Mark's Use of the Messianic Secret

L E W I S S. HAY

VER since it was first recognized as such, the problem of the messianic secret in Mark has continually engaged the attention of New Testament scholars The controversy on the issue has waned from time to time only to be raised again by some new insight into its importance for a general understanding of the Gospel Recently the significance of the issue has been recognized anew because of the bearing it has on the problem of the " J e s u s of history and the Christ of faith" and because it touches the question of the very nature of "Gospel" literature I

The modern discussion of the messianic secret dates from the publication of William Wrede's book, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien (1901) l Mark's lack of a clear and consistent presentation of Jesus as Messiah led Wrede to conclude that Jesus' ministry had not always been viewed as messianic, rather, the messiahship was at first seen as beginning with the Resurrection After Easter the believers pressed the messiahship back upon Jesus' earthly life Since, however, elements of the older non-messianic understanding of Jesus' life persisted alongside the messianized view, Mark sought to resolve the contradiction in these conceptions by inserting the explanation that Jesus had kept his messiahship a secret throughout his ministry Wrede regarded the idea of the secret as pre-Marcan in origin, but the pervasive scheme of secrecy that appears in the Gospel was judged to be the work of the evangelist 2 Most of Wrede's most serious critics opposed his understanding of the messianic secret because they objected to the split that it implied between a non-messianic historical Jesus and the Christ of the Gospel 3 They insisted that Jesus' history had been indeed messianic, and many argued that the secret itself had been a part of that history By the middle of the twentieth
LEWIS S HAY, Professor of Religion at Presbyterian College, Clinton, South Carolina, holds degrees from Presbyterian College, Columbia Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Emory University His article on "The Son of-God Chnstology in Mark" appeared in this Journal in April, 1964
1 William Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Ezangehen Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verstndnis des Markusezangehums, Gottingen Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1901, 3rd ed , 1963 2 Ibid , pp 145 f 3 For an excellent Forschungsbericht on the secret, see J Fbehng Das Messiasgehennnis und die Botschaft des Marcusevangelisten, Berlin Verlag A Toepelmann 1939, pp 1-113 For a more recent report, see G H Boobyer, " T h e Secrecy Motif in Mark s Gospel," New Testament Studies, VI (1960), 225-26 These works make the customary kind of survey unnecessary here

