Mark places Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin between two betrayals — Judas before it, Peter denying him during it — so that the Lord stands surrounded by false witnesses while being the one true and faithful witness in the room. The whole Gospel has been building to a single question: who is this man? The religious leaders convene an illegal, predetermined trial, but their fabricated testimony collapses (you can't get your story straight about something that didn't happen). With the case falling apart, the high priest finally asks Jesus directly whether he is the Christ, the Son of the Blessed — titles that, by themselves, no one was executed for.

Then Jesus does something staggering. He answers "I am," and fuses two Scriptures — Psalm 110:1 (seated at God's right hand) and Daniel 7:13 (coming on the clouds) — into an unmistakable claim to ...