Mark initially reacts with sadness,
Jesus Seminar October 2009 in Santa Rosa, California; The conference hotel Flamingo he, too, sees a connection between the work of the Christians and the disastrous uprising against Rome.
But Mark finds comfort in Greek poetry, in Homer, whose Iliad was well known to him as school reading at that time.
Thus he can compare the downfall of Jerusalem with the downfall of Troy in Homer and understand it as a fate assigned by God. Just as the defeat of the Trojans in the Iliad was decided by Zeus despite all human struggle, so the defeat of the Jews followed the counsel of God, which is to be accepted by humans as fate.