Prof: What is a Gospel
and how should we read it? Popular opinion may think that
the Gospels are biographies of Jesus, but they're not
biographies, at least not anything like the modern sense.
We don't get much of a personal
portrait of Jesus from the Gospels.
We don't know anything about
how he developed, how he went from being an
obnoxious teenager to being an apocalyptic prophet.
We don't know about his
relationship to his parents, his brothers and sisters,
we don't know all kinds of things that a modern biography
would automatically be expected to tell you.
The Gospels aren't biographies.
Somebody once said,
a scholar once called Mark, a passion narrative with an
extended introduction. What's a passion narrative?
Passion comes from the Latin
passio which doesn't mean just desire,
it could mean that in the ancient world,
but it also means "suffering."
"Suffering"
is what passio means and so it's the suffering of Jesus
that happens at his arrest, his trial, his crucifixion,
and then the resurrection. All of that's part of what
scholars call the passion narrative.
If you notice,
that occupies a huge part of the Gospel of Mark.
The Gospel of Mark is our
shortest Gospel that's in the canon.
It's only sixteen chapters,
of course the chapters and verse numbers weren't there in
the original manuscripts, it was just written.
In fact, they didn't even
divide up words, and they have very little
punctuation. It was just one capital letter
after another, which is one of the reasons
that ancient tended to read text out loud.
They didn't read silently to
themselves. One of the reasons is because
it's easier to read a text that had no word divisions,
it was all capital letters, no punctuation,
it wasn't divided up into sentences,
it was much easier to read that if you read it out loud to
yourself, so that's the way ancient
people read. We don't have chapter numbers
and verse divisions, those are all later creations
that came about in the Middle Ages in Christianity.
By modern reckoning,
therefore, there are sixteen chapters in Mark,
that's the shortest Gospel, and of that,
one-third of Mark is just the last week of Jesus' life,
the passion narrative part of it.
As this scholar said,
Mark is really a passion narrative with an extended
introduction. Notice what you get if you have
an outline of Mark. Chapter 1, verse 1 is the
title, "the euangelion,"
or "the gospel according to Jesus Christ,"
and it doesn't say "according to Mark"
in the title because that name was added later.
That's the title of the book.
Then for the next few verses
from 1:2, that is Chapter 1, verse 2 to verse 13,
you get an initial introduction to Jesus, just a little bit
about him. Then from 1:14 to 9:50,
so nine chapters is Jesus' Galilean ministry,
his healings, his teachings,
his traveling around, his miracles that all take
place in Galilee which is where he is from.
That's of course the northern
part of Palestine, whereas, Judea is down in the
southern part of Palestine. Then Chapters 11 through 15 are
all just the last week in Jerusalem, again,
five chapters just on his last week.
Then Chapter 16:1-8 is rumors
of the resurrection. Why do I say rumors of the
resurrection? Because if you'll notice in the
Gospel of Mark, if Mark ends at Chapter 16:8,
and there has been some controversy about whether it
really is supposed to end there, but in most of your modern
editions it ends at 16:8. If that's true,
you don't actually see the resurrected Jesus.
You just get--he doesn't appear
on the stage so to speak. You only get reports that he
has been raised, or one report that he's raised.
Then the women are told by this
young man, who's sitting at the tomb,
probably supposed to represent an angel,
to go and tell the other disciples that he's raised and
he'll go before them to Galilee. Notice the women don't tell
them, it says that the women were afraid and they ran away.
You don't even get many reports
about Jesus' resurrection in Mark;
you just get the one young man at the tomb telling the women
that he's been raised. A huge bulk of the book tells
us about the last week of Jesus' life,
and even in the previous ten chapters of the book,
you have Jesus talking about his upcoming crucifixion.
These passion predictions,
we call them, that occur in the Gospel,
you have several of those in the Gospel of Mark.
There are several references to
Jesus' upcoming death. That focuses our attention even
more on the last part of the book.
Is that important?
Does that tell us anything
about what sort of thing Mark's Gospel is if it's not a
biography? Let's look at the ending also.
Mark 16, now remember,
I want you to bring your Bibles to class.
Why do I want you to bring your
Bibles to class? Yes?
Student: Because you're
going to lie. Prof: Because I will lie
to you. I may something that's not true
and you need to check me out, de omnibus
dubitandum. When the sabbath was over [Mark
16] Mary Magdalene,
and Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices,
so that they might go an anoint him.
And very early on the first day
of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.
They had been saying to one
another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the
entrance to the tomb?" When they looked up,
they say that the stone, which was very large,
had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb,
they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe,
sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.
But he said to them,
"Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of
Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised;
he is not here. Look, there is the place they
laid him. But go, tell his disciples and
Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee;
there you will see him, just as he told you."
