6. Jesus and the Scriptures of Israel
In our quest to understand the Christologies of the Synoptic
Gospels, we have covered the titles son of God and son of man; the birth and
resurrection narratives; and the stories of Jesus’s power over spirits, bodies,
and nature. In each, I have attempted to demonstrate that reading Jesus as an
idealized human figure makes sense of the various presentations, indicates a
strong grasp of the interpretive cues in each given pericope, and also best
coheres with the overall story each Gospel tells. In this final set of studies,
I turn to the issue of intertextuality, taking up the question, Do citations of
or allusions to the scriptures of Israel so coordinate Jesus with God as to
indicate, however subtly, that Jesus and Israel’s God are one and the same?[1]
In the introduction I discussed the approach of this book as
testing the explanatory power of the idealized human paradigm. Here, perhaps
more than anywhere, the importance of paradigmatic assumptions comes to the
fore. If Christological presuppositions can influence or even determine a
reader’s interpretation of any one passage, that possibility increases
exponentially when one scriptural text is embedded within another. Many of the
texts that this chapter explores can be interpreted as indicating Jesus’s divinity
if certain measures are assumed (e.g., that the application of a YHWH text to
Jesus indicates that Jesus is, in some sense, the God of Israel). And yet, the
capacious realm of possibility opened up by the idealized human paradigm
enables an alternative set of conclusions. While at times this chapter points
to an explicit indication that idealized human Christology is intended by the
author in the scriptural citations (such as Luke’s paradigmatic statements in
the final chapter of his Gospel), the more common approach will be to
demonstrate that early Jews deploying or hearing scripture in the manner we
find in the Synoptic Gospels (and Acts) could well use such deployments to
characterize an ideal, human messiah.
Before turning to the New Testament directly, it will be
profitable to recall some data that turned up in the discussion of early
Judaism. There are examples outside the New Testament of early Jewish
interpretations of scripture in which passages that originally spoke about God
have been applied to an idealized human figure. Three examples of this come
from Qumran. First, in the Habakkuk Pesher, the Teacher of Righteousness
replaces God as the object of faith in Habukkuk 2:4: “Its interpretation
concerns all observing the Law in the House of Judah, whom God will free from
the house of judgment on account of their toil and of their loyalty to the
Teacher of Righteousness” (1QpHab VIII 1-2).[2]
A second example comes from a likely citation of Hosea 5:14 in 4Q166-67b.
There, God’s words, “I will be like a lion to Ephraim and like a young lion to
the house of Judah,” are ascribed to the priest: “For I will be like a lio[n to
E]ph[ra]im [and like a lion cub to the House of Judah. Its interpretation
con]cerns the last priest who will stretch out his hand to strike Ephraim”
(4Q167 2, 2-3).[3]
Third, in 11QMelchizedek “the year of the Lord’s favor” (Isa 61:1) is rendered
“the Lord of Melchizedek’s favor.” This and other evidence leads Carl Davis to
conclude, “Application of such texts occurred both to divine and non-divine
figures. . . . The evidence does show that one cannot claim that application of
such passages necessitates a view that Jesus was divine or that the early
Christians worked with a Trinitarian view of God, nor can one claim such
application necessarily depends on viewing Jesus as God’s agent.”[4]
Applying to other figures verses that originally referred to God is a daring
move, but not necessarily so fraught as to suggest a transformation of the
divine identity. Only interpretation of the passages cited within their new
contexts can determine the relationship between God and the other figure in
each given instance.
A.
MARK
Appeal to scripture is a key way that Mark frames his
narrative as unfolding within a Jewish, and specifically scriptural, milieu.
Stephen Ahearne-Kroll summarizes the result this way: “Through the lens of
Scripture, we see a Markan Jesus that is at once powerful and God-like, utterly
human, and mediating between the divine and the human as a prophetic figure.
All of these images constitute what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah for
Mark.”[5]
And yet the scriptural citations that contribute to Mark’s Christology
typically reside in the background, signaled only through wording that calls to
mind a possible biblical precedent. An exception to this rule is Mark’s first
and clearest scriptural citation.
1.
