How could Jesus be the messiah? Wasn’t the messiah to be a powerful figure sent from God to overthrow the enemies of the Jews and establish a new kingdom on earth? How could a person publicly humiliated and tortured to death by his enemies be considered the Mighty One to Come? That is the question Mark sets out to address in his narrative, the first of our surviving Gospels.
My goal in this entire thread on the books of the New Testament is to provide four major posts on each of the books, one summarizing its major themes; another dealing with the historical questions of who wrote it, when, and why; another providing an annotated bibliography of other work written by scholars for a non-scholarly audience – studies, commentaries, and online resources; and a final one dealing with one of its key, interesting aspects. I have done that for Matthew, and now I do it for Mark. This post is on it’s overarching and distinctive themes.
As I did with Matthew, here I begin by summarizing the book in one fifty-word sentence. Before you read it, try it yourself. Have you ever read Mark closely or studied it? If so, what would you say it is about, in one sentence, covering its contents and showing its distinctive features? Here’s my attempt:
I have long thought that part of the reason Mark wrote this way, particularly the women staying silent after the resurrection, was to explain why the Jews in Jerusalem did not believe, even after his astounding resurrection: they never heard about it! They didn’t understand before and didn’t hear about it after. At least that’s less anti-semitic than the other Gospels, where the Jews deliberately refuse to believe. Of course Acts has it quite different: just 40 days later they start converting by the 1000s! Quite a contrast.
Dr Ehrman,
In some ways Mark seems to have done a jiu jitsu or turn around on the then notion of messiah who would be materially powerful but instead was materially powerless.
Jesus preached of unfairness so blatant that even the stones would cry out.
To what degree do you think that the growing Christian believers were aware of the unfairness/injustice of the larger society and connected it with the belief that God would return to save the righteous.
Was this just an idea that the individual should straighten up, or that there were problems with the larger institutions?
Thanks
My sense is that the vast majority of people realized the world was unjust; and that the earliest Christians latched on to the hope that it would end soon. The problems of society were both institutional (thus hatred of Rome) and individual. The Christian message wsa that God would soon bring it all to an end.
The Gospel of Mark is the simplest version of Jesus’ story, set within the brewing war between Galilee’s Herod Antipas and Aretas. Jesus speaks in parables of peaceful alternatives, re-gathering an ancient flock who recognize the traditions of Hayya, “The Living” God, Eblaite Ea whose theophoric is Ya.
The assignment is much tougher than it sounds. My first attempt hit similar themes as yours but I couldn’t get it under 55 words. Admittedly, this one is a bit irreverent and doesn’t really work as one sentence.
“The Gospel of Mark is an emotional narrative that reveals Jesus at his crucifixion as the Son of God, the authority of – and way to – God in contrast with the faithless fools who believe that one can understand God through prophecy and philosophy or become Holy through ritual.
Nice shot at it. But my view is that it is ALWAYS possible to cut five words. It just takes the political will. 🙂
As far as I can tell, the critical view is that the author of Mark was a pagan convert. After reading commentaries by Marcus and Yarbro-Collins I think I understand the arguments. However I remain a bit puzzled. As you say, Mark’s main theme is to redefine the very concept of the Jewish Messiah.
Also, at a certain point the Jewish Temple is almost a character in the book. ( Mark is very much concerned with Jesus’ relationship with the Temple and the fate of the Temple, which he seems to have known, is tied up in his view of the Parousia.)
And Mark presupposes a great deal of knowledge about the Hebrew scriptures on the part of his readers.
For these and other reasons, what for you mitigates against the author being a diaspora Jew, like Paul? These all seem profoundly Jewish concerns.
Thanks!
We know that these points were widely accepted among gentiles (e.g., Paul’s converts in Thessalonica and Corinth and Galatia), so I don’t think in themselves they would show whether Mark is a Jew or gentile. Other factors come into play, one of which for me is that he does not seem to know much about Judaism.
