by Reza Aslan
CHAPTER ELEVEN: WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?
On the expectation among the Jews in first-century Palestine for Elijah’s return and the inauguration of the messianic age, see John J. Collins, Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1997). On Jesus’s deliberate imitation of Elijah, see John Meier, Marginal Jew, vol. 3, 622–26.
Unlike Matthew and Luke, who report a change in the physical appearance of Jesus in the transfiguration (Matthew 17:2; Luke 9:29), Mark claims that Jesus was transfigured in a way that only affected his clothes (9:3). The parallels to Exodus in the transfiguration account are clear: Moses takes Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu to Mount Sinai, where he is engulfed by a cloud and given the Law and the design for building God’s tabernacle. Like Jesus, Moses is transformed on the mountain in the presence of God. But there is a great difference between the two stories. Moses received the Law from God himself, whereas Jesus only sees Moses and Elijah while physically receiving nothing. The difference between the two stories serves to highlight Jesus’s superiority over Moses. Moses is transformed because of his confrontation with God’s glory, but Jesus is transformed by his own glory. The point is driven home for Morton Smith by the fact that Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, appear as Jesus’s subordinates. See “The Origin and History of the Transfiguration Story,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36 (1980): 42. Elijah, too, went up a mountain and experienced the spirit of God passing over him. “The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:11–12). It should be noted that Smith thinks the transfiguration story to be “from the world of magic.” His thesis deals with his concept of Jesus as a magician “like other magicians.” Smith, therefore, believes the transfiguration to be some hypnotically induced mystical event that required silence; consequently, the spell was broken when Peter spoke. Mark’s attempt to use this story as a confirmation of Jesus’s messiahship is, for Smith, an error on the part of the evangelist. All of this demonstrates Mark’s notion that Jesus surpasses both characters in glory. This is of course not a new notion in New Testament Christology. Paul explicitly states Jesus’s superiority over Moses (Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 10:2), as does the writer of Hebrews (3:1–6). In other words, Mark is simply stating a familiar belief of the early Church that Jesus is the new Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18:15. See also Morna D. Hooker, “ ‘What Doest Thou Here, Elijah?’ A Look at St. Mark’s Account of the Transfiguration,” The Glory of Christ in the New Testament, ed. L. D. Hurst et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 59–70. Hooker sees great significance in the fact that Mark’s gospel presents Elijah first, stating that Moses was with him.
The term “messianic secret” is a translation of the German word Messiasgeheimnis and is derived from William Wrede’s classic study, The Messianic Secret, trans. J.C.G. Greig (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Theories about the messianic secret can be divided into two schools of thought: those who believe the secret can be derived from the historical Jesus and those who consider it a creation of either the evangelist or the early Markan community. Wrede argued that the messianic secret is a product of the Markan community and a redaction element of the gospel itself. He claimed that the messianic secret stems from an attempt by Mark to reconcile a primitive Christian belief in firstcentury Jerusalem that regarded Jesus as becoming messiah only after the resurrection, with the view that Jesus was messiah throughout his life and ministry. The problem with Wrede’s theory is that there is nothing in Mark 16:1–8 (the original ending of the gospel of Mark) to suggest a transformation in the identity of Jesus other than his inexplicable disappearance from the tomb. In any case, it is difficult to explain how the resurrection, an idea that was alien to messianic expectations in first-century Palestine, could have raised the belief that Jesus was messiah. The point of Wrede’s study was to use the “messianic secret” to show that, in his words, “Jesus actually did not give himself out as messiah” in his lifetime, an intriguing and probably correct hypothesis. Those who disagree with Wrede and argue that the messianic secret can actually be traced to the historical Jesus include Oscar Cullman, Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963), 111–36, and James D. G. Dunn, “The Messianic Secret in Mark,” The Messianic Secret, ed. Christopher Tuckett (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 116–36. For more general information about the messianic secret, see James L. Blevins, The Messianic Secret in Markan Research, 1901–1976 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981), and Heikki Raisanen, The “Messianic Secret” in Mark (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990). Raisanen correctly argues that many of the theories offered for the “messianic secret” generally presume the notion that “the theological viewpoint of Mark’s gospel is based on a single secrecy theology.” He believes, and most contemporary scholars agree, that the “messianic secret” can be understood only when the secrecy concept is “broken down … into parts which are only relatively loosely connected with each other”; Raisanen, Messianic Secret, 242–43.
For a brief précis on the many messianic paradigms that existed in firstcentury Palestine, see Craig Evans, “From Anointed Prophet to Anointed King: Probing Aspects of Jesus’ Self-Understanding,” Jesus and His Contemporaries, 437–56.
