I’ve often noted that even the very first Gospel we know of (the one eventually source-credited to someone named Mark), despite often being described as the least fantastical or the most mundane narrative of Jesus, is in fact wildly fantastical, and does not even come close to resembling the actual histories and biographies of the era that are actually mundane and mostly lack the fantastical. I discuss this generically with comparative examples in chapter 7 of Not the Impossible Faith and specifically with examples from Mark in chapters 3 and 6 of Jesus from Outer Space (and various other places). But today I want to make a complete list. In a book or journal article it would be too long for space. But no such limit need contain me here.

Analytical Context

It should first be noted that in antiquity there was no clear demarcation between the natural and the supernatural. The subject was debated, but without modern science and global experience, the ability to draw any lines was quite limited—and almost wholly rejected by believers in the supernatural, who accepted wild tales as being just as plausibly historical as mundane ones (see Establishing the Biblical Literalism of Early Christians and Christianity Is a Conspiracy Theory), indeed precisely because they believed the operation of the divine and the magical in the world was routine—even “natural.” Moreover, even now, with our demarcations available (see Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them and The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism, as well as, for example, The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: A Case Study in Christian Lies and Theism & Atheism: Miracles), we can also tell the difference between the plausible and the fantastical even within the domain of what is now known to be naturally possible (see, for example, Formalized Gullibility as a Modern Christian Methodology).

In other words, the real issue is not cataloguing every “supernatural” event in the narrative Mark—which would be anachronistic because our modern categorization of what counts as “supernatural” did not exist then, and still wouldn’t capture the whole of the fantastical and thus obviously mythical. Indeed, many of the events in Mark that we would readily recognize as fiction because of their utter lack of realism are technically still “possible,” insofar as it would violate no laws of physics, but they are still wildly unlikely—hence they remain extraordinary claims (which thus require extraordinary, and not mundane, evidence). For example, you can give a naturalistic explanation of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, but the probability that what you just described ever happened is astronomically small—to the point of being de facto impossible. We might call this “statistically impossible,” like the sequence of events in almost any big-budget action movie or screwball comedy or plot-twisting thriller. (On the kinds of impossibility, see discussion in my study for Biology & Philosophy, where the “statistically impossible” is used by creationists to “disprove” natural biogenesis, so we know they well understand this kind of impossibility when it suits them.)

However, I won’t be counting here mere errors or anachronisms. For example, the way the Gospel of Mark portrays the Pharisees makes no sense in actual context; and the extant text of Mark screws up local geography. I will only reckon up here the genuinely fantastical—things that simply wouldn’t likely happen in a universal sense, such as defy (even if they don’t strictly violate) physics or human psychology. I have long noted that by this standard, there is at least one impossible event narrated in every single chapter of Mark. In fact, the count is well more than one. Mark is therefore wildly more mythological in composition than any genuine history or biography of the time. And Mark resembles only ancient fiction and mythology in this respect. And yet Mark is the first narrative of a historical Jesus, and the core (and only really known) source for every other. Such wild fiction was rarely composed about historical persons; but not usually.

Okay. Here we go…

Chapter 1

In Mark 1:

1. Jesus is the prophesied chosen one of a Levantine starlord (1:1–3).
2. The sky tears open and a magical bird flies down to live inside Jesus’s body (1:10).
3. God’s voice booms from the sky declaring Jesus his beloved son (1:11).
4. The magical bird inside Jesus tells him to go on a shamanic quest (1:12).
5. Jesus hangs out with wild animals and an immortal darklord called “The Satan” for over a month (1:13).
6. During which space creatures known as “The Messengers” fly down to attend to Jesus’s needs (1:13).
7. Jesus walks up to some total strangers and asks them to leave their families and jobs and depart and serve him—and they immediately do, without any convincing, or even description of what they will be preaching or why they should believe in him or his message (1:16–18).
8. In fact, they literally just drop their nets in the sea and abandon their boats and equipment (1:18).
9. Jesus does this a second time! (1:19) Although this time, the abandoners of their families leave their equipment with their dad and some henchmen (1:20). The first ones didn’t even do that.
10. Jesus extraordinarily amazes everyone at a synagogue with his teaching, exceeding (we’re told) even the greatest scholars of the age (1:21–22)—yet we aren’t told anything of what he taught or how it was extraordinary or what anyone thought was special about it.
11. Before many witnesses, an alien being speaks to Jesus, using a human body it lives inside and controls (1:23–24), proclaiming him a magical exorcist empowered by God.
12. Jesus magically expels that alien with a word of command (1:25–26), and it then screams loudly after it has left the body it was controlling—thus no longer using a human body as its mouthpiece, the alien entity speaks with its own supernatural voice.
13. Witnesses marvel at all this single incident, and Jesus somehow becomes famous for just this one event across the entire region of Galilee (1:27–28), even though Jewish exorcisms were common side-shows of the day.
14. Jesus magically cures a woman of influenza (1:29–31).
15. Jesus magically cures many of various nonspecific ailments and possession by alien beings (1:32–34).
16. We learn that Jesus can telepathically control the voices of the many alien beings he orders out of human bodies (1:34), although he evidently forgot to control that first one.
17. Jesus keeps magically defeating alien beings (1:39).
18. With a mere touch Jesus instantly cures a man of a mytho-biblical skin disease (1:40–42). Jesus is also inexplicably annoyed by this one diseased penitent.
19. Jesus inexplicably strongly insists (ἐμβριμησάμενος) that this one (and only this one) patient of his not tell anyone about it, but that he perform an ancient magical ritual for it (1:43–44); and instead, the guy inexplicably blabs about it to everyone (1:45).
20. Jesus thus becomes so famous and successful a wizard that he can’t even enter a town anymore and has to hide from people in the wilderness, yet inexplicably even that doesn’t work and he is continuously mobbed by people anyway (1:45).

That’s at least 20 fantastical things in chapter 1 alone. Out of 45 verses, that’s a rate of almost one fantastical thing every 2 verses. It is the most fantastical chapter in Mark.

Chapter 2

In Mark 2:

1. Jesus is so mobbed in one town that some guys have to climb up and tear open the roof of where Jesus is speaking and lower in a victim of paralysis whom Jesus magically cures with a mere command (2:1–5, 11–12), which we’re told no one had ever seen before, despite psychosomatic healing acts being then commonplace. (It also never occurs to anyone to just let the guy in or have him carried in by the audience. And it never occurs to Jesus to go out to him, or tell his audience to let him in. And no one is concerned about the damage to the roof. There are just a lot of weird things to explain away here.)
2. Jesus magically reads the minds of the town elite (2:6–10).
3. Jesus casts the instant “summon person” spell again, and a guy abandons his job at once, mid-shift, and for no described reason (2:13–24).

That’s 3 fantastical things in chapter 2. Out of 28 verses, that’s a rate of almost one fantastical thing every 9 verses. Our total rate is now 23/73 or almost 1 fantastical thing every 3 verses.

Most of this chapter is also occupied with fables (chreiae) that are obviously intended to teach principles of the Christian mission, like evangelizing sinners, and Christian doctrines about fasting and the Sabbath, using plausible-sounding narratives. So, although these are not fantastical, they are still clearly mythical.

Chapter 3

In Mark 3:

1. Jesus magically unshrivels a hand with a word of command (3:1–5).
2. The narrator magically knows that this is when the elite began to strategize “how to kill” Jesus, and for the strange reason that he commanded a healing on the Sabbath (Mark will soon forget this motive and impute another later on), yet they inexplicably don’t simply arrest and try him for the crime if it was one (it wasn’t), nor can they even think of a reason to kill him (the verse says they conferred on how they might kill him; not that he should be killed for this, or any particular thing at all). (The Herodians are also now mentioned as plotters, but they have never been introduced as a character before now, and despite the narrator’s magical knowledge, their motive is never explained. And we will never hear of their involvement in this conspiracy again.)
3. Jesus magically defeats more space aliens (3:11–12).
4. Jesus bestows this power on twelve disciples (3:13–15).

That’s 4 fantastical things in chapter 3. Out of 35 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 11 verses. Our total rate is now 26/108 or 1 fantastical thing every 4 verses.

Most of this chapter is also occupied, again, by doctrinally relevant fables that aren’t implausible per se but are nevertheless probably false. For example, the entire story of Jesus denouncing his family serves the function of explaining the Christian principle of fictive kinship (and the need to leave family for the Christian community). The story is thus obviously an etiological myth, just like the baptism scene (which sets Jesus up as the successor and superior to the famous preacher John, a competitor to the Christian mission, and explains the doctrinal function of Christian baptism as adoption by God and infusion of the Holy Spirit).

