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”—!!
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:
Go,
sell what you have,
give it to the poor (that’s where you’ll get the treasure in heaven), and
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.
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”?
In a recent Facebook discussion, someone concerned about women’s lack of power in the church said she’d found comfort in the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman who came to Jesus to ask him to heal her daughter:
“Here is Jesus being a racist dick, and she totally calls him on it. Then Jesus checks himself, repents, and changes his tune. From then out his ministry includes gentiles, pointedly. Jesus the man, Jesus the Israelite with all his own cultural hang-ups, shows us how to choose to give up your power, how to react when confronted with the power and biases you may have, and how God’s love is breaking down all the boundaries that power lets us make between ourselves and ‘others’.”
Jesus, in other words, was an ordinary man with “cultural hang-ups”. We have transcended those by now (at least those of us who are woke), but what makes him admirable was that he could allow himself to be set straight by a woman; if Jesus can learn stop being such a racist and start treating women properly (despite being a card-carrying member of patriarchist culture), then maybe the Church can eventually come around too.
This would seem to be the opinion of more than one person only. Apparently, the story going around today is that, like every human being, Jesus needed to learn justice:
Those Syro-Phoenician Greek women could teach Jesus a thing or two about social justice!
In researching this post, I found that even the Maryknoll Missioners recently tweeted,
“Jesus was part of his culture: prejudiced against Canaanites. But he allowed a foreign woman to expand his views. Do we?”
Are we really on the right track, though, when we think of Jesus as just “part of his culture”, “prejudiced”, or even a “racist dick” who then came to his senses and “repented” (of his sins!) when given comeuppance by a strong woman? Let’s do a double-take.
Every Episode Has a Context
The context of the story of the Syro-Phoenician Greek woman is the whole Third Section of Mark (6.6b–8.21)— sometimes known as the Section on the Bread— in which it plays a key role in Jesus’ self-disclosure to his disciples. To understand her story, we need to see it within the whole narrative where it has meaning, so this is going to be a somewhat longish post, but I promise not to bore you. The fact is, none of the episodes in the Scriptures are stand-alone, and the fact that we fail to understand them in context is the source of all our unnecessary problems with the Bible. So please bear with me; I think you’ll agree the journey is worth it.
Introduction: Exodus and Mission
As always in the first half of the Gospel, the introductory part (6.6b-30) of the Third Section features a story about Jesus, followed by a story about the disciples. Here, the story about Jesus is only half a verse long: “And he went around the villages in a circuit, teaching” (6.6b).
Now, we will need to know where this is happening. The previous Section (3.7–6.6a) featured several boat journeys, back and forth from Capharnaum and elsewhere. Jesus had gone to the land of the Gerasenes, in what was known as the Decapolis or Ten-City Region, on the eastern side of the “Sea” of Galilee, in 5.1-20. The Decapolis was a Gentile region; they even herded pigs there. From there, he went back to the “other side” from the Decapolis in 5.21, which would presumably have put him back in Capharnaum; but in any case this “other side” was Jewish, as we recognize when Jairus, a synagogue official, asked him to heal his daughter. From there he came to “his fatherland” (6.1)— presumably Nazareth (cf 1.9, 24; 10.47; 14.67; 16.6). And after that, he went “around the villages” in a circuit, teaching (6.6b), exactly as he had done did from his base in Capharnaum in 1.38-39. So as the Section opens, we may read his location as being in the area of Nazareth, or perhaps in that of Capharnaum. Most scholars assume that he’s working out of Capharnaum, because that seems to be his home base in general, but in either case, we know enough to know that the story is now unfolding on the western side of the “Sea” of Galilee— that is, in Jewish territory. That’s a key fact.
The introductory part (6.6b-30) of the Section features a story about Jesus, followed by a story about the disciples, so now we will learn of the disciples. To expand the reach of his ministry, Jesus begins to send the disciples out, two by two, whom he had designated as “apostles” in the introduction of the previous Section (3.13-19), empowering them to cast out unclean spirits (6.7). He instructs them to dress and to go forth as if for the Passover (6.8-9); when they enter a village, they’re to stay in one house until they leave— no looking for a better deal! (6.10)— and if they’re not received, they’re just to shake off the dust from their feet and move on— but it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for that village (6.11). So the disciples go forth, proclaiming that people need to change their attitude (“repent”). They heal the sick and cast out demons (6.12). Interestingly, though, Mark does not say they proclaim the arrival of God’s regime, as Jesus did (1.14-15); this invites further investigation, but it need not detain us here.
The disciples go forth (6.12-13) and return (6.29), but Mark interrupts his account of their journey— which he tells only schematically— with an extended and vivid account of the murder of John the Baptist (6.13-29). This story is fully self-contained, but Mark tells it as part of the disciples’ missionary journey, by having the disciples return and relate to Jesus all that they did and said (6.30) only after he finishes recounting John’s murder. Mark often uses this A-B-A form, known to scholars as an inclusion, to relate two stories that otherwise would have no obvious connection, and to get us to think of the one episode in terms of the other. There’s always a point of connection between the two narratives; here, the disciples proclaim a change of attitude (“repentance”), the very thing that John was proclaiming at the beginning of the Gospel (1.4-5)
When the disciples return and report on all they said and did (6.29), Jesus invites them to retire by boat to a deserted place for a retreat, “for there were many coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat” (6.31-32). This verse transitions us to the body of the Section, and we note that Mark brings up the theme of eating.
