I am new to this blog so if this topic has been recently covered, I apologize. I have always been troubled by Mark 9:1. To me, it is saying that the new kingdom will arrive within the lifetime of some of those there. Well, they have been waiting for 2,000 years then. I realize a person can explain this statement away to mean a hundred different other interpretations. I think it’s interesting that the ‘Bible is inerrant’ believers explain away verses like this but want to interpret others literally. If that is the case, then Jesus was just flat wrong. Right?
It doesn’t seem that Christians as a group ever came to terms with Jesus being wrong about the Kingdom coming soon. They just decided they’d been wrong about what he meant. And since it was widely agreed that Jesus was much misunderstood, even by those closest to him (I think that’s almost certainly the case, just not in this specific case), and there were no writings from him, it wasn’t too difficult to make the transition from the early Kingdom of God to the celestial Kingdom of Heaven. All the more since most Christians were converted pagans by then, and many pagans (unlike Jews) did believe in both heavenly and hellish afterlives–the trick was to make the former more appealing, and the latter even less so. Reaching its apotheosis in Dante, many centuries later–and his heaven let pagans in through the back door.
Still, the notion of Judgment Day has proven very durable, and it’sl coming. Anyyyyyyyyyy day now. 😉
An interesting question. The typical interpretation on the part of those who blanch at the idea that Jesus was in error is that he must have been referring to the Transfiguration, the next event in Mark’s gospel. Notice the chapter divisions. Mark 9:1 is associated with the Transfiguration narrative when it would seem to best make sense as the conclusion of the teachings in Chapter 8. Of course the original manuscript had no such divisions although it’s possible Mark himself might have intended this association.
Of course it doesn’t seem likely that Jesus was referring to the Transfiguration because the statement “there are some standing here who will not taste death” clearly implies that there are some who will taste death. Seems unlikely that too many of Jesus’ audience happened to die in the next six days! (Or was it eight?)
We can ask why embarrassing sayings like this one and Matthew 10:23 weren’t simply purged instead of interpreted? I suppose the tradition was simply too strong. It’s hard to see why a later generation of Christians would make up these sayings so here we probably have the clearest view of the historical Jesus, the apocalypticist.
We actually don’t know that anything was ‘purged’–impossible to prove, without very early copies of the texts, that almost certainly don’t exist now. Given the relatively high consistency between the different copies we have of each gospel, it’s unlikely there was any concerted effort to change the basic story–but the gospels themselves differ from each other, because dueling interpretations of who Jesus was, and what he meant. And that would have been true while he was still alive.
True enough, but the fact that Jesus’ sayings were collected at all shows at least some degree of editing took place. And we know stuff was added so it’s not beyond the pale to imagine stuff was deleted. You’re right, we cannot know what we cannot know. But we can never completely discount the possibility.
Preacherskid said
I am new to this blog so if this topic has been recently covered, I apologize. I have always been troubled by Mark 9:1. To me, it is saying that the new kingdom will arrive within the lifetime of some of those there. Well, they have been waiting for 2,000 years then. I realize a person can explain this statement away to mean a hundred different other interpretations. I think it’s interesting that the ‘Bible is inerrant’ believers explain away verses like this but want to interpret others literally. If that is the case, then Jesus was just flat wrong. Right?
Here is another possibility: could Jesus have been talking about mysterious people in the crowd who were going to be inordinately long-lived? Legends about such people abound.
My source for this idea in connection with Jesus: there is a little-known story about the Muslim conquest of ‘Iraq; the army find a mountain inhabited by a companion of Jesus, who claims to have been told by Jesus himself “Stay here worshipping on this mountain until I return.” The companion’s name is given as Zurayb ibn Barthalma, or something like that, and he gives the army lots of advice before mysteriously disappearing. Later on, others search for him again at the mountain, yet can’t find him.
Although coming from the Islamic world, the story suggests there may have been pre-Islamic Jesus-traditions in circulation concerning companions of Jesus who lived an inordinately long time. And that suggests an alternative way of looking at the verse in Mark.
Preacherskid said
I am new to this blog so if this topic has been recently covered, I apologize. I have always been troubled by Mark 9:1. To me, it is saying that the new kingdom will arrive within the lifetime of some of those there. Well, they have been waiting for 2,000 years then. I realize a person can explain this statement away to mean a hundred different other interpretations. I think it’s interesting that the ‘Bible is inerrant’ believers explain away verses like this but want to interpret others literally. If that is the case, then Jesus was just flat wrong. Right?
There was a new kingdom. There was no waiting for 2,000 years. Jesus was not just flat wrong. You are in error (flat wrong).
Jewish rebels defeated the Roman legion Fulminata XII and set up a new kingdom. This happened in the lifetime of some people who were alive in 30 Common Era.
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