Like the farewell discourses of major biblical figures (Jacob, Genesis 49; Moses, Deuteronomy 32–33; Joshua, Joshua 23; Samuel, 1 Samuel 12; Paul, Acts 20), Mark 13 attributes to Jesus a final discourse that constitutes the longest block of teaching in the Gospel. Some instructions occur in other contexts in other Gospels (compare Mark 13:9–13 with Matthew 10:17–22), suggesting that some of the teachings in chapter 13 were delivered at various times in Jesus’s ministry. The organizing theme of the chapter is eschatology (from Greek eschatos, “last [things]”), in which future events, including some as distant as the second coming of the Son of Man, are prefigured by the destruction of the temple and fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Mark places the whole eschatological discourse on the Mount of …