The Body of the Section: Who Can Eat the Children’s Bread
5000 Jews Eat Manna in the Desert
Upon arriving at their place of retreat, they find that a crowd has already run there ahead of them (6.33-34). Out of compassion, Jesus teaches them. It grows late, and the disciples want him to send the crowd away to buy something for themselves to eat (6.35-36). Instead, Jesus orders them, “You give them to eat!” (6.37a). They protest— are they to go and buy bread (ártous ἄρτους) at a cost of 200 days’ wages for all these people? (6.37b). But he asks how many “breads” they have. It turns out they have five, and two fish (6.38). Jesus commands the crowd to sit down on the green pasture in battle array (“hundreds and fifties”, 6.39)— although Mark colorfully describes this “army” as a “leek garden” (prasiaì prasiaì, πρασιαὶ πρασιαὶ)— that is, as 50 x 100 onion rows (6.40). “And when He had taken the five breads and the two fish, he looked up to the sky, blessed and broke the breads, and gave them to [his] disciples to set before them; and the two fish he divided for all” (6.41). “And they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of fragments and of the fish, and those who had eaten [the breads] were about five thousand men” (6.42-44).
5000 is the size of a military unit, so even though they sat in “onion rows” of 50 x 100, it’s not surprising that Mark specifically says that the 5000 were specifically “men” (ándres ἄνδρες), not “people” in general (ánthrōpoi ἄνθρωποι). This is tantamount to saying “Israel, Officially Mustered”. What’s more, “Twelve” is the number of the tribes of Israel, and the type of basket Mark says they used for the fragments is a kophínos (κοφίνος), a kind that only Jews used.
The point here is obvious: Jesus has broken “bread” for 5000 Jewish men. Mark is underscoring that Jesus has provided “bread” (the narrative emphasizes this word) for Jews. The green grass recollects Psalm 23; the themes of blessing and abundance and other details suggest that this “bread in the wilderness”, which they ate until they were full, is both the antitype of the manna of the Exodus (Ps 78.19-29) and a type of the messianic banquet (Ps 72). The Messianic Age has arrived— for the Jews.
Yhwh, the God of Israel Himself Puts in an Appearance!
After they gathered the twelve baskets of fragments, Jesus “forced” (ēnágkasen ἠνάγκασεν) his disciples to get into the boat, to go ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismisses the crowd (6.45).
But why did he have to “force” them? Because it’s a windy day— as we learn a couple of verses later, when Jesus sees them “tortured in rowing”, because of this (6.48a)? But Mark doesn’t tell us this until he first recounts that Jesus had dismissed the crowd and gone up a mountain to pray (6.46), that evening had fallen and “the boat was in the middle of the ‘Sea’ and he was alone on the land” (6.47— and why is the latter obvious detail relevant?
From the mountain, he sees the disciples on the “Sea”, “tortured by rowing” (6.48). The wind is against them, and despite rowing all night, they make no progress.
If they are starting, as we’ve seen, from the western, Jewish side of the “Sea”— whether near Capharnaum or Nazareth— Bethsaida is to the east. They’re battling a “strong east wind all night”, as at the Exodus (Ex 14.21), but this wind does not turn back the sea so that the disciples may pass on dry ground. In fact they get nowhere.
Bethsaida, on the eastern side of the “Sea”, is a city of mixed population, in a mostly Gentile region. Jesus has constrained his disciples to go (alone!) to the Gentiles!
Is that what he’s praying about on the mountain? Mark doesn’t say, but “at about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the ‘Sea’, and wanted to pass by them” (6.48). If we’re to understand this in an ordinary sense, it suggests he was planning to let them struggle while he went ahead to Bethsaida, and would meet them there. Perhaps they need not have been so reluctant. But they don’t recognize him— in fact they’re terrified and shout, “It’s a ghost!” (6.49-50a). Jesus calms them by saying “I AM” (6.50b— usually translated, “It’s I”, but that misses the point, as we’ll see—) and gets into the boat (6.51). The wind ceases, and the disciples are astonished beyond measure, Mark tells us, “because they had not understood about the breads, because their heart was hardened” (6.52).
What an odd comment! But for the moment, we’ll just note that it underscores the theme of eating and bread, and that it refers to the previous episode of sharing bread. There’s something about that, that they failed to understand. Mark will develop these themes even further as we proceed.
Jesus’ “walking on the water as if to pass them by” has baffled interpreters perhaps since Matthew himself, who simply deletes the expression “as if to pass them by” from his rewriting of Mark’s account (Mt 14.25).
Of course, there have been plenty of imaginative (read: wrong) interpretations!— St Augustine, for example, says that Jesus wanted to pass by them, in order to get them to cry out, so that he could then come to their relief! (Harmony of the Gospels 2.47).
Sometimes St Augustine didn’t quite get it. Later on, St Anselm didn’t really help either.
In line with the 20th century American Quaker author, D. Elton Trueblood (The Humor of Christ), an interested non-scholar on the Internet writes,
“. . . . nonchalantly walking on water passing the disciples? That projects a sense of humor to me. One could picture him snacking on an apple or whistling as he went by.”
One could picture Jesus that way, but then one would have framed the story in purely sentimental and therefore meaningless terms. That Jesus!— why, he was the kind o’ guy that liked to do tricks with Nature itself, just to get you to laugh! Truth told, though, that isn’t much worse than Augustine’s solution. And my impression is that it’s probably about as much as we’re going to get from most sermons today— though I could be wrong.