THE LORD
a. Isaiah 40:3: The Way of the Lord
Within the Gospels’ presentation of Jesus it is possible to
argue that an implicit Christological claim is made when biblical texts that
originally applied to God, especially those containing the divine name (יהוה,
MT; ὁ κύριος, LXX), are quoted in such a manner that a title, noun, or pronoun
that refers to divinity in its original Old Testament context refers to Jesus
in the Gospel.[6]
There are at least two plausible explanations for such phenomena that fit
within the thesis of this book, and they might both be at work. First, C. H.
Dodd has shown that several scriptural texts were foundational for the
preaching of the first-century church such that they recur independently across
our earliest witnesses.[7]
Among these foundational texts is Psalm 110:1, which appears in the Synoptic
Gospels, receives independent elaboration in Acts, is quoted in 1 Corinthians
and alluded to in Romans and Ephesians, and finds a place in the argument of
Hebrews. Since the Tetragrammaton is rendered as ὁ κύριος in the LXX, this
widely quoted psalm refers to two separate persons as κύριος in the same
breath: “The Lord said to my Lord” (εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου). Such a
conjunction opens up the possibility of applying to the royal Lord (in the New
Testament universally interpreted as referring to the messiah, and usually a
reference to Jesus is clear) passages that originally referred to the divine
Lord. Because the Tetragrammaton fell out of use, and was replaced by a noun,
κύριος, which the earliest Christians applied to Jesus, it became a simpler matter
to apply to Jesus texts whose original referent was YHWH. Psalm 110 facilitates
a change in person, not simply a change in referent, by holding the two κύριος
figures in such tight connection. This, then, leads into a second possible
explanation, in line with the conceptual framework of this book; namely, that
the human agent of God so represents God to the world that texts originally
referring to God are interpreted as finding their fulfillment in God’s human
agent. This latter possibility, perhaps under the influence of the first (it is
impossible to say for sure), may well account for Mark’s opening salvo, in
which the narrator calls attention to a scriptural citation by means of a
citation formula.
Mark introduces an amalgamated citation of three scriptural
references with, “Just as it is written in the prophet Isaiah.” The ensuing
quote comes from Exodus 23:20, Malachi 3:1, and Isaiah 40:3. Table 6-1 on page
493 lays out the possible source texts alongside the text of Mark.
The Hebrew texts of Exodus 23:20 and Malachi 3:1 use the
same verb for “send” (שׁלח), making them somewhat closer to one another than the
extant Greek translations. This has led both Rikki Watts and Joel Marcus to
suggest that the MT rather than the LXX is the source for Mark’s citation.[8]
For our purposes, the important point is that despite a somewhat vague
connection between Mark’s Greek text and that of the LXX translations we are
aware of, an allusion to Malachi is nonetheless likely.[9]
Malachi’s messenger is later identified with Elijah (Mal 4:5, Eng.; 3:23, Heb,
LXX), and Mark depicts John the Baptist as fulfilling the role of forerunning
messenger here in chapter 1, and later indicates that he was Elijah (1:6;
9:11-13).[10]
The Christological ramifications of the verse come into focus
when we shift from Elijah the forerunner to the one for whom the way is
prepared. Whereas in Exodus 23:30 the divine voice speaks of preparing the way
for God’s people, in both Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 the way is prepared for
God, indicated by the pronoun μου in the former and by the words κυρίου and τοῦ
θεοῦ ἡμῶν in the latter. The question thus becomes, Does such an application of
verses whose original referent was YHWH, including Isaiah 40:3, whose κυρίου
translates יהוה, signal an identification of Jesus with the God of Israel in a
manner that exceeds representation by an idealized human figure?[11]
The question is heightened by the use of the same pair of words, פנה דרך, as an
indication of preparing YHWH’s way in both Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 (cf. Isa
57:14; 62:10).[12]
Watts concludes that the deployment of these verses in Mark
1:2-3 carries profound Christological implications. His claim is vague, but
suggestive. Watts does not say that Mark depicts Jesus as YHWH, but seems to
want to lead readers down such a path: “he is to be identified in some way, not
so much with ‘the Messiah,’ but with none other than the האדון and מלאך הברית
of Malachi and, in terms of Isaiah 40:3, the presence of YHWH himself.”[13]
Richard Hays suggests that this is the first in a string of clues that might
point toward Jesus’s “divine status” in the Gospel.[14]
Joel Marcus also argues extensively that the way of Lord is not merely the way
of those who want to be ethically faithful to God or even just the way of
Jesus, but the way of YHWH that is inseparable from the way of Jesus as
depicted in the Gospel.[15]
However, in assessing the Christological implications of such a claim, Marcus
is keen to preserve the differentiation that Mark’s Gospel maintains between
the two characters of Jesus and God even as it draws them together as, in some
ways, inseparable.
