Category: Bible

The coming of the Son of Man in Mark and Matthew

About ten years after Mark wrote his Gospel, Matthew used Mark’s Gospel to compose a new Gospel. In fact, more than 90 percent of Mark appears in Matthew— often word-for-word, but also often generally simplified and summarized. So what was Matthew up to? Why did he even bother? Well, brilliant as Mark is, Matthew was facing a new situation. Though he stood in the same events, he was looking at a different horizon.

Writing just before the Roman legions destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Mark was specifically addressing an audience in Palestine that was, at that very moment, hard-pressed to join the Jewish Revolt. With six legions amassed against Jerusalem and famine and civil war raging inside its walls, it was clear that unless God intervened, the Romans would indeed destroy the Holy City and God’s House once and for all. But many prophets were saying he would indeed finally act! When would the light would dawn, except in darkest night?!

But were they right? What side to choose??

“Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I Am’ and will deceive many. . . . do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. . . . the good news must first be proclaimed to all the nations” (Mk 13.5-10). The destruction of Jerusalem will come, but will not be the end, because God’s reign has to be extended to the whole world.

By contrast, Matthew’s audience is not faced with any pressure to join the Jewish Revolt; he’s writing in Antioch in Syria ten years after it was suppressed, and the Temple’s destruction is already a fact of the past. For him what’s relevant about that disaster is how it’s led to the now-ongoing spread of the Good News to “all the nations”— just as Jesus said— of which Antioch is an example. He’s rewritten Jesus’ speech on the destruction of the Temple in Mark to address the troubles and persecutions that the Church is facing in this new context. If Mark wrote about “the beginning of the good news” (Mk 1.1), Matthew is writing about how it spread to the world— but not quite in the same way as Luke will, in another ten years or so.

Also, Mark is all but entirely narrative— an action thriller, if you will— and the apostolic generation is rapidly dying out. Matthew apparently wanted to include more of Jesus’ teachings, which apparently existed in some form but not as part of a formalized “Gospel” (remember, so far there’s only one Gospel, and that’s Mark). So he adds the sermon on the mount and a ton of other teaching material— making the book half again as long— and, while doing so, shifts some of Mark’s episodes or sayings around a bit to bring out some of his own didactic emphases. There’s no disrespect to either evangelist in pointing this out. This is only to describe the literary relationship between the two writers and their Gospels.

When it comes to Mt 24— Jesus’ discourse on the destruction of the Temple— Matthew describes that destruction in terms of Old Testament prophecies. Mark, of course, has already done this in his chapter 13, and indeed Matthew’s audience still needed (as we still need) to understand that catastrophe properly— i.e., in terms of how it fit in to the grand sweep of Israel’s history. So, as far as that goes, much of Matthew’s version is drawn word-for-word from Mark, and where it isn’t, Matthew has mostly just smoothed out Mark’s rougher Greek. But he does makes some tweaks, because he’s interested in Jesus’ announcement of the Temple’s destruction not just as a historical curiosity (“Oh look, Jesus predicted it, gee wasn’t he divine!”)— but as something directly helpful for his own audience.

Mark tells of how, right after Jesus left the Temple for the last time, he sat on the mountain opposite it (readers should have in mind Ez 11.22-23, the moment God abandoned the Temple in the OT), and announced its destruction— “not one stone will be left on another” (13.3). At this, the disciples ask, “When will these things be? And what will the sign be, when all these things will be ended up (synteleisthai συντελεῖσθαι)?” (13.4) (I’m using “ended up” because there are three words in play here, telos and synteleisthai (v.) or synteleia (n.), but translations say all kinds of things— “end”, “fulfill”, “complete”, “finish”— but we need to hear how they echo each other. So: end, and end up.) The disciples’ question in Mark is about the Temple’s destruction, very pressing to Mark’s audience, and when they ask how things will be “ended up”, they’re referring to what Jesus has just said about the end of the Temple, not to the end of the age.

Matthew rewrites this— “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your parousia and of the end-up of the age?” (24.3).

Parousia (παρουσία) does not mean “coming”, much less any “second coming”, but the presence or residence (literally, the being-near) of the emperor in a given city. Our Bible translations are simply wrong to translate parousia as “coming”! Matthew does not talk about any “second coming”; at the end of his Gospel, Jesus does not ascend to heaven but reassures his disciples, “I am with you all days, even unto the ending-up of the age (synteleias tou aionos συντελείας τοῦ αἰῶνος)” (28.20— using the same phrase as here in 24.3). We find the story of the ascension and the promise of a “coming [again]” only in Luke 24.51 and Acts 1.11, and Luke uses eleusetai ἐλεύσεται, not parousia. In the New Testament, the ascension belongs to Luke’s specific narrative and theology. Of course, the Church later reflects on all the Gospels at once and speaks from all of them together in the light of her living experience of the living Christ, but that’s not yet the case inside the Gospels— the four different narratives are only in the process of being written. So, in Matthew, the disciples are asking, What will be the sign of your residence as King? And the ending-up, on the other hand, is not that of the Temple, as in Mark, but, specifically, that of the present age as a whole. In fact the destruction of the Temple had turned out not to be the end of the world— just as Jesus had said— but then, how will it end?

