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Did Jesus Predict His Own Death and Resurrection in Mark?
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Barfo

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December 30, 2019 - 2:23 pm

I have been studying the sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark and in chapter 9:31 Jesus says, “The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him.  After he is killed, he will rise on the third day.”  I have not found an explanation for it.  Does anyone know if it is a verse which was added later?

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godspell

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December 30, 2019 - 3:40 pm

I’ve never seen any reference to it having been added later.  Mark believed Jesus had known he was going to be crucified (I think he probably suspected it would happen, may just possibly have provoked it), and all Christians believed he had risen from the dead.  Why would it need to be added later?  

In most translations, Jesus says he will be delivered into the hands of the Chief Priests and Scribes, then handed over to the gentiles for crucifixion.  It’s very specific.  More specific than you’d expect from a man given to allusory expression most of the time.  (Some translations simplify it to “into the hands of men.”)  I don’t believe Jesus said this, at least not in this way.  He would have been much more oblique.  Mark, following his theme that no one understood Jesus, says they didn’t know what he meant, even though clearly they know exactly what he means, and Peter upbraids him for making this grim prophecy.  It is one of Mark’s less convincing assertions, but he has to put that in there, or why would they have agreed to go with him?

It’s something written after his death, but not necessarily by Mark.  All the gospels have earlier sources that we don’t have now.  But none of them have anything directly from Jesus himself, because he left no writings, and probably neither did his disciples.  

Bart believes Jesus was referring to an angel empowered by God when he talks about the Son of Man, but hard to say why he’d think an angel would suffer crucifixion and death at the hands of mortals.  Whatever Jesus really did say, if we had exact transcripts, we’d still be arguing about what he meant.  Mark was not wrong to say that people had a hard time understanding him.  He was just wrong to think he wasn’t one of the people with that problem.  😉  

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Barfo

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December 30, 2019 - 6:56 pm

Sounds about right, thanks godspell.  I did no other research on it other than looking for an explanation on this blog which I could not find.  I’m reading all of the quotes of Jesus in Mark to get a grasp on what Jesus (according to Mark) thought of himself/claimed to be.  Too bad there wasn’t an actual written source available that Mark used other than oral traditions. 

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godspell

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December 30, 2019 - 7:21 pm

I doubt very much Mark didn’t have written sources.  Nobody wrote anything about Jesus’ life in any language for over three decades?  Unlikely.  But because his gospel is the first of the narrative works that survived, we can’t read any earlier ones to see who he was borrowing from.  Paul was not a storyteller.  So the speculation as to Mark’s sources is necessarily–speculative.  Some of those speculations, from real scholars, can be very involved–and very convincing.  Until you read a different one.  

If he wrote it all himself, he was a genius.  

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Robert
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December 30, 2019 - 7:36 pm
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