In interpreting the Christological significance of these
citations, one of the most important pieces of evidence is that the referents
have been changed such that verses that originally spoke directly about YHWH no
longer do so. In the voice of YHWH, Malachi 3:1 uses the first-person singular
pronoun μου to delineate the one for whom the way is prepared. In Mark 1:2,
however, the pronoun shifts to the second-person singular, so that another
figure is added: from the two figures of the messenger and YHWH in Malachi 3:1,
Mark produces a text of three figures in which YHWH is still the speaker, but
he speaks of not only a messenger but also an unnamed “you.” In an analogous
manner, Mark’s citation of Isaiah 40:3 eliminates an opportunity to clearly
state that the path being prepared is for God. Rather than “make straight the
paths of our God [τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν],” Mark reads, “make straight his [αὐτοῦ]
paths.” Confronted with the possibility of applying scriptural texts to Jesus
that would directly identify Jesus with God, Mark instead changes those texts
so that no such direct identification is made.[16]
In this composite biblical citation, both God and the
messenger speak. This accounts for the shift in pronouns that refer to Jesus:
σοῦ in verse 2, when God is addressing the one for whom the way is prepared,
and αὐτοῦ in verse 3, when the messenger is proclaiming the preparation. In the
latter, the one for whom the way is prepared is the “Lord” (κυρίου). This is a
reference to Jesus, a title that, throughout the Gospel, indicates Jesus’s
authority to exercise God’s rule over the earth while still functioning as one
who is distinct from God. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28, a claim, as
we saw above, of his being an idealized, representative human figure); he is
either the Lord who showed mercy to the Gerasene demoniac or else the agent
through whom it came (5:19-20); he is the Lord who can command use of a colt
(11:3).[17]
In this Gospel, God is also κύριος: the one in whose name
Jesus comes (11:9); the master of the vineyard (12:9) who exalts the rejected
stone (12:10-11); the one who is to be loved with all that a person is
(12:29-30). Throughout, there is a close identification of Jesus with God;
however, Jesus is not identified as God. Such proximity fits well within a
Jewish idealized human framework.
The Christological implications of these opening verses are
significant, but do not in themselves indicate that Jesus is identified as the
God of the biblical texts. The ramifications are, first of all, eschatological,
in demonstrating that the story of Jesus is the moment toward which Isaiah and
Malachi looked forward. The latter prophet’s eschatological vision, and its
association with John the Baptist, comes up again in Mark 9:11-13. The pairing
of John with Jesus is a crucial component for imbuing Mark’s story with its
claim to be taking place at the time of fulfillment (cf. 1:15). Jesus is the
one whose way is prepared by John the Baptist, the “stronger one” whom John
anticipated (1:7-8). Jesus’s Christological significance comes, first of all,
from his being God’s eschatological agent.
Additionally, playing the role of God on earth, as that role
is prophesied by Isaiah and Malachi, does in fact establish Jesus as a unique
agent of the dawning eschatological age. The idealized human paradigm allows us
to say that God is visiting the people through Jesus, who is the agent
identified with God’s actions on the earth. The good news is about Jesus the
messiah (1:1), and this is precisely how it is also the good news of God
(1:14). Making straight the ways for God’s anointed messiah is how the way is
prepared for the kingdom of God to come through God’s chosen human king.
In interpreting this passage, the paradigm that the reader
brings to the text will likely determine the outcome. For those who assume a
divine Christology, the replacement of divine referents with references to
Jesus will clearly indicate that Jesus plays the role of God, in some
mysterious way, as God. For those who approach with an idealized human
Christology, the possibility demonstrated at Qumran that the divine name might
be replaced with a divine agent looms large. The pervasive indications that
human agents are identified with God in the biblical and post-biblical Jewish
traditions provide another lens for coming to terms with the text. An idealized
human paradigm cannot prove that the text refers to a human agent of God, but
it can show that the textual dynamics are well accounted for on such a reading
and that, therefore, a divine Christology cannot be proved from Mark’s
hermeneutical move.
b. Psalm 110:1: The
Lord Said to My Lord
It may well be that the widespread citation of Psalm 110:1
accounts for the sort of conjunction in differentiation that attends to the use
of the word κύριος in the Gospel. Mark 12:35-37 contains one such citation of
Psalm 110:1. The passage offers a number of challenges for the interpreter.