So, changes: Where Mark’s Jesus said, “they will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them” (13.9)— Matthew’s Jesus doesn’t mention synagogues, but only that “they will hand you over to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake” (24.9).

Matthew does use Mark’s saying about witnessing before synagogues, but he puts it into Jesus’ instructions to the Twelve, as he sends them out for the first time (10.17-18). In that context, Jesus warns them, “They will hand you over to councils and scourge you in their synagogues; you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations” (10.18). In Mark’s version of this commission (6.7-11), there is no mention of being handed over or scourged, or of governors and kings— but persecutions by both civil and religious authorities are the reality that Matthew’s Christians are facing. So when Matthew’s Jesus gives the Twelve their commission, he does so in a way that will culminate at the end of the Gospel with a command to teach “all the nations” (28.19-20).

Even inside the speech on the destruction of the Temple, where Mark’s Jesus does say, “the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations” (13.10), Matthew’s Jesus emphasizes, “this good news of [God’s] reign will be proclaimed in all the inhabited [earth] as a witness to all the nations, and then the end (telos τέλος) will come” (24.14). By adding mention of the “end” here, Matthew again ties the speech not only to the disciples’ initial question about the “ending-up of the age” (24.3), but also to the final horizon of Gospel, when the risen Messiah tells his disciples, “make disciples of all nations. . . . and behold, I am with you always, to the ending-up of the age” (28.19-20, cp 24.3). In Mark, Jesus told the disciples that wars and earthquakes would not be the end, because the good news must first be proclaimed to all the nations (13.5-10). In Matthew, Jesus talks about the end as something that happens after the good news is proclaimed. Same thing, but the perspective has slightly shifted.

Again, Matthew heightens the evangelical implications of the persecutions, by inserting into Mark’s account of Jesus’ speech the words, “If they say to you, ‘Look, he’s in the desert!’— don’t go out; or ‘Look, he’s in the inner rooms!’— don’t believe it; for as lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the parousia of the Son of Man be” (24.26-27). The parousia of the Son of Man will be like lightning shining from east to west, obvious to the whole world, and not some secret teaching by a separatist sect. What will this look like?

Well, we see the same missional emphasis with mention of “the tribes of the earth” in 24.28-30, amid a dazzling tour-de-force that describes the Son of Man “coming (erchomenon ἐρχώμενον) on the clouds in power by referring all at once to Dn 7.13–14,18, Is 13.10, Ez 32.7, Jl 2.10,31, 3.15, and Zc 12.10,14. After he “comes in power”, then “he will send his messengers (angeloi ἄγγελοι) with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together his chosen from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (24.31). Now, if you want to know what Matthew thinks what the Son of Man’s coming in power is about, read Daniel 7.13-14,18, where the Son of Man comes up to the throne of God and is given dominion over all nations, along with Mt 26.64, where Jesus tells the High Priest, “from this moment (ap’ arti ἀπ’ ἄρτι) you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven”, along with and 27.27-53, his enthronement. That Jesus said his crucifixion was the coming-in-power of the Son of Man was of course already what Mark had reported, but Matthew underscores it with his expression, “from this moment”. Just in case you missed the point! And the “messengers” that he sends out to the ends of the earth? Those would be those whom the risen Son of Man charged to “Go . . . . and make disciples of all the nations” (28.19).

Deflates a lot of misunderstandings, doesn’t it. Oh well.

Mark has the Jewish Revolt in mind; Matthew, the mission of the Church to all the nations. Each is dealing with the prominent fact of Church life in his own circumstances. And you see (I’m now responding to someone whose challenge inspired this post), paying careful attention to the actual Text— which is all that scholars try to do, really— does in fact help you to understand the “discrepancies” in the Bible without resorting to explanations like, “Matthew lied”, or “Mark got it wrong”. All four Gospels are perfect, and there are no “contradictions”. We ought to know that if we come up with answers like tht, we’re either asking the wrong question, viewing the matter in the wrong framework, or we haven’t dug deep enough. The very idea that the Gospels could be “wrong”—!!

Forgiveness and Resurrection

God commands us to forgive debts and trespasses, and he does so himself, simply by saying, “I forgive you.” We don’t need to demand appeasements before we’re forgiven. We are to forgive, in fact, “seventy times seven times”, just because our brother comes to us and asks for it. Would God behave less kindly to us than we would to our own children? Do we need our “wrath” to be “appeased” before we forgive them?