So they went out and fled from
the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them;
and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.
Now you'll notice there's--and
maybe some of your Bible's there will be a paragraph under that
titled, "A Shorter Ending of
Mark." All that had been commanded of
them they briefly told to those around Peter.
And afterwards Jesus himself
sent out through them, from east to west,
the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal
salvation. Then you'll notice there's
maybe a few paragraphs, called by your editors,
"The Longer Ending of Mark," and it has several
verses. I'm not going to bother to read
that to you, but if you look at that,
the little incidents-- several of the incidents in
that longer ending of Mark could sound familiar to you if you
know the other Gospels, how they end.
What scholars now believe is
that probably the Gospel of Mark really did end at Chapter 16:8.
Some people said,
well that's no way end a book, the women don't tell anything,
it just says they were afraid and they ran away,
that's it. Even the Greek that it ends in
is a very short little sentence that's an odd way to end a book
in Greek. Some people--scholars have said
well maybe that wasn't originally the ending,
maybe Mark was writing along and he got to 16 and he fell
over an died of a heart attack. Or maybe he left the manuscript
out and some mice ate the end of it, because you roll up the
scroll and you just have the leftover parts at the back.
Or maybe it got in a fire and
burnt, maybe the last few verses--the last part of the
Gospel burnt. Obviously ancient people had
the same sense of uneasiness with the way--
with Mark ending at 16:8 and what you've got in that shorter
ending and the longer ending were later compositions of
scribes, Christian scribes,
who thought you can't end Mark's Gospel that way,
so they made up those other verses and they put them at the
end of the manuscript they were copying.
Because you remember before
printing presses all manuscripts had to be made one by one,
by somebody sitting down with a quill,
and ink, and a papyrus and just copying it word by word,
so other scribes when copying this over must have added that
on. In fact that looks very much
like the longer ending, it was scribes who knew some
events from the Gospels, and they took some events from
Matthew, Luke, and John,
and they stuck them into a little paragraph and they said,
well that must be the way Mark really intended to end his
Gospel. In the twentieth century,
basically, modern scholars have come to pretty much reject most
of those theories. At least we take the Gospel of
Mark as ending at 16:8, even intentionally.
But if you do that then you
still have to explain why end a Gospel this way,
it's not a normal way to end a book,
and it's not the way the other Gospels end at all.
The very ending of Mark is one
of the problems of the text that scholars feel like we have to
deal with. This all demonstrates though
that scholars don't read the Gospels as biographies or as
even straightforward accounts of events.
Last time I tried to show you
how you can't take the Book of Acts and Paul's letters as
simply being a historical description of what happened,
because each of these documents had agendas,
these authors had things--points they wanted to
get across. We learn to read these Gospels
in twentieth century by using the method of historical
criticism. The criticism part of that
doesn't mean necessarily being critical of it,
that is criticizing the text, it just means reading it with
critical eyes, with questioning eyes,
with, if you were, doubting eyes in some cases.
What we do is we read these
texts not for what they tell us about the events in the past,
although you can read this, but we actually read the text
as if they were intentional documents written by authors who
had points they wanted to make and they tell the story the way
they tell the story because they have a message.
The important thing is not what
really happened or what lies behind the text for modern
scholars most of the time, unless you're doing historical
Jesus research, and I'll lecture about that at
one period later. But most of the time we're
saying, what did Mark as an author want to do?
Therefore we say,
why would end the Gospel this way if he did that?
Now that's--notice this
historical critical method, which is what I'm teaching in
this class, is somewhat different from
several other ways of reading text.
I'm not implying by this that
historical critical method is the correct method or will give
you the correct meaning of the text.
I believe that it's perfectly
legitimate for Christians, for example,
to read these texts to get something religious out of the
text for their lives. For personal guidance,
for doctrine, for images of Jesus,
to help their relationship to God, whatever.
That's a perfectly legitimate
way, in my view, to read a text,
to read it theologically. But a theological reading of
the text is not the same thing as a historical critical reading
of the text. The historian is what I'm
playing my role here in this class.
I don't care whether these
texts have anything theological to say to you or to me
personally. What I care about is what kind
of theological message was this original writer intending to
give, and to whom was he intending to give it?
The theological way to reading
is one way, perfectly fine way, but it's not the historical
critical reading necessarily. There are also literary ways of
reading these texts and this has been a very common thing in
English departments for people to write an account of the
Gospel of Mark, it's been a particularly
significant Gospel for modern literary people to retell or
talk about the Gospel of Mark, do a literary reading of it.
There they're looking for
things like the plot of it, the way it accomplishes its
story. Are there figures and
characters, and what kind of thing does this character
represent, or what kind of thing does this
event represent symbolically or literarily.