Among academic commentators, some have fared better than others. There are basically three major approaches. Some say that Jesus’ “wanting to pass by” is how the event seemed to the disciples. In support, they adduce Luke 24.28, where Jesus “made as if he were going on”. But actually, even that is not about the disciples’ impression; Jesus is there observing expected social etiquette by deliberately expressing an intention not to impose. Here, as Jesus walks on the “Sea”, Mark explicitly casts Jesus’ intention in the declarative form: Jesus “came to them, walking on the sea, and he was wanting (kai ēthelen καὶ ἤθελεν) to pass by them”. Passing by them is his direct intention; there’s no dissimulation involved, and in fact the disciples respond not to his passing by, but to the fact that they think he’s a ghost!
Other scholars note that Jesus wants to pass by, but is forced to abandon his intention. He wants to prove his divinity by walking past them on the water, but he can’t make a full display of it because they’re afraid. He’s proving his divinity by performing a miracle, but they’re too scared to get it.
This is somewhat on track, but we need to understand it more deeply, and we can get to that understanding by taking the third approach, which is to discern what Mark is saying about Jesus, by telling the story the way he tells it. In other words, we need to grasp the web of allusions behind Mark’s discourse
The verb translated as “pass by” (parérchomai παρέρχομαι) has a broad semantic range and can mean “pass in view of”, as when Yhwh said to Moses on Mt Sinai: “I will pass by before you with my glory, and I will call by my name, the LORD, before thee; and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and have pity on whom I will have pity. . . .” (Ex 33.19, 22; cf 34.6). Likewise, in 1Kg 19.11, God “passes by” Elijah on Horeb (1Kg 19.11). Interestingly, in that same verse, there was “a great and strong wind. . . . but the Lord was not in the wind”. In Am 7.8 and 8.2, Yhwh says that he will “never again pass by” his people in this sense; the end has come.
That this episode in Mark is a theophany like those I’ve just mentioned is confirmed by both the disciples’ terror (the standard reaction to divine epiphanies in the Old Testament), and by the way Jesus reassures them— for his words, “I AM, fear not” (egō eimi, ἐγώ ειμι, 6.49-50) of course correspond to Yhwh’s “I AM” at the burning bush (Ex 3.14; cf also Dt 32.39; Isa 43.10, 45.18).
But Mark is actually quoting the Septuagint version of Job. Marveling at how the Creator God eludes his understanding, Job says of God—
8 . . . . who alone stretched out the sky and walks upon the sea as on dry land … 11 If he passed over me, I would certainly not see him, and if he passed by me, I would not even know.
Job 9.8, 11
Job represents the Lord as walking on water and as “passing by”— and, for his part, Job, like the disciples in Mark, is uncomprehending.
Reading the phrase with this rich web of Old Testament associations in mind, Mark appears to be saying that Jesus “wanted” to “pass by” his disciples in the way that God “passed by” Moses, Elijah, and Job, but that when he did so, they just thought he was a ghost, even though they were “astonished beyond measure in themselves” at his power, once they realized that it was he who had been walking on the water (6.51).
But at this point, Mark says something really interesting. He tells us that they did not comprehend “because they had not understood about the breads, because their heart was hardened” (6.51-52).
Note the causal chain: their heart was hardened; therefore they did not understand about the bread, and therefore they failed to recognize him. The basic problem was hardness of heart; this prevented them from understanding about sharing the bread; and because of that they had failed to recognize Jesus precisely as Israel’s Lord and God. And the latter point is not exactly new news to them. They were present, after all, when Jesus forgave sins, which God alone can do (2.5-11), claimed to be Israel’s Bridegroom (2.19-20), and Lord of the Sabbath (2.28)! They should have gotten it!
Jesus has appeared as Israel’s Creator God, who apparently is making some kind of a new Exodus for his disciples. But the disciples fail to understand, so he gets into the boat with them, and he no sooner does so, than they end up in Gennesaret. There, as always crowds of people bring their sick to Jesus, and he heals them wherever he goes (6.53-56).
Which is all fine, and just as expected, except for one thing— they are supposed to be in Bethsaida! And Gennesaret is nowhere near Bethsaida; it’s still on the western shore of the ‘Sea’, in Jewish territory. They are not on the eastern side, on the Gentile shore:
They haven’t made any progress at all! More specifically, they haven’t gotten to the Gentiles yet. And, their reluctance to go there seems to have something to do with not “recognizing” Jesus. Now, at the beginning of the Section, Jesus had them dress for the Exodus (6.8-9) as they went to proclaim a change of attitude, heal the sick, and cast out demons. The exodus that Jesus seems to have had in mind appears to be related to sharing “the breads”. We should not be surprised to find Mark dealing with this at further length!
How = Who
In Gennesaret, almost immediately, a controversy arises with the Pharisees and some scribes from Jerusalem (this would be the “FBI”— the Temple is getting involved). The disciples are “eating bread with common, that is unwashed, hands” (7.1-5).
This is a controversy about the purity code. One of the chief purposes of the purity code in any society (and all societies have them) is to enforce a separation between “us”, the people who live the right way, and “them”, who do not. In Israel, the code separates Jews and Gentiles. Israel is “holy”; it is not “common”; Israelites therefore must not eat with “common” hands. Mark gives a long description at this point to the various washings that Jews do. Addressed apparently to a (mostly) Gentile audience, this description cleverly shows how different the Jews are from “us”— I say, cleverly, because this way of telling the story itself accomplishes for his Gentile audience the very thing that hand-washing accomplishes for the Jews— it separates “us” from “them”! So now the Gentiles have skin in the game too!
