The first act of Jesus’s public ministry in Mark is an exorcism (1:21–28), in which the More Powerful One (1:7) exercises the divine authority he received at baptism to free a man from demon possession and to prevail over the dominion of Satan (see 3:27). Although Jesus was raised in Nazareth, he chose Capernaum, propitiously situated on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee on the Via Maris, the main trade route leading from the Mediterranean to Damascus, as his base of operations. The population…