Mark draws upon a great scriptural heritage of journey, the way, the passing over into the promised land. He reshapes this motif in combining it with the Babylonian Isaiah's figure of the suffering servant, as well as elements of some Psalms and the apocalyptic tradition. The resulting composition is a unique narrative text, a story of an exciting, astonishing, and sometimes troubling journey-troubling for the disciples who try to comprehend their master, troubling for those who seek an explanation of the narrative's seeming disjunctions, incon-sistencies, and lacunae.