28.Michael Edward Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra, ed. Frank Moore Cross, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 381–82.
29.Ibid., 383.
30.Ibid., 387.
31.I offer a different way of approaching the Son of Man, an approach that doesn’t so much resolve the famous Son of Man debate but makes an end run around it by asking different questions. Joel Marcus has made this same point in quite another language when he wrote, “This conclusion [that the “Son of Man” in the Similitudes is pre-Christian] is supported by the way in which Jesus, in the Gospels, generally treats the Son of Man as a known quantity, never bothering to explain the term, and the way in which certain of this figure’s characteristics, such as his identity with the Messiah or his prerogrative of judging, are taken for granted. With apologies to Voltaire, we may say that if the Enochic Son of Man had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent him to explain the Son of Man sayings in the Gospels.” Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 530.
32.Carsten Colpe, “Ho Huios Tou Anthrōpou,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 8:420.
3. Jesus Kept Kosher
1.This is partly dependent on the very common view that Mark himself, the author of the Gospel of Mark, was a believer from the Gentiles for whom the practices of eating kosher were entirely foreign and off-putting. The consequence of these two positions when put together is that at its earliest moment, the Jesus movement was characterized by a total shift in ideas about how to serve God, becoming entirely other to Judaism. The other evangelists, especially Matthew, who openly portray a Jesus who is much more friendly toward the Torah as practice, are understood as the product of communities referred to by names such as Jewish-Christian or Judaizing communities, themselves terms of art in an ancient Christian discourse about heresy.
2.Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, ed. Harold W. Attridge, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 356. It should be emphasized that Collins does not consider this necessarily the meaning of Jesus’ original pronouncement at v. 15, but she does so read v. 19, which is a gloss by the evangelist Mark, thus rendering Mark (like Paul) the beginning of the end of the Law for Christians.
3.Robert A. Guelich, Mark 1–8:26, Word Biblical Commentary 34A; Mark; I–VIII (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1989), 380.
4.Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 450. It should be noted clearly, lest there be anything misleading here, that Marcus does consider Mark a “Jewish Christian,” albeit a much more radical one than Matthew (more on this below in this chapter).
5.See too for instance, “Mark, our earliest gospel, offers a more reliable standard [than Paul]; and it says that Jesus abrogated laws of food and purity and violated the Sabbath”; Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993, 2004). This may be “a known fact” for Gundry; hardly for me.
6.See different translation here offered below.
7.Substituting the literal “curses” for the NRSV’s “speaks evil of.” I may be able to suggest a solution to a hermeneutic problem here. Marcus writes: “But, wrong as it may be to withhold material support from one’s parents, how is it equivalent to cursing them?” (Marcus, Mark 1–8, 444) If we think of the Hebrew, however, this is perhaps less of a problem. In Hebrew the verb for “to honor” is literally to “make heavy,” perhaps something like “to treat with gravitas.” On the other hand, the word for “curse” is to “make light.” So in Exodus 20, the verse reads, literally, “Make heavy your father and your mother,” while in 21:17 it reads, “All who make light their father and mother shall surely die.” If to make heavy (to honor) is to provide with material support, then to make light (to curse) is the opposite, so not feeding one’s parents is tantamount to cursing them. If this interpretation is appealing, then it would be evidence for at least a stratum in Mark that was much closer to the veritas Hebraicas.
8.Following Martin Goodman, who writes, “Jesus (or Matthew) was attacking Pharisees for their eagerness in trying to persuade other Jews to follow Pharisaic halakah”; Martin Goodman, Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 70. This is surely not the only possible interpretation, but it is the one that makes the most sense to me.
9.To be sure, the confusion has been partly engendered by the biblical usage itself. There is one area in which the terminology is muddled. Of the animals that we may eat and may not eat, the Torah uses the terms “pure” and “impure.” Nonetheless, the distinction between the two systems—what makes foods kosher or not and what makes kosher foods impure or not—remains quite clear despite this terminological glitch. In the later tradition, only the word “kosher” is used for the first, while “pure” means only undefiled.