Just as you know how to do a
literary reading of a novel, some modern scholars will do a
literary reading of the Gospels. It's a perfectly legitimate way
to read the Gospels; it's just not the one that I'm
going to concentrate on in this class.
There are many others,
you could say, I'm going to do a
deconstructionist post-structuralist reading of
Mark and they have been done. You can go buy books that have
done it. You can do a structuralist
reading of Mark, and those are the dullest ones
of all. Lots of different ways to read
these texts and I'm going to teach you this historical
critical reading, which means certain things.
It means we're not going to
read the Gospel of Mark through the lens of Matthew,
Luke or John. We're going to take Mark's own
Gospel as standing on its own. So we're not going to rush off
to another Gospel, or to Acts, or the letters of
Paul to provide an interpretative clue for how to
read Mark. We're going to read Mark as
Mark by itself, and that's one of the
fundamental rules of historical criticism is don't harmonize
different texts in the Bible. Take them each individually.
Another one is you have to
avoid anachronism that is you can't attribute a meaning to the
text of Mark that doesn't make sense in the first century in
his own context. For example,
if you're a Christian, you're going to read some of
the Psalms in the Hebrew Bible as being about Jesus,
probably, most Christians do. When the Psalmist says,
"The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand and I will
make your enemies your footstool."
Christians have traditionally
said the first "Lord" there is God,
and the second "Lord" is Jesus,
and this is an Old Testament reference to God the Father and
God the Son. This is a christological Psalm,
that's a theological way of reading the Psalm.
It doesn't pass the test of
historical criticism because historians will point out,
look the original Psalmist didn't know anything about
Jesus. He wasn't prophesying about
Jesus personally, he was talking probably to the
David the King, the Psalms meant to talk to
David, or to David's descendants who sit on the throne of Judah.
Anachronism has to be avoided
in historical critical readings. There are several other kinds
of clues that you're doing a historical reading rather than a
theological reading, or a literary reading,
and you'll pick up on those as we go through the class.
In fact, in your sections not
this time but next time, you will actually talk about
how to write an exegeses paper, because you'll all be writing
one, and your section leaders will lead you through this
method and try to get you to see how it's done.
If we're going to do that,
though, let's imagine what kind of
community this ancient guy we're going to call Mark,
we're going to continue to call him Mark even though we don't
believe that it was the historical John Mark who wrote
the Gospel, but for convenience sake we'll
just call them the Gospel writers Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John for convenience sake.
What did Mark want to do with
this text? Who did he want to do it with?
What kind of historical context
do we imagine? First we see--immediately we
see a bunch of problems with this text.
There's first the problem--one
of the most famous problems of the Messianic secret.
This is when over and over
again in Mark, and it happens sometimes in the
other Gospels, but it's--it happens more in
Mark then a lot of other places. You get Jesus doing something,
and then he tells somebody to be quiet about what he's just
done. Look in 1:25,
Mark 1:25, he's just cast--he's confronted an unclean spirit.
The unclean spirit cried out,
"What have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth,
have you come to destroy us? I know who you are,
the Holy One of God." In other words,
the unclean spirit has just made a correct christological
confession according to the Gospel of Mark.
"But Jesus rebuked him
saying, 'Be silent and come out of him.'
And the unclean spirit
convulsing and crying out with a loud voice, came out of
him." Look at 1:34,
chapter 34 right below that, "He cured many who were
sick with various diseases and cast out many demons,
but he would not permit the demons to speak because they
knew him." Wait a minute,
if Jesus is going around and we're supposed to think that
he's announcing that he is the Messiah,
the Christ, when people recognize this,
why doesn't he let them speak? Why does he tell them not to
speak? He does with demons a lot,
but it's not just demons that he commands to silence,
he also does it to people. Look at 1:43,
"Immediately the leprosy left him,"
this man at verse 42, And he was made clean.
After sternly warning him,
he sent him away at once saying to him,
"See that you say nothing to anyone,
but go show yourself to the priest,
offer your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony to
them." It's a testimony to the fact
that he's now no longer a leper, but he tells the man,
don't tell anybody about the miracle.
Now 5:53, also notice what
happens right below that in verse 45,
But he went out [the man did] and began to proclaim it freely
and to spread the word so that Jesus could no longer go into a
town openly but stayed out in the country and people came to
Him from every quarter. So Jesus does some great act,
he tells the person--the demon or the person,
don't tell anybody, the person goes out and tells
people anyway. It's a pattern.
