Loading...In my previous two posts I’ve pointed out that no one seems to understand who Jesus is in the Gospel of Mark. In this post I want to show how Mark himself understands Jesus. Here is how I discussed the matter several years ago on the blog.
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Jesus The Suffering Son of God
Throughout the early portions of Mark’s Gospel the reader is given several indications that Jesus will have to die (e.g., 2:20; 3:6). After Peter’s confession, however, Jesus begins to be quite explicit about it. Even though he is the Christ, the Son of God — or rather, because he is — he must suffer death. Three times Jesus predicts his own impending passion in Jerusalem: he is to be rejected by the Jewish leaders, killed, and then raised from the dead. Strikingly, after each of these “Passion predictions” Mark has placed stories to show that the disciples never do understand what Jesus is talking about.
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These posts remind me that the story of Jesus and Christianity is similar to the story of Joseph Smith and Mormonism.
Once the historical facts are identified and pieced together, along with probable logical conclusions to non-documented events such as miracles, visions, prophesy and traditional hearsay, the entirety of the “religious” claims of both Christianity and Mormonism crumble.
Do you think the Barabbas portion of the story is to lead the reader to the Yom Kippur ritual of having 2 matching goats, one which is sacrificed and one set out into the dessert to release the sins of Israel? Barabbas means “son of the father” and Jesus is Son of the Father so they represent the matching goats. Would the readers of Mark understand this portion of the story? Have you written on this before? If so, please just let me know. I’ll find it (eventually). Thanks so much for this analysis! Fascinating!
Yes, something like that may well be behind the account. I talk about the Barabbas incident (almost certainly not historical, I think) in my book Jesus Before the Gospels.
One has to ask why the early Christians would have Jesus crucified along side a couple other criminals if it didn’t, in fact, happen. What would be gained by adding that detail? It was probably an unavoidable (historical) detail of the narrative, so they left it in, but with some rationalizing additions, such as the Barabbas part, or the “today you will be with me in heaven” part, etc. If I put myself in Pilate’s shoes I would want to send the biggest possible message to the festival crowds, and one way to do that is to find a few men to put up on crosses before Jerusalem. One isn’t enough. I would need at least three. So Pilate’s men looked for three troublemakers to make examples of, and Jesus just happened to be one of those three.
As for Barabbas, it’s possible that it was a nom de guerre, not unlike the various “Abu”s we see in the Arab world today (e.g. Abu Abbas, Abu Mazen, Abu Nadir, etc.). I wouldn’t be surprised of Barabbas was an actual criminal (or rebel?) who avoided capture, and only later did stories develop about how he was freed in exchange for Jesus. That is, the two stories were conflated, though they weren’t at all related.
Possibly to fulfill Isa 53:12 “he was numbered among the transgressors” ?
Might as well say they made up the crucifixion itself.
It’s never hard, as you know, to take vague prophetic writings and make them fit present day occurrences. You were just writing about that very thing regarding Revelation and the number of The Beast.
No doubt in my mind there were others crucified that day. My query would be more along the lines of why there’d be only three. Slow month? Monty Python fixed that problem.
Or, because Mark loved triads! Jesus denied three times by Peter. The ninth hour corresponding to 3 pm as reported by Josephus. Jesus is hung from the cross three hours after sunrise and three hours later darkness covered the earth, exactly three hours later Jesus dies. A party of three crucified together. He rose on the third day…
Why would Mark write 14:62 at a time when the interrogators were no longer alive and had missed the opportunity to witness the return of the Son of Man, thus assigning a failed prophesy to Jesus?
He probably simply overlooked the implication of the statement (which he heard from an oral source) — just as virtually everyone after his day (till today!) has.
Do you think that the insistence in Mark that Jesus *had to* suffer and die was, in part, a response to the common Jewish belief of the time that the Messiah would be a powerful figure who would overcome evil instead of dying?
Yes, I think Mark is trying to explain how Jesus could be the messiah if he was crucified. It’s because he *had* to be.
Given how long it’s taken us to properly understand Jesus’ meaning (assuming we do), I don’t think Mark was too far offbase in his premise.
His underlying assumption that “Now we all of course know understand what the master meant” is the sticking point. And to a great extent, still is.
“Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders.” (Mark 14:43). In your opinion, did the armed crowd consist of a mixed group of Roman soldiers and Jewish guards?
Do you mean historically or in Mark’s narrative? Big difference. In Mark, it was a Jewish crowd/arresting party. Historically: hard to know what actually happened.
Thank you for all that you do Dr. Ehrman.
I know you have covered this “son of God” term before and I will try to track it down. I remember when I was baptized as an adolescent I was asked by the preacher whether I believed that Jesus was the “son of God” and I assumed the preacher meant that God had somehow impregnated Mary.
