The Construction of the Way into a Reordering of Power

The two Old Testament quotations of Mark 1:2-3 serve as the governing principle of Mark's Gospel. Although they stand in contradiction to each other, the resolution that follows constructs a paradoxical relationship between Jesus as "the Son of the Human Being—Son of God" and Jesus as a type of Elijah, like John the Baptizer, who constructs the way for his disciples into death and resurrection. The youth in the tomb, who appears in the Gospel's ending that is not the ending, continues this paradoxical principle of participating in the reordering of power and yet constructing the way into a reordering of power for the addressees of Mark's Gospel.