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century, however, the balance in the debate had shifted decidedly in favor of Wrede's basic position, perhaps the strongest support for it coming from the influence of Rudolf Bultmann The form-critical work of Bultmann demon strated repeatedly that the Gospels provide evidence not of a historical Jesus, but only of the Christ of the church's faith, and that one cannot merely assume the two to be identical Furthermore, the words expressing the secret that Wrede's critics supposed to be historical were found by Bultmann to lie in the redactional additions of Mark, not in the tradition received by him 4 Ironically, just as Bultmann was about to establish the traditional view of the messianic secret over against all its foes, the problem was transformed from within by some of Bultmann's successors In 1957 Hans Conzelmann injected a new factor into the debate He asserted that the material received by Mark was already thoroughly messianic It is thus no longer a question of reconciling two traditions of Jesus, one messianic and the other non-messianic, rather, Mark's secret is seen as a theological conception, which aims at bridging the gap between Jesus' actual life and the church's faith Conzelmann finds the messianic secret to be a justification for the fact that the church's faith, which arose only after the Resurrection, can now be proclaimed in the traditions concerning Jesus' life prior to the Resurrection. "Die Geheimnis theorie ist die hermeneutische Voraussetzung der Gattung 'Evangelium ' " 5 More recently, Conzelmann's view of the secret has been approved by James M Robinson and used directly in the interest of the post-Bultmannian approach to the relation between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, e , in the interest of the new quest of the historical Jesus 6 Robinson sees in Paul the use of a bare kerygma which depended on no Jesus-tradition whatever, but proclaimed, on the contrary, only the Cross Over against this kerygmatic approach of Paul there grew up a tradition that had transformed the non-messiamcally conceived Jesus of Nazareth into a oeos , and it was such a tradition, as Conzelmann has said, that was received by Mark. But Mark's familiarity with the theologia crucis of the Pauline kerygma made the Oeos Jesus-tradition seem to him inadequately kerygmatic So, argues Robinson, Mark chose to kerygmatize the tradition by means of the messianic secret Hence, "Mark's problem, resulting in his messianic secret, was not to impose messiahship upon a non-messianic tradition, but to super impose upon a deos Jesus-tradition the paradox of Christian existence, the theology of the cross " 7 The ultimate point Robinson wishes to prove by all this is that whereas it may be possible in certain circumstances (e g , those of Paul) to hold strictly to a kerygmatic approach, in other circumstances
Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, Vol I, trans Kendnck Grobel, New York Charles Scnbner's Sons, 1951, 32 5 Hans Conzelmann, "Gegenwart und Zukunft in der synoptischen Tradition," Zeit schrift fur Theologie und Kirche, L I V (1957), 295 6 James M Robinson, " T h e Recent Debate on the 'New Quest,' " The Journal of Bible and Religion, XXX, 3 (1962), 198-208 7 Ibid , pp 203-4 Cf also U Luz, "Das Geheimnismotiv und die markinische Chnstologie," Zeitschrift fur die Neutestamenthche Wissenschaft, LVI, 1 (1965), 9-30
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(e. g., those of Mark) it is necessary and legitimate to seek out and employ a Jesus-tradition. The Conzelmann-Robinson understanding of the messianic secret, therefore, is being used specifically to give a biblical-theological justification for the new quest of the historical Jesus as over against the exclusively kerygmatic position of Bultmann. A comparison between the solution of Wrede and Bultmann and that proposed by Conzelmann and Robinson reveals two basic similarities as well as two important differences. Common to both views are (a) the assumption that the messianic secret is the creation of Mark; 8 and (b) the assumption that Mark was primarily concerned with what is now known as the problem of the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, the secrecy being the evangelist's way of coping with that issue. It will be our purpose to demonstrate that these assumptions are both false. But the differences in the two solutions are equally significant. They have to do with (a) the nature of the pre-Marcan tradition, and (b) the function of the secret as it was imposed on the traditon by Mark two integrally related points. Whereas Wrede and Bultmann held that the pre-Marcan tradition was so non-messianic that Mark had to compensate for it by means of the secrecy motif, Conzelmann and Robinson now argue that the tradition received