This is what we call--one of
the old theories about the Messianic secret was a modern
scholar in the early twentieth century said,
well here's what happened, the disciples of Jesus,
they say the writer of the Gospel of Mark,
knew that Jesus wasn't proclaimed openly and widely as
the Messiah during Jesus' own lifetime.
He was proclaimed as the
Messiah by Jesus' disciples after his death.
Why didn't all these people
recognize Jesus was the Messiah during his lifetime?
This scholar said,
well the writer of the Gospel of Mark decided it must have
been because Jesus kept it a secret.
Jesus wanted to keep it a
secret. Now the problem with that
theory is? Can you pick out the problem
with that theory? The reason we have the
Messianic secret in Mark is because people knew that Jesus
was not openly proclaimed as the Messiah during his lifetime,
so this was a literary device to explain why Jesus wasn't
known in his lifetime is because Jesus kept it a secret.
What's wrong with this theory?
Yes, ma'am.
Student: That
> Prof: There's one place
where he does say, go tell.
The binding of the strong man.
Other problems with the theory?
Student:
> Professor Dale Martin:
The people tell anyway. It doesn't explain that Jesus
wasn't proclaimed the Messiah because all the people that he
tells to be quiet go and proclaim him anyway,
and he just says his fame spread.
There have been a lot of other
theories about this Messianic secret.
What does it mean?
Why does he tell people to be
quiet? What is it that he wants them
to keep quiet? Why do they go tell about him
anyway? What does that mean for the
story? That's the first problem.
The second problem,
the problem of misunderstanding.
Look at Mark 2:16:
When the Scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating
with sinners and tax collectors they said to his disciples,
"Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
When Jesus heard this he said
to them, "Those who are well ..."
Is that what I want to read?
Well okay, look at 15:34,
I think I can make this point better with a couple of other
texts. The point I'm making is that
people tend to misunderstand Jesus, his sayings,
and often events. "At three o'clockJesus
cried out with a loud voice [this is when he's crucified],
'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?'"
which means-- it's Aramaic--it means,
"My God, my God, why have You forsaken
me?" "When some of the
bystanders heard it they said, 'Listen, he's calling for
Elijah.'" Well he's not calling for
Elijah; it's just that the word--the
Aramaic word eloi, eloi sounds like the
name Elijah, so people standing around
misunderstand things that are happening.
It's not just people standing
around, the disciples--in Mark,
the disciples themselves, the people who are closest to
Jesus, are the ones who get it wrong
the most. I hope you noticed this when
you were reading this text before class,
is that, repeatedly, Jesus has to explain things to
Peter, and James, and John,
his closest disciples. 4:41, "He said to them,
'Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?'"
In other words, they've already seen him do all
kinds of miracles by this point in Mark.
"And they were filled with
great awe and said to one another, 'Who then is this?
That even the wind and the sea
obey Him?;'" Well we're the readers;
we're going, you learned that in the first
verse, Son of God. All the way through here Jesus
has been telling people what He is,
or at least demons have and other people and people have
been confessing, and yet the disciples don't
understand. 6:52--now notice my point about
this is not to say that historically Jesus' disciples
actually didn't understand. We're not looking for what
happened, what we're looking for is the narrative structure.
What kind of story the author
tells and why does he tell it this way.
6:52, start reading at 51,
"Then He got out of the boat," this is when Jesus
is doing another kind of sea miracle.
"He got out--into the boat
with them and the wind ceased, and they were utterly
astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves but
their hearts were hardened."
In other words,
Jesus had multiplied loaves and fishes in a previous scene.
They should have picked up on
that that he's somehow special. Somehow they didn't understand
what's special about Jesus. It goes all the
way--7:18--8:17-21. Over and over again,
when you're studying Mark, go through and mark the
different times when somebody gets it wrong even when they
should not have gotten it wrong. There are people who recognize
him. The first person who recognizes
Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is you,
because the very first verse announces,
"The beginning of the good news," euangelion in
Greek, meaning "good
announcement, good news"
of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Now some manuscripts don't have
that verse quite like that, but if that's the original
wording of that verse, you have been told from the
very first verse that Jesus is the Son of God.
It's not a mystery to you the
reader, that's part of the fun of the Gospel--Mark and John
both play with this. They let you,
the reader in on certain kinds of jokes and puzzles that the
people in this story don't get. That's one of the things that
Mark is doing is letting you in on some things,
but still it's very difficult for us to figure out this whole
Messianic secret thing and this lack of understanding,
even though we've known the secret.
The last person to know who
Jesus is, and to recognize him and not to misunderstand is the
centurion at the cross. In 15:39, the Roman centurion,
when Jesus dies says this and I'll do it the way "The
Greatest Story Ever Told," the movie--
this scene is played by John Wayne,
he's the Roman centurion. You don't really see John Wayne
clearly, you just see his shadow with
the sun coming in, and Jesus has just died on the
cross, and then you hear this
over-voice, "Surely this was the Son of God."