In the Gospels we see that the eschatological remission of sins that John the Baptist proclaimed as imminent (Mk 1.4) actually arrived in Jesus’ healing ministry— he says to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are remitted” (Mk 2.5). And it’s done— they’re remitted! But there is nothing about how sin was forgiven at the other end of the Gospel, when Jesus goes to the cross. There doesn’t need to be, because he’s already forgiven sins. The cross is his enthronement as Israel’s— and the world’s— King and Lord.

The fathers of the church had exactly the perspective. Sin is easy— just forgive, and it’s done. The habits (“passions”, in patristic parlance) that lead to sin— lust, greed, anger, pride, and so forth— are harder, because they must be addressed not by forgiveness but by a program of healing. That’s what the “mysteries” (i.e., sacraments), fasting, prayer, confession, almsgiving, Lent, asceticism, and all those things are about— to soften our hard hearts, to restrain and retrain our responses, to transform our relationships. And since those are the passions of death, this is already the beginning of our conscious, voluntary, and intentional participation in the resurrection. “We are buried with him by baptism into death: that just as the Messiah was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Rm 6.4-6). These lines from Paul sum up the whole of patristic teaching.

It was Adam who fell, so it’s Adam who has to get up. But (obviously) the problem is, he can’t, because he’s dead! So as Paul says, the Messiah went down into death to Adam to bring him life— and that new life, by the way, is God’s Own life, not just a restoration to the previous kind of life Adam had previously enjoyed. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Messiah Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you” (Rm 8.11). The Messiah has become our New Adam— “as in Adam all die, so also in the Messiah shall all be made alive” (1Co 15.22); “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-creating spirit” (1Co 15.45).

In the final analysis, Jesus’ ministry was one of healing from beginning to end. By a word he healed the paralytic first of his sins, setting him uncondemned before the Father; then he healed him of his paralysis, restoring him to community and creativity; and now by his commandments and mysteries (“sacraments”) he heals those who follow him of their passions and evil habits, transforming their relationships with heaven, earth, and man; and finally, by his death and resurrection, he heals us all of death itself. And when death, “the last enemy”, is finally and absolutely overcome by his final appearance (1Co 15.26), “God will be all in all” (1Co 15.28; Ep 1.23), and “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of God’s children” (Rm 8.20-21).

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of covenant membership* reign in life through the one man Jesus, the Messiah” (Rm 5.17).

*This is the meaning of dikaiosynē (δικαιοσύνη) “righteousness” in St Paul.

Why did Jesus say, “No one is good except the One God”?

After Jesus and the three disciples descended from the mount of transfiguration (Mk 9.9-13), they encountered a man who had brought his demon-possessed son for healing— but the disciples had failed to cast it out. The episode turns on the man’s anguished cry, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” Jesus almost scoffs at him with indignation— “This ‘If you can’!— All things are possible for one who trusts” (9.22-23). After Jesus casts out the demon, the disciples ask, “Why couldn’t we do it?” and Jesus replies, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer” (9.28-29). Later manuscripts say “prayer and fasting” but, apart from the mere fact that that’s apparently not the original reading, this seems contrary to Jesus’ point, that the disciples’ authority over demons is based on their connection with God, not on their “position” as disciples or their personal “spiritual powers” or ascetic exploits, or whatnot— and both trust and connection with God will come up again at the end of the subsection of the “Way” that follows (9.30–10.31).

“They then departed from there and passed through Galilee, and he didn’t want anyone to know, because he was teaching his disciples and saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And having been killed, he will rise on the third day'” (9.30-31).

The disciples don’t get it and are too afraid to ask about it (9.32). Plus they have other things on their minds. When they get back home in Capharnaum, Jesus asks them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” Dumb as they are, they know when to keep quiet, because they can see they’re in for a licking this time— they’ve been arguing about who among them was the greatest (9.33-34).

So at this point Jesus sits down and— your translation probably says, he “called” the Twelve. But “call” is kaleō and Mark says proskaleō— he “summoned” the Twelve. This is serious. But we already know that this is serious, because Jesus is sitting. In the ancient world, a teacher giving formal teaching would sit, and his students would stand, out of deep respect. So we envision the disciples standing with heads bowed before Jesus, the Master, seated in full authority. And he says, “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all” (9.35).

In teaching this passage to my “Sixteen” in Uganda, I made them stand up while I spoke Jesus’ words from my chair. It was a powerful moment for all of us. Whenever Jesus sits, it’s always a sign that we should take what follows with the utmost seriousness.

Now, this entire section of Mark (8.22–10.52)— often called the “Section on the ‘Way'”— has four parts, each having this pattern:

Jesus anounces his forthcoming passion,
One or more of the disciples spectacularly fails to get it,
Jesus rebukes and teaches him/them,
Jesus teaches all.