by Mark was so messianic even offensively so that he had to ameliorate its effect by creating the notion of the secret. These views are doubly contradictory. The former see the secret as making a non-messianic tradition more messianic; the latter see it as making a thoroughly messianic tradition less messianic. Which is the correct evaluation? With regard to the nature of the tradition, Conzelmann is surely right. If it is true, as Bultmann himself has convinced us, that liberalism's attempt to retrieve a non-messianic Jesus from the Gospels leads to a cul-de-sac, we must then admit that there is no real evidence that the Jesus-tradition ever existed in a non-messianic form. The classical solution to the secret has proved to be inadequate because it assumed the messianizing of the life of Jesus to have been a matter of altering an already existing body of material so that the resulting messianic tradition was opposed to the lingering bits of non-messianic tradition. It is no longer possible, however, to speak of a "non-messianic tradition" at all; for that is actually a contradictio in adjecto. It was not until Jesus was recognized as the Messiah i. e., not until the Resurrection that there was anything to "hand on." Or again, there was no reason to "hand on" anything unless it was "messianic." Thus, all tradition is messianic tradition. With regard to the effect of the secret on the tradition, an evaluation may be achieved simply by removing from the text the several demands for silence (which constitute the secret per se) and then asking what difference this makes in the understanding of Jesus' messiahship. When this has been done the
Although Wrede denies that Mark created the secret, he can finally make no clear distinction between Mark's work and the view of Mark's circle of believers {op. cit., pp. 145, 146).
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answer becomes immediately apparent : The secret neither impairs nor enhances the messianic nature of the tradition. W e must conclude that if Mark intended to use the secret as a means for accomplishing either purpose attributed to him, he was a most ridiculous failure. Of course, once it is clear that no such results are effected by the secret, the ground for ascribing such a purpose to Mark disappears. So far as the messianic secret is involved, therefore, Mark is not concerned with bringing together a historical Jesus and a Christ of faith in either of the ways in which this problem is conceived. And since the secret is the point at issue for the whole Gospel, we must say that the problem that exists for the modern critic did not exist for the evangelist. II To understand Mark's use of the messianic secret we must begin with a careful reappraisal of the relevant texts. It is already a step forward if, as is hoped, we have succeeded in freeing the problem from the burden of another and quite different issue, that of the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, a burden that the secret itself cannot bear. A clearer view of the texts involved may be gained by examining them according to the following classes: (a) the silencing of the demons; (b) commands not to tell of a miracle; and (c) prohibitions concerning Jesus' prediction of his suffering and death. These are the principal sources. In addition, the following have traditionally been associated closely with the secret, or made a part of it: (d) the blindness of the disciples; and (e) the blindness of the people. (a) The silencing of the demons. The relevant texts are Mark 1:23-25 (cf. Luke 4:33-35); Mark 1:34 (cf. Luke 4:41); and Mark 3:11-12. W e must note first that in 1:23-25 we have to do with a specific incident in the synagogue at Capernaum; Mark, however, understands this incident to be typical. In 1:34 and 3:11-12 we have quite clearly cases where the evangelist is generalizing. In the first of these texts, the demon immediately recognizes Jesus, addressing him as "Jesus of Nazareth," "the Holy One of God." Jesus then commands the demon to be silent and come out of the man. Wrede argued that the demon's recognition of Jesus is understandable in the narrative only when it is contrasted with the lack of recognition by others, which is to say, it presupposes the messianic secret.9 But this assertion springs from a complete misunderstanding of the demon's words. In ancient times the calling of the name of a spiritual being deity, angel, demon, or sometimes a human being was understood as a means whereby one could gain control over that being. Thus, when the demon shouts out Jesus' name, especially addressing him by his honorific title, he is doing his utmost to resist the power of Jesus and so to prevent his own expulsion. Having addressed him as "Jesus, Son of the Most High God," the demon shouts, "I adjure you by God, do not torment
9