Chapter 4

In Mark 4:

1. Jesus teaches everyone only (4:34) in riddles that no one understands, not even his disciples (so how was his teaching so impressive as to draw crowds from over a hundred miles around?), and even more implausibly, Jesus secretly explains his very intention is not to be understood (4:10–12, 33–34).
2. Jesus practices weather magic before a dozen witnesses (4:36–42).

That’s 2 fantastical things in chapter 4. Out of 41 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 10 verses. Our total rate is now 30/149 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.

Most of this chapter is a repetition of a collection of parables and explaining the mechanism of parable secrecy, and trivial activities that barely seem narratively relevant, when in actual fact, those features have literary functions just like all the previous fables do, and are therefore also mythical (see my analysis of the Gospel of Mark’s literary structure in Chapter 10.4 of On the Historicity of Jesus).

Chapter 5

In Mark 5:

1. Jesus meets a ghoul with supernatural strength because he was possessed by aliens (5:1–5).
2. The ghoul magically knows Jesus is a celestial emissary and tries to make him get rid of the aliens (5:6).
3. Jesus has a conversation with a literal alien army inside the ghoul (5:7–10).
4. For some unexplained reason, the aliens controlling the ghoul don’t want to be tormented by Jesus (5:6), yet let the ghoul they are inhabiting run up to Jesus even though he was far away (5:6), and just as inexplicably, when they beg Jesus not to make them leave the country (χώρας), Jesus is okay with that idea, and lets them instead magically murder two thousand pigs (5:11–13). It is not explained where they then went, or why they would have wanted to live inside two thousand pigs, or why they wanted to immediately kill the bodies they were just allowed to inhabit—or why Jesus would want any of this.
5. Though the town’s local economy is thus completely devastated by the most extraordinary property crime in history, Jesus does nothing about it (5:14–16), and inexplicably, the townsfolk only insist Jesus merely leave; they attempt no legal action nor ask for him to pay for their massive loss (5:17).
6. Jesus resurrects the dead with a word of command (5:21–24, 35–42).
7. Jesus’s robe is so magical it cures at a mere touch a bizarre gynecological disorder (5:25–34).
8. Jesus can feel his magical power drained by this touch to his cloak (5:30).
9. Even though Jesus resurrected a girl at a request made in front of crowds (5:21–24), after she had been publicly declared and mourned as dead (5:35–40), Jesus inexplicably asks that it be kept secret (5:43), which to any realistic observer would be obviously impossible. (Also, apparently, resurrected people need food to eat. You’d think a resurrection spell from a god would at least supply you with adequate blood sugar. Mark must be playing by 5e rules.)

That’s 9 fantastical things in chapter 5. Out of 43 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 8 verses. Our total rate is now 39/192 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.

Chapter 6

In Mark 6:

1. Inexplicably, despite marvelous wizardry famed across seven lands, Jesus cannot perform any exorcisms, and hardly any healing spells, in his own town (whose inhabitants are apparently Nega-Psychics: 6:1–6).
2. Jesus gives his twelve disciples magical powers again (6:7, 13), though unlike Jesus, their power to heal requires spell ingredients.
3. We are told a wildly implausible story about how Herod unwillingly executes John the Baptist by accident (6:14–29; in historical fact, he had far more plausible motives). This is actually full of fantastical elements, yet that only work collectively together, so I’ll just count it all as one.
   • In no universe would any king make the promise the plot requires (6:22–23), much less honor it (6:26), even less for the reasons given (a king would readily bat aside the impolitic wishes of a mere girl in front of elite guests—honoring it would make him appear weak, not refusing it).
   • The time compression of the story is laughable. Herod Antipas’s Galilean palace was over a hundred miles from John the Baptist’s prison, a week round trip by fast horse. And even if his birthday banquet was for some reason held outside his kingdom in Jerusalem, the distance is still over sixty miles, four days around by fast horse. And either way John the Baptist’s head would have rotted for days by the time it was delivered on a platter.
   • The tale has John’s disciples travel to the prison to collect and bury John’s body after they learn of the delivery of his head (6:29). In fact Jewish law mandated burial before sunset. That means John would have been buried in the prison graveyard days or even weeks before his disciples even learned of his death, much less could arrive to take the body for a burial already completed.
4. Thousands of people implausibly horde into the desert to see Jesus but, despite being experienced rural travelers, don’t think to bring any provisions (6:30–36). Worse, they apparently need to be told to go get some (real people don’t need reminding).
5. Twelve jobless rural disciples inexplicably have hundreds of silver coins on hand and are merely concerned about draining their purse (6:37). In a more realistic story, it would be “Where the hell are we going to get that kind of cash?” Or “Shall we take donations and send runners?” Or “Shall we marshal foraging and hunting teams and gear up to do some fishing?” Anything but “Hey, man, I know our pony is fat with staxx, but come on, bro!”
6. Although Jesus asks his disciples to feed these thousands of people, inexplicably, Jesus does (6:38–44). So why didn’t he just say, “I’ll take care of it”? (Note that in all cases like this, I often do know the literary reason that Mark wrote it the way he does; I am just cataloguing when the result is historically unrealistic. So, for example, here the story is a fable teaching readers a cryptic lesson about the Christian mission. But as such, it is completely ahistorical, and thus fantastical.)
7. For some inexplicable reason, all that twelve rural travelers can pull together is two fish (two? bad day at the nets?) and five loaves of bread (6:38). Why did they think to bring only five? And are we to believe that literally five thousand other people are on hand, and not a single soul has even a morsel to contribute to this pop-up soup kitchen? And why is it just fish and bread? No vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, berries, beans, cheese, preserves, honey, beer, wine, posca, bugs, sausage, or any other meats, fresh or jerked? Not even some fowl or varmint? No shepherds in these thousands with some goat, lamb, or beef?
8. Jesus magically feeds five thousand people by a conjuration of self-replicating food (6:41–44).
9. And there are inexplicably “twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish” left over after five thousand people ate (6:43). Um. There would be vastly more poop left over than that (a problem with which the narrator is blissfully unconcerned). (And where did these twelve baskets come from? Were they just hauling around empty baskets this whole time? And isn’t twelve a cheekily suspicious number?)
10. Jesus magically walks on water before a dozen witnesses (6:45–53).
11. Jesus performs more weather magic (6:51).
12. Jesus’s magical cloak heals the ailments of every single person who touches it (6:54–56).

That’s 12 fantastical things in chapter 6. Out of 56 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 4 verses. Our total rate is now 51/248 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.

This chapter is mostly a list of etiological myths teaching doctrinal lessons (such as why Christians don’t live kosher, 7:15) that are plausible per se but not likely historical (e.g. a departure from kosher practice was invented after Jesus died).

Chapter 7

In Mark 7:

1. Despite having spent dozens of hours with Jesus—hours of public instruction, hours of private instruction—spanning many days of opportunity to ask him questions and have whole lengthy conversations about his answers and his mission and his teachings and ideas, the disciples still don’t understand even basic things he says (7:17–23).
2. While trying to hide from crowds (a contradictory objective for a divine being whose only mission at the time is mass public communications), Jesus is inexplicably found out by a woman with a kid inhabited by an alien being, and after a testy racist argument she finally gets Jesus to begrudgingly do something about it (7:24–29).
3. As usual, Jesus magically removes the alien, but this time he can do it at long range and without even line-of-sight, evincing Jesus has leveled up the spell (7:30).
4. Jesus magically heals a deaf man with reiki, saliva exchange, and a word of command (7:32–35).
5. Despite that spell being cast in public at public request, Jesus implausibly “commands” (διεστείλατο) that no one tell anyone about it; and, of course, everyone tells everyone about it—in fact, the more he insists they don’t, the more they do it (7:36–37).

That’s 5 fantastical things in chapter 7. Out of 37 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 7 verses. Our total rate is now 56/285 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.

