey in which blind man Tiresias recognises Odysseus. I don’t consider it implausible that Mark knew this story. But what is important to recognise is that the motif of the blind seer, which shows up in Homer, is also scattered throughout ancient literature. In each instance of this motif, the figure who is physically blind has some remarkable insight – often insight of a spiritual nature or into the identity of a person.
Knowing this is important for our interpretation of Mark. For while Matthew and Luke unambiguously present Jesus as the Son of David, many scholars have questioned whether Mark depicts Jesus as a Davidide.13 Jesus seems to raise a question-mark over whether the Messiah is to be called David’s son – in his famous ‘Davidsohnfrage’ in the Temple – and Mark does not provide a genealogy which displays Davidic descent. So did Mark understand Jesus to be the Son of David?
Some might say that Bartimaeus is mistaken as proclaiming him to be David’s son. Just as Peter was incorrect to think that Jesus’ messiahship cannot involve going to the cross, so Bartimaeus is now mistaken that Jesus was the Son of David. If we understand the trope of the blind seer, however, things become more clear. Bartimaeus, though he lacks physical sight, has true insight into Jesus’ identity. Yet Jesus is establishing his Davidic identity not through conquest, but by healing.
In short, I do think MacDonald’s impulse is right. There are many things that ancient readers would naturally pick up which we have to squint at to recover – and reading texts like the Odyssey can reveal some of those early assumptions. Yet in the end, MacDonald’s case for genetic dependence stretches the evidence too far. Mark has woven a wonderful narrative, rooted in early Christian memory, the Jewish Scriptures and Graeco-Roman literature. But he has not provided us with another Odyssey.
Ps.-Heraclitus, Quaestiones Homericae 1.5–6 in Dennis R. MacDonald, “Homeric Epic in the Gospels” in The Historical Jesus in Context. Princeton Readings in Religion, eds. Amy-Jill Levine, Dale C.Allison Jr., John Dominic Crossan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006): 372-384 (373).
Xenophon Symposium 3.5; cf. 4.6; Plato’s Ion cited in Macdonald, “Homeric Epic,” 373.
MacDonald, “Homeric Epic,” 373.
On Poetry 5.30.36–31.2 cited in MacDonald, “Homeric Epic,” 373.
Dennis R. MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
See Kay Higuera Smith, “Mark and Homer” in Classical Greek Models of the Gospels and Acts: Studies in Mimesis Criticism. Claremont Studies in New Testament and Christian Origins 3, eds. Mark G. Biblby, Michael Kochenash, Margaret Froelich (Claremont, CA: Claremont Press, 2018), 25-33.
I refer here to a string of words that would otherwise be difficult to account for.
M. David Litwa, How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 49.
See Margaret M. Mitchell, “Homer in the New Testament?,” Journal of Religion 83 (2003): 244-58 (252); cf. Adam Winn, Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative: Considering the Practice of Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010).
See Litwa, Gospels Became History, 48.
See Karl Olav Sandnes, The Challenge of Homer: School, Pagans and Christianity, LNTS 400 (London: T&T Clark, 2009).
Very kindly, a mother of a friend offer to take me through an introduction to New Testament Greek; she bought me my first Interlinear Bible and we studied Duff’s Elements of New Testament Greek, which I now use to teach my own students.
For more on this debate and where I land, see my book Jesus’ Physical Appearance: Biography, Christology, Philosophy, LNTS 715 (London: T&T Clark, 2025), 108-111.