Mark14chapter 14

The perfume poured over his head was nard, imported from far to the east in sealed alabaster flasks that had to be broken open. The sum objected to — over three hundred denarii — is about a year's wages for a labourer.

The signal for finding the room is a detail only an eyewitness would keep. A man carrying a water jar was conspicuous, because fetching water was women's work; that is precisely why it made a reliable prearranged sign in a crowded festival city where the arrangement had to stay quiet.

The Passover meal by this period followed a set order: cups of wine at fixed points, unleavened bread, bitter herbs, the retelling of the exodus, and a closing hymn from the festival psalms. Mark's brief note that they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives is the end of that liturgy.

Gethsemane means oil press, and the grove lay across the Kidron ravine on the slope of the Mount of Olives. The arrest party comes at night with clubs, and the hearing that follows is held before morning at the high priest's house — a speed and secrecy that later Jewish rules for capital trials would not have permitted.

Mark alone records the young man who ran away naked, leaving the linen cloth in the soldiers' hands. It has often been suggested that this is Mark's own quiet signature, though the text does not say so.