So, here, after Jesus rebukes and teaches the Twelve, there now follows a series of episodes and sayings on relationships— with the vulnerable (represented by a child) (9.36-37), with non-conforming disciples (9.38-41), with “little ones” (9.42-49), with each other (9.50), with wives (10.1-11), and with children (again) (10.13-16). In each case, Jesus emphasizes that the strong must yield to the weak, the privileged to the unprivileged, and the first to the last.

Finally, “one” arrives in breathless haste and immediately starts to flatter Jesus— “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit the life of the [messianic] age?” (10.17). This is the only place in Mark where we find the expression zōē aiōnios, “life of the [messianic] age”. “Eternal life”, the translation found in your bible, is by the way simply not correct; the man is not asking about “eternity” and certainly not wondering how he can “go to heaven when he dies”; he is interested in the life characterized as aiōnios, that is, as belonging to the aiōn, the “aeon” or “age” in which God’s regime will be established once and for all.

Note also his interest in “inheritance”, that is, in social advantage. We’ll get to that.

Jesus rebuffs him by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but One, God” (10.18).

This is quite consistent with everything that’s transpired since he cast out the epileptic demon at the end of the previous section. In stark contrast to the disciples’ concern about being the “greatest,” Jesus has emphasized that the first must be last and be servants of all. And all glory is to be ascribed to God, not taken advantage of.

Many people have agonized over the christological implications of Jesus’ apparent self-effacement here in 10.18. But the problem disappears once we see that he is simply rebuffing the man’s effort to ingratiate himself and to gain advantage by bestowing an honor which, if Jesus accepted it, he would somehow have to reciprocate. Deflecting such flattery, Jesus effectively rebukes the man: Only “the One God” is good. Now, about you, sir. . . .

At first glance, Jesus seems to do little more than to quote some generalities from the Decalogue, and not particularly hard ones at that— most people don’t commit murder or adultery or even go around stealing or bearing false witness in court. So, from the man’s own point of view, he must be looking pretty good!

And of course, as Mark’s audience, we recall that in the controversy on divorce just prior to this, Jesus intimated that parts of the Torah were given as concession to human “hardheartedness” (10.5b). So if all that’s required for “inheriting the life of the messianic age” is to have a general commitment to the Torah (give or take a few “human” rules)— well then, the man is set!

Except for one thing. One of the statutes that Jesus cites doesn’t in fact appear in the Ten Commandments: “Do not defraud”. In fact, both Matthew and Luke drop this phrase, because they want to have Jesus quoting only the Ten in their stories. But Mark’s insertion takes us right to the heart of the point he’s making: In the Septuagint, the verb “defraud” (apostereō) refers to holding back the wages of an employee. Hmmm. Where’s he going with this?

Well anyway, the man seems to have missed Jesus’ point that “no one is good”, and cheerfully claims that he’s “kept all these things from my youth up” (10.20). And to be sure, he probably didn’t commit murder, adultery, and so forth. Yet the Talmud reports that only Abraham, Moses, and Aaron kept all of the Torah. So this man seems to think he’s in pretty good company, and probably just the kind o’ guy Jesus is looking for, so he can bestow an important inheritance in that glorious oncoming Age!

Well, Jesus looks at the man and “loved him” (ēgapēsen, related to agapē). This is the only place where Mark says Jesus “loved” anyone, so it strikes us as a bit odd— until we come to his later conversation with the scribe in 12.28-34, where the issue once again is the commandments of the Torah, and the verb “love” makes its only other appearance in Mark— the greatest commandments are to “love” God and neighbor. Mark is just being careful to show in advance that Jesus practices the “greatest commandment” even as he sets forth what this man who would “inherit the life of the messianic age” must do.

The man embodies the seed that falls among thorns in the Parable of the Sower— those for whom “the deceitfulness of riches, and desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (4.18). That he loves wealth and advantage is obvious from the fact that he’s trying to get more of it from Jesus. But Jesus’ love for the man contrasts vividly with this. The man seeks his own flourishing— and Jesus seeks his flourishing too! But, since the guy is choking with “the deceitfulness of riches, and desires for other things”, Jesus must prescribe a remedy! However pious he may have been from his youth, this man “yet lacks one thing”, and Jesus concretizes it for him in four distinct imperatives:

  1. Go,
  2. sell what you have,
  3. give it to the poor (that’s where you’ll get the treasure in heaven), and
  4. come, follow me (10.21).

The first command usually appears in healing stories (1.44; 2.11; 5.19, 34; 7.29), and that’s part of what we must understand here: be healed of the sickness of accumulation. The fourth closely echoes the call of the first disciples (deuro, “come”, 10.21, is the singular of deute, “come” in 1.16). And in this light, the second is really not so exceptional; the demand that an owner (10.22) divest his assets is not different from asking a fisherman to leave his nets (1.18).

