bacht

Are there other interpretations of Mark that use a mythic Jesus? For instance, is he giving us something like Jeremiah's Lamentations but couched in indirect language to avoid attention from the Roman authorities?

gstafleu

My main idea is that Mark is showing that Jesus as Messiah failed with respect to what appears to be his target audience, the Jews. Whether "satire" is a correct description of that is perhaps debatable.
You mean like "what if they gave a Messiah and nobody came?"
Yes, exactly. IOW, the Messiah fails with respect to his target audience. To me it looks as if Jesus is presented as failing generally, though, not just with respect to the disciples. Sure, the general public falls for the magic bits, but they fall short when it counts and release Mr. Ananonymous rather than the Messiah.

In what, if anything, does Jesus actually succeed? He succeeds with his magic tricks, and he succeeds in getting himself killed and then resurrecting. He doesn't seem to succeed in achieving the goals that were the reasons for setting up the tricks and the death/resurrection in the first place, though.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

We have a bit of a problem here, because the Messiah was supposed to be, originally, a figure yet to come, not someone walking the earth in real time. That may make it a bit difficult to establish Messiah characteristics, because of lack of experience. But one of the characteristics of a Messiah surely would be that he is an outstanding individual, with extraordinary knowledge. That fits in rather well with giving apocalyptic predictions. Plus, it makes him look like a prophet, another type of "holy man."

Can we be more precise? The whole apocalyptic bit seems to come down to the fact that at some day things will turn into a generalized mess, presumably because of the generalized badness of the world. But then the Son of Man will come and set things right. This fits in rather well with the whole idea that the Messiah is someone who is supposed to come and set things right for Israel. But in another post I gave a list of Messiah characteristics. Here I'll present a few of them:

• Once he is King, leaders of other nations will look to him for guidance. (Isaiah 2:4)
• The whole world will worship the One God of Israel (Isaiah 2:17)
• Evil and tyranny will not be able to stand before his leadership (Isaiah 11:4)
• Knowledge of God will fill the world (Isaiah 11:9)
• There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease (Isaiah 25:8)
• The Jewish people will experience eternal joy and gladness (Isaiah 51:11)
• He will be a messenger of peace (Isaiah 52:7)
• The ruined cities of Israel will be restored (Ezekiel 16:55)
• Weapons of war will be destroyed (Ezekiel 39:9)
• He will then perfect the entire world to serve God together (Zephaniah 3:9)
• He will take the barren land and make it abundant and fruitful (Isaiah 51:3, Amos 9:13-15, Ezekiel 36:29-30, Isaiah 11:6-9)

If we see these items as the opposite of "abomination of desolation," then the idea that the Son of Man will appear to fix things after the mess works rather well with some of the properties a Messiah is supposed to have.

So what we have here is the following. Jesus tells the Sanhedrin that yes, he is the Messiah. The Sanhedrin doesn't believe him, IOW Jesus fails to establish himself as Messiah with them. In parallel Mark shows that not only does the Sanhedrin not believe him, his (main) disciple Peter also doesn't seem to be to secure in his belief and denies Jesus no less than three times in a row. It seems to me that this fits very well with my hypothesis.

Now you seem to be saying that As Jesus' prophecy/prediction that Peter would betray Jesus came true, therefore Jesus' apocalyptic prophecy also must come true, according to Mark. Yes within the story this is correct. In the "fictional" world that Mark portrays (cf the "Harry Potter world") the apocalyptic predictions would indeed come true. But that does not mean that Mark, the author, actually believed his fiction himself, just as J.K. Rowling in all likelihood does not believe that one can fly on a broomstick.

Gerard

Ben C Smith

This is not a problem, since the messiah was expected (in many or most streams of thought, at any rate) to walk the earth in real time in the future, and he was supposed to accomplish certain things. Those things are identifiable from the texts regardless of when they were supposed to happen.

Presumably, then, Mark is also cautioning against prophets?

Where does the messiah appear in each of the above passages? IOW, are you certain that all of them have to do with a messiah?

But, if this is your list of expected messianic characteristics, where in Mark does Jesus (attempt to) fulfill each of them? Let us get precise, as you suggested.

For example, where does Jesus attempt to restore ruined cities? Conversely, you said that Jesus certified himself messianically by performing healings, yet healings do not even appear per se on your list.

More to the point, if the nationalistic kind of messiah figure represented by the Egyptian or by Theudas is what concerned Mark (as you postulated), why does Jesus not do anything in Mark to actually restore the fortunes of Jerusalem?

This is mindbending. Rowling was not writing a cautionary tale about wizardry, was she? But you are saying that Mark was writing such a tale about messiah figures. Presumably if Dumbledore makes a prediction in a Harry Potter book that has yet to come true within the timeline, readers may well assume that it will come true in that fictional setting at some point; but that prediction would not be cautioning readers against anything. But Mark, you are saying, is a cautionary tale. So what are the apocalyptic oracles in Mark cautioning the reader against in real time?

Furthermore, if the oracles do wind up coming true in the Marcan timeline, that would seem to make Jesus a success, not a failure, for Mark.

Ben.

Lógos Sokratikós

Notwithstanding the fact that he spoke with authority (he shut up a few mouths) and power (his mere words commanded the elements and created bread and fish where there were not, a la mon père YHWH). The futility of killing the messiah is hinted, because, well... killing him did not work (Mark 16) according to the account.

