Loading...It is one thing to be able to establish the emphases of both Mark and Luke in their accounts of Jesus going to his death. (See my previous post). It is harder, and more speculative, to establish why they chose to portray Jesus in these ways. But there are some good, plausible views of the matter. I’ll start with Mark.
In Mark Jesus appears to be in shock, is silent the entire time, seems not to understand why this is happening to him, up to the end, when he cries out asking God why he has forsaken him. And then he dies, never having received an answer. What is most striking is that even though Mark’s Jesus may not know why, when it comes to the time, he has to suffer like this, the reader does (and so, of course, does Mark). The moment that Jesus dies, two things happen: the curtain in the temple is ripped in half and the centurion confesses that he is the son of God. The curtain was the barrier between God, in the holy of holies in the temple, and the people. No one could go behind the curtain to be in God’s presence, except once a year when the High Priest entered the room on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) to make a sacrifice to atone for the people’s sins for a year. For the author of Mark, Jesus’ death changed all that. There is now no longer a curtain separating God from his people. All people have direct access to God through the death of Jesus, which is the ultimate atonement. And someone recognizes it – the pagan centurion who has just crucified Jesus. The atonement is not for Jews only, but for all people. At the time he was suffering, Jesus may have been filled with doubts, but the reader knows why this had to happen: Jesus’ death was to bring an atonement for sin.
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“No one could go behind the curtain to be in God’s presence, except once a year when the High Priest entered the room on Yom Kippur ”
I remember a Church-camp counselor telling me about this with the additional detail that the high priest had a cable tied around his waste, lest the power of the presence of God overcome him they’d be able to at least retrieve the body. Kind of urban-legendy, but believable if you’re a 15 year old curious Presbyterian. Is this a common idea? Sorry for the digression…
I”ve heard this too. But offhand, I don’t know where the tradition comes from. Maybe someone else knows? If so, let us know!
According to https://aish.com/priest-on-a-rope/ it comes from the Zohar (which was first published around 1300 and is considered fiction).
I think that for Mark the torn temple curtain is a portant of the coming destruction of the temple, which was a contemporary event for Mark and his community. Thata Roman centurion recognizes the significance of these events is highly dramatic. Awesome staging by Mark. The high priests will indeed see his coming in glory and it will be their demise.
It seems that redaction criticism would be a central pillar in any examination of early (and modern?) christian writings. I am quite intrigued by it and yet I encounter little of it in my own reading. Has it become so deeply ingrained in scholarship that it is assumed that no one need mention it? Has it been found seriously flawed or limited? Has it been superceded by some newer scholarly fad?
It’s a tried and true method. I think it is not talked about much these days because it has been applied so thoroughly and rigorously to the Gospels that, for scholars at least, there’s not that much more to say.
Professor, is it reasonable to think that perhaps Luke was closer to it than Mark ? That Luke was privy to a tradition that Jesus not only went to his death calmly and resolutely but that he anticipated (even welcomed) his death ? In a later chapter in your latest work, “Did Jesus Exist”, you discuss the incident at the Temple. You write, “Jesus apparently took umbrage at the operation [i.e. the money changers and animal sellers] and reacted violently to it. We do not know why.” Might it have been to provoke the authorities, as Dr Schonfield and some others have argued ? Did Jesus have a time table to keep, leaving Jerusalem each night of the week to avoid being taken captive too soon, and only when ready goading Judas into turning him in to the authorities and leading them to him ? Maybe Jesus believed that his death would be the precipitating factor in bringing on the apocalyptic age and the new world to come ?
Yes, these are all possiblities. Different scholars, of course, work out the scenario differently. I myself do not think that Jesus was out to provoke authorities, but to proclaim his message, which ended up provoking the authorities. I lay out my view at greater length in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
Just started reading Apocalyptic Prophet. I am trying to save it for an upcoming trip but that is proving nearly impossible!
I will most likely be studying religion at university soon in the UK and I’m just wondering who you consider to be the best British scholars in the UK teaching at university?
There are lots of them! Terrific scholars. It depends completely on what you want to study (both field and subfield). I would suggest you look at all the websites, see what each faculty member is doing, see if it is what you want to do, look at their publications, and see if they are the one(s) you would like to study with.
But who are your favorite in the UK
It really depends on which fields you mean! There are lots and lots of amazing scholars in the UK, from Rowan Williams to Judith Lieu to Chris Tucket to Ward Blanton to … on and on and on. These all do different things, and there are lots more.
Hi Bart,
I wonder if you can write a post on whether any of the Church Fathers espoused the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as advocated by evangelicals today? I have been reading an article by Derek Flood and Garry Williams in the Evangelical Quarterly, the former arguing that none of the Fathers taught the doctrine (he says they only substitutionary atonement in the context of restorative justice, not penal justice in sense of punishment) while the latter insisting some of the Fathers did teach the doctrine.
