Loading...In my previous post I pointed out that Jesus’ mother (and brothers) don’t seem to know who he really is in Mark. This is part of a broader theme distinctive to Mark’s Gospel, a theme that is considerably downplayed in the other Gospels (and almost completely done away with in John). Mark wants to emphasize, repeatedly, that no one seemed to understand who Jesus was throughout his entire ministry. Here is what I say on the theme in my textbook on the New Testament, in the chapter on Mark.
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Jesus The Misunderstood Son of God
One way to establish “misunderstanding” as a Markan theme is to read carefully through the first half of the Gospel and ask, “Who realizes that Jesus is the Son of God?” The answer may come as a bit of a surprise. Clearly God knows that Jesus is his Son, because he himself declares it at the baptism (1:11). And since this declaration comes directly to Jesus (“You are my beloved Son”), the reader can assume that he knows it as well. In addition, the evil demons recognize Jesus as the Son of God; on several instances they scream it out when they encounter him (3:11, cf. 1:24). Who else knows? Oddly enough, only two other persons: the author of the Gospel, who recounts these various tales, and you the reader, who reads them.
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Beautiful analysis. You could say that our perception of Mark’s gospel–of the artfulness of its writer–has itself been like gradually learning how to see.
Do you think Mark could have been thinking of 1 Corinthians? Through a glass darkly, then face to face? How widely were the epistles distributed by then?
A more interesting possibility is that this notion of gradually coming to see Jesus’ true identity was a widespread concept in the Christianity of Mark’s era. He obviously wasn’t writing just for himself–he had a readership. For any writer–and look who I’m telling this–what you write is going to be impacted by who you think is going to be reading it.
My sense is that Mark had not read Paul’s letters; but the idea of “hidden truths” is longstanding in Xty (and other religions of the time)
The Mystery Cults I’ve heard of, but I think there the idea was that by joining some inner circle, you would be granted special knowledge denied to outsiders (effectively so, which is why we know so little about them now). Much like Scientology today (or the Shriners). Christianity had its cultish aspects, but was not keeping the ‘Good News’ a secret from anybody. They believed they’d been directed to spread it as far and wide as they could, and they took that duty seriously.
But yes, I think the idea that you could come to a greater and greater understanding of Jesus was widespread, and Mark was playing to that, by suggesting even the disciples and his own family didn’t realize his true nature.
I wonder what Jesus’ reaction would have been if Peter’s answer to 8:29 was: “You are the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. You all are separate persons but only one God”.
Ha! That’s a good one. I wonder why it never occurred to me?!
I worked for a time at a lowly position at McCann-Erickson, and I think any advertising copywriter’s reaction to that would be “Too long.”
Do you think Mary got pregnant out of wedlock and covered it up by saying he was the Son of God, so as not to get in trouble?
I really don’t know what happened, and don’t think anyone else does either!!
This is what alienates me so much from Christianity, the things many Christians say with such certainty. I believe it was Pope Gregory who designated Mary Magdalene to be of questionable virtue (ahem) despite a lack of Biblical, in itself a questionable source, authority. I am convinced that no one knows what happens after death.
Hume – Your comment reminds me of the humorous song “Benny’s From Heaven” (sung to the music of “Pennies From Heaven”). The lyrics are at https://martimendenhall.bandcamp.com/track/bennies-from-heaven .
Doug, what a neat find. Thanks for sharing!
One has to presume that if the only person who was a witness to the qol bath during Jesus’ baptism was Jesus himself, that at some point Jesus must have relayed it to someone so that the event could be later recounted in this gospel. At no point in Mark does Jesus relay the event to his disciples. Indeed, throughout Mark, Jesus appears to be playing a game with his disciples. Jesus knows who he is, but instead of telling his disciples outright, he appears to be dropping hints and testing their ability to “get the hint”. Even up until the end, the disciples don’t seem totally convinced. Peter even admits to denying he knows Jesus at all. To me, all of this says volumes more about Jesus’ followers than it does about Jesus himself. This is all a textbook case of hindsight bias. Here, I’ll explain.