Although many contemporary scholars would agree with me that the use of the title Son of Man can be traced to the historical Jesus, there remains a great deal of debate over how many, and which, of the Son of Man sayings are authentic. Mark indicates three primary functions of Jesus’s interpretation of this obscure title. First, it is used in the descriptions of a future figure that comes in judgment (Mark 8:38, 13:26, 14:62). Second, it is used when speaking of Jesus’s expected suffering and death (Mark 8:31, 9:12, 10:33). And finally, there are a number of passages in which the Son of Man is presented as an earthly ruler with the authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:10, 2:28). Of these three, perhaps the second is most influential in Mark. Some scholars, including Hermann Samuel Reimarus, The Goal of Jesus and His Disciples (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1970), accept the historicity only of the noneschatological, so-called lowly sayings. Others, including Barnabas Lindars, Jesus Son of Man (London: SPCK Publishing, 1983), accept as authentic only those among the “sayings traditions” (Q and Mark) that reproduce the underlying bar enasha idiom (there are nine of them) as a mode of self-reference. Still others believe only the apocalyptic sayings to be authentic: “The authentic passages are those in which the expression is used in that apocalyptic sense which goes back to Daniel,” writes Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 283. And of course there are those scholars who reject nearly all of the Son of Man sayings as inauthentic. Indeed, that was more or less the conclusion of the famed “Jesus Seminar” conducted by Robert W. Funk and Roy W. Hoover, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Polebridge Press, 1993). A comprehensive analysis of the centuries-long debate about the Son of Man is provided by Delbert Burkett in his indispensable monograph The Son of Man Debate (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). An interesting comment by Burkett is that the Gnostics apparently understood “son” literally, believing that Jesus was stating his filial relation to the gnostic “aeon” or god Anthropos, or “Man.”
Geza Vermes demonstrates that bar enasha is never a title in any Aramaic sources; “The Son of Man Debate,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 1 (1978): 19–32. It should be mentioned that Vermes is among a handful of scholars who believe that “Son of Man” in its Aramaic expression is just a circumlocution for “I”—an indirect and deferential way to refer to oneself, as in when Jesus says, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nes
ts but the Son of Man has [that is, I have] no place to lay his [my] head” (Matthew 8:20 | Luke 9:58). See also P. Maurice Casey, Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7 (London: SPCK Publishing, 1979). But as Burkett notes, the basic problem with the circumlocution theory is that “the idiom requires a demonstrative pronoun (‘this man’) which the gospel expression lacks.” The Son of Man Debate, 96. Others take the opposite tack, claiming that “Son of Man” does not refer to Jesus at all but to some other figure, someone Jesus expected would follow him. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and the holy angels with him, he shall sit upon the throne of his glory” (Matthew 25:31). Prominent proponents of the theory that Jesus was referring to someone else as the Son of Man include Julius Wellhausen and Rudolf Bultmann. However, that, too, is unlikely; the context of most of Jesus’s Son of Man sayings makes it clear that he is speaking about himself, as when he compares himself to John the Baptist: “John came neither eating nor drinking and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man [i.e., I] came eating and drinking and they say ‘Look! A glutton and drunk’ ” (Matthew 11:18–19 | Luke 7:33–34). Among those who believe that “the Son of Man” is an Aramaic idiomatic expression meaning either “a man” in general, or more specifically “a man like me,” are Barnabas Lindars, Jesus Son of Man, and Reginald Fuller, “The Son of Man: A Reconsideration,” The Living Texts: Essays in Honor of Ernest W. Saunders, ed. Dennis E. Groh and Robert Jewett (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 207–17. These scholars note that God addresses the prophet Ezekiel as ben adam, meaning a human being but perhaps implying an ideal human. For the lack of unified conception among the Jews of the Son of Man, see Norman Perrin, “Son of Man,” Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1976), 833–36, and Adela Yarbro Collins, “The Influence of Daniel on the New Testament,” Daniel, ed. John J. Collins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 90–123.
Although the “one like a son of man” is never identified as the messiah, it seems that the Jewish scholars and rabbis of the first century understood him as such. Whether Jesus also understood Daniel’s “one like a son of man” to be a messianic figure is unclear. Not all scholars believe that Daniel is referring to a distinct personality or a specific individual when he uses the phrase “son of man.” He may be using the term as a symbol for Israel as victorious over its enemies. The same is true of Ezekiel, where “son of man” may be not a distinct individual named Ezekiel but a symbolic representative of the ideal man. In fact, Maurice Casey thinks even the “son of man” in Enoch is not a distinct individual but simply a generic “man”; see “The Use of the Term ‘Son of Man’ in the Similitudes of Enoch,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 7.1 (1976): 11–29. I do not disagree with this position, but I do think there is a significant difference between the way the generic term is used in, say, Jeremiah 51:43—“Her cities have become an object of horror, and a land of drought and a desert, a land in which no man lives, nor any son of man [ben adam] passes”—and the way it is used in Daniel 7:13 to refer to a singular figure.