The crucifixion passage in Mark is often cited by evangelicals as supporting the doctrine: the darkness represented God’s judgment on Jesus; Jesus’ cry of dereliction signifies God was punishing Jesus on the cross hence abandoning him on the cross. In your view, do you think any NT author conveyed the idea that God was angry with Jesus, that God was punishing Jesus who voluntarily took on the sins of the world onto himself thereby making him guilty?
My problem is that I don’t know what evangelicals are teaching these days. If it’s what you’ve said, then no, I don’t think any of the authors of the NT taught this. But Mark certainly does teach that Jesus’ death brought an atonement (hence the ripping of the curtain). But Jesus himself doesn’t seem to undersand why it’s happening to him at the end.
Is it not also possible that Mark’s account is less about subtext, and as such, simply more historically reliable than Luke’s? E.g. Using the criterion of dissimilarity, isn’t it more likely that a Christian would alter the story in order to make Jesus look more confident and knowledgeable, than the other way around?
Yes — but that would make Luke unhistorical — it wouldn’t make Mark, necessarily, historical, if you see what I mean.
Professor Ehrman, what are we to do with the numerous passages in Mark where Jesus predicts his own execution? Its true that Mark depicts the suffering of Jesus in very vivid terms but does he really depict Jesus as being “not to understand why this is happening to him”?
Yes, I’d say Mark’s Jesus is confused on the point. He knows that he has to die — since he says so three times — but at the end he doesn’t understand (“Why have you foresaken me”). Maybe Mark wants to say both things at once….
The thing is that while its true that Mark’s Jesus is depicted as silent throughout the whole passion except for that last cry, I found no reason to interpret such silence as “shock”. It could be as well be interpreted as a stoic silence for that matter. My point is, what evidence is there that Mark’s Jesus is *confused* about the nature of his suffering? What allows us to interpret his silence in such a way?
Hi Bart,
I found this and was hoping that you would comment on the logic.
At what hour was Jesus crucified? The answer is easy when you realize that there were two different time systems being used.
1. The third hour, Mark 15: 25, “And it was the third hour when they crucified Him.”
2. The sixth hour, John 19:14-15, “Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold, your King!” 15 They, therefore, cried out, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.’”
Most probably, John was using the Roman measurement of time when dealing with the crucifixion. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, for the most part, used the Hebrew system of measuring a day: from sundown to sunup. The Roman system was from midnight to midnight. “John wrote his gospel in Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia, and therefore in regard to the civil day, he would be likely to employ the Roman reckoning.1
I’m not sure what makes that “probable”? The other authors were also writing in the Roman empire outside of Israel — why would John be different? And what evidence is there in the text apart from this passage that suggests he’s following a time scale different from the one of the setting that he is describing? (If I’m writing about something that happened yesterday in London and I say that it took place at 4:30, surely I wouldn’t mean 4:30 in San Francisco where I was writing from!) The more common explanatoin is that John is trying to show that Jesus was executed at the time of the Passover lambs, that is, starting at noon on the day of Preparation for Passover (see 19:14).
Thanks for your reply!
Hello Bart,
It appears (at least in my layman eyes) that Jesus knows he will be betrayed, his blood will pour out, and that he will be raised according to the below verses in Mark. As these occurred before the crucifixion, how can that be harmonized with the idea that Jesus did not understand what was happening to him on the cross according to Mark?
Mark 14:18 “Truly I say to you that one of you will betray Me—one who is eating with Me”
Mark 14:21 “For the Son of Man is going away just as it is written about Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed”
Mark 14:22-25 “This is My blood of the covenant, which is being poured out for many” ….“until that day when I drink it, new, in the kingdom of God.”
Mark 14:27-28 “But after I am raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.”
Mark 14:41-42 “The hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let’s go; behold, the one who is betraying Me is near!”
Thanks for all of your excellent content and looking forward to the next book!
Yes, he certainly knows what will happen to him in the Gospel accounts. That, of course, is not to say that this was the case *historically*. But it is how he is portrayed. It is most interesting in Mark, because he repeatedly predicts what will happen and then when it begins to happen as predicted he is portrayed as in doubt about why it’s is happening.
I agree, professor, that Mark wanted to “stress that Jesus himself didn’t understand, even to the end.” However, I suspect he had a different purpose than mollifying “a persecuted Christian community who were suffering for their faith in Jesus.”
A four decades, ex post facto author could see the ‘Big Picture’ and know he was recounting, “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” But would his readers recognize the surpassing faith and astonishing courage of someone who had volunteered to become God’s emissary — *without* having the benefit of foresight OR hindsight?