— Was the historical Jesus actually testing his disciples to see if they knew his true identity? No. The historical Jesus probably only came to see himself as the Messiah when his disciples began to speculate that he was the Messiah. They would ask him, “Are you the Messiah?” And Jesus, being the typically cagey cult leader would respond, “What do you think?” And then maybe Peter might respond, “We think that you are the Messiah.” And Jesus coyly refused to confirm or deny it, allowing the mystery to build him up in his disciples’ minds greater than Jesus could do so with easily refutable details. Only later, after Jesus has been executed, and the remaining followers start seeing “visions” of Jesus, do they think back and start seeing Jesus’ reticence not as cageyness but, rather, Jesus trying to drop hints about his true nature and his true destiny. In other words, they reimagined the events to fit their new notion of Jesus.
— All the incidents in the gospel where Jesus is supposedly presaging his inexorable death and resurrection, none of that is historical. None of that ever happened. Right up until Jesus was arrested, his followers had no clue that anything other than the eschaton was going to happen. Up until that moment, the disciples thought that Jesus was going to be with them as the eschaton started. But when Jesus was arrested and ignominiously crucified, they had to quickly rethink and re-evaluate everything they knew about him. Did Jesus know this was going to happen all along? Did he drop any hints that we missed? Were we too blind to see this coming? Alas, the purpose of the Gospel of Mark is not to make the disciples look more clueless than they were. The purpose of Mark is to make the disciples look more perceptive than they were. It’s supposed to make it look like the disciples actually did see the signs, but that the portends only became perfectly clear AFTER Jesus was killed. In reality, the disciples were not only as clueless as portrayed in Mark, they were thoroughly, absolutely clueless in real life, because (apart from Judas himself) it would have been near impossible for them to predict Judas’ betrayal, Jesus’ arrest and execution. They simply did not see it coming. But the story created and passed down via Mark is meant to make it look like the disciples kind of saw it coming the whole time. It’s a retroactive eureka moment. It would be difficult to create a better, more textbook example of hindsight bias.
Fascinating!
talmore, I’m not sure I would flesh it out as fully as you do hear, but I agree that is likely that the early followers of Jesus had to do a lot of rethinking when the promised coming of the Son of Man failed to materialize,
I think it’s fascinating to wonder if Jesus actually anticipated his death as the catalyst to bring about the new order or if he was caught as unawares as the others. We should ask Bart!
No comment on the post, I just want to wish you and all the members of your blog a happy and loving Thanksgiving.
Might Mark’s gospel reflect a coming to terms with and making sense of the unexpected death and widespread rejection of Jesus? Though how would this sit with Paul’s ecstatic preaching of God’s resurrection of Jesus prior to the writing of Mark? No doubt in Paul’s mind who Jesus was! Different ideas about Jesus in different communities and different times?
My sense is that Mark himself had little doubts about who Jesus was, but for the purposes of his narrative he employed a “secrecy” motif. He wanted his readers to think that the truth about Jesus was not known during his public ministry.
The various synoptic diarists offered several explanations for what was obvious to people who lived at that time. Why were the ideas of Christianity unknown during the lifetime of Jesus? Even Jesus didn’t know it then. It was hidden. The disciples were dense. The disciples understood but were told not to tell.
All these aimed to provide Christians with fodder to address the challenges they were hearing. If what you say about Jesus is true, how come no one has even heard of him? Or of the ideas?
I’m not quite clear what you’re asking. Obviously people did know about Jesus.
No, that’s not obvious. As you documented in your book Did Jesus Exist?, we have no writings by or about him during his lifetime. We have no writings which can be credibly attributed to anyone who met him. The sages (later rabbis) were meticulous about crediting their sources. None mention Jesus until later. Part of the diarist’s explanation is that he was in backwoods Galilee, not Jerusalem, where the action was. Some say that Jewish writings about Jesus were redacted out because of what Christians were saying about him. That’s slightly plausible. All the Christian writings were either late bios narratives (the gospels) or what people believed about him after his death (everything else in the NT).
Come to think of it, it wasn’t even necessary that someone (human, god, or both) died as the universal sacrifice. It was sufficient that people believed that someone died and was accepted by God as the universal sacrifice.
I’m just saying that Jesus was a public preacher, and people who saw him knew something about him and his teachings. As to none of the rabbis in his day mentioning him — we don’t have a single writing from any rabbis in his day, do we?