The scribes and the Jerusalem-based Pharisees have accused Jesus of violating the boundary between Jews and Gentiles, between God’s people and common humanity. In response, Jesus delivers one of the longest and most important discourses in Mark’s gospel (7.6-23). He is quite outspoken about how the Pharisees misinterpret and even abrogate God’s express commands. And as Mark relates Jesus’ subsequent private instruction to his disciples, he specifically tells us that Jesus has pronounced “all foods clean” (7.19). Some think that this is a marginal note that somehow got incorporated into the text; others, that Mark the author here breaks in to his story to speak directly to the audience— something he does nowhere else. Whether the note was preserved as if Mark had broken in like that, or whether Mark actually wrote it— in either case, its presence underscores how immensely important the issue was to the Church. St Paul wrote two entire epistles (Romans and Galatians) about it!
The Syro-Phoenician Greek Woman
All this is in the background as we finally come to the episode of the Syrophoenican Greek woman. Jesus has entirely set aside the purity code that separates Jews from Gentiles. Now he “arose”— note the resurrection language— “and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon”.
He is taking the disciples to what is most decidedly Gentile territory (7.24— see map above).
In Gentile territory, a woman approaches Jesus. Matthew simplifies and describes her simply as a “Canaanitess” (Mt 15.22), identifying her with Israel’s ancient enemies, but Mark describes her as a Greek, a Syrian, and a Phoenician (Mk 7.26)— that is, as a triple Gentile!— Moreover, she’s a woman. Mark is usually not this blatant. He is portraying her almost cartoonishly as a quadruple threat to Jesus, from the vantage point of the Israelite purity code.
A woman, a triple gentile, comes and begs a favor of a famous Jewish rabbi, directly challenging the purity code. And at this point that rabbi, fully conscious of his vocation as a leader and teacher, has only two choices. He MUST either ignore her or slap her down. Otherwise, he will not just lose face; he will even show that he is positively dishonorable, because he doesn’t care about the honor of his own people and his own God.
At this point, I want to pause and say something about purity codes. A friend of mine wrote that “purity codes are systems of fake boundaries.” But is that so? Despite what Jesus has just said to the Pharisees about “abandoning God’s commandment of God and holding to human tradition” (7.9), “rejecting God’s commandment in order to keep your tradition: (7.10), and “voiding God’s word through your tradition” (7.13), could we say that the purity code established by the Torah are “fake boundaries”— given that they were instituted by God? . . . .
So we see what was at stake with the Syro-Phoenician Greek woman. This conversation is not about setting aside “fake boundaries” at all. Those Jesus has dealt with in speaking to the Pharisees about their “traditions” in the previous section (7.1-23). This is not about prejudice, not about “Jesus being a dick”. In fact Jesus’ encounter with the Syro-Phoenician Greek woman was very serious, and world-changing.
Now for her part, if Jesus ignores her, she will have no recourse but to slink away in shame. But if he engages her at all, he leaves himself open to a counter-challenge. And if she can top him, then he has to give her what she wants. The game is quite well known— sociologists call it “challenge-riposte”— and it’s common in honor-shame societies like that of Jesus. The form the game will take here is that of a “battle of proverbs”. She has challenged Jesus simply by making her desperate request. Jesus, who must either ignore her or make a suitable riposte, chooses to describe the situation of interest by means of a proverb, or at least by a proverb-like saying. If his opponent can find a more fitting proverb or gnomic saying to describe the situation, she wins. Can she do it?
He was saying to her, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
But she answered and said to him, “Yes, Lord, but even the puppies under the table feed on the children’s crumbs.”
Mark 7.27-28
We must note first that Jesus is not describing the woman as a “dog” or being a “racist dick”. When Chou En-Lai visited the USA and spoke of new economic reforms in China, a reporter asked, “Isn’t that capitalism?”, and Chou En-Lai replied that “The point is not whether the cat is black or white; the point is to catch the mouse”. Chou En-Lai was not calling capitalism a white cat and communism a black cat or vice versa. He was simply applying a proverbial saying to the reporter’s question, to illuminate the issue and to illustrate his attitude toward it. In the same way, Jesus is here just stating a proverb that’s sufficiently analogous to the situation, to make the point that God’s gifts are only for the Jews. Isn’t that the presupposition of the whole purity code, and of the scribes’ insistence on it?
But note that in proposing this proverb, Jesus specifically introduces the theme of eating bread, which was the topic of the controversy with the Pharisees in the previous episode, the very thing that the disciples failed to understand when they saw Jesus walking on the water, wanting to “pass by” them; the banquet he had made possible for 5000 Jewish men; and the activity for which there had been no room because of the crowd before that. Also, for Mark’s Christian audience, eating bread would have eucharistic connotations, and indeed, Mark will tie together the whole theme of bread and all that’s associated with it when he comes to tell of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples on the night before his murder.
We might also note, before we go on, that it was Jesus, not the woman, who has crossed the border into unclean territory. What is he up to?
The woman’s response, of course, is deliciously witty— she’s a true master of the game. And Jesus concedes. In fact he sought exactly this exchange; otherwise the proper response would have been to ignore her. Or rather, given the fact that people from the “coasts of Tyre and Sidon” are already coming to him (3.8), if he wanted to avoid such encounters, he shouldn’t have ventured into Gentile territory to begin with!
