Solo

It would appear that Mark denied flatly Jesus had Davidic pedigree in a polemical passage (12:35-37).

This calls immediately into question Mark's relationship with Paul's doctrines. While, nominally, the rejection of a "fleshy kingdom" (however Jewish) seems an eminently Pauline idea (1 Cr 15:50), Paul himself testifies in Rom 1:3, that Jesus Christ was ek spermatos David kata sarka.

I think the simplest explanation would be that Rom 1:3-4 was interpolated by a later scribe eager to find a compromise formula between the traditions about Jesus which held him to be an earthly power (and exaggerating its importance after his death) and Paul's radical antithesis. Bart Ehrman (or via: amazon.co.uk), ever cautious, avoids taking this step, prefering instead the view that Paul was taking the Davidic descent only metaphorically. Smart....but would that not make Mark more Pauline than Paul ?

What do you think ?

Jiri

Malachi151

I think that in many ways the writer of Mark was simply independent and had his own particular views and that nothing in Mark can be taken as necessarily built on any given tradition.

I find Mark to be an extremely critical and almost anti-Christian work. I'm not even sure if the writer of Mark believed in Jesus at all.

aa5874

This is completely opposite to what the author of Revelation 22:16 had Jesus to say, 'I Jesus have sent my angels to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star."

Malachi151

I think that Mark is anti-Jewish, and this denial of David may have been just one more way of denying the Jewish aspect of the Messiah.

Solo

This is likely because HJ's Jewish following in Palestine adopted the view that he was the Davidic Messiah who would return bodily to restore his kingdom in Israel. Paul preached the separation of heaven and earth (also church and state) and the inaccessibility of heavenly kingdom to "flesh". The two (major) schools were at loggerheads but were eventually reconciled in the church dogmas.

Jiri

neilgodfrey

Mark does turn the Davidic lineage on its head. He is at least ambiguous about it (as he is with most other things) by they way he has Bartimaeus address him as the Son of David. (I can't help wondering if there's significance, though, in that Bartimaeus calls him this when he is still in his blind condition.)

And yes, I think the entirety of Romans 1:2-6 is an interpolation, as I've discussed here. And Herman Detering argues even more successfully on pages 107-112 in his Falsified Paul here (beginning page 109 in the adobe reader).

But as for Mark's relationship with Paul's letters, how do we decide what Paul's letters looked like at the time (when was that?) that Mark was supposed to have known them?

Mark was an adoptionist, his Jesus was declared to the the Son of God at his baptism. I doubt Paul would approve.

Mark's Jesus is absent, he's someone to wait for till the end of days, is he not? Paul's Jesus is "in" his followers. Paul says Jesus is here, in him and the brethren. Mark said Beware anyone saying He is here or there.

These are some of the questions I'd like clarified whenever I think of the relationship between Paul and Mark.

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

Solo

There is a thought. My own view of the Bartimaeus address is that it again raises the mystery of Jesus identity. Like in Caesarea Philippi. But that in no way negates or equivocates Mark's Jesus view of the Messiah's royal requisites in 12:35-37. I find it intriguing that the Davidic resolution follows immediately one of the more glaring Pauline ethical hyperboles issuing from Jesus' mouth, the "loving of one's neighbour as oneself" (Gal 5:14).

It looks quite possible that the whole passage was inserted, and quite possibly for the reasons Detering indicated. The idea of Jesus being owed anything on account of his Davidic descent clashes violently with the core of Paul's piety, IMHO.

It will be, like nearly everything in the study of early Christianity, a matter of speculation. And no matter what we decide, it will sound outrageous to some people.

No doubt Paul would disapprove. Paul believed in pre-existent Christ. IOW, Jesus was sent to serve humbly, to take on a human form and be defeated as all humans, through the weakness of flesh, but even more so, as the last one of them, a despised fool and blasphemer. The cross was Paul's Christ only Messianic credential. To believe in him was a fool's science, except smarter than all the worldly wisdom.

Mark of course had exposure, and was not immune, to the competing view of Jesus as a great power on earth, an infinitely wise and righteous teacher, who was unjustly martyred by lawless men. So, with his gospel begins the literary "blending" of the Jesus revered but failed by his earthly disciples and Paul's witness to his celestial glory.
I think Mark's Christ is essentially Pauline, meaning above all in the resurrectional plan. Even though concretized in quasi-historical symbols it remains true to Paul's 'metamorphic' liberation from the world and union with God in some spiritual hyper-form.

Jesus' last cry on the Cross is also Pauline theology. Paul radically rejected "the earthly kingdom" that the (putative) historical Jesus promised and the disciples believed was returning with him. That cause was lost, in that cause God forsook his Son and let him die alone, abandoned, defeated. Jesus' Messianic mission was fulfilled in his earthly defeat which was a necessary step in God's plan of the conquest of death in his resurrection.

Jiri

Pataphysician

I would say that Mark is anti-Messianic. He is trying to give the reader a clue what he is talking about. What kind of "son" is the Messiah to David? How is it one can be both the son of David and yet greater than David? possibly your thinking about the wrong kind of son when interpreting what God has said!

2Sa 18:18
Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself a pillar (Matstsebah, sacred pillar, altar, can rarely mean stump, see Isaiah qoute below) which is in the King's Valley, for he said, "I have no son to preserve my name." So he named the pillar after his own name, and it is called Absalom's Monument (Yad, main meaning is hand or power, in the LXX translated as Agency or Power) to this day.


Ps 110:1
The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies a (at the) footstool for Your feet."

1Ch 28:2
Let us go into His dwelling place; Let us worship at His footstool.
Then King David rose to his feet and said, "Listen to me, my brethren and my people; I had intended to build a permanent home for the ark of the covenant of the LORD and for the footstool of our God. So I had made preparations to build it.

Lamentations 2:1
How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty(in LXX, doxasma, which one could read as idea, maybe creatively read as archtype) of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

Isa 6:13
Yet there will be a tenth portion in it, And it will again be subject to burning, Like a terebinth or an oak, Whose stump(Matstsebah) remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump(Matstsebah)

Chili

The messiah was not Jewish or Mary would not be the Immaculate Conception. Just read the inspired lineage in Luke that goes past David right back to God. Joseph was the Jew who's sins were the cross that Jesus carried and on which Jesus the Jew was crucified to set Jesus the man free with: mother, there is your son.

So nothing of the Christ is Jewish except the venue for which they must be admired.