Chapter 8

In Mark 8:

1. Another implausible scenario of four thousand travelers forgetting or neglecting provisions (8:1–3).
2. The disciples (and even Jesus himself) inexplicably have their memory deleted of the last time this happened (8:4–5). Indeed it is inexplicable why even Jesus wouldn’t remember this problem and have planned for or avoided it by now. It’s especially weird that everyone implausibly forgets not only that Jesus is a wizard with a conjure food spell, but, again, that food can be procured by foraging, hunting, fishing, and pooling resources among the thousands attending.
3. Inexplicably, again, twelve practiced travelers, and thousands of experienced rural peasants, have only seven loaves of bread and “a few” fish, and nothing else (8:5–7).
4. Jesus magically feeds four thousand people by a conjuration of self-replicating food (8:8–9).
5. Inexplicably, again, after four thousand meals, only seven baskets of crumbs are left over (8:8–9).
6. Inexplicably, immediately after that, the disciples literally “forget” to bring any food with them, but for a single loaf of bread (8:14–16).
7. When Jesus utters another cryptic remark, the disciples inexplicably forget that Jesus does that a lot, and instead think he is referring to the loaf of bread (8:17–18).
8. Jesus explains the matter to them by completely failing to explain anything to them; yet not a one of them asks a follow-up question to clarify whatever his point was supposed to be (8:19–21).
9. Jesus magically cures a blind man with an elaborate travel-and-spit ritual (8:22–25).
10. Jesus’s spell fails. He has to cast it again, wasting another spell slot (8:23–25).
11. Jesus inexplicably insists the cured man go home and not back to the village where the villagers had brought the blind man to Jesus (8:26). Inexplicably, Jesus does not command him to tell no one; and the reason for going straight home eludes any explanation. (The villagers are going to notice eventually that he isn’t blind anymore, after bringing him to Jesus for a cure, and watching Jesus lead him away; it’s also not explained why none of the villagers followed Jesus and the man, since everyone else has been following Jesus even into foodless wastelands by the thousands and Jesus could never find privacy up to now.)
12. Inexplicably, Jesus warns the disciples not to tell anyone about him (8:30)—a guy who has been preaching the gospel to audiences of thousands by now and is already famed across seven lands, and was already publicly declared the chosen one by a booming voice from heaven (1:11).
13. In a wildly implausible scene, Jesus “openly” explains to the disciples how prophecy predicts his death and resurrection, and Peter inexplicably “rebukes” him for it (ἐπιτιμᾶν), at which Jesus inexplicably accuses him of being a worldly servant of Satan (8:31–33), rather than simply correcting whatever mistake Peter made and explaining why this is a good thing and how they can help bring it about. Indeed there is actually nothing at all humanly plausible about the conversation here depicted.

That’s 13 fantastical things in chapter 8. Out of 38 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 3 verses. Our total rate is now 69/323 or 1 fantastical thing almost every 5 verses.

The rest of this chapter (continuing into 9:1) has Jesus elaborate his bizarre conspiracy theory about cosmology and the fate of the world, which isn’t fantastical because weirdos with weird beliefs are commonplace. But this will be relevant later when, despite such a clear exposition of things (with again, obviously, in reality hours of questions and discussion ensuing), the disciples will continue never to have understood any of it.

Chapter 9

In Mark 9:

1. Jesus becomes Gandalf the White (9:2–3).
2. Inexplicably, ancient dead men descend from outer space (9:4–6). (I am setting aside the question of how anyone knows what Elijah and Moses “look like,” because maybe Jesus introduced them?)
3. A magical talking cloud joins the show and proclaims Jesus the One (9:7).
4. Inexplicably, the extraterrestrial revenants then instantly vanish (9:8).
5. Twelve Jews having heard Jesus preach and converse about resurrection for days on end don’t know what “resurrection” is (9:9–10).
6. Twelve Jews forget that they themselves have recited at every Passover of their lives why people say Elijah shall precede the Messiah (9:11–13).
7. Jesus tells them Elijah has already come and been persecuted—and no one asks a follow-up question as to who he means or how he knows they’re actually Elijah (9:13). (And didn’t they just meet Elijah at the top of this episode?)
8. An alien possesses another child, and no one’s magic can expel it (9:14–18).
9. Jesus inexplicably curses out the crowd, who literally have nothing to do with this (9:19).
10. Jesus is the only wizard with a spell slot of sufficient level to expel the alien (9:20–27).
11. The disciples ask Jesus why their spell didn’t work, and Jesus inexplicably replies that “This kind can come out only by prayer” (9:28–29) even though that isn’t true—Jesus expelled it without any prayer. (Some manuscripts even add “and fasting,” which obviously also didn’t happen. Jesus also never explains why “this” alien is any different than the others, or why “only prayer” can expel it, or what prayer, or how that would be any different from just casting another spell.)
12. The disciples still can’t understand what Jesus means by his being prophesied to die and rise, despite his very clear exposition of that already, and their having had hours of access to question him about it for days now (9:30–32).
13. Other wizards expel aliens (9:38–40).