As more and more of Mark is acknowledged as a complex literary story with so much of it a midrash of OT stories, where are the oral traditions of sayings? I do think some are still in there (somewhere) but how can a case be made for them? The epistles don’t show any evidence of oral sayings, do they? Yet, here they are being claimed in Mark. I’m not talking about the traditions of what he did but of what he said, just to be clear.
The epistles are a different genre; they are not stories, like the Gospels. And stories of historical figures almost *always* begin as oral traditions (still today). Any story not beginning in the oral tradition was invented by an author as a written tradition. Anyone who thinks that a particular story about a person from the past was simply a fiction invented by the author would need to bear the burden of proof (since the vast majority of stories are not that kind of thing)
But, as Pattylt identifies, Mark has been identified as a complex literary product consisting of ring structures, Homeric components, OT midrash and more. There is no need for an historical Jesus character. Mark’s use of Jesus derives from Paul’s epistles – and that Jesus was not historical.
I re-read The Gospel of Mark a few days ago. In Mark 15:39 it’s a centurion at the foot of the cross who declares, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” It’s such a powerful declaration and comes from the unlikeliest of candidates. It makes the reader wonder if perhaps he (centurion) was more convinced at that point than Peter.
Another passage that struck me is in Mark 5:7-9. Jesus orders the unclean spirit (singular) out of a man. The spirit replies, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” The spirit recognizes him. Then something strange takes place. Jesus asks the spirit, “What is your name?” Could it be that they recognize Jesus but he cannot recognize them by name? That would fit in well with the adoptionist theory. Could it be that they recognize Jesus due to their shared pre-existence? That would work ok for Johannine theory but with some obvious issues. Could it be that the man recognized Jesus from the area but Jesus did not recognize him? That would fit well within the naturalistic theory. The story concludes with the spirit(s) declaring, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” Do you have a view on which is the best way to understand these passages?
Yes indeed. But there are confusions: for example, what is the full significance of “legion.” It is clearly a reference to a large army unit in the Roman military: but what does that mean in this context? Does it mean that Jesus is shown as being more powerful than the Roman army? That the Romans are a demonic force? Other options? Lots and lots of interpretive questions about all these passages.
I have heard that the standard formula of exorcisms in those days had the exorcist having to name the demon he was expelling. Part of the process was to trick the demon(s) into naming themselves so they could then be expelled. The readers in these times would understand that the demon’s name needed to be stated. Any truth to this?
That’s how it appears to happen on one occasion in the NT; I’m not familiar with similar procedures elsewhere.
Back when you were working the Christian side of things, what was your explanation for why the incarnation of God would appear for such a limited period of time and choose to be so obscure, if in fact the salvation of everyone in the world would thereafter be dependent on knowing about him?
It was a mystery to me! God has his plans!
Seems like I read somewhere in Donald Akenson’s books (either Saint Saul or Surpassing Wonder) the idea that the gospels were basically a really successful effort at reining in Paul’s Christology. Maybe I misrepresent this great historian. But is there anything to that?
Yeah, I don’t see that. I’m not opposed to the idea, but I just don’t see the evidence for it. THe only “opposition” to Paul in the Gospels that I see is Matthew’s insistence on the ongoing importance of the Torah for the followers of Jesus, but that’s not a Christological issue per se.
I think you could also use Matthew’s “sheep and goats” parable; it seems to me that this is a challenge to Paul’s justification by faith (and works) in that works alone get the sheep into “heaven.” But I have never really understood Matthew’s point here, for that same reason – the parable implies faith in Jesus is not necessary.
That’s not opposition to Paul. It’s simply portraying Jesus as a sage of Second Temple Judaism. It’s what a sage would have taught. Jesus couldn’t teach Christianity since it didn’t exist yet. Jesus had not yet been sacrificed. Or, for some, Christianity had not yet been invented.
You say that Peter understands Jesus as the traditional Jewish messiah. Is this the view that continued in the Jewish Christian church after the death of Jesus? Based on the tension between Paul and James it seems that the “disciples” really never did come around to thinking of Jesus as a savior of Gentiles.
Mark therefore understood Jesus the way that Paul did (making him a follower of Paul). As a suffering Christ who brought salvation to the Gentiles.
Did any of the gospel writers maintain a Jewish messiah view of Jesus?
So many questions.