Unprompted, Jesus challenges the people, “How do the scribes say that the
Christ is son of David? For David himself says by the Holy Spirit, ‘The Lord
says to my Lord, “Sit at my right side, until I place your enemies as a
footstool for your feet.” ’ Therefore David himself calls him Lord; and so how
is he is his son?” (12:35-37). This passage presents two puzzles
simultaneously: (1) what is the relationship between the two Lords? and (2)
what is Jesus’s relationship to the Davidic king?
The latter question frames Jesus’s challenge, and embodies
the ambiguity of the Markan narrative with respect to the notion of a Davidic
messiah. Jesus’s only other invocation of David is in 2:25-26, where David’s
lawbreaking becomes precedent for that of Jesus’s disciples. As discussed in
chapter 3 above, this likely suggests a parallel between Jesus and David as
figures anointed to be king by God’s spirit who have yet to come fully into
their thrones. Importantly, the former passage is in the first half of Mark’s
Gospel, the portion in which Jesus is putting on display his powerful authority
prior to Peter’s confession. Peter’s confession itself might be thought of as
an allusion to a Davidic Christology in its absolute use of “Christ.” If so, it
is telling that he and Jesus immediately thereafter part ways over the
significance of this title. Like “Christ” itself, “son of David” in Mark’s
Gospel must be reframed around Jesus’s peculiar mission if it is to be
understood.
The second and third appearances of the name David in Mark
are on the lips of the blind man outside Jericho (10:47-48): “Jesus, son of
David [υἱὲ Δαυίδ], have mercy on me!” (v. 47).[18]
This is the second blind man that the reader encounters in Mark, the prior
coming in 8:22-26. The healings of these two men bookend the middle section of
Mark, which otherwise runs from the scene of Peter’s confession at Caesarea
Philippi (8:27-30) through Jesus’s third passion prediction and the conversation
that ensues around it (10:32-45). The healing of the first blind man is widely
recognized as a metaphor for the disciples’ own need for sight, a recovery from
“blindness” that takes place in the two stages of (1) knowing that Jesus is
Christ, but then (2) having to subsequently learn that the mission of this
particular Christ entails rejection, suffering, death, and resurrection. This
twofold eye opening is critically important for interpreting the subsequent
healing of Bartimaeus. The metaphor of blindness for lack of understanding
renders his appellation “son of David” suspect. However, the request for mercy
and for sight, together with his assuming the posture of faithful discipleship
by following Jesus in the way (ἠκολούθει αὐτῷ ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ, 10:52),[19]
which the reader knows to be the way not only to Jerusalem but also to the
cross, signals that his blindness is not complete. Instead, his vision of Jesus
as “son of David,” like Peter’s vision of Jesus as “Christ,” needs to be
transformed by Jesus’s journey to the cross.
Together, the two stories of Jesus healing the blind,
bracketing the section in which Jesus travels from Caesarea Philippi to
Jerusalem and issues his passion predictions, metaphorically depict
understanding Jesus and his ministry. Like the term “Christ” itself, Davidic
messiahship is not a sufficient category for interpreting Jesus’s ministry. It
needs reframing and reinterpretation by Jesus’s own ministry. The importance of
this for my current purpose is to suggest that son of David is not a wholly
inappropriate title for Jesus within Mark, but that it demands a radical
reorientation around the fate of Jesus that includes not only authority,
suffering, and death, but also resurrection and enthronement.
Returning, then, to the citation of Psalm 110 in Mark 12:36,
we see that Jesus raises the question of how Christ can be equated with “son of
David.” The psalm is interpreted as referring to the coming messiah, and will
later be alluded to in Jesus’s response to the high priest when he affirms the
latter’s question, “Are you the Christ, the son of the Blessed?” (14:61-62).
Thus, in Mark’s narrative world, Jesus is the Lord Christ about whom David
prophesied, who will be enthroned at the right hand of the Lord God. The
question, then, is whether this association of Jesus as Lord with the Lord God,
and unraveling the notion of Davidic sonship, entails an identification of
Jesus with God that signals a divine or preexistence Christology.