My John Wayne imitation for you.
The centurion,
though, recognizes that Jesus is the Son of God,
at least according--if that's the way we read that.
The other people who recognize
Jesus and understand are demons, at least they recognize him.
Now let's look at the turning
point in the Gospel, and what I'm going to do is
show you how I, as a brilliant modern scholar
,have posed these problems, the Messianic secret problem,
the problem of misunderstanding and all this sort of thing,
and the problem of the ending which I'll get to in a minute,
and I'm going to make it all makes sense for you.
There are other scholars who
might not think I'm so brilliant and might have other
explanations, but this one's mine and I'm
sticking to it. 8:27--follow along with me,
in your hymnals, 8:27 "Jesus went on with
his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
And on the way he asked his
disciples, 'Who do people say that I
am?'" Nice little introduction,
you're smart readers, as soon as you get to this part
you go, okay we're getting to the
climax of this book, because all the way through the
book up to this point we've had this issue of who is he,
who do people say he is, how do they understand him,
so your antennae should be picking up that this story is
going to be an important story for you.
And they answered him,
"John the Baptist, and others Elijah,
and still others one of the prophets.
He asked them,
"But who do you say that I am?"
Peter answered him,
"You are the Messiah."
He sternly ordered them not to
tell anyone about him. There it is again.
Peter confesses correctly,
"You are the Messiah,"
and Jesus says, okay don't tell anybody.
Jesus is not a very good
evangelist, apparently. He's not Joel Olsteen or
whoever that guy is in Houston. He's not the kind who's
proclaiming it all out, at least according to the
Gospel of Mark. Then he began to teach them.
Now wait a minute that might be
important. He just did this command to
silence, what does the next verse say?
"Then he began to teach
them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering."
Then he began to teach
them, then he began to teach them--not before--"
Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo
great suffering, be rejected by the elders,
the chief priest, the Scribes,
and be killed and after three days rise again.
He said all this quite openly.
Mark is a clever writer.
He puts little short sentences
like this in his gospel at interesting places,
and you the reader are supposed to go, okay he's talking right
to me. "He said this
openly," it's not closed anymore,
this part's opened, this part's not closed.
It's not going to be the end of
the problem. "Peter took him aside and
began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his
disciples he rebuked Peter."
Peter is of course saying
something like, "No, no,
no, no, Jesus, you didn't get it.
We just said you're the Messiah.
The Messiah doesn't suffer and
die on a cross; the Messiah comes with angels
and rules the world. The Messiah overthrows the
Romans. The Messiah sets up the new
reconstituted Israel, and all the nations will flock
to Jerusalem now. You're the Messiah,
that's what you do. No, you don't suffer and die,
that's not what Messiah's do."
There's no Jewish expectation
in the ancient world that the Messiah would suffer and die.
Modern Christians think,
well that's-- of course it's all the way
through the Old Testament, but those prophecies and
things, those statements and poems in the Old Testament,
they weren't taken to be about the Messiah they were taken to
be about other prophets, or holy men of God who might
have to suffer, who might be persecuted.
The Messiah passages don't have
suffering and death in them; they just refer to this coming
King, the descendent of David. No Jews in the first century
this time expected that the Messiah would be crucified.
It just was absolutely against
common sense. Messiahs don't suffer,
Messiahs aren't crucified, Messiahs aren't beaten.
Peter actually quite
understandably thinks that Jesus has got it wrong.
Peter says, You're the Messiah,
you're not going to be killed and suffer,
and that's when Jesus turns around and rebukes Peter looking
at His disciples-- is that an interesting clue?
that Jesus is looking at his
disciples and he rebukes Peter? "Get behind me,
Satan, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on
human things." That's a very interesting story
in itself. What is Jesus rebuking Peter
for and calling him Satan? He called the crowd with his
disciples, and said to them,
"If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me. For those who want to save
their life will lose it, and those who lose their life
for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
For what will it profit them to
gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
Indeed, what can they give in
return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and
of my words in this adulteress and sinful generation,
of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in
the glory of his angels-- of his Father with the holy
angels." [That's what Messiah's were
expected to do, is come in glory with holy
angels.] And he said to them,
"Truly I tell you there are some standing here who will
not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come
with power. What's going on here?
You have the correct
identification of Jesus, even according to Mark as the
Messiah. You have the charge to secrecy
in 8:30; you have the passion
prediction--one of the passion predictions and the first of
several that we'll see in Mark. Jesus saying,
this is going to happen, and then you have this word,
"And he said this plainly and clearly to them,"
a nice little clue. Then you have Peter's
misunderstanding, but what does Peter
misunderstand? That's what we'll ask.
