Thursday, April 30, 2009
How Jesus became God...
On April Deconick's blog she is in the process writing a series of posts on how Jesus became God, and in light of my recent post on the messianic secret this is some interesting stuff. Wrede's classic argument about the messianic secret in Mark is that Mark used secrecy language in his narrative to reconcile the fact that Jesus was not perceived as the messiah until after his death. Wrede argues that Mark portrayed Jesus and his disciples as being very secretive about Jesus' identity and that it was not to be made known to outsiders until after the resurrection (the key to Wrede's argument is Mk. 9.9 after Peter identifies Jesus as the messiah and Jesus tells his disciples to keep quiet until after the resurrection). I don't necessarily agree with Wrede's entire argument (or that Jesus' identity was the key to the secret in Mark, more on this later), but I think he is right in at least pointing out that there was some motivation to explain why the Historical Jesus wasn't seen as the messiah during his life, thus giving fuel to the inquiry into how Jesus actually became god.
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5 comments:
Hi Nick,
Great post, Nick. The problem I see with Wrede's thesis is the rise of "Christ" being collocated with "Jesus" so quickly after his death, so that it's almost his part of his name, "Jesus Christ." Whatever explanation we have for the way Jesus was viewed prior to his death, it would seem to need to square with the fact that the earliest members of the Jesus movement referred to him as "Jesus Christ" (aka "Jesus the Messiah") from very early on. What gave rise to that collocation is up for discussion, but the fact that it is very early is generally accepted as historical fact.
I've added you to my rss feeder. I'm looking forward to more dialogue!
I don't disagree that it was very early. I think his followers would have been rather eager to make the distinction between Jesus and Christ. I think Wrede's point is that according to Mark, Jesus couldn't even be identified as Jesus Christ until after the resurrection.
I need to read up more on Wrede's argument, but it would be strange that the disciples would need to the resurrection as proof of Jesus' messianism. The reason I say this is that there is no expectation anywhere in all of ancient Judaism (that I'm aware of) that a messiah would die, let alone come back to life before the resurrection at the Final Judgment.
Like, I said, I'll need to go back a read Wrede's arguments again, but that just stands out as strange to me in the Jewish milieu of the messianic conceptions of the Second Temple period.
His argument comes from Mark 9.9, after Jesus' disciples see the transfiguration. He tells them to tell no one what they say until after the "Son of Man has risen from the dead." So he is not arguing the resurrection as proof, but the point where the disciples can claim Jesus as the messiah, thus his argument that Mark was trying to explain why no one saw or claimed Jesus as the messiah until after his resurrection, because Jesus wouldn't allow it.
Thanks for that clarification, Nick. That helps flesh out his assertion quite a bit.
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