Wrede, op. cit., p. 32.

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me." Hence, in their original sense the demon's words had nothing to do with the disclosure of Jesus' identity, rather, they constituted a solemn utterance understood to have a magical potency.10 The comment in 1 34, "and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him," is so ambiguous as to add nothing to our understanding of the tradition or of Mark's use of the tradition, except to say that such an incident as the one at Capernaum was often repeated. The remark in 3 12, however, "And he strictly ordered them not to make him known," introduces something entirely new that Mark sees the command to silence as a prohibition against revealing Jesus' identity. That the statement occurs within a generalizing remark of the evangelist, together with the representative function that Mark assigns to the first pencope, implies that Mark view s all such prohibitions in the same way. Hence, Mark does in fact present us with a "messianic secret." But once the original sense of the command to silence has been perceived, it becomes obvious that Mark has completely missed the original sense of the saying.11 Indeed, when there is a crowd present, as is true in the first pencope, Jesus' command could not succeed in keeping the secret once the demon had spoken. Any attempt to silence him for that reason would merely have invoked more attention to what he had said. The conclusion is inescapable that in the original form of the tradition the shouting of Jesus' name and title constituted an attempt on the part of the demon to overcome the power of Jesus and prevent the exorcism. When this original sense of the pencope was lost, the cry of the demon was transformed into an action of clairvoyance whereby the evil spirit recognized and declared Jesus as the Messiah, and so the prohibition of Jesus became an attempt to hide his identity. The very fact that the command to silence is misunderstood and transformed into the messianic secret proves beyond doubt that the evangelist did not invent the saying to suit his own purpose. Rather, he handed on a tradition the original significance of which he did not perceive. (b) Commands not to tell of a miracle The relevant texts are Mark 1 43-44 (cf. Matthew 8 4 and Luke 5 14), Mark 5 43 (cf. Luke 8 56), Mark 7 36, and Mark 7 24.
The meaning of the verbal exchanges m the exorcism stones is correctly seen by O Bauernfeind, Die Worte der Dmonen ? Markusevangehum, Stuttgart Kohlhammer Verlag, 1927, pp 3-73 Others have made similar observations, but except for Bauernfeind no one has seen that this insight raises difficulties for Wrede's theory of the secret See S Vernon McCasland, By the Finger of God, New York The Macmillan Compan), 1951, pp 83-95, Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St Marl, London The Macmillan Company, 1952, 281, and Sherman E Johnson, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St Mark (Harper's New Testament Commentaries), New York Harper and Bros , 1961, 48 Erik Sjoberg, on the other hand, recognizes the validity of Bauernfeind's obser vations, but immediately loses the value of his insight by subordinating it again to the motif of the secret See his Der verborgene Menschensohn in den Evangelien, Lund C S Gleerup, 1955, pp 150-54 11 In speaking of the "original" sense of a tradition we do not mean to imply anything in regard to its historical authenticity W e are concerned here (and so also below) only with the sense in which the tradition is to be understood.
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The last text of the series requires special attention because it is usually understood as a general request for privacy, unrelated to any miracle. Taken by itself it is completely unintelligible "And he entered a house, and would not have anyone know it, yet he could not be hid." W e can only assume that Mark intended its meaning to be revealed by the context. When we see that it serves to introduce the episode of Jesus' healing of the daughter of the Syrophoenecian woman, it becomes clear that the desire for secrecy is a desire that the miracle to follow should not be publicized. That is the function of the topological reference to "a house." 1 2 There is no ground for the assump tion that here Jesus expresses a desire to travel about incognito. The pencope is actually parallel to the ensuing story of the healing of the deaf mute of the Decapohs, a story brought to a close with the charge to keep the incident a secret We must conclude, then, that in spite of the ambiguous wording of the request itself, we are to see it as a command not to tell of a miracle. The texts of this class tell us only that Mark's Jesus did not wish word of his deeds to be spread abroad. The matter of Jesus' identity is not overtly raised This fact suggests that in their original form these pencopes had nothing to do with a hiding of the messiahship Nevertheless, Mark under stands the miracles as acts of the Messiah-Son of God and therefore as signs of the messiahship, regardless of how they may have been interpreted originally13 so that he may now employ the commands to keep the miracles secret as commands to keep the messiahship secret Here again we are faced with a situation where it is impossible for Mark to have created the sayings, on the contrary, he has recorded sayings that had lost their original sense, and he has understood them in a new way. (c) Prohibitions concerning Jesus' predictions of his suffering and death The relevant texts are Mark 8 30-31 (cf Matthew 16 20-21 and Luke 9 21-22), Mark 9 9 (cf. Matthew 17 9 and Luke 9 36), and Mark 9 30-31. With the exception of the New English Bible, the modern texts (both English and Greek) do not give the impression that the first of these commands is governed by the following reference to Jesus' disclosure of his imminent suffering and death. The common editions present it rather as a briefer form of what Matthew expresses more fully and clearly "Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ." Luke's version, on the other hand, specifically relates the prohibition to the following statement about the passion "But he charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, 'The Son of man must suffer many things. . . .' " The nature of Mark's text allows either interpretation It must be remembered that the most ancient manuscripts have no paragraph, sentence, or even word divisions, furthermore, the ambiguous (Aramaic i) at the beginning of the sentences allows the statement in question to be regarded as the final sentence of the
12 Cf G Strecker, "Zur Messiasgeheimnistheone im Markusevangelium," Studia Evangelica, III, ed F L Cross, Berlin Akademie Verlag, 1964, pp 91, 92 13 Contra Albert Schweitzer, The Que^t of the Historical Jesus, trans from the first German edition by William Montgomery, N e w York T h e Macmillan Company, 1961, 347

