Mark's Jesus - The Messianic Secret

http://www.philipharland.com/publications.html
Mark's is the first of the written gospels. It's really the one that establishes... the life of Jesus as a story form. It develops a narrative from his early career, through ...the main points of his life and culminat[es] in his death. And, as such, it sets the pattern for all the later gospel traditions. We know that both Matthew and Luke used Mark, as a source in their composition and it's also probable that even John knew something of Mark in tradition. So, Mark is really the one that sets the stage for all the later Christian gospel writings.

SECRECY AND MISUNDERSTANDING

Mark retells the story of Jesus. He starts by taking a number of elements of earlier oral tradition. Mark seems to have a knowledge of at least one and maybe two or three different collections of miracle stories as a source. He weaves these together with other stories about Jesus, about teachings, about travels, about other things and makes those a part of his understanding of how Jesus' life worked and what it was intended to do. But, in the final analysis, Mark's gospel is really about the death of Jesus. It's a passion narrative with an extended introduction, some people would say. Mark tells the story by thinking about the death and letting all the events that lead up to that death move toward it and through it. So, it's the death of Jesus that's the guiding principle to Mark's gospel, not the life....

Mark tells the story this way in order to make sense out of the death of Jesus and in the light of the events of the first revolt. Those are the two guiding principles really of the story line of Mark....

For Mark, Jesus is a somewhat enigmatic figure and that's very important to his way of telling the story. Jesus is mysterious. Jesus intentionally keeps people from understanding who he really is, at times. At times, Jesus actually silences the demons who would announce his true identity. When he performs a miracle, he tells people, don't say anything to anyone about what I have done. He even takes the disciples away, off into a corner, and teaches them privately so that others won't hear and understand the message. He seems to be a very secretive kind of figure in Mark's gospel.

Now, why does Mark tell the story this way? It seems to be the case that he uses this motif of secrecy and misunderstanding as a way of reconceptualizing the image of Jesus. There's something about the the previous understandings of Jesus, even within the Christian community, that Mark feels compelled now to correct and to give a new meaning for, and it probably has something to do with the post-war experience. Why had it all happened? What had gone wrong? Why was Jerusalem destroyed? Mark tells the story in such a way to make sense out of that, in the light of the death of Jesus.

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Education

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• mark
• jesus
• Messianic
• secret
• messiah
• gospels
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• historical
• Jesus
• suffering
• bart
• ehrman
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• yt:stretch=16:9

[Tsadi9Mem9Khet9]

...according to the book.

[Tsadi9Mem9Khet9]

...what the young man in the tomb told them. It being written that they did not tell anyone would circumvent anyone raising the question as to why they'd never heard of any of this. The book was produced on behalf of the Romans in order to justify the destruction of the holy land by way of creation of the idea that the God and messiah of the Jews had incarnated and been ill-treated and eventually crucified due to the demands of "the Jews", while the Romans bear no guilt in this event....

[Tsadi9Mem9Khet9]

Mark doesn't tell the story in order to make sense of "Jesus'" death. It is the earliest of the historical gospels which is the reason it contains a "Jesus" who seeks to hide his "messiahship" and "divinity" as a means of subverting the possibility of anyone who would have information from anyone living in the holy land at the time of these supposed events. The fact that the story came out of nowhere, without historical basis is also the reason that the women are said to have told no one...