Hi Bart! I have this problem with the original ending of Mark. If the women didn’t tell anyone, how does Mark know? How does anyone know? Thank- Puzzled in Pittsburgh
Yup, that’s the questoin! But it’s a question about historical plausibility, not literary meaning. Mark *says* this and means it, as an important theme in his book (the disciples never *do* understand!). But historically it doesn’t make sense.
Bart, arising from your recent course on Acts where you touched on some of the factors that were considered in the process of choosing Luke as the traditional author of Luke & Acts, is there any evidence for this process taking place in any systematic way?
I’m not sure we have anyone on record going through the steps, but there is a good bit of discussion of Luke writing both volumes and talking about himself in the first person in the second of htem.
Mark 5:52 was quoted above but doesn’t exist
Dr. Bart – Your write-ups on the Gospels are wonderful. Looking forward to referring my students to them. Might you consider doing a similar series on The Gospel of Q — just as you’re doing for the Gospels, providing four major posts, one summarizing its major themes; another dealing with the historical questions of who wrote it, when, and why; another providing an annotated bibliography of other work written by scholars for a non-scholarly audience – studies, commentaries, and online resources; and a final one dealing with one of its key, interesting aspects. Thank you for considering this, and thank you for all you do. +Br. Mark
Yup, after I do Luke I’ll deal with the Synoptic Problem and Q.
Is the “Messianic Secret” indicative of an oral tradition that Jesus never said he was the Messiah and Mark had to come up with a reason why?
That’s one of the explanations people have. The way to evaluate it is to see if there are any indications that Jesus did call himself the messiah (apart from the problem of the Messianic Secret). My sense is that he did tell his disciples, and that’s how the authorities found out about it and crucified him for it. But it wsan’t widely talked about in his life, and Mark may be explaining *that*.
In all my many decades of hearing sermons, homilies and meditations during uncounted Christian religious events, I don’t ever recall one sermon based on Mark. Yet, a preacher who has read Mark while awake and meditated on his message could build a powerful sermon based on Jesus’ good news. More humble than in Luke, more faithful than in Matthew, the Messiah brings a usable message for believers of the 21st century. Based on your experience, Bart Ehrman, why is Mark so seldom the basis for sermons in today’s churches?
My sense is that people still consider it to be a condensed version of Matthew, a kind of nuts-and-bolts account that doesn’t have much independent interest. WRONG on every score!!
For some reason I still remember attending a Sunday School session on Mark at a church near Wheaton College led by Chaplain emeritus, Walsh. My takeaway: Mark sure used “Straightway” a lot! (obviously the class was using the KJV text!)
I still think the BIG question is why did Jesus, since He was not the powerful king that the Jews expected, consider Himself to be the Messiah?
My view is that he thought God was going to install him as the king/ messiah once the day of judgment arrived. He understood his messiahship in an apocalyptic sense.
Mark’s Gospel (48-words)
A counter-narrative to be kept secret by readers. Disregards first disciples and postmortem appearances. Affirms Jesus is God’s adopted Son (at Baptism); is transformed from prophet/healer to Messiah (by Moses/Elijah); crucified, buried, raised, no longer with us, will soon return to Galilee and bring God’s Kingdom.
Nice! But not one sentence! 🙂 (And hey, you can find two more words; add a couple of adjectives)
Thank you Bart that is spot on. It led me to think of so many activists today and in recent history engaged in non-violent direct action who are judicially punished by the state for standing up for what they believe. Jesus prefigured them all!
How much of the historical Jesus does Mark capture, either purposefully or accidentally?
Well, it’s impossible to put a percentage on it. For one thing, if Jesus’ lived for, say, 30-33 years (who knows?), and Mark’s Gospel takes roughly two hours to read/recite, then necessarily he would capture only a tiny fraction of the historical Jesus’ life, even if he is 100% accurate. He’s clearly not 100% accurate, so the question I suppose is less how much of his life does he capture than how much of his account is accurate. And, as I say, that’s impossible to quantify and different scholars would give different responses (though none of them in a percentage!). What most agree on is that of the four surviving primary sources, Mark is the oldest, the basis for two of the others, and on balance somewhat more likely to be providing relatively accurate material than the others. None of them can be used on their own though; as with all historical sources for anything or anyone, they have to be used in combination and in light of each other.