IMHO Mark was simply portraying a “Messiah” so utterly confident in and unreservedly devoted to the “Word” he had *chosen* to make incarnate that he unhesitatingly risked (and ultimately met) an unspeakably horrific fate.
After two millennia the ocean of church doctrine is so wide and deep that everyone is as oblivious of all that water as the metaphorical fish. But what if the author of the earliest gospel also embraced the earlier, *low* Christology?
I think Mark intended his readers to see a Jesus who (to borrow from the late, contemporary poet) might have said: “You can stand me up at the gates of Hell, but I won’t back down!”
Mark’s Jesus is clearly an enigma to everyone — the authorities (both religious and civil), the hoi polloi (both admirers and detractors), and even his closest disciples.
Indeed, Jesus, himself, was ultimately nonplussed about the purpose of his mission and how it could be accomplished.
“Once I was inspired,” Andrew Lloyd Webber imagines him ruminating in a haunting lamentation in Gethsemane. “Now I’m sad and tired.”
A retrospecting Mark knew what the Messiah only came to recognize at the end, i.e., that his own doom was the inescapable (perhaps, even inevitable from the moment the Holy Spirit descended upon him at his baptism) price he would pay.
Paul’s ingenuous rationalization — that “Jesus’ death was to bring an atonement for sin” — not only reconciled Messianic expectations with reality, but proved remarkably fortuitous, given that the Temple would soon be reduced to a Wailing Wall.
However, recasting the Messiah from Judaism’s conquering hero into a blood sacrifice to appease Yahweh’s continuing resentment over the impertinence of the first man should require a suitable stand-in for the original transgressor.
Doesn’t the “Substitutionary Atonement” doctrine — on which the *entire* canon of NT scripture stands — impel the “low” Christology that is found only in Mark?
I’m not sure how it impels a low Christology since most of those who have held to substitionary atonement have had a high christology.
Only “most”? I assumed that they *all* did!
The other NT authors wrote anywhere from 2+ decades to nearly a century *after* the apostle/apologist who, as you have so insightfully observed, transformed the religion of Jesus into a religion *about* Jesus.
Paul’s solution to the ‘crucified Messiah’ conundrum presages (or perhaps more accurately, “prescribes”) the High Christology that would inspire and isolate the last gospel and keep it from being ‘seen together’ with its three predecessors.
Further, Paul accounts for *half* of the books in the NT canon! And AFAIK, only the earliest book in the other half — Mark’s gospel — appears to have both held to a Low Christology and (aside from an inept, easily recognized, post-resurrection appendix) somehow managed to elude redaction by later, orthodox, ‘Thought Police’ scribes.
FWIW you do make a fairly persuasive case for canonical Luke being a 2nd edition — that author having, perhaps, revised his gospel to evince a High Christology by inserting two chapters of ‘birth narrative’ prequel and amending his original opening that had the “voice from heaven” correctly pronounce the words of Psalm 2:7.
But Mark (and possibly Luke) aside, do *any* other passages of NT scripture presuppose a Low Christology?
Sure. Romans 1:3-4; Acts 2:36; Acts 13:32-33
Matthew and Luke spun nativity fables to have Jesus fulfill the prophesy that the Messiah would be born in the ancestral hometown of King David. Likewise, Paul lends Jesus Messianic bona fides in Romans 1 by portraying him as “descended from David according to the flesh.”
Doesn’t his specified, incarnation qualifier imply a *High* Christology?
In any event, the apposite question is: *How* did God’s emissary come into this world? Did the divine Christ unite with the mortal Jesus at his conception? Or at his baptism? Was the mortal man elevated to divinity at the Resurrection? Or did an eternal, preexistent Christ temporarily conjoin with the mortal Jesus?
Modus operandi aside, how is a putative, familial connection between Jesus and King David (genuine or contrived) relevant?
Paul clearly shares the High Christology so explicitly propounded in the last gospel — where “In the beginning was the Word” that “became flesh” (in Jesus of Nazareth) and “dwelt among us.” In this letter he merely states that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God,” confirmed “by his resurrection from the dead.”
If he was not referring to the pronouncement by “the voice from heaven” at Jesus’ baptism, to what declaration was Paul alluding?
I don’t think Paul does share the Christology of John. It’s certainly similiar in key ways. But for Paul, Jesus was not equal with God until he was *made* equal with him at the resurrection (Phil. 2:6-11). When Paul quotes an earlier creed that says he wsa declared son of God at the resurrection, he clearly, I think does not mean at his “baptism” (since he says “resurrection”); Paul of course never mentions Jesus’ baptism so there’s no way he knows about it, let alone knows about anything connected with the voice. The word “declares” in Rom 1:4 actually doesn’t mean “stated out loud,” it means something more like “designated” or “appointed.” That’s whan Christ became God’s son (according to that creedal statement.