The mixed citation of Psalm 110:1 with Daniel 7:13 in Mark
14:62 suggests that within Mark’s narrative the resolution of the question is
to be found in Mark’s son of man Christology; specifically, it is to be found
in the exaltation dimension of that narrative arc. As I argued in chapter 3,
Mark’s exalted son of humanity is not a preexistent divine figure, but takes
his seat at God’s right side as the earthly, human Jesus is exalted to heavenly
glory. As Peter’s Christ Christology has to be refracted through the lens of
the suffering son of humanity, so also any son of David Christology must be
refracted through the lens of the exalted son of humanity. Although it is
possible to conceive of this Christology as a divinization, there is no
indication in Mark’s Gospel that it suggests preexistence, such that Jesus
would be identified as YHWH of the Hebrew Bible.
Interpreting Psalm 110:1 as a psalm about the coming Christ,
and reading the enthronement as a literal, heavenly exaltation, renders Christ
greater than David and hence David’s Lord. The psalm indicates one clear
element of this coming Lord’s reign that differentiates him from David: the
place of his enthronement. A “son of David” would be expected to take his seat
on a royal throne in Jerusalem, the city of David. But with the literalization
of the language of being positioned at “the right side” (ἐκ δεξιῶν) of God
(Mark 12:36), a heavenly enthronement is now in view. Importantly, this has
dramatic consequences for how the throne must be attained, as recovery of
David’s earthly throne would likely entail geopolitical, military methodologies
— even as David’s coming to and securing the throne in Jerusalem required the
death of the reigning king Saul and numerous battles against other people.[20]
Psalm 110:1, as cited and queried in Mark 12:36-37,
maintains the distinction between the two characters of God and the Christ that
runs throughout Mark’s Gospel. Though the title “Lord” is used of each, Jesus
distinguishes which “Lord” is addressed by David as “my Lord.” The Lord God
speaks to and seats the Lord Christ. This session indicates a union of the
reign of God with the reign of God’s messiah, but it is a union of precisely
the type that we expect given the closeness between God and idealized human
figures that we have observed throughout this book.
As noted above, Psalm 110:1 is a widely cited verse that
uses the same title for God and for God’s Christological agent, whom the
earliest Christians interpreted as Jesus (Mark 12:36; par. Matt 22:44 and Luke
20:42; Acts 2:34-36; 1 Cor 15:25; Heb 1:13, in addition to a number of other
likely allusions). The verse maintains the two as distinct characters, and yet
speaks of the enthronement of the Christ figure “at God’s right side,” thus
indicating a close proximity, even to the point of the Christ mediating and
enacting God’s reign. Moreover, it speaks of God’s own power continuing to be
the means by which the rule of the messiah is established through the
conquering of the messiah’s enemies. As we would expect from our survey of
early Judaism, the Lord God is known through the rule of the Lord Christ, and
the Lord Christ’s rule is put on display through the ruling and subduing power
of the Lord God.
c. Psalm 118:22-23,
26: The Coming Kingdom Is the Lord’s
Doing
The association of the Lord God with Jesus as the son of
David is iterated also in the cry of the crowds during Jesus’s entry into
Jerusalem (Mark 11:9, alluding to Ps 118:26). The citation itself mentions only
God as the Lord. Importantly, this same psalm appears on the lips of Jesus a
chapter later, in explanation of the parable of the vineyard: “The stone which
the builders rejected, this one has become the chief cornerstone. This is from
the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Mark 12:10-11; citing Ps 118:22-23).
Together, these passages provide the same sort of reorientation about Jesus’s
messianic identity that both Peter and Bartimaeus require: a move from
identifying God’s chosen agent in undifferentiated messianic terms (“the coming
kingdom of our father David,” Mark 11:10), to a Christology of divine
vindication of the rejected and murdered son (Mark 12:1-12, esp. vv. 8-11).[21]
In both citations from Psalm 118, “Lord” clearly refers to
God rather than Jesus. In the first, the coming one comes in the Lord’s name,
signaling precisely the sort of conjoining of God and messiah that I articulate
above. Moreover, the language of coming in the Lord’s “name” provides another
perspective on the possibility that someone other than God, who comes as one
authorized and empowered by this Lord, might also be referred to as Lord in a
mediated, derivative fashion. In the citation of Psalm 118:22-23 that concludes
the parable of the vineyard, the Lord corresponds to the vineyard owner who has
sent his sole, beloved son, only for that son to be killed. This places the
parable squarely within the son of God Christology discussed in the son of God
chapter above.[22]
Moreover, this citation hints at something that the parable does not itself
point to — that the murder of the son will not be the end of his story.[23]
The character to whom responsibility for the continuation of the son’s story
falls, however, is not the son himself (cf. John 10:18), but the Lord God, who
is the father of Jesus. Both Jesus and God can be referred to using the title
Lord. In the Psalm 118 citations, God maintains the role of Lord that YHWH has
in their original setting. But in each, the Lord God is also represented by
Jesus, who in the first bears YHWH’s name, and is known by what happens to and
through him.
