As Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza points out, right after Mark notes that “women were looking on from a distance” at the Crucified (15:40), he writes of women what we never read of Jesus’s male disciples: as Jesus came into the world to serve and give his life (Mark 10:45), so they “followed” him and “served” him (15:41); standing by him at the cross they are portrayed as “the exemplary disciples of Jesus.”
