Ben C Smith

A question that often arises about the trial of Jesus in the gospels is why the high priest accused Jesus of blasphemy. Mark 15.61b-64:

Again the high priest asked him, saying to him: Are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? Jesus said: I am. And you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of the power, and coming with the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest tore his clothes and said: What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy! What do you think? And they all condemned him to be deserving of death.

What I am wondering is what, if anything, stands in the way of the answer preferred by Gundry. He notes that Jesus is quoting Psalm 110.1 when he speaks of sitting at the right hand of power, but Psalm 110.1 of course has the right hand of יהוה, with the tetragrammaton. This is the only Marcan instance of the strange circumlocution power, and it seems explicable on the basis that Jesus actually pronounced the sacred name at trial instead of using a substitute. Accounts of the trial would of course have to use a substitute (to avoid something like the comic scene in Life of Brian in which repeating the blasphemous utterance of Jehovah itself constitutes blasphemy, and gets the priest, played by Cleese, stoned as well as the original blasphemer). In Mark, that substitute is power.

Is there any obstacle to this reading? For convenience, here is what R. H. Gundry writes in Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (or via: amazon.co.uk), pages 915-916:

Our attention better goes to the just-cited passage m. Sanh. 7.5. It says that a blasphemer is not liable, i.e. cannot be condemned to death, unless the blasphemy has included a pronunciation of the tetragrammaton (so also Lev 24:16 LXX ["but let (the one) naming the name of 'Lord' (MT: יהוה) die by death"]; Philo Mos. 2.37 §§203-4; 2.38 §§206-8; b. Ker. 7b; cf. m. Yoma 3:8; 6:2; m. Sota 7:6 for a limitation in m. Sanh. 7:5 to the tetragrammaton, i.e. for an exclusion of other divine names; and see Mark 2:7 for a supposed blasphemy of God that did not include a pronunciation of the tetragrammaton and that therefore did not draw a capital charge). Yet when giving testimony during a trial, witnesses to capital blasphemy use a substitute for the tetragrammaton. Only in closing does the chief witness pronounce the tetragrammaton in quoting the blasphemy. Before the chief witness quotes it with the tetragrammaton, however, the court is cleared of observers. Only the judges, the witnesses, and the accused remain. On hearing the chief witness pronounce the tetragrammaton, the judges stand up and tear their garments. Of the reasons listed in Str[ack]-B[illerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament] 1. 1007 for tearing one's garments, only the hearing of the tetragrammaton has a legal setting (D. Juel, Messiah and Temple 97). In view of the mishnaic regulation that witnesses to capital blasphemy use a substitute for the tetragrammaton so long as an audience of non-jurists are present, then, how would we expect Jesus' blasphemy — if it did include a pronunciation of the tetragrammaton — to be quoted by witnesses, in his case by the judges themselves, to non-jurists? Why, of course, with a substitute for the tetragrammaton just as in Mark's text. Thus Jesus did pronounce the tetragrammaton. It is the right hand of יהוה, "YHWH," concerning which Ps 110:1 speaks; so Jesus must have said, "I am, and you will see the Son of man sitting at [the] right [hand] of Yahweh...," and the Sanhedrists who later reported to non-jurists what Jesus had said used "the Power" as a substitute for Jesus's "Yahweh" (cf. the substitution of "God" for "Lord" [κυριος — Greek for the tetragrammaton] in quotations of Ps 110.1 at Acts 2:34-35 with 2:36; Rom 8:34; Eph 1:20 with 1:17; Col 3:1; Heb 1:13; 8:1; 12:2; also the paucity of occurrences of the tetragrammaton in Q[umran] L[iterature] and the use of four dots and of archaic Hebrew characters for it also in QL and even in pre-Christian manuscripts of the LXX, where we might have expected ο κυριος, "the Lord" [for details see H. Stegemann in Qumrân 195-96, 200-202]).

Any thoughts? (And has this solution been discussed before on the IIDB?)

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

Jeffrey Gibson wrote a nice paper about this topic. Maybe he can tell us where it is published or, if still in press, how to get a draft of it. His notion of what the charge of blasphemy relates to, however, differs from your proposal.

Stephen

Toto

There is a reference to Jeffrey's paper here.