But Jesus allows the woman’s description of the situation to be the correct one.
Contrary to what some people are saying these days, the dog is actually in the background, not the foreground. Or am I being too subtle about this?
Mark hasn’t mentioned the disciples since Jesus taught them about how “all foods are pure” (7.19) and about what really “makes a person common” (koinoî κοινοῖ, usually translated “defiles a person”) (7.20-23). They’re still very much present, though. And the scene is being played out not in front of them only, but of course in front of the Church as well, which is Mark’s audience.
Since I’m writing this blog partly for an Orthodox audience (well, I can always hope!), let me add a comment about “St Photini”, the name that the Orthodox tradition has given to the Syro-Phoenician Greek woman. Or not— for in the first place, “St Photini” is usually identified as the “Canaanite” woman, from Matthew’s version. And Matthew and Mark— to say nothing of Luke and John— are NOT the same! Matthew of course is basing his story of Jesus on Mark’s, so there’s a continuity— but there are differences also, and we need to appreciate and respect them. That is precisely our work in reading the Synoptics. Otherwise we could just go with a Gospel Harmony, and be done with the hassle of different mismatching versions! But God has given us four gospels because he wanted us to understand the event of Jesus in four different ways.
And calling her “Photini” goes even beyond confusing Matthew and Mark. It positively re-frames Matthew’s version of Mark’s story as a bit of Byzantine hagiography— and Byz. hagiography has yet other interests beyond those of either Mark or Matthew! If we read the episodes in the Gospels within other frameworks, we don’t catch what Mark (or Matthew, or Luke, or John) is doing by placing a story about Jesus’ encounter with a triple-gentile woman and the threat she brings to a Torah-keeping rabbi of Israel at this point in his narrative. We Orthodox tend to read the Gospels within the generally moral and devotional interests of 10th century AD monasticism or thereabouts— and even this, we bring into our own 21st century context. That’s not bad, but we need to do it after we let the Scriptures speak with their own voice(s)!
And this means we even need to become very precise about how we quote the Bible. Not because there’s some Law that says you have to quote word for word, but because each writer was actually saying something very precise, and has made use of very precise words to do so. Don’t be fooled by similarities and by the writers’ seemingly informal prose! There is nothing haphazard in Scripture, and all differences are meaningful!
I can’t hammer on that point hard enough!!
Who Really Can Eat the Bread?
I mentioned that the scene with the Syro-Phoenician Greek woman is being played out not only in front of the disciples, but of course in front of the Church also, which is Mark’s audience. That includes us, certainly, but Mark would have had a more immediate first-century audience in view. What was the audience that Mark was writing for?
Eusebius (4th c) reports that Papias, bishop of Hierapolis (2d c) reported that Mark was St Peter’s helper in Rome, and more for lack of any other early testimony, this has become the standard view, even though it’s already at least a third-hand account:
Mark, Peter’s interpreter, wrote down from memory everything that was said or done by Christ, though not in proper order. For he had not heard the Lord nor had he been one of his followers, but, as I said, later became a follower of Peter, who adapted his teaching to the practical needs of the churches. Mark had only one purpose in mind: not to omit anything he had heard or to make any false statements.
Papias, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. III.39
Personally I don’t think this is correct, and most Markan specialists don’t think so either. Eusebius is reporting Papias who got it from someone else, so this is third-hand information— and Papias— or at least Eusebius, who quotes him— Papias’ own works are lost— is known to have been wrong about other things as well. Personally, I’m troubled by the fact that he says Mark wrote down what Peter remembered about Jesus, “though not in proper order”. The actual events that Mark is describing may have happened in a different order— and if this is what Papias meant, but we’d like to know why he thought so. Did he have some way of knowing the exact sequence of events in Jesus’ ministry, apart from the Gospels? I judge that unlikely. Or is he just taking Matthew’s order to be the correct one, and saying Mark didn’t follow that? But we know that Matthew is an adaptation of Mark, and not the other way around. And few pieces of literature anywhere in the world are as well-ordered as Mark’s Gospel! Moreover, if you don’t recognize Mark’s order (structure), you don’t know the story he’s telling, which is why I have to take you through the whole Third Section to show you what Jesus’ encounter with the Syro-Phoenician Greek woman is about. I don’t think Papias understood the structure of Mark— nor did Eusebius, who quotes Papias in this regard with approval.
The more common objection to Papias’ idea that Mark wrote down Peter’s “reminiscences” is that nothing at all in Mark’s Gospel strongly suggests a Roman audience. On the other hand, there’s a good deal that suggests Mark was writing for a mixed Jewish-Gentile church living in the Decapolis region (across the Jordan from Jerusalem and north a ways) precisely at the time the Romans are besieging Jerusalem, in 70 AD— perhaps Pella, where Eusebius tells us the Christians in Jerusalem fled before the Siege in 70 AD. They were already under persecution for not joining the Revolution. And Jewish zealots would have been very keen on keeping Israel “pure”, so as to ensure victory. And family members would have put enormous pressure on other family members to join the effort to free Israel of Gentile domination. “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name” (13.12-13)— for a single Messianic community had included both loyal Jews and Gentiles now for 40 years.
So— what is it to be a loyal Jew?
Can the “bread of the children” of the Promise be given to Gentiles, or even, ultimately, to Romans?