What was Peter expecting
different? Well he was expecting the
Messiah to come with angels and triumphant.
Then you have an emphasis on
suffering that everybody has to suffer,
not just the Son of Man, but everybody has to suffer and
you have a prediction of future eschatological glory.
Eschatology is just a fancy
theological word meaning the end times, the study of the end
times. Eschaton is just a Greek
word meaning "the end."
You'll see this if you read
much about the Bible or ancient religion,
the eschaton will come up apocalyptic contexts,
and eschatology means any study or doctrine about the end of the
world as we know it. In fact I used to direct a
little singing group in the Divinity School when I was a
grad student here, and we called ourselves
"The Eschatones." A joke that only divinity
students would get. The prediction of the
eschatological glory that comes after the suffering and then
right after that, 6:2:
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and
James and John, led them up to a high mountain
apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before
them, and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no one on earth could bleach them.
And there appeared to them
Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
Then Peter said to Jesus,
"Rabbi it's good for us to be here;
let us make three dwellings [three tabernacles,
three tents], one for you,
one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
He did not know what to say for
they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them,
and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son,
the Beloved; listen to him!"
Suddenly when they looked
around, they saw no one with them anymore but only Jesus.
[The next verse:]
"As they were coming down the mountain,
he ordered them to tell no one what they had seen [--
again that secrecy motif--] until the Son of Man had risen
from the dead. And again an emphasis on death.
What's going on with all this?
What's going on is that Mark is
trying to make an important point, maybe even to his fellow
believers at the time. Apparently, what Peter doesn't
understand about Jesus is that Jesus has to suffer and has to
die, and if that causes a
redefinition of Peter's notion of what a Messiah is,
so be it. Peter needs to work with a
redefined notion of the Christ, the Messiah,
if he doesn't include the necessity of suffering in that
notion. Let's imagine the context for
this kind of message. The rapid fire style of Mark is
one of the-- if you notice--did you notice
how many times "immediately"
is used, the word
"immediately"? The writer of the Gospel of
Mark needed a good Yale college editor or a writing tutor,
because there's kind of a rapid fire,
it's not reading very good Greek style either.
It's rapid fire,
he says, immediately this happened, then immediately this
happened, and then immediately this happened.
You get the idea reading the
Gospel of Mark that the narrative is pulling you along,
it's shoving you along, is rushing you along.
That's actually part of,
I think, this apocalyptic style of Mark, because the Gospel of
Mark is also apocalyptic in its message.
It talks about angels coming at
the end; it talks about a big war that's
going to happen, so you have demons and a battle
of Jesus with the strong man, another apocalyptic story.
You have the emphasis on
suffering and persecution, and that's a common theme of
Jewish apocalyptic. Not that the Messiah would
suffer but that the Jews themselves might have to suffer
before the fabulous kingdom of the end time.
Remember you saw it in Daniel,
when we read Daniel two classes ago,
Daniel predicts suffering for the righteous,
and only after the suffering would you have the goodies,
heaven, the Kingdom of God. Now we'll look at Mark 13 and
we're going to analyze it pretty carefully.
Again some of these things will
come into play. The basic message I'm saying is
that people misunderstand about Jesus is that they misunderstand
the necessity of suffering that must be there before you--
must precede glory. Yes, God promises them glory,
they're going to be glorified in the end,
they're going to win in the end, but they have to go through
a period of suffering. Jesus is the first one who does
this, he accepts suffering and death
before he himself is glorified but the glory will come,
it has to be preceded by suffering.
But Jesus also in Mark tells
the disciples over and over again,
you also will have to suffer first,
but if you endure you will experience glory also.
Now look at Mark 13.
As he came out of the temple,
one of his disciples said to Him,
"Look, Teacher, what large stones and what
large buildings!" Then Jesus asked him,
"Do you see these great buildings?
Not one stone will be left here
upon another; all will be thrown down."
[He's predicting the
destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.]
When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the
temple, Peter, James,
John, and Andrew asked him privately,
"Tell us, when will this be,
and what will be the sign that all these things are to be
accomplished?" Then Jesus began to say to
them, "Beware that no one leads you astray.
Many will come in my name and
say, "I am he!" and they will lead many astray.
False prophets,
Jesus predicts there will be false prophets,
maybe even false Messiahs, although he doesn't use that
term here in Mark. It will occur in other places.
When you hear of wars and
rumors of wars, do not be alarmed;
this must take place, but the end is still to come.
So just when people have--when
times are bad and there are wars that's not necessarily the end
yet, you've got to have a few of those.
