The messiahship of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark has figured prominently in modern New Testament scholarship. With the increasing awareness of the Jewish context from which the gospel traditions emerged, scholars have also paid close attention to the way Mark portrays Jesus in relation to the temple. Within these discussions, it is not uncommon to find claims that the Markan Jesus regards the Jerusalem institution as completely obsolete, some maintaining that the message of the kingdom of God in Mark is fundamentally opposed to the ancient Levitical system. Yet, there is not a single full-length monograph grappling with the question of how Mark presents Jesus as royal messiah on the one hand, and his interaction with the Jerusalem priests on the other. Such a project is now imperative, not least given the recent advancement in our understanding both of messianic expectations in the late Second Temple period and of the role of the high priesthood in Jewish polity at the turn of the Christian era. In this thesis, I argue that Jewish messianism from the mid-second century BCE to the late first-century CE anticipated the culmination of the Jerusalem priestly institution under the rule of the royal messiah. In portraying Jesus as the end-time king, Mark in turn assumes a similar expectation. However, contrary to the majority scholarly view, the earliest Gospel does not repudiate the Israelite worship as such. Rather, Mark depicts Jesus’s stance towards the priests in terms of a call to allegiance and warning of judgement. And it is in the light of its cumulative narrative context that Jesus’s criticism of the Jerusalem shrine should be read. To Mark, that is, the temple will be destroyed because the priests have rejected Israel’s end-time king, placing themselves outside the messianic kingdom. Nevertheless, Jesus will be vindicated over against his enemies as God’s messianic son. Chapter one examines important passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and chapter two focuses on texts from the Pseudepigrapha. In chapter three, I argue, against recent critics, that the Markan Jesus is indeed a royal figure. Then, chapter four looks at the relevant passages in Mark 1–10 in which the Jerusalem priests are in view. Finally, chapter five investigates the climactic clash between Jesus and the temple rulers in Mark 11–16 in comparison to my findings in the previous chapters.

[pt] A Dissertação de Mestrado O fenômeno democrático na dimensão da opinião e sua desfiguração analisa o fenômeno democrático tomando como princípio seu caráter representativo e dando especial enfoque aos seus processos de desfiguração, partindo da premissa de que a democracia contém, em si própria, os elementos capazes de figurá-la e, também, de desfigurá-la. Essa análise teve como base os fundamentos teóricos acerca do tema, iniciando pela perspectiva de Joseph Schumpeter, a qual é, há décadas, hegemônica na ciência política, passando pelas críticas feitas à referida teoria por Peter Bachrach e mergulhando mais profundamente na tese de Nadia Urbinati, a qual é considerada como sendo uma perspectiva alternativa e mais precisa para encarar os processos de desfiguração democrática em curso em diversos países. Com Urbinati, a protagonista da presente dissertação, tensiona-se as dimensões da esfera da opinião e da vontade na estruturação da forma de vida democrática, evidenciando em que nível e de que forma certas deformidades, que podem surgir durante o próprio fluxo metabólico da vida democrática, são capazes de desfigurá-la. / [en] The Master s Dissertation The democratic phenomenon in the dimension of opinion and its disfiguration analyzes the democratic phenomenon taking as a principle its representative character and giving special focus to its disfiguration processes, starting from the premise that democracy contains, in itself, the elements capable of figuring it and also of disfiguring it. This analysis was based on the theories on the researched subject, starting with the perspective of Joseph Schumpeter, whose theory has been hegemonic in political science for decades, passing through the criticisms made to the referred theory by Peter Bachrach and diving deeper into the thesis of Nadia Urbinati, which is considered to be an alternative and more accurate perspective to face the ongoing processes of democratic disfiguration in several countries. With Urbinati, the protagonist of the present dissertation, the dimensions of the sphere of opinion and will in the structuring of the democratic way of life are stressed, showing at what level and in what way certain deformities, that can arise during the metabolic flow of democratic life, are capable of disfiguring it.