Can Jesus’ Jewish disciples have anything to do with Gentiles, or even, ultimately, with Romans?
Can Jews and Gentiles, and ultimately even Romans, be in the same Church?
Can they eat the same eucharistic bread?
These are the questions that seethed throughout the Christian church in the first century. Acts is all about them. Paul’s letters to the Galatians and the Romans are all about them. It’s no surprise that Mark is about them too. But what makes Mark interesting is that he is writing, apparently, right in the thick of the Jewish Revolution, watching as Jesus’ words are fulfilled: “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (13.2).
We should note that the aforementioned Elton Trueblood (The Humor of Christ) considers the episode of the Syro-Phoenician Greek woman to be another example of “Jesus’ humor”. The scene is, indeed, somewhat humorous, but it is in deadly earnest and the stakes could not be higher for Jesus, the disciples, or the Church. To stop at the witty aspect of Jesus’ counter-challenge and the woman’s riposte is to miss everything Jesus is teaching in this whole Section of Mark and hence in the Gospel itself. It’s appalling how we trivialize the Scriptures, but we do so because we fail to read episodes in the context of the whole book!
Well, and as I noted at the top, the alternative standard interpretation of this episode seems to have become that Jesus, the “racist dick”, was just “part of his culture: prejudiced against Canaanites”— but that he’s still cool because “he allowed a foreign woman to expand his views.” The not-entirely-subtle implication, of course, that we’re actually more cool than Jesus because we now recognize what he couldn’t, is also something we shouldn’t miss.
In fact we should be astonished!
Who Really Can Eat the Manna, Part 2
Well, ok, I’m borrowing the image of “manna” from John’s version of these bread-in-the-wilderness episodes: “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’” (Jn 6.31, 49). John, as usual, is headed in his own direction, but he’s only surfacing a theme that’s understated in Mark, so calling the bread here in Mark, “manna”, is legitimate— especially since, in any case, Mark isn’t finished with his Exodus yet.
After his encounter of the Syro-Phoenician Greek lady, Jesus and his disciples take a very confusing itinerary: “And going out again from the coasts of Tyre they came through Sidon to the ‘Sea’ of Galilee along the middle of the coasts of the Decapolis” (7.31). This is something like going from San Francisco to Miami via Edmonton and down the Colorado. But all the places that Mark mentions on this wild ride are Gentile or mixed, and the point is, they end up in the Decapolis, the Ten Cities region on what Mark has already referred to as the “other side” (the west) of the “Sea” of Galilee (cf 4.35, 5.1). The Decapolis has a mixed but mostly Gentile population. Upon arriving in the Decapolis, “they”— evidently, Jesus’ followers— bring a deaf and dumb man to him (7.32-37). In this Gentile region, we may infer that the man is a Gentile. In this extended and interesting story, Jesus gives the power of hearing and speaking to a Gentile. In the Bible, “hearing” is not trivial. Every single day, every observant Jew pronounces these words: “Hear, O Israel, Yhwh is our God; Yhwh is One!” (Dt 6.4).
6 Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. 7 Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbolc on your forehead; 9 inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Dt 6.6-9
So, immediately after giving this Gentile the power to be a son of the Covenant— still in the Ten [Jewish and Gentile] Cities— Jesus again breaks bread for a large crowd (8.1-9). This time, he doesn’t do it in response to the disciples’ insistence that he send the crowd away, but simply out of his own compassion. And this time, Mark does not specify that the large crowd consists of “men”, nor does he describe them with a military number. His neutral term, “about 4000” implies both men and women, Jews and Gentiles. Moreover, the number both of breads and of baskets of leftovers is “seven”, a number applied to the nations (the Gentiles) in the Old Testament (for example, 7 x 10 nations in the “Table of Nations” in Gn 10), and the baskets are spyridas (σπυρίδας), a type of basket used by the Greeks (each large enough to hold a man, as we read in Ac 9.25). And 4000 is a proverbially large multiple of 4, which is the number of directions on earth.
So then. We’re almost at the end of the long journey of the third Section of Mark (6.30–8.10). Jesus has taken the disciples— and hence Mark’s audience— on an Exodus from the Jewish shore to the Gentile shore, setting aside the purity code that separates Jews from Gentiles, and he has shared the bread of the Messianic Age with all who follow him, from whatever language or nation.
And Mark is telling this story just as the Gentiles have come to burn the Temple to the ground and enslave God’s people.
Conclusion: Surprise!— The Disciples Don’t Get It
The Section ends with the Pharisees asking for “a sign”, that is, for proof. And Jesus rejects them— “no sign will be given”— and gets in the boat and leaves them (8.11-13)— more or less had he had instructed the disciples to do when a village refused to hear them (6.10-11). That’s the conclusion of the Section.
But the Third Section of Mark (6.6b–8.21) is also the final one of the three Sections that constitute the First Half of the book, and the Second Half will be thematically and structurally quite different. So, fittingly, Mark adds a second conclusion that brings an end to the whole First Half with its multiple boat journeys and constant repetition of the themes of bread, healing, and casting out demons.
It’s not a comfortable ending.
Jesus and the disciples get into the boat one last time. Jesus warns the disciples against “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (8.14-15). Mark tells us the disciples misunderstand, again because they didn’t get it about the bread (8.15-16).
At this point, Jesus positively unloads on them:
“Why do you argue that you have no bread? Don’t you perceive? Don’t you understand? Is your heart still hardened? You have eyes; don’t you see? You have ears, don’t you hear? Don’t you remember?