Thanks Dr.Ehrman,
Having a succinct summary is a great way to help others comprehend the main theme of Mark.
Very useful when reading individual stories from Mark 🙂
And I assume it speaks directly to the situation or community Mark found himself in 40 years after Jesus death – many unbelieving Jews who couldnt accept this new type of Messiah. Is that a fair summary ?
Yup, I’d say so. And also many Christians wanting to explain to these Jews (and to themeselvees) how Jesus really could be the messiah.disabledupes{85b6206ccac897d2fb0e057ef2e053cc}disabledupes
or those who realized that the messiah Jesus had come to make a “ransom” for their “sins”.
Could you please elaborate on this: In what sense is Jesus considered a ransom for sins, and whose sins is He a ransom for? Is it for all of humanity or specifically for the sins of the ancient Israelites? Additionally, how does this concept of ransom compare to Paul’s teachings?
It’s a matter of interpretation — what does Mark mean? He doesn’t go into detail so it’s hard to know. Later interpreters had different views. Virtually all of htem agreed that he ransomed (that is paid the price that would set others free from their bondage to sin and debt to God) everyone who would believe in him. Some though claimed his ransom paid for everyone whether they believed in him or not. Almost no one said that he died only for Jews.
Here is my attempt at a 50-word max explanation of the Gospel of Mark. As you will see this is based on my hunch that Mark is presenting a frustrated Jesus and the frustration boils over into anger a few times. I read the words Mark wrote, 40 years after Jesus said whatever he said, with my “frustrated” hat on.
“Mark presents Jesus as a frustrated evangelist who modestly performed miracles while teaching people how to live through simple parables although they do not get it, and despite the more complete message the twelve do not get it; but the pagan centurion does as he is not wanting anything.”
I confess, before I wrote this I read your 50-word piece and found it polished and succinct. If I wrote something even close Jesus would need to do another miracle. So, this is my feeble attempt to share a non-traditional perspective.
Hey, you gotta believe in miracles!
Is the theme of secrecy there to emphasize that the Messiah didn’t come as a triumphal king, loudly proclaiming his identity, but as a suffering servant? I struggle to understand what mark is trying to say through his secrecy motif…
My view is that he’s trying to explain why people Jesus’ own day did not understand that he was the messiah. For Mark: He kept it a secret.
Consider the following hypothesis:
Mark responds to Marcion, trying to undo its vehemently anti-Judaic nature by judaising all of it, and even turning Jesus into a Judaic Messiah – which obviously requires a mountain of creative fiction, including going against everything that any Jew ever understood about the Messiah
Mark’s challenge lies in the fact that whatever he introduces is unknown to the collective memory, and as such he must come up with excuses why it wasn’t known: in essence, Mark has to create and destroy his own work at the same time; and he successfully does so by creating multiple witnesses, none of whom however testify to anything!
1) Jesus and John the Baptist aren’t adversaries, JtB even baptised him!
Yet JtB immediately exits the stage, alas
2) Jesus is recognised by many, even demons! The Messianic Secret indeed, without the parables. All are instructed to remain silent on the matter, so again, none of these witnesses to the fact that Jesus is the son of God, son of David, the XS, testify, alas
3) Mark ends at 16:8, with the Marcionite women (observe Luke 24:9!) not telling no one, alas.
Mark invents the baptism, Jesus-son-of-God, and the resurrection as unknown facts
Interesting ideas. But I don’t see how Mark could have been written be later than 70-75 or how Marcion could be earlier than 130.disabledupes{917b972180375313d0d27adb3c524e41}disabledupes
Well,
I will try to make you see then 😉 – and throw the gospel of Thomas into the mix
*Ev has compellingly been demonstrated to precede Luke, by BeDuhn but most certainly via the majestic 1,400 detailed pages of Klinghardt, a masterly work.