I believe your "cautionary tale" hypothesis is weak. Although Mark 16 is under suspicion, I doubt someone would go into so much detail of his power and divine authenticity as a cautionary tale. Cautioning who? YHWH? "Please don't send us your messiah cuz he'll get killed"?

gstafleu

It doesn't, it is a list I got from Jewish_messianism, assuming this page more or less knows what it is talking about. So far, I think, it is the first instance of such a list I have seen on this forum.
He doesn't. That was not my point. My point was that in Mark 13 the SoM comes down to clean up the mess, and the characteristics I mentioned can be seen as examples of cleaning up mess, especially mess of the apocalyptic kind.
Errr... no, I was just using her and her work as an example where something maybe true within the fictional work of an author, without the author believing it is also true in the real world.
Correct, assuming that Dumbledore is known for his predictive capabilities.
Correct.
They aren't. Oracling, like miracling, is just something Mark has Jesus do to establish his extraordinariness.
Yes, it would. Only they don't come true, in the timespan given, and hence the people still don't believe in Jesus, QED. Remember: Mark is portraying Jesus as a real Messiah, and in spite of this realness the people still don't believe it.

How about turning this around? What, IYO, are (from Mark) the goals Jesus is trying to achieve, and how does he succeed in them?

Gerard

bacht

The historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth is not accepted here as proven. Gerard's theory is based on the idea that Jesus Christ was never a flesh-and-blood person, but was created/invented by the earliest Christians as a variant of the Messiah theme. [paraphrasing]

We already know the traditional version.

Lógos Sokratikós

I don't see the relevance. I'm talking about the genre of the story. We're (mostly) all talking about the genre of the story.

Ben C Smith

So are you saying that Mark portrays Jesus as a failed present messiah but a successful future messiah?

I think if Mark wished to portray Jesus as a messiah both real and expected, he would show Jesus overthrowing Rome.

I think Mark is doing the best he can with an iffy situation. He believes that Jesus was the messiah, but he knows that Jesus did not look much like a messiah. That is, if the messiah has already come and gone, what the heck is Rome still doing in power? So he is reinterpreting the concept of messiah. Mark is saying that the messiah was supposed to die and rise again, for example. This is not typical messianic expectation; a messiah who gets killed is a messiah who has failed. Mark is spinning this.

All of this makes sense if Mark is reconciling two disparate facts: (A) Jesus was the messiah, and (B) Jesus failed to do the principal thing(s) the messiah was supposed to do. It does not make sense to me if Mark is fabricating Jesus as a real messiah as a caution against following would-be messiahs.

Ben.

the_cave

Once again, all of this makes me turn back to the Slavonic Josephus. In the Slavonic TF, Jesus is arrested by Pilate (after some sort of Roman assault)--but is then set free! He is later arrested a second time, apparently by religious authorities, and only then is crucified.

Now, here's the interesting thing: in Mark, there may also be two arrests of Jesus! One is Barabbas, who is "Jesus Barabbas" in some texts of Matthew, and the other is Jesus Christ. "Jesus Barabbas" in Matthew suggests that Matthew had access to a text--either an unedited version of Mark, or a prior gospel altogether--where Barabbas is also named Jesus (I am not the first to point to this; Price does it in one of his books, for starters.)

If Matthew calls him "Jesus Barabbas", and canonical Mark calls him "Barabbas", this suggests that there was an earlier text in which "Jesus Barabbas" was original--so "Barabbas" is derived from "Jesus Barabbas". Suggesting that the original author of Mark (apparently the creator of "Barabbas") knew this.

What could that mean?

IMO it means that Mark is indeed a satire...on an earlier text. One which more closely resembles the Slavonic TF in its narrative structure. Why would he do this? I likewise think, with those above, that he is satirizing the idea of a militaristic messiah, in favor of the idea of a salvationist messiah (we could call it a "salvific messiah"). Barabbas is found in Mark "bound with those who had made insurrection, men who in the insurrection had committed murder" (WEB translation). What insurrection? We don't know, but we do know that in the Slavonic Josephus, Pilate seems to launch a much larger assault on Jesus and his followers than we find in any gospel. IMO Mark may be creating the character of Barabbas out of the events surrounding the first arrest of Jesus (who could be called "bar-Abbas", as many have pointed out), again as a satirical counterweight to the real messiah, Jesus Christ.

So, in the original text, Jesus, son of Abbas, would have been arrested in some sort of altercation with Pilate, set free, and arrested again. In Mark's satirical revision, "Barabbas" is arrested at the same time as Jesus Christ--the first is set free (the false vision of the messiah), but the second is crucified (the true vision of the messiah).

I think there may be another clue which supports this in Jesus' rebuke of Peter. In Mark 8:33 he uses the "Get behind me, Satan" rebuke (opiso mou) against Peter, right after Peter becomes the first to declare him the Christ (i.e., to the Greek-reading audience, the messiah), and also after Peter tries to tell him that the dying-and-rising Son of Man theology is a bunch of nonsense (in Mark 8:31-32).

Quick: where else do we see the phrase "Get behind me, Satan"?

We see it in Matthew 4:10, where Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world. (Though I note with surprise and curiosity that opiso mou is a textual variant in Mt 4:10!) I'm not sure if this can be tied directly to Mark, but Matthew's connections with the Slavonic Josephus is kind of intriguing to me, and we may be looking at some sort of three-part relationship, with the text behind the Slavonic Josephus serving as an intermediary. At any rate, the thematic relationship is intriguing--in one pericope, Jesus rebukes Peter for trying to put a clamp on all the spiritual salvation talk. In the other pericope, Jesus rebukes Satan (using the very same phrase, at least in the majority text) for offering him a worldly kingship, i.e. a non-spiritual kingship.

Also intriguing that the author of the Slavonic TF, out of myriad gospel details, selects only a few, one of which is Jesus' rejection of the role of a military messiah.

I realize, of course, that this is a highly speculative suggestion.