outhouse

sure they did.

didnt stop Paul from overseeing the stoning of stephan

JonA

Even if Mark thought that Jesus was divine, this does not mean that Mark thought Jesus was God.

Mark's Jesus repeatedly talks about God as a separate entity. I think the real telling passage is 13:32:

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Mark 13:32 (NRSV):

'But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

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Is this a link someone has tried to make?

The point is that not every instance of 'I am' is a claim to being 'God'. And how could it possibly be? No one could ever say anything without being guilty of blasphemy.

It's highly doubtful that Mark saw 'I am' as a claim to being 'God'. And if Mark did think Jesus was God, he did a good job hiding this belief throughout the rest of his gospel—even contradicting it everywhere God and Jesus are mentioned together.

Jon

EarlDoherty

I'm not saying that it's a slam-dunk exactly what Mark had in mind for his Jesus character. I've also taken flak from a couple of others, notably James McGrath, for my opening sentence. It was basically meant to be "pithy" as one supporter suggested. But as a general statement (hardly meant to identify Jesus as identical with God), I maintain it's valid if you don't insist on trying to take it apart on uncertain technicalities. The very fact that we're debating the point here at length, shows that it's not a clear-cut case.

But I guess pithy and poetic ain't popular around these parts.

Let's move on.

Earl Doherty

LegionOnomaMoi

How does the above not strike you as a contradiction in terms? "IS human" and "one like a human"? The LXX and hebraic both have "like/as/similar to" here. Not "IS."

stephan huller

No it is not the name of God in Hebrew. Yahweh technically derives from a root which means to become. Yesh is the closest thing to being. But in reality there is no Hebrew verb which means 'to be.'

LegionOnomaMoi

No question at all. Otherwise we would have things like Casey's monograph The Solution to the 'Son of Man' Problem (vol. 343 of the edited series Library of New Testament Studies) devoted to dealing with whether or not the term implied a human figure or not, and what exactly it may have meant.

stephan huller

Sorry I was putting my kids to bed. There is no verb 'to be' in Hebrew. The subject of the sentence is often restated with the relevant pronoun - not for emphasis but to avoid confusion.

stephan huller

We understand that the Jews in the early period (Sepher Yetsira, Philo etc) envisioned an Almighty God that could not come down to earth but then some secondary power that acted as an intermediary. So in effect Jesus was not 'God' per se but some form of God which was the firstborn of creation a.k.a. the Son. Clement of Alexandria spoke of there being not one but two logos beings. Clearly there were variations but the basic idea is that Jesus is not the Father but the Son who acts as the presence of the Father on earth.

No Robots

That was a lynching to which the Romans may have turned a blind eye. Similarly, the murder of James took place during an interregnum in Roman administration.

Vorkosigan

I'm with (b) on that.