Roth follows Harnack in sweeping evidence under the carpet and neglecting to even mention the anomalous “do as you did in Capernaum” when Luke’s Jesus hasn’t even been there yet, and reluctantly and stealthily admitting that *Ev contained the parable of the wineskin and the patch, the reverse order: “it is likely that ὁ οἶνος was discussed before τὸ ἐπίβλημα”
Evidently, none of the Patristics admitting this disqualifies their reliability, and Harnack (who makes a similar statement) nor Roth apparently can suffer that, so this is their best shot.
Beduhn fully restores, as does Klinghardt. Very questionable scholarship by Roth here
Now, onto Thomas.
114 logia there, 72 of which are shared with the Synoptics – YMMV.
63 Thomasine logia in Luke, 59 of which exist in Klinghardt’s reconstruction of *Ev, while BeDuhn restores 47.
What are the odds?
Redaction criticism leaves little doubt:
https://www.academia.edu/123948288/The_super_canonical_Synoptics_Marcion_and_Luke_and_Thomas
Why can’t Marcion be earlier than 130? Because the Patristics say so?
OK. But it’s by far a minority opinion among experts who don’t have a horse in the race but simply want to know waht the evidence suggests. Not sure if you’ve read Roth, but he’s no sloth (!) when it comes to establishing Marcion’s text.
In the NRSVUE a footnote to Mark 15:39 says “or a son of God”. So, my first question is, in the most reliable ancient Greek sources is it the singular “Truly this man was God’s son” or plural “Truly this man was a son of God”? Another footnote in 15:39 says “other ancient authorities add – cried out and”. That leads to my second question. Verse 15:39 says the centurion recognizes Jesus as a/the son of God because of the way he cried out and breathed his last breath. That seems really strange. How could an onlooker conclude that Jesus was semi/divine just by a “loud cry and breathing his last”, 15:37, unless the centurion had also seen the temple curtain divide in two? And even then, how could the centurion conclude it? Perhaps Mark thought the temple and its curtain were visible to the centurion or, if not, then maybe Mark is engaging in some sort of sarcasm here, perhaps related to the Messianic secret. Bart, I’d really love your thoughts on this and what you think Mark is trying to say here.
Finally, somebody gets who Jesus is by Jesus uttering a moan and then dying?
It can be translated either way!
And yup, it’s hard to understand how the centurion would think he was something special without seeing the curtain rip. It could mean that though — that this is how he died: with a kind of supernatural sign. Otherwise it’s hard to see who Mark put it right after the rip itself (next verse). It’s also hard to understand how the centurion could have seen inside the temple from outside the walls! (Assuming that’s where Golgotha was). But Mark is filled with things that are hard to make sense of. It’s one of the great htings about it!
In looking at some pictures of ancient Roman temples and their columns, many of them have the front part of the temple completely open to the outside (see the link below). And it’s not unreasonable to assume that a curtain would be in that area. So, it may be that Mark simply didn’t understand what the Jerusalem temple was like. Mark may have known that the Jerusalem temple was tall enough that it could be seen, even miles away from Jerusalem, and Mark assumes anybody outside the city could see a very large curtain through the temple columns. It is interesting that in verse 15:29 Jesus is being derided for claiming to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Perhaps that plays into the curtain being divided. So, all that could be strong evidence that the author of Mark’s gospel had a misunderstanding of the Jerusalem temple. Mark also has huge crowds coming to Jesus, and that is hard to imagine in ancient Galilee, but easy to imagine huge crowds visiting important people in a big city like Rome. The author of Mark seems to imagine Galilee and Judea being like a big Roman city.