That’s 13 fantastical things in chapter 9. Out of 50 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 3 verses. Our total rate is now 82/373 or 1 fantastical thing almost every 5 verses.

Chapter 10

In Mark 10:

1. Inexplicably, the people tell a blind man asking Jesus for help to shut up—the opposite of every similar scene to date (10:46–48).
2. Jesus instantly cures this one—without ritual, spell ingredients, or failure this time (10:48–52).
3. This man, Bartimaeus we are told, then follows Jesus—but we never hear of him again (10:52).

That’s 3 fantastical things in chapter 10. Out of 52 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 17 verses. Our total rate is now 85/425 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.

This chapter is mostly filled with parables and fables, as before, which teach doctrine or concepts and thus are no more likely to be historical, but are not fantastical.

Chapter 11

In Mark 11:

1. A fantastical donkey heist (11:1–6).
2. A wildly implausible triumphal entry scene, conveniently corresponding to various details of prophecy, that none of the ruling authorities or city guard notice or ever remark upon (11:7–11).
3. Jesus magically withers a fig tree (11:12–15, 19–25).
4. Implausibly, Jesus even does this in anger at it not feeding him when he was hungry (10:12) even though he knew it wasn’t fig season (11:13) and thus not its fault.
5. Implausibly, “Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there, overturning the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and not allowing anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts” (11:15–18). But: “The temple square was a heavily populated space over ten acres in size and guarded by an armed battalion authorized to kill troublemakers on sight” (JFOS, p. 54; see OHJ, pp. 431–42).
6. Completely unbelievably, Jesus shuts up all of Jerusalem’s Elders, Priests, and Rabbis with his (not at all) brilliant refusal to answer them when they ask on what authority he did any of that (11:27–33), and in result, no one arrests him for the outrageous (and probably capital) crime he just publicly committed (the violent defiling of the temple grounds and operations). (The Gospel Jesus was actually quite bad at argument. But many people were. What makes this fantastical is that the scene is completely unrealistic and can never have happened as described.)

That’s 6 fantastical things in chapter 11. Out of 33 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 5 verses. Our total rate is now 91/458 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.

Chapter 12

In Mark 12:

1. Fantastically, “the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders” of Jerusalem, the very capital of Judea, “looked for a way to arrest” Jesus “because they knew he had spoken [a] parable against them” (12:12). In no way would the entirety of a city elite conspire to assassinate someone simply “because he spoke a parable against them” (having inexplicably forgotten their original motive, in episode three). And in no way would they need to conspire to “find a way” to kill him: in-story, they could already get him for indisputable felonies and public acts of treason.
2. Fantastically, after having criminally and violently assaulted the temple and its occupants, Jesus just casually goes on “teaching in the temple courts” unimpeded (12:35).

That’s 2 fantastical things in chapter 12. Out of 44 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 22 verses. Our total rate is now 93/502 or 1 fantastical thing every 5 verses.

This chapter mostly consists of teachings couched in trivial narrative contexts, or scenes meant to teach lessons (like the fable of the widow’s mite), and thus still mythical, but set in mundane scenes. There are anachronisms. For example, Jesus is depicted pithily answering a question about paying the Romans taxes (12:15–17), but the scene depends on those taxes being paid with the Roman denarius (which has the emperor’s visage upon it). In Judea, that was not the case. Taxes there were paid with special faceless coins minted for compliance with the Jewish law against icons. But as I said at the outset, anachronisms (mere historical errors) also abound in Mark, but I am only counting fantastical things—things that couldn’t happen in any genuine historical context, such as defiances of ordinary human psychology.

Chapter 13

Mark 13 entirely consists of a single speech by Jesus in an obvious set-scene (a classic staged soliloquy). The speech consists of ridiculous and ahistorical apocalyptic teachings, but such beliefs were common and thus, though still obviously mythical here, nevertheless not fantastical. So with no opportunity to throw in ridiculous events, we get 0 out of 37, getting us to 93/539, which is still almost 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses.