Both Enoch and 4 Ezra explicitly identify the son of man figure with the messiah, but in 4 Ezra he is also called “my son” by God: “For my son the messiah shall be revealed with those who are with him, and those who remain shall rejoice four hundred years. And after these years my son the Messiah shall die, and all who draw human breath” (4 Ezra 7:28–29). There’s no question that 4 Ezra was written at the end of the first century, or perhaps the beginning of the second century C.E. However there has long been a debate over the dating of the Similitudes. Because no copies of the Similitudes were found among the many copies of Enoch found at Qumran, most scholars are convinced that it was not written until well after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. See Matthew Black, The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch: A New English Edition with Commentary and Textual Notes (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1985). See also David Suter, “Weighed in the Balance: The Similitudes of Enoch in Recent Discussion,” Religious Studies Review 7 (1981): 217–21, and J. C. Hindly, “Towards a Date for the Similitudes of Enoch: A Historical Approach,” New Testament Studies 14 (1967–68): 551–65. Hindly offers a date between 115 and 135 C.E. for the Similitudes, which is a bit late, in my opinion. For better or worse, the best date we can give for the Similitudes is sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., but before the composition of the gospel of Matthew in around 90 C.E.
On the parallels between the Enoch Son of Man and the gospel Son of Man in the material that is unique to Matthew, see Burkett, The Son of Man Debate, 78; see also John J. Collins, “The Heavenly Representative: The ‘Son of Man’ in the Similitudes of Enoch,” in Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism: Profiles and Paradigms, ed. John J. Collins and George Nickelsburg (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1980), 111–33. On the Son of Man as a preexistent heavenly being in the fourth gospel, see Delbert Burkett, The Son of the Man in the Gospel of John (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) and R. G. Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-Existence, Wisdom, and the Son of Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). It should be noted that neither in the Similitudes nor in 4 Ezra is “Son of Man” used as a title, certainly not the way Jesus uses it.
Jesus standing before Caiaphas quotes not only Daniel 7:13 but also Psalms 110:1 (“The Lord says to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool’ ”). The integration of Daniel 7:13 and Psalms 110:1 in Jesus’s reply to the high priest may at first seem somewhat disjointed. But according to T. F. Glasson, Jesus is making a natural connection. Glasson notes that in Daniel, the coming of the Son of Man “with the clouds of heaven” symbolizes the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Thus, once Jesus is exalted to the right hand of God, the kingdom he preached in 1:15 will emerge as the “new community of the saints.” According to Glasson, the reference to the Psalms demonstrates Jesus’s personal exaltation, while the reference to Daniel indicates the inauguration of the kingdom on earth—an event that must begin with his death and resurrection. This idea is quite in league with Jesus’s threefold interpretation of the Son of Man. In other words, Glasson believes that this is the moment when the two titles, messiah and Son of Man, come together for Jesus. See Thomas Francis Glasson, “Reply to Caiaphas (Mark 14:62),” New Testament Studies 7 (1960): 88–93. Mary Ann L. Beavis notes the parallels between the story of Jesus before Caiaphas and the previous confession made by Peter. Both scenes begin with a question of Jesus’s identity (8:27, 14:60), and both end with a Son of Man discourse. Furthermore, in both instances Jesus’s reinterpretation of the messianic title is met with a resounding condemnation (8:32–33, 14:63–65); see Mary Ann L. Beavis, “The Trial Before the Sanhedrin (Mark 14:53–65): Reader Response and Greco-Roman Readers,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 49 (1987): 581–96.
CHAPTER TWELVE: NO KING BUT CAESAR
As tempting as it may be to dismiss the betrayal of Judas Iscariot as nothing more than a narrative embellishment, the fact is that it is a detail attested to by all four gospel writers, though each presents a different reasoning for his betrayal.
Mark and Matthew make it clear that “the crowd” had been expressly sent by the Sanhedrin, and Luke adds the presence of the Temple captains to the arresting party to make the point clearer. Only the gospel of John indicates the presence of Roman troops in the arresting party. That is highly unlikely, as no Roman soldier would seize a criminal and deliver him to the Sanhedrin unless he was ordered to do so by his prefect, and there is no reason to think that Pilate became involved in Jesus’s situation until Jesus was brought before him. Although Mark seems to suggest that the one wielding the sword was not a disciple but “a certain one of those standing by” (Mark 14:47), the rest of the gospels make it clear that this was indeed a disciple who cut off the servant’s ear. In fact, John identifies the sword-wielding disciple as Simon Peter (John 18:8–11). Luke’s discomfort with a Jesus who seems to resist arrest is ameliorated by his insistence that Jesus stopped the melee and healed t
he poor servant’s ear before allowing himself to be taken away (Luke 22:49–53). That said, it is Luke who specifically claims that the disciples were commanded by Jesus to bring two swords to Gethsemane (Luke 22:35–38).
On Eusebius, see Pamphili Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History III.3, quoted in George R. Edwards, Jesus and the Politics of Violence (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 31. Eusebius’s account has been challenged by some contemporary scholars including L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2004), 230.
Raymond Brown outlines the argument for a set of pregospel passion narratives in his encyclopedic two-volume work The Death of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 53–93. Contra Brown is the so-called Perrin School, which rejects the notion of a pre-Markan passion narrative and claims that the narrative of the trial and crucifixion was shaped by Mark and adapted by all the canonized gospels, including John. See The Passion in Mark: Studies on Mark 14-16, ed. W. H. Kelber (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976).