What audience assumptions about religion pagan and Jewish might the author of Mark be counting on to get his point across?

Answer 1

Although it is difficult to say what the audience's assumption were, we know Mark wrote his Gospel for the Gentile Christians. Mark's language is simple, direct, and common. He penned a Gospel designed to evoke faith in the deity of Jesus. For example, Mark's stories of the cleansing of the temple and the cursing of the fig tree were interwoven to aid the audience in interpreting the parabolic activity of Jesus. Along the way to Jerusalem, Jesus indicated to His disciples that He was hungry and approached a fig tree to harvest its fruit. The tree was full of leaves, giving every indication of life; but it possessed no fruit. Mark recorded that Jesus "answered" the tree and announced may "no man eat fruit of the tree hereafter for ever". The disciples, who "heard him," must have been puzzled by Jesus' actions, for Mark recorded that "the time of figs was not yet." Jesus led His disciples into Jerusalem where he cleansed the temple, where Jesus found no spiritual fruit. Israel, the fig tree, was supposed to provide a "house of prayer for all the nations." Instead, the religious leaders turned the devotion of worshipers into financial profit. Jesus "answered" the fig tree by pronouncing a curse on the Jewish religious leadership. In word and deed, Jesus prophesied that God would no longer use Israel as the vehicle for salvation for humanity. Peter and the disciples thus found the cursed fig tree dead. By purifying the temple, Jesus marked the death of Judaism, caused His own death, and gave birth to a religion for all people.