Chapter 14

In Mark 14:

1. “The chief priests and the teachers of the law” are still (!?) “scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him” but, they concluded, “not during the festival, or the people may riot” (14:1–2). Yet, fantastically (and completely unintelligibly) they do that anyway, in the most public and flagrant way possible—by actually arresting him and publicly executing him in the middle of the festival! And no one riots.
2. An impossible story about a peasant’s eighteen-thousand dollar alabaster nard jar being pointlessly smashed over Jesus’s head instead of funding poverty programs (14:3–9).
   • An unidentified woman does this for no logical or historically intelligible reason.
   • Jesus says she will be memorialized forever (Mk 14:9), yet Mark doesn’t even name her. And we never learn anything about her and never hear of her again (she vanishes from history).
   • No one would anoint Jesus for burial (Mk 14:8) days before his death.
   • Nor would any commoner be carrying around an $18,000 pot of oil (see OHJ, 452n131).
   • Nor would they smash it over someone’s head: because the woman does not just pour the oil out, but even breaks its delicate stone container, a wholly pointless and wasteful thing to do (Mk 14:3).
   • It is not even plausible that any oil could carry such value, much less commonplace spikenard (unless the quantity exceeded all logical purpose, and everyone in the room was gassed into unconsciousness by the intense aroma); and although the valuation may be for the container being carved from alabaster—a cheap stone, but perhaps the craftwork was priceworthy?—smashing the container is then the crime against the poor, not pouring out the oil, which makes even less sense, since…
   • Jesus’ excuse for thus destroying almost twenty thousand dollars is fantastical and can never have happened (such a cost was not needed for his burial; he wasn’t even dead yet; and this doesn’t explain destroying its expensive container, or why nard oil specifically was necessary, or why it even needed to be in such a container).
3. Fantastically, Judas suddenly decides on his own to conspire to get Jesus killed, and for no intelligible reason given in the story (14:10-11).
4. A strange tale of a boy and his water and a miraculous hotel comp (14:12–16).
5. A completely implausible story of Jesus psychically knowing about Judas’s secret conspiracy (14:17–20); and announcing it to everyone, yet keeping his identity secret for no historically plausible reason; and no one presses Jesus for who it is or how he knows this or why he won’t take action—or why he even mentioned it if he wasn’t going to do anything about it. We don’t even get a believable conversation about Jesus needing the conspiracy to go forward to effect his plans, as he has suggested before—although there is also no discernible reason why he would need it, either, since, as we’ll see, Judas performs no relevant function. Jesus also threatens the conspirator with a horrific punishment, but if Jesus needed him to do it, it is unclear why he should be punished for it; or why Jesus should want to threaten him, as if to deter him from doing what Jesus actually wanted to encourage him to do. In short, the entire scene makes no sense and cannot have happened.
6. Fantastically, Jesus describes a detailed psychic premonition that comes true in every particular (14:27–31, 66–72). And despite Peter being warned, and knowing Jesus is a genuine wizard and a real psychic, he still goes through with it. It’s also not explained why Peter is hanging around the courthouse (14:54) to be recognized by one of the court staff after having fled arrest. That’s a strange thing for a fugitive to do. Why hasn’t he already booked it over the border to hide in non-Roman Galilee (per 14:28 and 16:7)?
7. All twelve disciples are implausibly (even comically) sleepy (14:32–42). (Jesus must have cast 5e Sleep by accident.)
8. A completely implausible arrest scene (14:43–52).
   • Judas leads an armed police squad to effect the arrest (43). But why was Judas needed? Jesus could have been arrested by such an armed force anytime. (We were even told the plan was to do this after the festival and all its pilgrims had left.) And anyone could have tailed him to Gethsemane. How would Judas know any better that that’s where he’d be? We can make up retcons here. But none of this makes any sense as written.
   • Judas inexplicably arranges a secret signal to point Jesus out (44–46)—but he’s already there with a visibly armed police squad, so why did he need a secret signal? He would just say, “That’s him!”
   • There is no intelligible reason Judas is needed to point out a man so famous he had been seen and even conversed with by thousands of persons, including much of Jerusalem’s elite, which would have had many of their staff in attendance as well.
   • All of this is so obviously unintelligible that Mark has Jesus “fourth wall” a supernatural explanation of why all this is happening so oddly (48–49).
   • The police then seize only Jesus (46)—so why did everyone else run away? (50) Remember, Judas was supposed to be secretly signaling who to arrest—which makes no sense if they came there to arrest everyone and sort out who’s who later.
   • Maybe it was because someone (oddly, we are not told who, or why, or why only them) attack the police with a sword and viciously mutilate “the high priest’s slave” (47). But…the police did nothing about this. They don’t even defend the slave, strike back, or pursue the armed felon. Which makes no sense. (It’s also not explained why the high priest’s slave is even there. Not even the high priest is there: in v. 43 Mark says the police were sent “from” the high priests [παρὰ] not “with” them.)
9. “A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus; and when they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind” (14:51–52). That’s all we hear about this bizarre event, or the boy. This is so weird and out-of-the-blue it deserves to be counted separately.
10. No one can come up with a crime to convict Jesus of (14:55–56).
11. Days of plotting and the entire elite of Jerusalem can’t even feed their stool pigeons a convincing lie to convict Jesus with (14:57–61). Herod just had the widely beloved John executed “because, bint.” And these guys can’t even frame Jesus?
12. They eventually convict Jesus of something that isn’t even a crime, much less a capital one, under either Jewish or Roman law (14:61–64). But if they could do that all along, why did they need the stool pigeons? And why did Mark say they couldn’t come up with a crime to pin on him? The entire scene makes no sense as written.