When I broke the five breads for the five thousand, how many kophinoi full of fragments did you take up?”
“Uh, twelve.”
“And when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many spyrides full of fragments did you take up?”
“Seven.”
—Gentlemen, that’s twelve kophinoi for the fullness of Israel; seven spyrides for the fullness of the Gentiles— such were the leftovers from the manna I gave in the desert—
“Don’t you get it?!!”
Mark 8.17-21
Jesus is very exasperated at these “racist dicks” of his (if you’ll pardon me), who just can’t quite seem to realize that both the Herodian path of collaboration with the Empire, and the Pharisee path of separatism have nothing to do with God’s regime; and who are still wrapped up in their own hunger, when they have the One Bread onboard with them.
At the beginning of the next Section (8.22), they will get out of the boat and leave the “Sea” for the last time. At that time, Mark will indicate that they’ve finally arrived in Bethsaida, the (mixed) Gentile town to which Jesus had sent them way back in the beginning of this Section, after the first feeding (6.45-53). Then, the disciples were tortured with rowing all night, but they could make no progress. Jesus came to them as God, walking on the sea as if on dry land (6.48-52; cf Job 9.8, 10 LXX), and led them on a long journey to show them that his bread was for both Jews and Gentiles. Now, as he gets out of the boat, he gives sight to a blind Gentile, and helps his disciples to see the Way they’re to walk as his followers (8.22–9.52).
St Paul distills the point this way:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Ga 3.28
But do we get it? Do we still need to get it?
Seriously? We have heard, but have we yet seen who Jesus is?
And now a word about Bible interpretation:
My friends, brothers and sisters, PLEASE!—
When you find yourself thinking of Jesus as just “part of his culture”, “prejudiced”, or even a “racist dick” who then came to his senses and “repented” (of his sins!) when given comeuppance by a strong woman— know by that very fact that you haven’t understood the passage yet.
FIND OUT WHAT THE WRITER IS TALKING ABOUT !!
This penchant for taking our own fantasies, misinformation, and half-truths as truth—
traps us in delusion, mutilates our understanding, and destroys our relationship with God.
Sentimental ignorance, fantasy, and the failure to read the WHOLE STORY are the SOURCE of EVERY problem in the modern church!!
Scientific (historical) questions about Scripture episodes can lead to inconsequential answers at best, and completely wrong and misleading ones at worst— not because science is bad, but because it filters the object under discussion through the wrong categories.
Someone in one of the Facebook groups I participate in recently asked how we’re to understand Luke’s story of Jesus’ ascension, since trying to calculate his present location at a certain (assumed) rate of ascent obviously leads to absurdity. I responded that the only way for us in the 21st century to understand it, is obviously the way its audience was meant to understand it in the 1st century. We absolutely need to stop trying to read first-century, Iron-Age documents with Cyber-Age, scientific eyes!
Mark has no Ascension story, because his theological narrative doesn’t need one. (Some other time I’ll talk about why that’s the case.) It would be also be wrong to say (as I’ve read elsewhere) that Matthew, for his part, denies Jesus’ “ascension” when he has the disciples go to the mountain in Galilee that Jesus had specified, where Jesus meets and commissions them, saying only, “Behold, I am with you all days, even unto the end of the age” (Mt 28.20)— showing that he’s not going anywhere! (“Aha!”, shout the critics. “Contradictions!!— untrustworthy!! lies!! they made it up!!”)— But of course, setting the gospels at odds with each other in this way is foolish; they tell different stories simply because they’re making different but interlocking theological points. But it’s still wrong to try to harmonize— “Well, Matthew left that part out; Luke only completed the story!” No, we need to appreciate the profoundly literary and theological nature of our Texts. Historicism is not our friend!
The story of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven is found only in Luke/Acts, so we need to read it as part of Luke’s theology, not as a scientific description of something that would have been accessible to anyone with proper equipment.
“But it can’t be just an idea, right? Because Luke mentions the disciples actually gazing up into the sky!” Well, as I said, historicism is not our friend. In Luke’s narrative, the disciples’ gazing at the sky confirms the ascension; but the ascension itself is already a literary device that alludes to Daniel 7.13-14— there, Daniel was standing in the celestial throne room and saw the Son of Man being brought up in the clouds; here, the disciples are standing on earth seeing the Son of Man going up in the clouds. The prophet’s vision is celestial, the disciples’ vision is earthly, but both Daniel and Luke are describing the same exaltation of the Son of Man (and that’s the point!)— “Dominion, glory, and kingship were given to him; all peoples and nations of every language must serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship, one that shall not be destroyed” (Dn 7.14). When the “men” (angels) in Luke’s story then rebuke the disciples for gazing upward, this also serves Luke’s point that Christians are not to look for heavenly visions, but to get to work on earth.