10.These words usually translated “and all the Jews” make no sense according to that usual translation, as they almost directly contradict the point of the whole pericope. Why attack the Pharisees alone if their practice is simply the practice of all the Jews? For “Judeans” as one legitimate translation of Ioudaioi, if not the only one always and everywhere, see most recently Steve Mason, “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 38, nos. 4–5 (2007): 457–512. It should be noted also that the translation “Judaeans” rather than “Jews” obviates comments that suggest that Mark by writing this is indicating a position outside of Jewry. Cf. Guelich, Mark 1–8: 26, 364.
11.Marcus, Mark 1–8, 439, but on 441 he is still doubtful. I, of course, agree with the translation, disagree with the doubt.
12.See also Stephen M. Reynolds, “ (Mark 7:3) as ‘Cupped Hand,’” Journal of Biblical Literature 85, no. 1 (March 1966): 87–88, supported by the late great talmudic scholar Saul Lieberman, my teacher (in a letter to Reynolds): “The custom of shaping the hands like cups when they were washed for ritual purposes from a vessel was most probably very old. The opening of the [vessel] was usually not a large one; water in Palestine was valuable. When one forms the hand like a loose fist the narrow stream of water covers at once the entire outer and inner surfaces of the hand. Water is saved in this way. For purposes of cleanliness it was sufficient to pour some water on part of the hand, which could subsequently be spread all over the hand by rubbing both hands. Pouring water on ‘cupped hands’ immediately indicated ritual washing in preparation for a meal.” Unfortunately, this highly attractive and significant interpretation had been almost totally ignored until just the last two decades or so, despite its being obviously correct in my opinion. Cf., for instance, “Standaert (Marc, 472–73) also repeats Hengel’s argument from an earlier work (‘Mk 7,3 Πυγμῇ: die Geschichte einer exegetische Aporie und der Versuch ihrer Losung,’ ZNW 60 [1969] 182–98) that πυγμῇ in Mark 7:3 is a Latinism, but the derivation and meaning of πυγμῇ are so obscure that no firm conclusions can be drawn about it (cf. Guelich, Mark 1–8:26, 364–65), 16”; Joel Marcus, “The Jewish War and the Sitz Im Leben of Mark,” Journal of Biblical Literature 111, no. 3 (1992): 444n15. Many scholars, especially Europeans, seem still to hold that Mark must be a Gentile, in part owing to his alleged ignorance of Jewish practice. I hope that this book will at least unsettle this view some.
13.The hermeneutic logic here is similar to that of Marcus in re Mark 2:23 (Marcus, Mark 1–8, 239) where the emphasis on “making a way” is taken as an allusion to the way that Jesus is making in the wilderness (the field). I am suggesting that Mark’s emphasis on “with a fist,” which is in itself quite realistic but seemingly trivial, has a similar symbolic overtone.
14.Yair Furstenberg, “Defilement Penetrating the Body: A New Understanding of Contamination in Mark 7.15,”
New Testament Studies 54 (2008): 178.
15.Tomson, 81, has brought this text to bear on Mark 7. It should be further pointed out, according to the Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 14a, that Rabbi Eliezer holds an even stricter standard than this; it is still within the category of rabbinic (Pharisaic) innovation or the “traditions of the Elders,” just as Jesus dubs it.
16.Furstenberg, “Defilement,” 200.
17.Collins, Mark: A Commentary, 350. Given, however, that she so precisely articulates this, I cannot understand how on the next page she approves of Claude Montefiore’s statement that “the argument in vv. 6–8 is not compelling.” It is as compelling as can be as described above: “Why, Pharisees, are you setting aside the commandments of God in favor of the commandments of humans—handwashings, vows—as the Prophet prophesied?”
18.Pace Collins, Mark: A Commentary, 356.
