The "Gospel of Mark" ends with a curious statement: "Then they went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Focusing on the fear and silence of the women in the last verse, Joan Mitchell offers an interpretation and encouragement to Christian women. She uses the feminist hermeneutic developed by Elisabeth Sch ssler Fiorenza to deal with the absence or presence of women in the text, but she also employs literary methods to provide an interpretation of the gospel as a whole.