For nation will rise against
nation, kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in
various places; there will be famines.
This is but the beginning of
the birth pangs. As for yourselves, beware;
for they will hand you over to counsels;
and you will be beaten in synagogues.
Again this theme of suffering.
You have all these terrible
cosmic events, terrible wars and disasters,
earthquakes and all that sort of thing,
but also he says, you're going to have to suffer;
they're going to hand you over for persecution.
In 13:10, "And the good
news must first be proclaimed to all nations,"
so Jesus is predicting that, before the end comes,
his message, the Gospel message,
will be proclaimed all around. Even though you have worse
things happening, 13:12:
Brother will betray brother to death, a father his child,
and children will rise against parents and have them put to
death; and you will be hated by all
because of my name, but the one who endures to the
end will be saved. In other words,
familial divisions even, that households will be torn
apart by the suffering, by the conflict.
Then 13:14, "But when you
see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to
be," now here's one of those little phrases,
"Let the reader understand."
The author is giving you a
very, very clear clue that this is when you really better be
paying attention, "let the reader
understand." "When you see the
desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be."
Have we heard that before?
The abomination of desolation
is the King James English translation of it.
The desolating sacrilege is
often what is translated in more modern Bibles;
it all refers to the same language.
Where have we heard about the
abomination of desolation being set up where it ought not to be
set up before? Daniel;
the words come right out of Daniel.
They occur three--Daniel was
written in a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic and this is
in Greek, but this is the Greek translation.
You have it in Daniel 9:27,
Daniel 11:31, and Daniel 12:11,
so this Jesus has read his Daniel.
Then you have warnings and
woes, verses 15 through 13, so you have all this stuff.
What happens after that?
The one on the housetop must
not go down into house and take anything away;
the one in the field must not turn back to get the coat.
Woe to those who are pregnant,
to those who are nursing infants in those days!
Pray that it may not be in
winter. For in those days there will be
suffering such as not had been from the beginning of creation
that God . and never will be.
And if the Lord had not cut
short those days, no one would be saved.
Now notice, we're not getting
any more historical events here, we're not getting any more
stuff happening except right then he says,
"If anyone says to you, 'Look!
Here is the Messiah!'
or 'Look!
There he is!'--do not believe
it." False Messiahs,
false prophets, so there's more false besides
false prophets. "In those days after that
suffering," now here's where you really get
the cataclysmic end, the world crashing down:
The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its
light, and stars will fall from the skies, and the powers in the
heavens will be shaken. Then you will see the Son of
Man coming in clouds with great glory and power.
Then he will send out the
angels, and gather his elect from the four winds,
from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
When does it happen?
Right after the abomination of
desolation is set up where it ought not to be.
What is the abomination of
desolation? Well, we don't know.
Obviously if Jesus is reading
Daniel, and this is where he's getting this,
he also believes that something's going to happen in
the temple. That author Daniel believed it
was something that Antiochus IV Epiphanes may be sacrificed a
pig on the altar or he desecrated somehow the altar in
the Holy of Holies in the temple.
Jesus doesn't believe that that
event was the end event as Daniel thought it was.
Jesus is predicting that this
is going to happen, something's going to happen in
the temple that is going to be so awful,
and it's going to be an abomination,
and once that happens then all hell breaks loose and when all
hell is broken loose the worst, then the Son of Man will swoop
down in the clouds with angels and put a stop to it all.
That'll be the glorification.
When does this happen?
Well Mark has told us one
thing: it's going to happen during your own generation.
Jesus has said,
"This generation will not pass away before this stuff
happens." The apostles asked him,
so he said, "Well it will be within a generation.
Then he says,
nobody's going to know the exact time,
but once you see the abomination of desolation set up
in the temple where it ought not to be,
that's when it's going to happen.
Now did this happen?
Well, we're not narrated
anything about it. What does Mark not narrate in
this section that we as historians know happened with
the temple? What?
What does he not narrate
happening? Its destruction.
Jesus predicts the destruction,
Jesus prophesied about destruction, but Mark doesn't
tell us that the temple in Jerusalem are destroyed.
He doesn't tell us explicitly
about the Roman armies led by Vespasian and Titus surrounding
Jerusalem and besieging it for two years.
He doesn't tell us that in the
year 70, the Romans actually did take Jerusalem and burn the
temple destroy the temple. If Mark knew about that why
didn't he tell us about it? This is why scholars--a lot of
scholars believe this is exactly like Daniel.
Remember how we said,
how do you date Daniel? You figure out when does has
his history gone right? When does his history not go
right anymore? If you applied that same
standard of text to this text, what you've got is a prediction
of the temple destruction, so at least the writer knows
that it is likely to happen. He can see it happening in the
future but he doesn't narrate it happening.
