Why does Mark have Jesus predict his death 3 times?

Answer 1

Mark's Gospel is a complex and well-structured narrative, demonstrating a command of the Greek language, although (perhaps intentionally) written in an ungrammatical style. The entire Gospel consists of a chiastic structure, with lesser chiastic structures for important events. A chiastic structure is an circular sequence in which an opening set of events is contrasted with another set of events that mirrors the first.

The opening set begins with John explaining the coming of Jesus, followed by the baptism and the voice of God from heaven, and ends with Jesus predicting his death. The contrasting structure begins with the Transfiguration of Jesus and the voice of God from heaven, and ends with the crucifixion, followed by the young man explaining the departure of Jesus. So Mark contrasted John's announcement of the coming of Jesus with the young man's explanation of the departure of Jesus. He contrasted the baptism and the voice from heaven with the Transfiguration and the voice from heaven. And he used the prediction by Jesus of his death, at the end of the first set, to contrast with the actual death in the second set.

Note: Everything after verse 16:8 forms a separate division in the modern version of Mark's Gospel, known as the "Long Ending". This was not in the earliest manuscripts and was added later to bring Mark more or less into harmony with Matthew and Luke. As an interpolation, it is outside the chiastic structure described above.

Chapter 13 contains an implied prediction by Jesus of his own death, so that the disciples to whom he spoke would see him return in clouds of glory before his present generation had passed Mark 13:30). Either Mark genuinely believed that Jesus would return in clouds of glory within just a few years, or he believed that the imminence of this awesome event would do much to encourage waverers to convert.

Just before his arrest, Mark has Jesus foretell his own death and say that Peter will deny him three times. This not only increases the tension, but introduces the reader into another chiastic structure, soon to unfold. Mark organises the narrative of the death of Jesus in a twenty-four hour cycle, neatly divided into eight three-hour segments. The watch of the night between 3 am and 6 am was called cockcrow, and Mark inserted his account of Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, once each hour until the cock crowed, to mark that phase of the night until 6 am.