4 Joost Smit Sibinga distinction between Narrative and Discourse.4 Morover, that Mark wrote ἀκριβῶς, precisely and accurately, is, to be sure, in no way a communis opinio. But it is a judgment that to my mind has much to recommend it - from the literary point of view, that is, as our investigation will show. 1.2. We will study the words spoken by Jesus in the first main part of Mark’s Passion Narrative, the section leading up to the arrest, i.e. Mark 14:1-52, trying to understand the way in which these words are incorporated into the narrative. The edition of Nestle-Aland26 is our starting-point. Among several debated or debatable elements of the text, we accept without questioning such phrases as ‘.. one who is eating with me’ in Mark 14:18 - an allusion to Psalm 40 (41):10 not found in Matthew, which Lohmeyer suspected to be a gloss.5 The promise ‘.. after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee’ (Mark 14:28, RSV) is absent from Luke and from the Fragmentum Fajjumense6; it is considered by some commentators to interrupt the connection between v. 27 and v. 29, and there may be other problems.7 It is however, in our perception, a normal part of the gospel text as it has come down to us, and so we do not hesitate to include it in our investigation. We explore the text as we find it8, and also will not try to make, as is usual, a distinction between Mark’s source(s) and the final product, the result of his own redactional work. 2. In this part of the Passion Narrative Jesus addresses his disciples or one of them twelve times, other people only once (see Mark 14:48- 49). In addition, Mark 14:36 records his prayer ‘Abba, Father ...’. Four 4 It is a familiar observation that ‘... the sayings material in the synoptics displays an overall verbatim agreement significantly higher than that observed in the narrative mate- rial.’ So Sharon Lea Mattila, ‘A Question Too Often Neglected’, NTS 41 (1995) 199-217, see p. 209. More specifically, the distinction is useful if not essential, e.g., when, while analysing Mark 8:22-26, a story of 80 words, which at v. 23/24 falls into 40 + 40 words, one notes that Jesus speaks 3 (v. 23) + 5 (v. 26) = 8 words, as does the blind man: 3 + 5 = 8 words in v. 24. ‘What is done’ and ‘what is said’, N(arrative) and D(iscourse), use 64 and 16 words, in a ratio of four to one, and this is part of the conscious design of this healing story. 5 Ernst Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus (1937), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, ¹¹1951, p. 300-301. 6 See D. Lührmann, Die apokryph gewordenen Evangelien (NovTS 112), Leiden: Brill, 2004, p. 88-90. 7 J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci, Berlin: Georg Reimer, ²1909. p. 119: ‘.. diese Weissagung .. steht .. locker im Zusammenhang.’ E. Klostermann, Das Markusevangelium (HzNT 3), Tübingen: Mohr, ⁴1950, p. 148-149: ‘.. eine den Zusammenhang .. unterbrechende Einschaltung ...’. Cf. Joel Marcus, The Way of the Lord ..., Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993, p. 154-155, and also Mark Black, ‘The Messianic Use of Zechariah 9-14 ..’ in Patrick Gray, Gail R. O’Day, ed., Scripture and Tradition, Fs. Carl R. Holladay (NovTS 129), Leiden: Brill, 2008, p. 97-114, see p. 103: ‘... the verse suits very well in its context.’ 8 The uncertain elements of the text, where N-A26 uses [ ], all concern the Narrative, as distinct from the spoken parts of the text. See Mark 14:33, 47.