I want to tell you the story of the
day that Jesus denied that he was God and the subsequent cover-up. Now this is not some
kind of Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown conspiracy theory. Oh no! This is based on really solid scholarship.
So what is this story? Well it's found in Mark chapter 10, Mark being our earliest gospel. The
other gospel writers Matthew and Luke used Mark in the writing of their gospel, they amended
it and added to it and so on as they saw fit. And our guide to the passage will be a chap
called William Barclay. William Barclay wrote this commentary on the gospel of Mark and he
was amongst other things an author, a radio and television presenter, Church of Scotland minister,
and most importantly for our purposes Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism at the University
of Glasgow, and he wrote this popular set of bible commentaries on the New Testament
which has sold over one and a half million copies. Now his motto if you like was quote "making
the best biblical scholarship available to the average reader" so that's why he wrote these
17 commentaries on the New Testament published by Saint Andrews Press and they're still very popular
today. You can buy them in Christian bookshops and other places he's very readable actually and
very accessible for the layman. So there's a story in Mark chapter 10 verse 17 I want to
tell you what he says about it and then we'll come to the cover-up. So the story in the gospel
goes as Jesus was going along the road a man came running to him threw himself at his feet and
asked him "good teacher what am I to do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him: "why do you call me
good? There is no one who is good except one, God." Dr Barclay says here is one of the most
vivid stories in the gospels we must note how the the man came and how jesus met him he
came running he flung himself at jesus's feet there was something amazing in the sight of
this rich young aristocrat falling at the feet of the penniless prophet from Nazareth
who was on the way to being an outlaw good teacher he began and straight away jesus
answered back no flattery don't call me good keep that word for god it almost looks as if Jesus was
trying to pour cold water on that young enthusiasm there is a lesson here it is clear that this man
came to Jesus in a moment of overflowing emotion it is also clear that Jesus exercised a personal
fascination over him Jesus did two things that every evangelist and every preacher and every
teacher ought to remember and to copy first he said in effect stop and think don't get carried
away by your excitement i don't want you swept to me by a moment of emotion think calmly what
you are doing jesus is not cold shouldering the man he was telling him even at the very outset
to count the cost second he said in effect you cannot become a christian by devotion to me
you must look at God i'll just read that again second he said in effect you cannot become a
Christian by devotion to me you must look at God preaching and teaching always mean the
conveying of truth through personality and thereby lies the greatest danger of the
greatest teachers the danger is that the pupil, the scholar, the young person may form a personal
attachment to the teacher or preacher and think that it is an attachment to god teachers
and preachers must never point to themselves they must always point to god there is in
all true teaching a certain self obliteration true we cannot keep personality and warm
person personal loyalty out of it altogether and we would not if we could but the
matter must not stop there teachers and preachers are in their in the last analysis only
pointers to God, end of quote that's page 283. So that's very interesting Jesus is clearly
denying that he is God in this passage and as a good teacher as a good preacher he's pointing
away from himself to true goodness the absolute source of goodness which is God himself so
what happens now? what happens now is we find in the later gospels who you remember
use Mark, Matthew and Luke use Mark in the writing of their gospels and they change
alter embellish edit add subtract as they see fit with great freedom to do what they
wish and when we come to Matthew's gospel we find according to Professor Jimmy Dunn who
is a very distinguished New Testament scholar at the University of Durham in his book Unity and
Diversity in the New Testament, an Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity.
This is a heavyweight academic work at least late undergraduate or
postgraduate level and he says on page 79 we must note also how some sayings
of jesus have been deliberately altered in the course of transmission altered in such a way as to
give a clearly different sense from the original for example the opening interchange
between the rich young man and jesus Mark 10:17 "good teacher what must i do to inherit
eternal life why do you call me good no one is good except God alone", we read that in Matthew's
version chapter 19 verse 16 reads as follows "What good deed must i do to have eternal life? Why do
you ask me about what is good only one is good." So the words have been changed: 'why do you call me
good' in Mark, becomes 'why do you ask me about what is good' in Matthew. So what's going on here? Why has
Matthew changed the words of Mark? Jimmy Dunn says elsewhere and other scholars have said the same:
to avoid the embarrassment of Jesus denial of his divinity in Mark this is an embarrassing saying
in Mark it leads to the inevitable conclusion as Barclay says that Jesus is pointing away from
himself to God, God being a separate being and some early Christians didn't
want that to be the conclusion that we naturally reach so they altered jesus's words to make them
more fitting for Christian belief towards the end of the first century and in this passage and maybe
i'll do a separate video on this Jimmy Dunn gives lots of other examples, of how the
teaching of Jesus has been changed and we can actually witness this this is not speculation
this is not a liberal scholarship you can by comparing the different passages you can see
how they've been altered and what the agenda jesus teaching has been changed whether it be
on divorce if you look at mark's teaching mark has jesus teaching one thing on divorce
and matthew adds and amends it in his gospel luke does the same on other
questions to do with the resurrection appearances and so on, I won't go
into all that at the moment my point here is that we have a story where jesus denies he is
god later christians find that unacceptable so they changed the words of jesus to make his
words more acceptable to a later christian faith as it changed and developed and elevated jesus
higher and higher and higher until he became at the Council of Nicaea, a god, God
the Son alongside God the Father. This is quite shocking and this
is totally mainstream scholarship it's one of the things that rocks your faith
when you go to university and you study this i was there as an undergraduate and i saw
it happening you can really oh my god as a christian impact you quite negatively you
think well what's this this shouldn't be happening anyway so i thought i'd share
that with you. Until next time