19.Marcus, Mark 1–8, 444.
20.In chapter 2, there is also a passage that is, I think, illuminated by such a perspective. In vv. 18–22, some people wonder why other pietists (the disciples of John and the Pharisees) engage in fasting practices, while the disciples of Jesus do not. Jesus answers that they may not fast in the presence of the bridegroom, which is clearly a halakhic statement interpreted spiritually to refer to the holy, divine Bridegroom of Israel. As Yarbro Collins makes clear, this is another indirect claim on Jesus’ part to be divine (Mark: A Commentary, 199).
21.“It seems that this is not the only occasion on which Jesus defends a conservative halakhic stand. In the woe-sayings in Matt 23, Jesus twice rails against Pharisaic law and offers an alternative halakhic opinion. In both matters, that of oaths (vv. 16–22) and the subject of purifying vessels (vv. 25–26), Jesus objects to the leniency of the Pharisees and offers a stricter ruling. This point is stressed by K.C.G. Newport, The Sources and Sitz im Leben of Matthew 23 (JSNTSup 117; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 137–45” (Furstenberg, “Defilement,” 178).
22.Albert I. Baumgarten, “The Pharisaic Paradosis,” Harvard Theological Review 80 (1987): 63–77.
23.This is close to the view of Seán Freyne, Galilee, from Alexander the Great to Hadrian, 323 B.C.E. to 135 C.E.: A Study of Second Temple Judaism, University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity, 5 (Wilmington, DE: M. Glazier, 1980), 316–18, 322.
24.Seeing Mark this way thoroughly reorients our understanding of its relation to the Gospel of Matthew as well. Let’s look at the crucial parallel text from Matthew 15:
15But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” 16Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? 18But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. 19For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. 20These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”
The Matthean text makes explicit that which might be ambiguous in Mark as we’ve read it. From beginning to end of the passage, it’s not about anything but washing of the hands. There is not the slightest suggestion in Matthew that Jesus abrogated the laws of permitted and forbidden foods: Matthew’s Jesus certainly kept kosher, a fact that no one can deny. But is Matthew a “Judaizing” revision of Mark, as many commentators have it, one who backed off from the radical implications of Mark’s Jesus? Is it genuine, “original” Christian orthodoxy to hold that the kosher laws written in Moses’ Torah mean nothing (and by implication all of the other so-called ritual laws of the Torah), with Matthew a temporizing voice that actually serves to neutralize the authentic Christian message on the Law as represented by Mark and Paul, namely, that Christianity is a whole new religion, an entirely different way of serving God from the way that the Israelites and Jews have understood it? On my reading, it is not. Whether Mark comes first (as I believe) or Matthew comes first (as a few scholars still hold), either way Jesus kept kosher and thus was kept kosher. Torahabiding Jesus folks are not aberrant; they simply are the earliest Church.
25.Weston La Barre, The Ghost Dance: Origins of Religion (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), 254.
4. The Suffering Christ as a Midrash on Daniel
1.Joseph Klausner, “The Jewish and Christian Messiah,” in The Messianic Idea in Israel, from Its Beginning to the Completion of the Mishnah, trans. W.F. Stinespring (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 519–31.
2.Ibid., 526.
3.Ibid., 526–27.
4.See Martin Hengel, “The Effective History of Isaiah 53 in the Pre-Christian Period,” in The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, ed. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, trans. Daniel P. Bailey (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 137–45, for good arguments to this effect. Hengel concludes, “The expectation of an eschatological suffering savior figure connected with Isaiah 53 cannot therefore be proven to exist with absolute certainty and in a clearly outlined form in pre-Christian Judaism. Nevertheless, a lot of indices that must be taken seriously in texts of very different provenance suggest that these types of expectations could also have existed at the margins, next to many others. This would then explain how a suffering or dying Messiah surfaces in various forms with the Tannaim of the second century C.E., and why Isaiah 53 is clearly interpreted messianically in the Targum and rabbinic texts” (140). While there are some points in Hengel’s statement that require revision, the Targum is more a counterexample than a supporting text, and for the most part he is spot on.