Jesus tells Peter, “Whoever would come after me must take up the cross and follow me.” And yet Peter flees the scene fearing for his life and is replaced by a different “Simon” who truly bears the cross when the time comes. James and John, who ask to sit at the right and left of Jesus in his glory, are replaced by two thieves at his crucifixion. Jesus’ own people, the Jews, mock their “savior” while it is actually a gentile officer of Rome who finally recognizes his divinity. Instead of a burial by his friends and family, it is the enemies of Jesus (Joseph the Sanhedrist) who come to bury the body. And instead of the male disciples, it is the lowly women who are first to hear the good news. “The least shall be first.” Etc. Mark’s literary strategy is to confound the expectations of the reader at seemingly every turn, which of course makes it exceedingly difficult to distinguish fact from fiction.
Did Jesus teach that being a ‘son of God’ [like what he may have heard at his
baptism] equated to being the ‘christ’ ?
i dont think so. . .
if not who came up with that idea?
The term “anointed one” (= Christ in Greek) was applied to the ancient kings of Israel; so too was the “son of God.” So the equation makes perfect sense, I think.
We may accept Jesus heard a voice at his baptism that he was God’s son and God was pleased with him, and even accept that he probably reported this experience frequently to his disciples, but we shouldn’t assume that, in and of itself, to mean Jesus took this experience to mean he was sinless, nor the ‘christ’, nor that held some kind of unique and special relationship with God. It is just as likely, and to me seems more probable, that he would take this experience as an lesson to teach his disciples to recognize themselves likewise as God’s sons and daughters, and to exhort them to behave in a manners appropriate to that position.
Mark sourced his Passover narrative on another and better known Jesus – Jesus ben Ananias. Josephus wrote about him in The Jewish War, written about 74-79. Jesus ben Ananias was an insane prophet. There are too many parallels between Mark’s Jesus and the Josephus one, for it to be coincidence. Weeden and Evans both wrote about this. Of course, George Nickelsburg noted that Mark’s passion narrative follows a Jewish mythotype.
As alway, it is alway nice to see the use of OT scripture in Mark. Jeremiah 7:11,
“Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord.”
So, there you go Bart. Hope I’ve redeemed myself and brought Mark’s date back to the 70’s – maybe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_ben_Ananias
I don’t see many similarities at all (basically the name and the prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction, which isn’t exactly what Jesus reportedly said).
I think you’re forgetting that there was a longstanding tradition of prophetic resistance to foreign rule, and there would have been many such figures during the Roman era, most of whom are forgotten. Mark could have been reacting to this story–or others we don’t know about. Or just to the times he lived in. But mainly he was reacting to his own vision, inspired by stories he’d learned about Jesus of Nazareth, who will be remembered always.
And you really think Bart didn’t know this already?
🙂
One more thing that occurs to me–this other Jesus was carrying on his self-styled crusade in an era when Jesus of Nazareth would have become a lot better known than he was in his lifetime. Jesus bar Ananias might not have read any gospels, but he’d probably have heard some stories.
Did it occur to you that maybe the name, common though it was then, isn’t a coincidence? Maybe it’s an homage. 😉
Maybe it’s because of a full moon rising, or maybe even worse – a new gospel arising:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDpEeHD54Mo
🙂 🙂
It’s because nothing ever happens in isolation. Jesus and those who followed him were products of their times–not the ONLY products, by any means. Simply the most durable. Time-tested, posterity approved. But that’s in no small part because Jesus had a coherent and compelling take on religion that he effectively conveyed to his followers–and this in turn attracted the interest of first-rate writers like Paul and Mark.
This other Jesus had none of that. Neither did John the Baptist (remembered today only for his connection to his presumed disciple, Jesus of Nazareth).
The pen really is mightier than the sword. Over time.
Early Christians were considered unpatriotic because they wouldn’t sacrifice to the Roman gods. When did patriotism become a Christian virtue?
When Christians became the rulers of empire!
A very different kind of patriotism than that professed by Jews in Jesus’ time. They were loyal to a nation that had existed in the past, and they believed would again in future. Loyalty to a multi-ethnic multi-national entity like Rome is another thing entirely. Rome became largely Christian, at least nominally, because it was necessary for it to have something most of its citizens could rally around. I believe that was Constantine’s idea. Kept the empire going a while longer than it might otherwise have done. Whether that was a good thing or not……?
While reading the Gospel of Mark the other day, the following question came to me. Is there a reason why Mark mentions Moses and Elijah during the Transfiguration and not some other biblical character, like David for instance?
Ah, good question. Moses represents the law and Elijah represents the prophets. The scene shows that “the Law and the Prophets” attested to the glory and destiny of Jesus.