d. Deuteronomy 6:4-5:
The Lord Is One
The singularity of Israel’s God that forms the basis for
many arguments in favor of early high Christology is captured in the shema of
Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Jesus cites just this passage in his debate with a scribe in
Mark 12:29-30. In response to the scribe’s query as to which is the first
commandment of all, Jesus replies, “Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is
one [ἄκουε, ᾽Ισραήλ, κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν κύριος εἷς ἐστίν]. And you shall love
the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole self and from your
whole mind and from your whole strength,” and he then proceeds to cite
Leviticus 19:18 as the second great command. The response of the scribe and
Jesus’s final return are important for our purposes. First, the scribe commends
Jesus’s answer, and largely repeats it back to him, but slightly modifies the
description of God: “Well done, teacher, you have said truly that he is one and
that there is no other but him [εἷς ἐστιν καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλος πλὴν αὐτοῦ]”
(12:32). The scribe also elaborates on the citation of Leviticus 19:18,
affirming that the mandate to love neighbor is greater than all sacrifices and
burnt offerings (12:33). Finally, Jesus commends the scribe as not being far
from God’s kingdom (12:34).
In the narrative world of Mark’s Gospel, the scribe’s
response to Jesus shows that Jesus’s manner of configuring the singularity of
God has not been so modified as to be a point of dispute between Jesus and the
traditional Jewish religious elite. The significance of this point is amplified
once we recall that the first controversy story in Mark also pits Jesus against
the scribes and may also have echoed the shema (2:6-7). In the earlier episode,
Jesus’s forgiving of the sins of the paralytic is met with a charge of
blasphemy due to Jesus’s infringement on the divine prerogative: “Who can
forgive sins but God alone [εἰ μὴ εἷς ὁ θεός]?” (v. 7). Mark tells the reader
that the interchange with the scribe in chapter 12 is the final time any of the
religious authorities dared ask him questions (v. 34), making this a bookend of
the conflicts that ultimately lead to Jesus’s arrest. Thus, Mark appears to be
linking the two episodes intentionally: a first and a final debate with scribes
and each concerning Jesus’s ministry in relationship to the shema.
The importance of the connection is to underscore that in
Mark 12 Jesus invokes the shema in a manner that is completely acceptable to
the religious leader who likely does not follow him, and that the religious leader’s
reiteration and modification of what Jesus had said is, in turn, completely
acceptable to Jesus. Thus, there is no thoroughgoing modification of the divine
identity, or the monotheism of the shema, that transforms the meaning either of
“God” or of “Lord” when it is referring to that God. It seems, instead, that
Mark maintains a distinction between these two characters in the story, even as
his conviction that Jesus is Christ and Lord allows him to speak of Jesus as
the κύριος in whose life the way of the Lord God is made known.
e. Conclusions:
Mark’s Κύριος Christology
Mark’s κύριος Christology, as it appears in biblical
citations from Isaiah 40:3, Psalm 110:1, and Psalm 118:22-26, and ripples
throughout the Gospel, does not present us with a Christology of Jesus’s
ontological identity with YHWH, but fits well a Christology of representation
and even embodiment of the reality of YHWH’s actions. When the Lord Jesus acts
and speaks, it is a mediation of the action and authority of the Lord God.
Maintaining this proximity in differentiation between Jesus and God is crucial
for the integrity of Mark’s narrative. The story requires a Jesus who prays to
a father who is other, and who is ultimately in charge of the plan that Jesus
go to the cross (Mark 14:36). Even more importantly, perhaps, the identities of
Jesus and God, however closely joined in action and heavenly enthronement, are
sufficiently distinct for the character Jesus to cry out to God from the cross,
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (15:34). The mystery of Mark’s
Gospel is not so much that Jesus “seems to be at the same time . . . both the
God of Israel and a human being not identical with the God of Israel,”[24]
but that Jesus is somehow both the authoritative messiah who is king of God’s
kingdom and the one who must suffer and die on the cross. Such a messianic
vocation is embodied in the κύριος Christology as it surfaces in Mark’s
biblical citations.