5.Hengel, “Effective History,” 133–37, even makes a case that the Septuagint (Jewish Greek translation) to Isaiah (second century B.C.) may already have read the Isaiah passage as referring to the Messiah.
6.While it is universally acknowledged that vv. 14:61–64 are an unambiguous allusion to Daniel 7:13, scholars who cannot abide the idea that Jesus himself claimed messianic status or to be the Son of Man have either denied that these could have been Jesus’ true words (Lindars) or understood them as Jesus speaking about someone else (Bultmann) (and see 13:25 as well). The clear sense of these words, however, as written by Mark in his Gospel is that here Jesus speaks of himself.
7.See the absolutely convincing Joel Marcus, “Mark 14:61: ‘Are You the Messiah-Son-of-God?’” Novum Testamentum 31, no. 2 (April 1989): 139. Incidentally, the comparison between this passage and 8:31 demonstrates that Jesus answers questions about his Messiahship by using the term “Son of Man,” which is accordingly equivalent to Messiah in extension. He uses the term “Son of Man” in these instances because he is crucially calling up in both cases the Danielic context. This obviates the problem seen by some commentators to the effect that Jesus does not answer Peter affirmatively when Peter confesses him the Messiah. See Morna Hooker, The Son of Man in Mark: A Study of the Background of the Term “Son of Man” and Its Use in St Mark’s Gospel (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1967), 104–5. Hooker herself suggests a similar interpretation to mine on 112; see 126 as well.
8.See Hooker, Son of Man in Mark, 118–19, for a related reconstruction, and especially 120–22.
9.C.H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures: The Sub-Structure of New Testament Theology (London: Nisbet, 1952), 116–19. Dodd ascribed the transfer of this theme from the People of the Holy Ones of God (a corporate entity) to Jesus (an individual) on the basis of an alleged “Christian exegetical tradition which thinks of Jesus as the inclusive representative of the People of God.” The “Christian” exegetical tradition has its point of origin in Daniel 7, which was then naturally joined in the manner of midrash with the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 and to the Psalms of the Righteous Sufferer, for which there was apparently also a tradition of messianic reading. I think, however, that this is not a special Christian exegetical tradition but one that is plausible enough to have been the extant Jewish tradition even aside from Jesus.
10.I do not know early evidence outside of the Gospels for this particular way o
f reading the Daniel material as applying to a suffering Messiah, still less to a dying and rising one, and I have no reason to think that it did not fall into place in this particular Jewish Messianic movement. (As we shall see below, however, the reading of this as referring to the Messiah is not unknown to later rabbinic Judaism, not at all.) It should be noted that also in Fourth Ezra, discussed above in chapter 2, an enemy arises to the Messiah, an enemy eventually defeated by him forever and ever.
11.This punctuation is Wellhausen’s, as reported in Joel Marcus, The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 99.
12.Ibid., 97.
13.Ibid., 100.
14.Marcus’s great insight was that the Gospel text thematizes the contradiction. He somewhat goes off track in the beginning of his discussion by citing (in the way of Dahl) the tannaitic rule of “two verses that contradict each other”; the correct comparison is to the midrashic form of the Mekhilta, which is given later. This initial confusion has some consequences, for which see below.
15.From here on, I will be following Marcus quite closely. Marcus, Way of the Lord, 106.
16.It should be noted that in some respects the Matthean parallel goes in quite a different direction from Mark, especially by leaving out the crucial “It is written” statements in both instances. There is no midrash in Matthew here at all. For other entailed differences in this passage between the second and the first Gospels, see W.D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 712. If Marcus and I are right, then Mark is much closer to a Jewish hermeneutical form than Matthew at this point.
The Jewish Gospels Page 16