Suffering and Sacrifice

Each of the Synoptic writers envisions the world as a place in which suffering is powerful, predictable, and meaningful. Each expects that followers of Jesus will experience hardships and that people in general will experience suffering in the apocalypse. While for Luke the death of Jesus adheres to the model of the self-controlled and respectable death of a philosopher, for Mark Jesus’s suffering is uncomfortably close and present: the reader cannot look away from the Gethsemane agony or cry of despair from the cross. For Matthew such moments serve as teaching moments: they offer moments of instruction for the disciples and, by extension, the audience itself

Suffering and Sacrifice

Each of the Synoptic writers envisions the world as a place in which suffering is powerful, predictable, and meaningful. Each expects that followers of Jesus will experience hardships and that people in general will experience suffering in the apocalypse. While for Luke the death of Jesus adheres to the model of the self-controlled and respectable death of a philosopher, for Mark Jesus’s suffering is uncomfortably close and present: the reader cannot look away from the Gethsemane agony or cry of despair from the cross. For Matthew such moments serve as teaching moments: they offer moments of instruction for the disciples and, by extension, the audience itself