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paragraph relating to Jesus' identity as the Messiah, or the first sentence of the paragraph relating to the passion prediction. Matthew took it in the former sense, Luke in the latter. That Luke has preserved the original intention of the tradition is proved conclusively by the fact that Mark repeats the identical idea in 9 30-31, and there in an unambiguous manner. W e must insist, therefore, that this text, which has usually been regarded as a specific command of Jesus to keep his identity secret, was originally not so intended. Instead, it means that Jesus did not wish the confidential disclosure of his fate to be recklessly spread about 14 Jesus' charge to the three on their descent from the Mount of Transfiguration (Mark 9 9) is, even in its present form, directly related to a disclosure of the passion by reason of the final clause, "until the Son of man should have risen from the dead." This saying makes sense only if an announcement of his suffering and death had just been made. Luke makes explicit what is implicit in Mark, for he says (931) that in the ecstatic vision on the mountain Moses and Elijah "spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem." Jesus' command that the disciples tell no one what they had seen on the mountain must therefore be understood as determined by his prophetic disclosure of his passion 15 The pencope of Mark 9 30-31 is the clearest of the whole class Here the evangelist states unambiguously that the privacy Jesus seeks is no mysterious desire to travel about incognito, but an opportunity to instruct the disciples privately about the tragic events immediately ahead. Since none of these prohibitions, when rightly understood, refers directly to the hiding of Jesus' identity, it may be questioned whether they properly form part of Mark's messianic secret. Two facts demand an affirmative answer. First, the close conjunction of the prohibition and passion prediction to the confession of Peter seems to indicate that Mark saw the prohibitions as related to the secret of Jesus' identity. Second, and more important, Mark understands the predicted passion precisely as the passion of the Messiah-Son of God, hence, as in the case of the commands to silence respecting the miracles, and regardless of how such pencopes may have been understood earlier, Mark sees the secret of the passion as the same as the secret of the messiahship. Here again we discover that it is impossible for Mark to have invented the sayings, since he has given these words an interpretation they originally did not have. (d) The blindness of the disciples. The relevant texts are Mark 4 1-34 (cf Matthew 13 1-15 and Luke 8 4-15), Mark 6 51-52 (cf Matthew 14 22Cf Ernst Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus (Meyer-Kommentar), Gottingen Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1937, pp 164 f 15 Wrede, of course, makes the command not to speak until after the Resurrection the cornerstone of his argument (op cit, pp 66-9) He is correct in observing that Mark is here telling us that those things which he said of Jesus were, and could only have been, said after the Resurrection But it is another matter entirely to say that Mark was concerned with harmonizing pre-resurrection and post-resurrection views of Jesus, for this idea Mark furnishes no evidence.
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33); Mark 7:14-18 (cf. Matthew 15:10-20); Mark 8:14-21 (a doublet of 6:51-52); Mark 8:31-33 (cf. Matthew 16:20-23); Mark 9:10; Mark 9:32 (cf. Luke 9:45); and Mark 10:26. These eight passages fall easily into three groups: (1) failure to understand a parable or saying (4:1-34; 7 :1418; 10:26); (2) failure to understand the meal in the wilderness (6:51-52; 8:14-21); and (3) failure to understand the passion (8:31-33; 9:10; 9:32). For Mark the parable of the soils (4:1-34) is representative of all Jesus' parabolic teaching, a fact that is evident because of the pericope's representative position in the Gospel, because of the catechetical interpretation given to it, and, above all, because Mark says so in so many words (4:13). What the evangelist does with this parable, therefore, has implications for all the other parables, and even for some of Jesus' teaching that we would not, strictly speaking, consider parabolic. It is well established that the intent to veil the meaning of his teaching, which is here ascribed to Jesus' use of parables, is not historically authentic material, but first arose when the church was opposed by unbelieving Jews. Such unbelief was viewed as a result of God's action in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 6:9-10.16 The allegorical explanation of the parable (4:14-20) represents a still later stage in the development of the tradition when the original sense of the parable was lost and the church supplied another that met the needs of a new situation.17 Since the dullness of the disciples throughout the chapter on parables is of no consequence except as a foil against which the private explanation is introduced, the motif must have appeared in the tradition at the same point at which the explanation was introduced obviously prior to Mark. But for Mark the disciples' dullness and the esoteric meaning of the parables together constitute the basis for the fact that in his day the church was actually the only group that knew the secret meaning i. e., the allegorical meaning of the parable. The case is similar respecting Jesus' saying about what defiles a man (7:1418). The later understanding of the saying is given in 7:19: "Thus he declared all foods clean." The same is true in regard to the third saying (10:26) about the camel's going through the needle's eye, a "hard saying" for which the explication is given in the following verse: "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God." The doublet of Mark 6:51-52 and 8:14-21 is part of a larger doubled tradition that includes the feeding of the multitude, followed by a pericope of a crossing of the sea, on which occasion Jesus rebukes his disciples for their lack of understanding. The doubling of the whole series of events reveals that the elements of the tradition are all prior to Mark. As with the first group of texts, we have to do here with a pericope the original sense of which has
16

