The Jewish Annotated New Testament by Amy-Jill Levine Read Free Book Online Page A

reader who understands the irony understands God’s ultimate purpose. It is often assumed, for example, that the Gospel of Mark presented a very human Jesus (called “low Christology”) because it was early and the idea of a fully divine Christ had not yet been articulated. But “high Christologies” of a divine or pre-existent Christ also existed at a very early stage (Phil 2.6–11), and Mark may have deliberately sought to minimize divine or heavenly claims for Jesus (16.5n.). At times Jesus is even said to be lacking in power (6.5) or faith (14.36; 15.34), but the audience already knows the ending of the story: Jesus is the true Messiah and will be resurrected and vindicated by God. Thus there is an ironic distance between the expectation of a triumphant Jesus and the depiction of a struggling messiah. It is probably for this reason that a triumphant conclusion to the story is not included (16.8)—a final irony.
    One of the most important examples of irony in Mark is the messianic secret: at a number of points Jesus commands people not to tell anyone about what they have witnessed. Indeed, in some Jewish texts of this period it is stated that the identity of the messiah, or the time of his coming, is hidden until the very end (2 Esd [ 4 Ezra ] 7.28; 1 En . 62.7; b. Pesah . 54b; b. Sanh . 97a). But in 1901, the German scholar William Wrede attributed the reason for these commands of secrecy not to Jesus but to Mark’s own attempt to make sense of why more people did not embrace Jesus as messiah during his lifetime. Despite the power of the messianic secret theme (taken up also by Matthew and Luke, but almost totally lacking in John), it is still not clear what it would have communicated to the first audience. The messianic secret could be a narrative technique, the use of irony to increase awe of Jesus (that is, the audience knows the true meaning of the secret). It may suggest to the audience that a “low profile” is the best response to persecution. It may also reflect Mark’s tendency to contrast expectations of Jesus’ triumph with the difficulties Jesus actually encounters, including the crucifixion. Mark thus carries the messianic secret through to the end by minimizing the apocalyptic expectations of vindication (ch 13) and the triumphal appearance of a risen Christ (ch 16). The Gospel communicates the idea that Jesus’ messianic identity ironically includes suffering and death, and it cannot be fully understood until after his resurrection; thus the Gospel’s audience fully understands Jesus’ significance, even though the disciples are depicted as not completely understanding it during his lifetime. Mark depicts a more human and vulnerable Jesus than is encountered in the Gospel of John, for example.
    The deceptive simplicity of Mark came to be fully appreciated in the late twentieth century, as literary scholars and theologians alike took note of its arresting narrative realism: whether the stories themselves actually happened, they are told realistically and with evocative details of everyday life. Mark, more than the other Gospels, never loses sight of the real lives of ordinary people—the economic and the social, the earthly over the cosmic, the present over the future.
    Lawrence M. Wills

4 Again he began to teach beside the sea. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the sea and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. 2 He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3 “Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6 And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8 Other seed