I would say there was no one Jewish view of Jesus. Matthew, Paul, Paul’s opponents in Galatia, the disciples of Jesus in Jerusalem all had Jewish views of Jesus, and they were very different from one another. (Peter and James *did* agree that Jesus was the savior of gentiles!)
Were the original Docetists Jews? Or can we at least speculate that they were? And is it possible they were active before the destruction of the Temple? Ignatius denounces them, so we know they were early.
PS: Happy (day after) Thanksgiving!
No, I don’t think there is any evidence to suggest they were Jewish.
If I only had Mark and had to rely on the parting message of Jesus – miraculous signs that would follow true believers – I’d have to conclude it a fraud. Why do we continue to put trust in this book to be “Scripture”????? Because Rome said so????
Mark’s creation is unquestionably a sophisticated document. It is the source of all subsequent gospels and thereby the source of Christianity as we know it. Mark used numerous inputs and a significant one was Paul. Paul’s “Jerusalem Pillars” enter his story early, (immediately,as Mark would say). Walking along the beach Jesus picks up Simon (= Peter = Cephas), James and John ( 1:16-19). The Jerusalem Pillars have been demoted to uneducated Galilean fisherman bumpkins!
We see Paul’s language and influence again in 3:14-16 when Mark uses Paul’s term “apostles” and Jesus appoints “the twelve”. Here Mark makes good use of Paul’s mysterious twelve (1Cor 15:5). This leads NT scholars, two thousand years later, to state absolutely that Paul’s “the twelve” were, in fact, Jesus disciples…
But what was the source for Mark’s bookend characters – the Baptist and Pilate? Here I’ll go out on a limb, but speculation is fun. I think it was Josephus, which means Mark dates mid 90’s at the earliest. What do you think Bart? A bit out of the mainstream maybe?
I completely agree: it is a bit out of the mainstream. 🙂
Great, that means it’s probably true! 🙂
There were other contemporary sources for John B and for Pilate that Mark could have relied on. I would also point out that Mark is less harsh on the Pharisees than the other gospels are, which particularly suggests a date around the time of the Great Revolt. After 70 CE; after the war and destruction, the Pharisees quickly became the only viable competitor to the Jesus Movement likely to become normative Judaism – at least as the Jesus Movement saw it.
The only earlier attestation for Pilate is Philo. His brutal Pilate bears no resemblance to the ditherer of the Gospels. The dating of Mark comes mostly from Mark 13, which is “prophesy” put on the lips of Jesus by Mark. The only thing that proofs is that Mark was written sometime AFTER CE 70.
Tony, why are you so keen to believe that mark never heard any stories about Jesus? I mean, you’re now saying mark was living in the 90s and the only things he knew about Jesus was from reading Paul’s letters and Josephus. He was writing a gospel for Christians, but he either never met any Christians, or the ones he had met never said anything about Jesus, JB or Pilate? I would think you would be more successful to argue that the “celestial” Jesus became “historicised” through the oral tradition.
Dragonfly, why are you so keen to believe that Mark heard stories about Jesus? Mark’s Gospel in no way resembles an historical narrative. It is a literary product made of complex ring compositions, Jewish midrash and mythology, Greek mythology (Homer), and likely based on a Josephus character called Jesus Ben Ananias and, of course, Paul’s letters. Numerous well qualified scholars have come to that conclusion. No oral tradition needed. I’m not really sure Mark wrote in the 90’s – but he could have. The celestial Jesus character who died and rose came from Paul. Because Paul provides no Jesus details, Mark had to look elsewhere for meat on the bones. He found it in Josephus’ The Jewish War (74-79) in the shape of a disturbed person called Jesus Ben Ananias. There are numerous parallels between that Jesus and Mark’s.
I think I’m starting to understand now.
I’ve studied the mythicist position in earnest since around May and joined several groups to discuss it. The conversations are generally the same: The James passage is considered an interpolation from Origen. That’s usually based on Carrier’s take on the passage. What they don’t do, in my opinion, is think Origen’s references through—“as Josephus says, of James the Just, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ…” Origen took that statement directly from Josephus because he had no reason to tell himself, or the reader, that Jesus was called the Christ. He, as well as his readers, obviously knew that already. Also, there are plenty of other times when Origen mentions Jesus and does not say “who was called Christ”. As far as I know he only wrote that when specifically referring to Josephus.