But the third imperative is striking, and it shows how the therapy must be applied, and the benefit. The Torah enjoins not “defrauding”, that is, not holding back the wages of employees. Jesus stipulates more than that. The man must not just not defraud; he must positively distribute all his wealth to the poor. And why are they poor? Not least because they have been exploited and defrauded.

At this word, the man departs, “appalled” (stygnasas) and “grieved” (lypoumenos) (10.22). Mark’s word stygnasas recalls Ezekiel’s judgment on the rich and powerful of Tyre— “All the inhabitants of the coastlands are appalled at you” (Ez 27.35). We should recall his “grief” (lypoumenos) when we read of how the twelve felt “grieved” (lypeisthai) later on when accused of betrayal (14.19). But we should also recall Jesus’ own “sympathetic grief” (syl-lypoumenos) at his would-be murderers’ hard-heartedness in 3.5.

And the reason for all this grief becomes clear as Mark reveals what’s been at stake all along: the man departs, “grieved” and “appalled”, because “he was one having many properties (ktēmata)”. Ah ha, just as we might have expected. A ktēma is a piece of land, a farm, field, or estate (cf Ac 5.1). So with this punchline, Mark reveals the man to be a wealthy landowner, and ends the episode abruptly. Note that Mark does not say that the man is “young”, Mt 19.20, 22, or a “ruler”, Lk 18.18!— only that he’s a landowner who came to Jesus, seeking to ingratiate himself and to obtain “inheritance” and (further) advantage.

In Mark’s Palestine, landowners were the most politically powerful social stratum. And Jesus’ point is obvious. The man’s wealth has been gained by “defrauding” the poor. He is actually trying to bring his attitudes and his practices into God’s regime. He has not “kept all these things” at all— and he must make restitution. In fact, assuming that at least some of his wealth was inherited, he must even make restitution for his ancestors. For Jesus, the Torah and its supreme commandment of “love” are kept only through concrete acts of justice. A facade of piety confers no advantage upon the powerful.

“No one is good but the One God” is not a general theological principle that we may abuse out of context to “prove” that Jesus is “not equal to God”, or to show that all people are “born sinners”. It has a specific meaning within the text and social context in which it was written. In Mark’s narrative, Jesus uses the phrase to deflect a flattering attempt to claim the inheritance and the life of the messianic age as a matter of personal privilege.

Recall now how the father of the epileptic demoniac cried, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” and Jesus said, “This ‘If you can’!— All things are possible for one who trusts” (9.22-23). After the landowner departs, Jesus reflects on what has just happened, and returns to this theme:

10.23 . . . . looking around, Jesus said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for a rich person to enter God’s regime!”

24 But the disciples were astounded at his words.

But Jesus answered again and said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter God’s regime.”

26 They were terribly shocked and said to him, “Who then can be saved?”

27 And gazing at them, Jesus said, “With people this is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”

And the section ends where it began:

“Many who are first will be last, and the last, first” (10.31).

Gaining an “inheritance” in God’s regime has to do with the struggle for trust— for relationship— not for “faith”, if faith has to do with “believing” certain propositions— such nonsense is completely alien to Christianity. But are we actually willing to risk life and treasure— and certainly to surrender all unjust advantage— so that others may flourish?

Someone once said that love is “giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting they won’t use it”. But Jesus is teaching the disciples about giving someone the power to destroy you even knowing that they will use it— giving them that power when, by doing so, you can actually help them flourish in God’s regime.

Some of you may know that I have a degree in Buddhist Studies. So at this point I can’t help remembering the story of The Hungry Tigress, which is one of the Buddhist Játaka Tales:

While walking in the forest, three princes came upon a tigress and her seven cubs. Exhausted by hunger and thirst, the tigress was hardly able to move and looked as if she would soon die. The three brothers were greatly disturbed by the sight of this poor tigress and wondered what they could do. Of the three, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva (the future Buddha) was moved to great compassion and asked his brothers to leave him a while. When they were gone, Mahasattva laid himself down in front of the tigress, hoping she would eat his body and drink his blood. But she was too weak. Realizing this, Mahasattva slit his own throat, so the tigress could do so.

What we see here is that neither Jesus nor the Buddha are in competition with death. And compassion, even up to renunciation of one’s own life for another, is the supreme value even in cultures that have never even heard of Jesus, much less of the Torah and its “greatest commandment”.

So when Jesus said, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone” (10.18), was he saying he wasn’t divine? Does this prove that “all the great Teachers are the same”? No, not at all. This post is already too long to explore the reasons why that is— but one thing should be clear already:

We have to stop ransacking the Bible for “proof” of “non-traditional” theological theories, or for reinforcement of “traditional” but inhumane and cruel ideas about people’s “sin nature” and other such ideologies.

We need to start reading the story for what it is— God’s actual “good news”, shining out as clear as high noon.