Cf. C. H . Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, rev. ed.; New York: Scribner's, 1961,

p. 4. Cf. Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961, pp. 159-61.
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been lost. The meal in the wilderness was no doubt a sacramental meal with an eschatological meaning, but before the tradition reached Mark, besides being doubled, it was transformed by its association with the Elisha story of Second Kings 4 42^-4 into a miracle story about Jesus' multiplication of food, and used over against the Jews' tradition of Moses' miraculous provision of bread (manna) in the wilderness (cf. John 6). The rebuke for the disciples' obtuseness entered the tradition at the stage where this change was made By the time of Mark, however, all this had become obscure, so that apparently he uses the dullness idea in 6 51-52 as a rebuke of the disciples' failure to trust the miracle-working power of Jesus, and in 8 14-21 as a means to introduce an explanation for Jesus' warning about the "leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod" (vs. 15, cf. Matthew 16 12). The third group of texts manifests the disciples' dullness in the face of Jesus' prediction of his passion and Resurrection. As they now stand, the texts differ as to whether the object of misunderstanding is the passion (8 31-3 3 ) or the Resurrection (9 10, 32). Certainly, the passion was originally the point at issue, and this was later changed, in the two places where such a change was possible, to the Resurrection. In the primary stage of the tradition the center of concern indeed, the center of the kerygmatic message was the paradoxical idea of the messiahship of a man who would suffer and die. This immediately became a live issue in the Palestinian milieu where the concept of the Messiah was well known, and it was doubtless a point of contention between Jew and Christian. Moreover, in that context the idea of a resurrection would not have raised any bewilderment. But when the tradition passed over to Hellenistic soil, the idea of the Messiah was not generally known and the notion of a suffering Messiah would have raised no problem Any reference to the Resurrection, however, may well have raised questions (cf Acts 17 32). W e conclude, then, that at the earliest stage of the tradition, the dullness motif centered in the passion, and had a distinct meaning for the church's position over against Judaism. With the spread of the gospel to the Hellenistic world the dullness was shifted over to the Resurrection After this shift had been accomplished, the one remaining text, where the original sense of dullness to the passion persisted because of the context (8 32-33), lost its meaning. Mark therefore uses that text to introduce the sayings of Jesus in regard to the disciples' (no longer Jesus' ) self-denial, cross-bearing, and losing of one's life (8 34-37), a theme which then had immediate relevance for the church of his time 18
18 Eduard Schweizer distorts the idea of the disciples' blindness by covering it over with the motif of the secret of the Messiah's passion a motif that he, to some extent, forces upon Mark He ignores the fact that in 9 10 and 9 32 the disciples' blindness is understood as a blindness to the Resurrection (not the passion), furthermore, he does not see the significance of Mark's transformation of the idea of the blindness to the passion (8 32 ff) into a reference to the disciples' suffering These M eaknesses are, however, only aspects of a larger fault the failure to recognize that Mark finds no meaning for the messianic secret within the history of Jesus, he finds it only in the history of the disciples See Schweizern article, "Mark's Contribution to the Quest of the Historical Jesus," New Testament Studies,

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W e have seen that in each of these groups of pencopes the theme of the disciples' blindness serves as a means for introducing a new interpretation for a pericope that had lost its original meaning The evangelist attempts at each point to employ the idea in a way that will reveal its significance for believers of his own day W e must also see that the texts referring to the lack of understanding of the passion (and Resurrection) overlap those cited above respecting the command to silence on the same matter Obviously, both motifs the dullness of the disciples and Jesus' command to silence would not be needed were Mark seeking through them to harmonize disparate views of Jesus' ministry, on that level, they are even contradictory But precisely because they do not dovetail smoothly we must conclude that Mark did not invent the motifs at all, but was passing on the tradition he had received and was trying to make the most relevant use of it (e) The blindness of the people The relevant texts are Mark 2 7, 2 16, 3 6, etc (all stories of conflict), Mark 4 1-33, Mark 6 1-6, and the entire passion narrative In Mark, the blind and disbelieving are, generally speaking, the people who reject Jesus and eventually bring about his crucifixion The conflict stories, the rejection at Nazareth, and the passion narrative constitute a unity in this respect The blind who appear in the chapter on parables (4 1-33) are, for Mark, part of the same general group, but in that case the motif performs the same function as the dullness of the disciples For the crowd is merely that group excluded from the private explanation, otherwise, as in 12 12, the people understand Jesus clearly yet resent him But just this fact gives us an insight into Mark's understanding of the whole conception For just as the secret revelation to the disciples is connected in Mark's thought with the church's exclusive possession of the secret meaning of the parables in Mark's own day, so the blindness of the people has its meaning in the blindness of the unbelieving world in that same day III By examination of the individual pencopes we have shown (1) that the various traditions associated with the messianic secret antedate Mark, (2) that the presence or absence of these ideas in the text neither impairs nor enhances the picture of Jesus as the Messiah, and (3) that whereas not all the pencopes are explicitly concerned with Jesus' identity as the Messiah, the overall impression remains that Mark has made connections among them in his presentation of the Gospel
X, 4 (1964), 421-32, espec 427-28 Sjoberg makes a similar error The meaning of the secret within the histor) of Jesus that Sjoberg ascribes to Mark is analogous to the apocalyptic notion of a divinely revealed secret, as appears prominently, for example, in the Similitudes of Enoch But such a unity of the secret as an aspect of Jesus life does not appear in Mark In fact, Sjoberg is forced to admit that Mark 10 47 f and 2 10 28 are interruptions of the otherwise uniform Marcan scheme See Sjoberg, op cit, especially pp 124-32, and cf pp 101 f, 105