That’s 12 fantastical things in chapter 14. Out of 72 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 6 verses. And that’s not even counting ahistorical anachronisms (such as that this fails to correspond to anything we know about how Jewish trials worked—at all, least of all capital ones). In any case, our total rate is now 105/611 or 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses.

Chapter 15

In Mark 15:

1. A wildly implausible fable about a Roman “prisoner release” ritual that coincidentally evokes an entire Jewish Levitical atonement ritual (15:6–8).
2. Unintelligibly, the crowds so behind Jesus that the elite feared their rioting at his mere arrest immediately switch allegiance to the elite and loudly call for Jesus to be killed (15:8–14).
3. Fantastically, Pilate releases a murderous rebel against Rome and executes Jesus at the whim of a mob no Roman magistrate would heed (15:15).
4. Fantastically, a random stranger we are told little about and never hear of again is forced to carry the cross for Jesus for no explicated reason (15:21).
5. The entire scene duplicates too many odd features from Psalm 22 to plausibly be historical (OHJ, 408).
6. The sun is blotted out from the Earth for three hours even at full moon (15:33–34).
7. Implausibly, Jesus dies almost immediately and without explanation (15:34–37). Crucifixion was intended to keep the victim alive (and suffering) for days. Even Pilate is surprised he died so quickly (15:44).
8. The magical bird that entered to live inside Jesus’s body at his baptism now leaves him (15:37: ἐξέπνευσεν, ek + pneuma, “the spirit went out,” vs. 1:10, pneuma + eis, “the spirit went in”).
9. A massively public, 80-foot tall tapestry, on which was depicted the heavens (Josephus, Jewish War 5.212–14) magically tears from top to bottom as Jesus dies. (Thus coincidentally the heavens tear apart both at Jesus’s magical birth—his baptism, 1:10—and magical death.)

That’s 9 fantastical things in chapter 15. Out of 47 verses, that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 5 verses. Our total rate is now 114/658 or almost 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses.

Chapter 16

In Mark 16:

1. A magical escape (16:2–4).
2. A magical boy (16:5–7).
3. Inexplicably silent witnesses (16:8).

If we keep going and include the later addition of a longer ending:

1. A magical appearance of the dead (16:9)
2. More alien inhabitants of human bodies (16:9).
3. A transmuted revenant encounter (16:12).
4. A magical ghost shows up for dinner (16:14–18).
5. Jesus flies into outer space (16:19).
6. The disciples become wizards (16:17–18, 20).

That’s either 3 or 9 fantastical things in chapter 16. Out of either 8 or 20 verses (respectively), that’s almost a rate of one fantastical thing every 2 verses. Our total rate is now either 117/666 or 123/678, leaving us with an average of almost 1 fantastical thing every 6 verses across the entire Gospel of Mark, or an average rate of 7 fantastical things per chapter—and over a hundred fantastical things altogether.

How gullible do we have to be?