This article investigates Mark’s story about Jesus’ ‘triumphal’ entry and its relation to Roman imperialism. The article’s first part analyses how that relation has been understood in both a late nineteenth-century biblical commentary and a contemporary political reading respectively. In the article’s second part, a reading is suggested that is informed by the postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha. Special attention is given to how Jesus acquires the colt by αγγαρεία, how he is greeted, and how the procession ends anticlimactically in the temple. The entry story with its subsequent temple incident, it is argued, could be taken as mimicry of celebratory welcomes. This places Jesus in an interstitial third space in-between a clear-cut anti- and pro-Roman position, a space that is characterized by colonial ambivalence.
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