From that reading we will get our answers about Jesus’ divinity and the other things that vex us in our postmodern age of pluralism. We will find, in fact, the place where the postmodern age and the messianic age intersect. Our only viable future starts there.

Is Mark Historically True?

As we find ourselves emerging from fundamentalism, we begin to see that a straightforwardly historical way of reading divine Scripture is fraught with problems. Yet we still hang on to the assumption that the Scriptures’ main purpose is to provide historical information about the persons and events narrated.

That’s just not the case. For instance, as I’ve already pointed out, in his story of Jesus’ transfiguration, we find that Mark has fashioned a powerful version of a literary trope that everyone in the ancient world would have recognized— the apotheosis of a hero. Only in Mark’s usage, just at the moment his reader would have expected Jesus to ascend to the heavens, there to be forever enshrined as a constellation like Heracles, or as a star like Caesar, Jesus refuses his apotheosis. And if he refuses to go up to the sky, then he will have to come back down the mountain to the valley below. And if he does that, it can only mean he really will die, just as he’s been telling his disciples. But now we know that he will do so willingly; and that he’s entirely in charge of what’s going to unfold.

So, did the transfiguration “really happen”? There is no way of telling, one way or the other. We have only this story— which as we’ve seen is deeply literary— and we have nothing more— to tell us about it. So we have to find the meaning inside the story, not outside it, in history. We have no access to the history.

Scholars have come to appreciate that our sacred texts are literary through and through— and that only in the most rare of instances can they really be resolved to “history” in any sense that we think of “history”. This means they were never intended to “prove” anything historically. Archaeology simply doesn’t back up the OT as we once assumed; and in fact for much of both Testaments, the nature of the story itself pretty much denies us any independent corroboration. Look at how much of the narrative is concerned with private, interpersonal conversations between historically insignificant people. Can anyone prove that Saul’s father told him to go looking for his father’s asses? (1Sm 9.3). Was the woman who came to Jesus in Sidon a Syro-Phoenician Greek (Mk 7.26), or a Canaanitess (Mt 15.22)? Did the events in Jerusalem before Jesus’ arrest take two days (Matthew), or three (Mark)? Did the Transfiguration even happen?— there’s just no evidence on which we could build a case, one way or the other. So apparently building that case is not the point. And that’s the point we forget.

For modern persons, whether something is “true” or not is often treated as a question about scientific verifiability. Do we have external evidence? Supporting documentation? Can modern devices and methods verify it? Yet even where we have mountains of documentation, we’ve come to realize that any historical account entails point of view and a choice. Choose a different vantage point, or different key moments, and we’d understand the whole “history” differently. We all know how black people, and women, and gays, and Nikola Tesla were written out of the histories we tell, and we’ve begun to realize that those voices need to be restored.

The Scriptures aren’t even trying to give us “history”. Rather, they seek to communicate an experience. Of the OT, the subject is not “ancient history”, but what Israel experienced in her walk with her Creator God through the desert of Empire (to paraphrase Ezekiel 20.35). The OT is definitely not a report of events in the Ancient Middle East, but Israel’s own huge, sprawling story of the meaning of the history of Empire(s) in which she was caught up. For the narrative, a few examples were selected and curated, from a certain point or points of view, in order to highlight and convey that experience of God. In telling about this, the Bible aims to communicate the meaning of history— but the meaning of history is not the same thing as history itself!

When it comes to Jesus, the Gospel of Mark is our earliest and only source. Oh (perhaps) there’s another source, which scholars call “Q”— Q being an abbreviation for the German word Quelle, meaning “source”; but we have no evidence of any actual source document; the term “Q” simply designates those stories and sayings that are common to both Matthew and Luke, but which are not found in Mark. Whether this material existed as a separate written or oral source, or whether Luke just used Matthew in the same way that both he and Matthew used Mark, is an issue of debate. But Mark and “Q” together comprise 90% of the content of the Synoptic Gospels— and Q is not a narrative, but a collection. So it’s Mark who supplies the narrative— that is, the basic Gospel story. And— we have no outside corroboration for any of it.

And as to Mark— it’s already a highly elaborate, carefully constructed narrative in which events happen in formal series, for instance in A-B-C-B-A order (“chiasm”) or in matching sets of five, four, and three episodes— all of them told in a very carefully crafted manner, with microscopic attention to wording, and so on. History doesn’t happen in ABCBA order— certainly not again and again and again— and not in ways that can be expressed only by loading the account with careful allusions to the Greek translation of the Old Testament! From both structure and content, it’s obvious that Mark is a literary work from its very conception.

This highly literary work is our earliest and only source for “what happened”— we simply can’t get behind it. We have no outside information about the “historical Jesus”. We have no choice but to take the story we have on its own terms and to see what Mark is attempting to convey by it— and he conveys something other than a “blow-by-blow account” of Jesus’ “ministry”. He tells a story of Jesus. He gives us a literary account in order to convey an experience of Jesus.

