I opened my Greek Bible this morning (that is, the day I originally wrote this) simply to read God’s Word. I looked down at the first three words on the page: Καὶ σταυροῦσιν αὐτον (literal translation: “And they are crucifying him,” Mark 15:24). These words arrested me—and if I’m fully transparent, instantly reduced me to tears. Mark uses what grammarians of Greek call the historical present instead of the tense you might expect at this point in his narrative. (For the Greek-ies reading this post, Mark uses the present tense here instead of the aorist tense. Mark reverts to the more common aorist for the same verb in the following verse.)

Matthew, Luke, and John, and especially Mark, sometimes use a present tense when describing a scene that happened in the past. For those of you who don’t know Greek, please don’t misunderstand. This isn’t because the event occurred in the present from the perspective of the author. It’s just a literary device a first-century author had at his disposal to pull you into a scene that occurred in the past to make you feel like you’re in the scene yourself. Mark uses the historical present in Mark 15:24 to make the scene vivid.

But this morning the directness and intensity of the scene surprised me, especially since these were the first words I saw at the top of the page of my Greek Bible. As my imagination got pulled into that awful scene, I couldn’t help but remember that it should have been me on that cross. And through profuse tears, I imagined myself forcibly thrown onto my back on a wooden plank. Immobilized by ropes. Stakes driven into one wrist. Then the other wrist. Then my feet. I visualized the cross raised with me on it and dropped into a hole. And I wept as I thanked my Lord for taking my punishment and dying on that cruel cross in my place. What love! What sacrifice!

I never finished my Greek reading for the day. Three Greek words stopped me (five in English): Καὶ σταυροῦσιν αὐτον.

“And they are crucifying him.”

Notes

Mark uses another historical present, again for the purpose of vividness, in the same verse: διαμερίζονται, “they are distributing his garments.”

We use the present tense to talk about past events occasionally in English, though far less frequently than did first-century AD Greek speakers. Imagine someone telling a story about something that happened yesterday: “So I’m walking down the street. This guy’s coming my direction. I’m thinking that I need to get out of here right now.”

This post is adapted from my personal journal, April 5, 2024.