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/roman-temple
Maybe not the right question for this blog post, but what is your take on the role of John the Baptist? It feels like there’s more to that story than we are getting. Maybe there was a significant rivalry for the messianic role and Jesus won? Did Jesus or someone close to him “do” something to John to give Jesus the eventual advantage? What is John’s narrative function?
Ah, there’s a lot to say about JB (John the Baptist)! The best full-length treatment in my opinion is Joel Marcus’s book deveoted to a full analysis. So I can’t give a satisfactory answer here in a brief comment, but I will say that JB in my view was hugely important to Jesus and the beginnings of Xty; Jesus was originally one of JB’s followers (he was baptized by him) and at some point for some undisclosed reason set off on his own ministry proclaiming a very similar message that the day of judgment was coming soon and people needed to repent in preparation for it. It’s not clear if Jesus got this from JB or aligned with him precisely because he already though thte same way. The followrs of Jesus and JB may have been in competitoin with each other (there are suggestions of that) after their deaths. Jesus came out on top because his followrs were claiming he had been raised from the dead. In The Gospels, John’s function is to be the prophecied “forerunner” of the messiah.
I’ve just added that succinct a summary of Mark to my notes. It’s fascinating to think that subsequent to the death of Jesus, some of his disciples may have lost all confidence in their Messiah or may have begun to see him more as a prophet. The resurrection was the rebuff to this line of thinking and Mark emphasises this as part of the secret plan for a secret messiah.
I’m not sure if you have a place to ask questions about your podcasts so I’ll ask here since it pertains to Mark.
Regarding your podcast about the failures of the disciples, I’m curious as to your take. Mark 6:7-13 is the one episode in Mark in which the disciples aren’t failures. They are sent out 2×2 to preach repentance, cast out demons, and heal. And in Mk 6:30, they return having done so. Mark has such a consistent picture of the failures of the disciples, why this one episode in which they don’t fail. I have some ideas, but curious as to your thoughts.
Of course, the episode creates problems because Judas would be included, which is probably why Matthew skips the outcome and why Matthew 7:21-23 speaks against apparent disciples such as Judas.
Yup, the passage does seem to portray them in a very good light. It’s interesting that the next things that involve them (with the interlude about Herod’s execution of John the Baptist — which oddly kinda gets blamed on the disciples of Jesus’! 6:17) are the multiplication of loaves and the walking on the water, both of which show them not understanding Jesus (for the loaves, see 8:21). So I”m not sure what to make of htat. Sort of seems to a similar mixed bag as when Peter recognizes him as messiah but doesn’t recognize what kind of messiah he is (ch. 8)
Thanks. Mark occasionally has exceptions to some of his consistent trends, eg Mk 5:19 doesn’t promote secrecy.
In Mk 6:7-13, the disciples would’ve been preaching the coming kingdom (Mk 1:15), not Jesus’ identity or death. So maybe Mark is implying they got that part right about repentance and the coming kingdom.
Or maybe Mark is presupposing the readers know the gospel went to the world (Mk 13:10; 14:9) so he’s implying the disciples eventually understood the resurrection and went preaching even though Mark stopped the story at Mk 16:8 without them being restored or commissioned.
Another thing I find odd about Mk 6:7-13, 30 is that it makes the disciples somewhat equal with Jesus in that they are able to do some of the same kind of mighty deeds he did. They’re not fully equal with him (walking on water, stilling a storm, multiplying food) but they’re able to do mighty deeds unlike others. Maybe this is Mark’s way of showing that Jesus did “baptize them with the Spirit” (Mk 1:8) to do these kinds of things since John the Baptist wasn’t known for doing these kinds of things.
This whole episode intrigues me.
Jesus was supposed to have spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting and then being tempted by Satan and then being attended by angels? Did Jesus take someone with him who observed this to report it? Or did Jesus himself disclose this in all its detail? If the latter would it not read that Jesus said it rather than just describing it? James 1:13 says “God cannot be tempted by evil”. So the temptation has to cast doubt on Jesus being God.
Right. Critical scholars as a rule do not think of these as historical episodes.