Of course every literary work seeks to convey an experience of some kind— not primarily objective knowledge, even if it uses objective data in telling its story. Mark wants to communicate something other than “objective data”— as any writer of narrative does. But what Mark seeks to give us is the apostles’ own experience of Jesus. I hope to show you at length another time how the original ending of the Gospel— Mark 16.8— shows that he is perfectly aware of what he’s doing, and in fact is astonishingly brilliant at it. But when it comes to “objective facts”, we have no other source from which we could corroborate ANY of the “data” in Mark. So the “history” of Jesus, as such, is mostly indeterminable. We can of course make very interesting observations about how Matthew and Luke each treat Mark’s episodes in their own ways, in view of their own audiences and literary goals— and why they, and Mark, treated the common stories the ways they did. But none of this tells us “what happened”, for its own sake. Each is trying to convey the apostolic experience of Jesus, in terms they deem important for their own distinct and particular 1st-century audiences to get. And each is doing so on the basis of Mark, which is already a literary work, not a straightforward historical chronicle.

So if we want to find out “who Jesus was, and how much we can even really know about him”, as one of my friends puts it— we have no choice but to take the only path available to us, which is this literary one. But we are not left in the dark; precisely this literary work conveys the apostles’ own experience of Jesus!

As to whether Mark’s main figure (Jesus) really existed (people have often asked me this question), well, we can read Ehrman or NT Wright or just about any other reputable scholar on that question; they will all tell you that we have more evidence for the (mere) “existence” of Jesus than we do for Caesar or Alexander the Great. And yet nobody has any problem with Caesar’s “existence”; we simply take it for granted. But of Jesus, it is claimed that he was the Messiah, Savior, Incarnate Son, and so forth, and our attitude toward him has to do with how we think of the ultimate meaning and destination of our lives. So, denying Caesar’s existence would be a meaningless waste of time, but denying Jesus’ existence would mean we refuse to accept that he embodies the ultimate meaning and destination of our lives. Well, let the arguments rage— why not?— but let’s be aware of what we’re doing, when we argue passionately against an existence for which we have more evidence than for any other in antiquity.

At the end of the day, the Gospels aren’t interested in the mere history or activities of a historical figure named Jesus, but in the apostles’ own earth-shattering experience of one whom they recognized as the Lord of their faith. They aim to show us why and how they recognized him as God’s unique Anointed One, and what that turned out to mean for them. And they seek to convey this in such a way that confronts us with the same choice they faced: Do I align myself with this Jesus? Are his priorities, my priorities? Was he right about the nature of the world, of religion, of Empire?— or was the High Priest right, or Pilate, or ultimately, Caesar the one who got it right?

It would of course be exceedingly foolish, even insane, to align ourselves with a crucified failure. Except for one thing— this crucified failure was “declared Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rm 1.4). In other words, God backed him up, and not Caesar. If you can believe it. And Mark has a really interesting way of showing that you do, in the last verse of his story (16.8). In a future post, I’ll explain that.

But that’s the meaning we are confronted with, in the Gospels. Their one and only purpose is to convey a challenge. And it’s a very practical one, with practical consequences:

“You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But— It. Is. Not. Thus among you” (Mk 10.42-43; the Greek is quite emphatic).

We have read the story as a story, and the story communicates the apostles’ experience of Jesus. And in entering into the story, we find ourselves asking, Do I trust this? Do I align myself with this “Jesus”?

How Reliable is the Text of the Bible?

I often read, for example, that the Bible has been “written, translated, edited multiple times”, with the implication that it’s not really reliable. Because the question comes up fairly often, I thought I’d elaborate briefly on what the Text of Scripture is, that we use today.

The Bible really hasn’t been “written, translated, edited multiple times”. Modern bible translations are based on some 5000 or so ancient manuscripts that still exist, not on translations of translations. Some of these manuscripts (the Dead Sea Scrolls) go back to a little before the time of Christ, and by careful comparison, scholars can pretty much tell which of those that were written even many centuries later are reliable. News flash: All of them, although the differences are occasionally interesting.

Our earliest NT manuscripts go back to about the year 300, but we have no reason to think the texts were changed between their writing (between 50 and 100 AD) and the 300s; and certainly they remained stable after that. The church fathers who quote the New Testament earlier than 300, didn’t quote anything different, even though, obviously they were quoting from manuscripts earlier than those we still possess

Everybody agrees on the core canon of the Old Testament, which is known as the “Masoretic Text” (“MT”) or the Hebrew canon. The word “masoretic” is based on the Hebrew word for “tradition”— it’s the traditional (Hebrew) text. The “critical edition” currently in use— i.e., the carefully vetted Text used today by all scholars for study and translation— is based on one manuscript that was produced in the 900s, the Leningrad Codex. If you look around on the internet, I think you can find photographs of the original online.

