Mark now places two stories adjacent to one another, each interpreting the other. The first, in 4:35–41, describes a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the fury of which threatens to sink the boat in which Jesus and the disciples are sailing. The following story, in 5:1–20, describes a demon-possessed man who wreaks havoc on himself and on all who come into contact with him. Both stories display Jesus’s power to rescue lives from cataclysms and from the chaos of both nature and human nature.

The first account is replete with details reminiscent of eyewitness experience and is recounted in a way that recalls the storms of Jonah 1 and Psalm 107:23–32. The Sea of Galilee lies some…