One difficulty mythicists do have getting around is Mark’s narrative when he quotes Jesus as saying, “Truly I tell you, some standing here will not taste death…” What kind of a storyteller has his hero making failed prophecies? Or when Matthew has Jesus telling the twelve disciples they’ll all have thrones. Why would Jesus promise Judas a throne? It’s another failed prophecy.
The mythicist position is insupportable so far, and the conversations with mythicists just go circles.
I have noticed two things. First, no-one looks at all the evidence and decides Jesus didn’t exist. They all go in with the idea and try to find evidence to support the claim. Second, there just isn’t any evidence. It would be amazing if there was, but alas, it’s just not there.
Just because Josephus is one of the few surviving sources we have of gospel stories outside the gospels doesn’t mean he was Mark’s source. Remember, Mark is writing BEFORE the fall of the Roman Empire. And within the lifetimes of people who could have met Jesus, though probably none of the twelve.
He knew a lot more about Jesus than Josephus ever knew, or ever cared to know. I can imagine him reading those chronicles and sniffing haughtily. Amateur. 😉
I hope you had a good Thanksgiving!
Very nice: with my mom and my brother and his family in Kent Ohio.
50 to 60 years after Jesus’ death, it’s clear that Jesus is not going to return as the Messiah Setting up a worldwide kingdom. So Mark creates a new theology where Jesus suffers and dies for the sins of the world . No preacher puts Mark in perspective. Thanks so much .
“in Mark’s view, to understand Jesus in any other way is to succumb to the temptations of the devil”
Could Jesus/Mark also be warning Peter that viewing him as a conquering messiah is to view him as the demons do, who see only his power to destroy them?
Yes, in Mark Jesus is dead set against the “conquering messiah” figure.
Perhaps because he believes that is not his role–the conquering will be done by God. The twelve disciples will rule the twelve tribes, and the Kingdom as a whole will be ruled by God through his regent, the Son of Man.
So where did Jesus think he’d be?
I still think he felt he was the sacrifice. It’s so integral to his thought that those who aggrandize themselves will be humbled. So much as he may have appreciated those who recognized the truth in his teachings, he was often angered by those who tried to elevate him to some higher level. “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.”
The story of the temptation in the desert dramatizes this conflict–that he considered himself as important as anyone who ever lived, more than most–but he felt the need to humble himself in every possible way. To chastise his pride. To contain it. To belittle it. The demons were the voices in his own head, telling him he was a king. And he rejects them by saying he’s not.
But Peter, James and John had their eyesight cleared (as in the blind man at Bethsaida at Mk 8.25) at the transfiguration (Mk. 9.2-13) immediately following Jesus rebuking Peter (Mk. 8.33). God specifically tells Peter, James and John that Jesus is his son and to listen to him (Mk. 9.7). For the rest of the Gospel of Mark, Peter, James and John know exactly who Jesus, even though they are told not to tell anyone (Mk. 9.9)(assuming that the Gospel of Mark is written chronologically). Therefore, when Peter, James and John abandon Jesus and Peter denies him, etc. they know exactly who he is. I think that is a powerful point Mark makes…Jesus was rejected or at least abandoned by the three disciples who knew who he was when they abandoned or denied him.
Hello, I’ve been wondering if there’s a way for laypeople to access the earliest manuscript we have of Mark? Or any of the gospels? I’m interested to see first hand how the earliest manuscripts differ from what is published today.
I’m not sure what you are asking. You can find a copy of P45 on the Internet — but it is in Greek and so you wouldn’t be able to compare it to, say, an English translation of today. Is that what you’re looking for? Or are you looking for an *English translation* of the earliest manuscript? If so, it wouldn’t be a *whole* lot different from a decent modern English version.
Dr Ehrman –
Wasn’t sure the best thread to ask this, but it pertains somewhat to the messianic secret: in Mark and Matthew, why do the bystanders at the cross think Jesus was calling for Elijah, when he was (supposedly) crying out to God? I have seen explanations of “bystanders mishearing Eloi/Eli as Elias” or “bystanders mocking him as a messianic claimant” or “Mark is further trying to distinguish Jesus from Elijah” – are any of these (or some combo of them) cogent? Thanks as always!
Not sure. The words sound alike. ANd there was a tradition that “Elijah” was to come before the end of all things. But I’ve never quite put it all together.