One other complete manuscript exists which is a few years older and almost indistinguishable from the Leningrad Codex. This is the Aleppo Codex, and it is currently being published but every “jot and tittle” has to be checked and compared with all other manuscripts that exist, differences noted and compiled, and so forth, and this will take some more years to complete. When done, the differences will be of interest only to specialists, but of course specialists do exist, so this is important.

You should be aware, though, that traditionally, the Christian Church never used the Hebrew Bible, but rather the Greek Septuagint— a translation of the Hebrew into Greek made by the Jews of Alexandria about 200 years before Christ. (It’s often referred to as the “LXX”, because it was supposedly translated by 70 experts; “septuaginta” is Latin for “seventy”, and the abbreviation is of course the Roman numeral, LXX, “70”.

The LXX contains a number of books that are not included in the MT; as well as other differences, some rather major. It appears that by the time of Christ, there were at least two versions of the Old Testament in circulation, one used especially in Alexandria, which became the Septuagint, and the other used in Palestine and Babylon, which became the the MT we use today. You remember that Alexandria was associated with the prophet Jeremiah, and Babylon with the prophet Ezekiel. They were aware of each other and in communication, but apparently had different manuscript traditions, which nobody seems to have been too worried about. Examples of both traditions are found (in Hebrew) among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

On the basis of a comment somewhere in Josephus, there’s reason to believe that the number of books in the canon was meant to match the number of letters in the alphabet; since the Greek alphabet has more letters than the Hebrew alphabet does, there are more books in the Greek canon than in the Hebrew. You reach the right numbers if you count the Twelve Minor Prophets as one “book” (for they were in fact written on one scroll), 1&2 Samuel and 1&2 Kings as one book each, and so forth.

For the most part, the LXX is what the NT writers used when they quoted or alluded to the OT, because they were writing in Greek. Thus, the Christian Church everywhere used the LXX as its Old Testament, and the LXX is still used directly (not in translation) by the Greek Orthodox Church.

Early on, there was an “Old Latin” translation of the OT from the LXX, but later St Jerome retranslated it, and his translation, the “Latin Vulgate”, became standard in the West. Interestingly, he chose to translate the Masoretic Text, although of course the Vulgate also includes the books that were in the LXX and not in the MT, because those had been in use since apostolic times in the Christian Church. Psalms also followed the Old Latin because it was used constantly in prayer and people were used to it.

It was Martin Luther who decided to eliminate the “extra” books, which are now known as the “deutero-canonical” or “apocryphal” books— those that are in the Greek LXX and not in the Hebrew MT— from the canon. He didn’t have any particular authority to do that, but he preferred “Hebrew truth” to anything he thought was “Greek”, and for that reason, Protestant bibles contain only the books that are found in the Hebrew MT, whereas the Catholics and the Orthodox continue to use the same Greek LXX canon that the Church has always been using. Most people don’t know that the KJV originally did contain the “apocrypha”, and you can still buy the “KJV Apocrypha” as a separate book from google.

As to the New Testament, everybody has always included the same 27 books, although the Ethiopians include a couple of others such as the Book of Enoch as well.

The NT was written in Greek, and most of our existing Greek Bible texts were understandably produced in what you might call “publishing houses” operated by the Greek-speaking Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire. There was an effort to correct and standardize the Text, but of course every scribe is going to make little errors, so there are occasional differences between manuscripts, occasionally they’re interesting. But of course we also possess many manuscripts that do not belong to this “Byzantine text-form”, and they tell us many things.

Above is a picture of the first page of Matthew as it appears in the standard critical edition of the NT. You’ll see lots of gobbledy-gook in the footnotes. That’s a highly compressed presentation of the differences between all manuscripts and an accounting of why the editors thought the reading given in the text above was more likely to be the original. Given that we have about 5000 hand-written manuscripts, you can see that there really aren’t very many differences. The text of the New Testament is quite well established. What you don’t see unless you’re an expert is that the differences tend to clump the manuscripts into “families”, so we can often tell the exact point at which a variant reading crept in. But as i said, most of the differences shown aren’t interesting to anyone but specialists— words in a different order (which you can often do in Greek without changing the meaning), spelling mistakes, etc.

There are a number of other books, the “pseudepigrapha” such as the Life of Adam and Eve and the Apocalypse of Isaiah, which were written between the two Testaments and after the New, but never became part of any canon (often for good reason). These are of interest, but they’re not part of any bible, except, as I said, for the Book of Enoch in Ethiopia and one or two others.

Scholars of every church are interested in the whole picture, including the MT, the LXX with its canonical and deuterocanonical / apocryphal books, as well as the pseudepigrapha.

All of it is valuable for knowing about our origins.

And of course, some modern translations are better than others, but you can rest assured that the underlying text, at least,of all bibles is reliable.