But does this mean that the Ascension is “just a story” and that it “didn’t actually happen”? No, not at all— because first of all, there’s no such thing as “just” a story— “everything is story”, as Muriel Rukeyser said. But more importantly, we need to understand that the exaltation/ascension of the crucified and risen Son of Man is itself what St Paul calls “mystery”— not something unintelligible, nor something that just hasn’t been figured out yet (scientifically), but something of unfathomable depth that can’t be put into a mere definition like 2 + 2 or even e=mc^2. Mystery requires a story; only by a story can we be introduced to it! And the story of the “Son of Man” which the evangelists are telling has a history, which is Daniel 7. Daniel 7 is about the mystery of Israel, of what the Creator God is doing with his world through his people. But this is beyond fathoming; St Paul says, “creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rm 8.21). Mystery is what we call that fathomless reality of God’s interaction with humanity that is to be experienced ever more deeply by those who trust in what God has done in Jesus, by raising him from the dead and exalting him at his right hand. So, what the Gospel writers do, each in his own way, is introduce us to what Jesus himself called the “mystery of God’s regime” (Mk 4.11), or what St Paul called “the mystery of Christ among you, your hope of glory” (Col 1.27). They give us the apostles’ own experience of Jesus in the language of Daniel. This is what we get, as we come to understand each of the Four Gospels in its own specific terms.
In his masterful study of Mark entitled, Jesus’ Defeat of Death: Persuading Mark’s Early Readers (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series; Cambridge, 2003), Peter Bolt noted that Mark’s Transfiguration story has the form of a classical “apotheosis” narrative— the hero takes his best friends to a high mountain, the gods or great heroes of old appear and converse with him, a cloud comes, the cloud departs, and the hero is no longer there, but has been taken to the abode of the gods / heaven and deified, leaving his friends astonished at his disappearance. This story is told over and over in classical literature, and it was even told of some of the Roman emperors when Jesus, Paul, Mark, and Luke were alive. So it was well-known all over the Empire.
Well, the shocking thing about the transfiguration story is that when the cloud departs, “suddenly looking around, [the disciples] saw no one with them any more”— so far, so good, eh? this is just what we expect— “but only Jesus” (Mk 9.8). Uh oh. Jesus is still there. He has refused his apotheosis. And that can mean one thing only: he will go back down the mountain to die, just as he told them in the immediately preceding episode. Jesus means business! He will not escape death, like the heroes in the classical apotheosis stories. And indeed the three disciples and Jesus discuss this very thing on their way back down. In Luke, the “heroes” (Moses and Elijah) discuss his “exodus, which he will accomplish in Jerusalem” (Lk 9.31). Interesting word, “exodus”. . . . .
Matthew and Luke do not deviate from Mark’s outline, but Luke ends his Gospel with a story that “completes” the “apotheosis” formula begun but aborted in the transfiguration narrative. He completes it in terms of Daniel 7, but on the way to doing so— unlike other ancient heroes— Jesus, the Son of Man, is crucified and dies. Luke’s purpose is to show that Jesus was indeed the Son of Man whom Daniel saw— and whom the disciples saw at the transfiguration— and that he was exalted precisely as Daniel had said— but that the way to such exaltation was not Hercules’ fantastic show of strength, nor Caesar’s impressive military and political exploits, but the Way of the Cross. In fact both Mark and Luke puts the Transfiguration (“apotheosis refused”) episode precisely at the beginning of their long treatment of the Way to Jerusalem (which is the way to exaltation)— in Mark, the whole of Section 2.1 (8.22–10.52), and in Luke, the entire middle third of his Gospel (Lk 9.51–19.44). On that journey Jesus explains and demonstrates by many parables and actions what he’s up to. He then arrives in Jerusalem and accomplishes his “exodus”, and is exalted in glory not by escaping death, but by dying.
That the Son of Man is enthroned precisely on the cross is the point affirmed in all three synoptic gospels when the High Priest asks, “You’re the Messiah?”, and Jesus answers, “I am; and you will see ‘the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven’” (Mk 14.62). In fact, just to make sure we don’t miss the point, Matthew and Luke add a couple of words to Jesus’ response: “From now on [ἀπ’ ἄρτι] you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mt 26.64); “from this very moment [ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν— lit., “from this now”] the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of God’s power” (Lk 22.69). What the High Priest is going to see “from this very moment” onward is precisely Jesus enthroned— and he will see him on a cross!
Only after dying on a cross does Jesus, the Son of Man, complete his apotheosis by “ascending to heaven”, the place of God (cf, eg, Ps 115.16), fulfilling Daniel’s prophecy. But as the “men” (angels) of Acts 1.10-11 assure the disciples, precisely because God has exalted him, he now in a position to come again— not to “rapture” us (that idea is less than 200 years old), but to judge and to rule the nations forever. Meanwhile, the disciples are to bring the good news to all those nations that the Father has raised this man from the dead and appointed him as judge, so that they too might be included in his regime and share in the blessings of the messianic Age. That’s the story in Acts— see especially Acts 17.31— and especially in Romans and Galatians.
The discussion on Facebook was in the context of a debate about the value of “apologetics”. I asserted that usual kind of apologetics— the kind where we “prove the existence of God”, or (worse) the “historical truth of Genesis”— is pretty much worthless. Instead, my experience in Africa (and differently, in Utah and San Francisco) taught me that we need to train in this kind of “narrative apologetics”. We have to learn how to tell the story of Jesus, not as we have it in our own heads, but as the Gospel writers told it. But of course that entails learning what the story in the Gospels actually is. It’s not about finding a satisfactory scientific explanation for things like the Ascension; rather it’s about learning to understand the language in which the writer (in this case only Luke) told it, which is provided by Daniel 7. And it’s in each evangelist’s specific story of Jesus that we get the particular experience that he wants us to get.
God is like Jesus, but to understand Jesus, we need to inhabit the story Jesus inhabited, which is that of Daniel’s “Son of Man”.
