Mathetes

Hello, learned masters,

I am new here, although I have been lurking for a while. I apologize if this question has come up before.

Reading Mark 12, 35-37:

Unless I am very mistaken, here Jesus is arguing why the Messiah will NOT be the son of David (!).

Doesn't this betray some kind of early apologetics? My (ignorant) interpretation is that the historical Jesus, if you believe he existed, claimed to be the Messiah, and some people objected that he could not be, not being the son of David. Here Jesus is explaining why the ancient prophecy does not apply, with a kind of lame excuse, in my opinion.

After that Matthew, in his eagerness to make him fulfill all possible prophecies, made him an actual son of David in his opening chapter, and did not percieve the contradiction when he copied rest of the story. It is also in Matthew 22, 41-46 and Luke 20, 41-47.

What do you think?

Toto

Interesting question.

The mid first century was full of Jewish messianic expectations. There was the great "messianic hope" that a "son of David" would come and rescue the Jews from the Roman Empire and be restored as a monarch over an independent Jewish theocracy.

The Jesus character in Mark seems to be playing with this idea in a zen koan sort of way - how can the messiah be a son of David, when David calls him "Lord"? Christians, of course, rejected the political aspects of the Messiah while claiming that Jesus fulfilled this messianic hope.

Mark does not give a genealogy for Jesus to prove him a descendent of David. Do Matthew and Luke contain this teaching?

Mathetes

As I said, it is in Matthew 22: 41-46 and Luke 20: 41-44, in similar wording.

In Matthew he is specifically speaking to the Pharisees.

Magus55

Well, first of all, this doesn't mean son as in father son, because obviously David died a 1000 or so years before Jesus. son of David is referring to Jesus being part of David's lineage.

And Jesus isn't saying the Messiah won't be from David's bloodline, He is saying the Messiah will be both from David's bloodline, as well as David's Lord. The human side of Jesus is a descendant of King David, but Jesus, the Messiah, is also God, and therefore is David's Lord.

This is verified by Jesus is Revelation 22:16 where Jesus states that He is the root ( Creator/Lord) of David, as well as his offpspring ( a descendant of David).


Rev 22:16 I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, [and] the bright and morning star.

Kilgore Trout

Jesus is saying in the gospels that the messiah will not be a descendant of David. He does not say he will be both a descendant of David and David's lord. Apologists like to find words that are not there in order to explain contradictions in the NT. You can bet that if there were no other references to jesus being in the line of David, christians would be thumping their bibles saying: "Mark 12:35-37 PROVES that jesus is not a descendant of David!" They only bring out silly arguments like this when they need to explain a contradiction.

The Revelation quotes are meaningless to this argument. Revelation is a "vision" of jesus someone had years after jesus' death. It is a completely different book from the gospels so to use it to show jesus says he is in the line of David is useless. Why don't you quote from the book of Mormon while you're at it? Maybe jesus had some important things to say about the subject in there. Revelation is just buying into the legends that the book of Matthew has.

The author of Mark thought the messiah was not going to be descended from David, so he had Jesus say that. Then "Matthew" ended up putting in a contradiction by having jesus be in the line of David.

This brings up another point that christians can never figure out. The Psalms are not prophecy! The Psalms are poems and hymns and the Jews know that, but somehow christians don't. They think lots of psalms are about the messiah, but they aren't.

Peter Kirby

The argument is reasonable that some early Jesus folks tried to defend a belief in Jesus as the Messiah even though there was no known davidic lineage. There was a Qumranic covenant of a "priestly messiah" and "davidic messiah" . . . and Epistle to the Hebrews says that Jesus is a priest of the order of Melchisedec (7:11) . . . perhaps there were some who saw Jesus as a priestly messiah? Interesting to ask who the davidic messiah might have been.

best,
Peter Kirby

CJD

Mark 10:47
And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Mark 10:48
And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Mark 11:9-10
And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!"

No 'teachers of the law' here, just your ordinary, everyday people (signifying a latent culture understanding that the Messiah was David's kinsman). If Mark was bent on showing that the Christ was not a physical son of David, why did he leave these in? To set up a rebuke by Jesus in Chapter 12?

Clearly what we have here in much of this thread is the typical practice of reading the text with eyes completely shut. The context of the passage in question (Mark 12:35-37) shows the outsider Jesus challenging the messianic assumptions of the religious leaders. He is saying that the Anointed One is more than just a man, he is the GodMan--greater than his earthly descendents because he is part and parcel of the divine. Nothing more or less is going on here. Is it that hard to see?

Regards,

CJD

Kosh

So, I'm a little confused here. Maybe someone could help me out. According to:

Matthew 1:16
And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.


If Mary was impregnanted by the Holy Spirit, and not by Joseph, then how can Jesus' ancestry to David be traced through Joseph?

Kilgore Trout

Mark 11:10.....
Blessed is the coming kingdom of OUR father David!
The whole crowd is calling David their father! Obviously David was thought of as some kind of sybolic father to all of the Jews so the other verses where they call Jesus the son of David don't mean anything because all the people seem to think they are the sons and daughters of David.

I will repeat Mark 12:37

David called himself called him "lord" so how can the messiah be David's descendant?

As I said, Jesus said the messiah cannot be David's descendant, it is very clear. Stop adding words that are not there. He did not say how can he be merely david's descendant or something like that.

The biggest problem with this verse is that Psalm 110 is not even talking about the messiah, so Jesus is wrong no matter what he meant to say about David.
For those interested in the real meaning of Psalm 110 please go to this address....
http://home.comcast.net/~messiahtruth/ps110.html
It shows that the NT is interpreting Psalm 110 completely wrong. I doubt christian will bother going there because they need to keep reading the text with eyes completely shut. They need to keep believing that when something is in the NT it is written by god therefore it is perfect.

CJD

Entirely irrelevant to the conversation. The issue of authenticity, truth, etc., is not even related to the topic at hand, which is, what meaning does the Mark pericope convey?

Some here say that Mark wished to show that Jesus was not a descendant of David. Unfortunately, this notion has been given little proof. If the text does not have Jesus saying that "The Messiah is no mere son of David, he is also the Lord (king) whom David addressed in Psalm 110," but that "The Messiah is not descended from David, but comes from something wholly other," then why do the 'common people' (v. 37) "hear him gladly." If the notion that the Messiah (as well as all Israelites) were sons and daughters of David, why would they joyfully receive the words that Jesus spoke?

The one who wishes to argue otherwise must show that Jesus was NOT answering the question: "How can David call his descendant Lord?"

It seems to me that some of the attempted interpretations in this thread are nothing more than veiled attempts to purposefully go contrary to the plain sense of the text. In other words, your lack of subtlety in this matter betrays your desire to undermine biblical theology at all costs.

Consider the case closed (unless you can offer something substantive),

CJD

P.S. You also should know better that I for one am completely undaunted by the original meanings of the OT texts. I affirm them wholeheartedly. And I think the NT authors did, too. They then went the next step and applied them to who they thought was the Messiah.