Photo by The Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany

ON THE COVER: “Hail, King of the Jews!” the Roman soldiers cry after dressing Jesus in a purple cloak and crown of thorns (Mark 15:18). The mockery of Jesus, depicted here by the early-20th-century German artist Christian Rohlfs, opens the evangelist Mark’s account of the passion. In “Jesus’ Triumphal March to Crucifixion—The Sacred Way as Roman Procession,” Thomas Schmidt argues that by presenting Jesus as a sort of anti-emperor, Mark mocks Roman imperial tradition and glorifies Jesus.