The narrative in 3:20–35 is the first of Mark’s signature “sandwich” units, in which a seemingly unrelated story is shoehorned into the middle of another story. The middle story determines the meaning of the flanking halves and succeeds in making an entirely new point of the A1-B-A2 sequence. Mark begins (A1, 3:20–21) and ends (A2, 3:31–35) the narrative with Jesus in a house surrounded by family and followers, into which he inserts the B-story of Jesus and Beelzebul (3:22–30).

The story begins with a house so besieged by a crowd that Jesus and the disciples are “not even able to eat.” Evidently believing that Jesus is on a collision course with the Jewish religious establishment, his friends and followers (“his own people,” 3:21 NASB, NKJV) conclude that Jesus “is out of his mind” (3:21…