Gospel of Mark 14.3 · 14.3

<p>This is the only anointing Jesus receives in Mark. There is no oil at his baptism and no coronation; the one <span class="gk">χρῖσις</span> in the book is a woman pouring <span class="gk">μύρον</span> over his head. The verb <span class="gk">χρίω</span>, to anoint, is the root of <span class="gk">Χριστός</span>, the anointed one, and the kings of Israel were made kings by a prophet pouring oil on the head, Samuel over Saul and over David. Mark adds no comment on the gesture. What the text shows is that the title the whole gospel turns on is enacted here, by her hand, and English hides it because Christ no longer reads as anointed.</p><p>The <span class="gk">μύρον</span> is <span class="gk">νάρδος πιστική</span>, spikenard, which Dioscorides treats as a warming drug for the stomach and liver and a base for antidotes and eye-salves (<em>Mat. Med.</em> I.7), and which Pliny prices near the gospel's figure for genuine, unadulterated spike (<em>HN</em> 12). To a first-century nose the jar smelled of the pharmacy as much as of wealth. Jesus reads the act as a burial performed in advance, <span class="gk">εἰς τὸν ἐνταφιασμόν</span>, and the shattering of the flask, <span class="gk">συντρίψασα</span>, the verb Mark used of the fetters no chain could hold (5:4), commits the whole of it at once.</p>

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