This Is Not the End: The Present Age and the Eschaton in Mark’s Narrative

Although many scholars continue to read Mark’s eschatology, and particularly the eschatological discourse in Mark 13, as a narrative of decline into increasing persecution, this is unsettled by careful attention to the narrative logic of Mark 13 and to the characterization of the present age throughout Mark’s work. In the present study, I argue that a close reading of Mark 13 in relation to the whole narrative places Mark’s readers in the Zwischenzeit, between the resurrection and the parousia, the present age, which is characterized by a mixture of abundance and suffering, success and opposition. It is into this situation that the abomination of desolation erupts as the green bud to the eschatological blossom, established eschatological labor leading to the arrival of the Son. In the present age, however, Mark’s eschatology is one of imminence without immediacy, where no narrative of decline can be established amid the varying experiences of abundance and penury.