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Wherein does the unity of the pericopes consist for the evangelist? With the silencing of the demons, the idea of Jesus' identity is overtly expressed. With the secrecy of the miracles, it is still a matter of Jesus' identity, since, certainly for Mark, the miracles are signs of the messiahship. With the secrecy of the foretold passion, the connection with the messianic secret is guaranteed by the fact that in the first instance (8:30) Mark follows the confession of Peter immediately with the command to secrecy about the passion, and also by the fact that Mark views the passion precisely as the passion of the Messiah. And so, the command to silence about the passion becomes for Mark a command to hide the true identity of Jesus. With regard to the blindness of the disciples and the blindness of the people, however, the question of Jesus' identity is not raised; rather, the evangelist sees the texts as giving a basis for understanding the situation of the church in his own day, a situation in which the believers are the exclusive bearers of the inner meaning of the Jesus-tradition. It is important to note, then, that the blindness motif (with respect to the disciples as well as the people) betrays no reference to the messianic secret as such.19 W e have seen that in the earlier stage of the tradition they were definitely unrelated. Nevertheless, in that stage represented by Mark, the connection he makes between the blindness and the secret is precisely what reveals to us Mark's understanding of the latter. The notion of the secret and that of the disciples' blindness converge at one point: the prediction of the passion and the Resurrection. For Mark ascribes both ideas to that prediction. Since these two ideas produce the same result, i. e., a lack of understanding of who Jesus is, Mark cannot have been responsible for bringing them into the tradition. But in view of this common result, it is quite possible for him to have conceived them both in the same way. Since we already know that the blindness motif was employed as a basis for understanding the church's position over against the unbelieving world, it is only logical to assume that Mark understood the messianic secret in the same sense. This means that for Mark the secret provides a ground in the ministry of Jesus for comprehending the fact that the church alone understands the true meaning of Jesus' person which is to say, his history while the outside world sees but does not perceive, hears but does not understand. The secret, therefore, is not at all a device for bringing together two disparate views of Jesus. Mark knows only one Jesus: the Messiah-Son of God. Rather, the secret points to the simple fact that the church alone knows who Jesus really is which is to say, only the church has faith. Although both of their interpretations of the secret have proved erroneous, Wrede and Conzelmann were correct in seeing the motif of the messianic secret as a normative factor in the production of Mark's Gospel.20 Moreover,
19 A similar observation but with different conclusions is made by J. B. Tyson, " T h e Blindness of the Disciples in Mark," Journal of Biblical Literature, LXXX, 3 (1961), 261-68. 20 So also J. Schreiber, "Die Christologie des Markusevangeliums," Zeitschrift fr Theologie und Kirche, LVIII (1961), 154-83.

MARK'S USE OF T H E MESSIANIC SECRET

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Conzelmann and Robinson have rightly perceived that the secret provides the constitutive principle for the rise of the Gattung "Gospel." 21 But the latters' misconception of the secret's meaning for Mark led them to a consequent misconception of the origin of the Gattung. A Gospel did not appear in order to provide a link between opposing views of Jesus ; we have no evidence that the evangelist knew of such a problem. Nevertheless, it is true that the messianic secret reveals the purpose for which a Gospel came into being namely, to tell who Jesus was. To the question of Jesus' identity, Mark answers : Jesus is the Messiah-Son of God, the man who lived and died and rose in just the way this Gospel relates. Mark does not understand the Jesustradition to be one thing and the Christ-kerygma another. Jesus' identity as the Messiah, i. e., Jesus' messianic history, is itself the kerygmatic news Mark wishes to proclaim.

Conzelmann, op. cit., p. 294, Robinson, op. cit., p. 202.

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