[1] In
this chapter I focus on specific, detectable allusions or references to
particular verses rather than more generalized scriptural motifs such as
“Exodus and Sinai Traditions” or “Kingship Traditions.” For a discussion of
several themes in the latter vein, see Willard M. Swartley, Israel’s Scripture
Traditions and the Synoptic Gospels: Story Shaping Story (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1994).
[2] Florentino
García Martínez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, DSSSE (2 vols.; Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1998), 1:17. Maurice Casey, “Chronology and the Development of
Pauline Christology,” in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honour of C. K. Barrett
(ed. M. D. Hooker and S. G. Wilson; London: SPCK, 1982), 128; Carl Judson
Davis, The Name and Way of the Lord: Old Testament Themes, New Testament
Christology (JSNTSup 129; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 47-48.
[3] Martínez
and Tigchelaar, DSSSE, 1:333. Davis, Name and Way of the Lord, 47.
[4] Davis,
Name and Way of the Lord, 60.
[5] Stephen
P. Ahearne-Kroll, “The Scripturally Complex Presentation of Jesus in the Gospel
of Mark,” in Portraits of Jesus: Studies in Christology (WUNT2 321; ed. Susan
E. Meyers; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 45-68, here 47-48.
[6] Such
is the assertion of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God
Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine
Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 265. However, the very change in
referent might be the most significant clue that the role of God is being
played by a divine agent who is not God as such.
[7] C.
H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments: Three Lectures with an
Appendix on Eschatology and History (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); Dodd,
According to the Scriptures: The Substructure of New Testament Theology (New
York: Scribner, 1953).
[8] Rikki
E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000),
61-62; Joel Marcus, The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old
Testament in the Gospel of Mark (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1992),
13.
[9] As
Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB
27; New York: Doubleday, 1999), 142, points out, Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20
were joined in several Jewish traditions as well as in Q.
[10] Adela
Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007),
136; Marcus, Mark, 142.
[11] This
is precisely the line of interpretation taken by Richard B. Hays, Reading
Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Waco, TX:
Baylor University Press, 2014), 20-21.
[12] Watts,
Isaiah’s New Exodus, 73. Although, interestingly, the repetition of the phrase
in the latter chapters of Isaiah is used in anticipation of the people’s, not
YHWH’s, return.
[13] Watts,
Isaiah’s New Exodus, 87.
[14] Hays,
Reading Backwards, 21.
[15] Marcus,
Way of the Lord, 12-47.
[16] As
Marcus points out, this argument has been made by both Krister Stendahl, The
School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament (2nd ed.; Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1968), 48, and Rudolf Pesch, Markusevangelium (HTKNT 2; 2 vols.;
Freiburg: Herder, 1976), 1:77.
[17] Cf.
Marcus, Way of the Lord, 38-39.
[18] Stephen
P. Ahearne-Kroll, The Psalms of Lament in Mark’s Passion: Jesus’s Davidic
Suffering (SNTSMS 142; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 139, points
out that this is the only pericope in Mark’s Gospel to use the son of David
title.
[19] Ahearne-Kroll,
Psalms of Lament, 140-44, argues that Bartimaeus is a reliable character based
on his willingness to leave behind his cloak and follow Jesus, thus confirming
the title he has spoken. Ahearne-Kroll also argues that Mark is reinterpreting
the significance of this title, but does not explore the metaphor of blindness
per se.
[20] Ahearne-Kroll,
Psalms of Lament, 161-66, offers a reading that concludes similarly: heavenly
versus earthly enthronement and redefinition of Davidic kingship away from
militant messianism are the key forces at work.
[21] Cf.
Ahearne-Kroll, Psalms of Lament, 156-61.
[22] See
also Klyne Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the
Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 292-95.
[23] See
also J. Samuel Subramanian, The Synoptic Gospels and the Psalms as Prophecy
(LNTS 351; London: T&T Clark, 2007), 53-57.
[24] Hays,
Reading Backwards, 27.