Yes sir?
Student: I was just
wondering about a timeline; the version I have has "a
generation" translated also as
"race." Prof: Yes.
Conservative Christians know
that more than one generation has happened since that time;
many, many, many generations. They've taken the Greek word
translated here as "generation,"
which I think is the right translation,
and they say well, you can take that to
mean "race of people." Of course what race would they
then be referring too? The Jews, and so conservative
Christians who don't believe-- who believe this has to be an
accurate prediction of something that's going to happen in our
future also, translate that as race or say,
the generation doesn't refer to a generation of time of forty
years or so, it means they're a race of the
Jews. As long as there are Jews in
existence then this thing can still go on and it hasn't
happened yet, so that explains the
translation. Quite frankly,
I think the translation's just wrong.
It seems to me that what Mark's
intention is to put some kind of time limit on this.
He's trying to get his readers
to see a time. Well if you just say the race
of the Jews, then that doesn't give you any sense of time.
Did you have a question?
Okay, so where are we now?
I think what's going on is
this, let's just think of--imagine this happening.
16:1-8 I've already read.
What happens in 16:1-8?
The women are told that Jesus
has been raised from the dead, as Jesus predicted he would be,
and the young man tells the women,
go tell his disciples that he will go before them to Galilee,
go meet him in Galilee. In fact earlier,
in Mark, in one of these sorts of passion predictions,
Jesus had told the disciples, once I'm dead I will go before
you to Galilee. Implying that they're supposed
to follow him to Galilee, but then 16:8 ends.
One possible reconstruction for
all of this, and this is just an
interpretation put out by some scholars,
accepted by some, rejected by a whole lot of
others. What if Mark himself is writing
right before the year 70? He knows--maybe he's even
writing in Galilee himself, or in someplace close to
Galilee. He knows--the Roman army went
through Galilee first in the year 66 and 68 and destroyed
lots of stuff, and they won their battles
against the Jews in Galilee first.
They won through Galilee on
their way to Jerusalem, they get to Jerusalem around
68, and for two years they're besieging the city of Jerusalem.
What if Mark has written right
at that time, before Jerusalem had actually
been taken, before the temple had actually
been destroyed, because he has Jesus predict,
like Daniel predicted, some abomination of desolation
happening in the temple, but we don't know of anything
like that really that happened as a historical event right
then. The temple was simply destroyed
by the Romans. We might think,
well maybe he thinks that they're going to set up a Roman
standard there or do something, but we're not narrated what
actually happened. In this scenario Mark writes
his Gospel with this message, "Things are going to get a
lot worse before they get better,
and just like they got a lot worse for Jesus before they got
better, they're going to get a lot
worse for us before they get better."
You need to be prepared,
because if you think that the Romans are going to win and
we're all going to be carried off into slavery,
you don't have the right faith. Jesus told us this.
Jesus told us it wouldn't be
all pie in the sky by and by, it wouldn't be all good stuff,
we're going to have to suffer just like He suffered.
He writes this Gospel message
that over and over again has Jesus saying,
suffering must precede glory, suffering must precede glory.
He even has Jesus predict
around the time when all this will happen,
when you see Jerusalem--if Jerusalem is surrounded by Roman
armies who are pagans, you can pretty well guess that
something's going to happen. I believe that the Gospel of
Mark may have been written right before 70 or right around 70,
but the destruction of the temple has not sunk into
consciousness yet or is not known to happen.
Maybe even Mark himself and his
disciples are themselves in Galilee.
Maybe this is why he says,
we're supposed to be Galilee waiting for Jesus,
and then He will appear to us. When all is worse,
when it just seems like everything couldn't get worse,
I tell you he's going to come in on the clouds and he'll
destroy the Romans, and he'll set up the Kingdom of
God. If he's doing this it makes a
lot of sense for the document also ending where it ends.
It says, "Tell them to go
to Galilee and wait," and Jesus goes to Galilee to
meet them. In a sense, Mark's telling his
readers, all we have to do is stay here and he'll come for us.
That's one historical reading
of the Gospel of Mark that places it in one,
not provable time; some scholars believe Mark was
written in Rome. Some people believe it was
written after 70. I would say if Mark was written
70, very long after 70,
I would clearly expect him to narrate the destruction of
Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple,
as Luke does. When you read Luke,
who used Mark as one of his sources,
you'll notice that the writer of the Gospel of Luke uses this
passage out of Mark and he edits it,
to add in the destruction of the temple before Jesus comes
back. The reason?
Because the writer of Luke knew
that the temple had been destroyed.
Why doesn't Mark tell about it?
Because he doesn't know yet
that it's been destroyed.
