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Messianic Secret

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The Messianic Secret is a phrase that refers to Jesus having commanded his followers not to reveal to others that he is the Messiah in certain passages of the New Testament, notably in the Gospel of Mark. New Testament scholars, starting notably with William Wrede,[1] have made various attempts to explain why this should be so.[2][3]

History

William Wrede, in his groundbreaking 1901 study, proposed that the secrecy theme was not original to Jesus's ministry, but rather it was a theological addition added by the writer of the Gospel of Mark. Wrede's argument, still influential today in religious studies, states that the Gospel of Mark had to come up with a convincing explanation for why Jesus did not seem like a messiah during the course of his life. By emphasizing secrecy in his gospel, Mark could simultaneously claim that Jesus was the messiah and that nobody knew it until after he had died, and that his messiahship was revealed only through his resurrection.[1]

Conservative interpreters of Mark's gospel, exemplified by William Sanday[4] and Albert Schweitzer[5], reacted negatively to such a suggestion. They believed instead that Mark's portrayal of Jesus was largely historical, as 19th century scholarship had previously held. Scholarship was strictly divided for a time, with neither side considering the other's views at all valid.[2] Adolf Jülicher[6] and Johannes Weiss[7] were instrumental in forging a consensus position. These scholars helped to bridge this divide by suggesting that while many of Wrede's suggestions were correct, other aspects of the Messianic Secret may have been historical. Jülicher, for example, called Mark's portrayal of Jesus as a taciturn Messiah "half-historical", and allowed for the analysis of some of Mark's presentation as an accurate depiction (while, at the same time, warning against an uncritical acceptance of these same statements.)[6] This scholarship helped pave the way to many post-Bultmann theories in the 1950s.[2]

Occurrences of the Messianic Secret

The most prominent instance of this occurs in Mark 8:27-30:

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say I am?' (28) And they answered him, 'John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.' (29) He asked them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered him, 'You are the Messiah.' (30) And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

As noted pointedly by W. R. Telford,[8] Jesus commands his followers to silence after healings and exorcisms. When Jesus heals a leper, he commands the man not to spread the news of his miraculous healing:

(43) After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, (44) saying to him, 'See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.' (45) But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (Mark 1.43-45)

Luke 8:10:

He said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, " 'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'" (NIV)

Matthew 13:10–12:

The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him." (NIV)

Attempts to explain the Messianic Secret

Bart D. Ehrman suggests that in Mark's Gospel, Jesus is generally misunderstood, even by his own family and townspeople,[9] citing Mark 3:21, see also Mark 3, and Mark 6:1–6.

Telford distinguishes between two types of explanation of the messianic secret: historical explanations and literary/theological explanations.

  • Historical explanations "claim that the secrecy attributed by the evangelist to Jesus and his behaviour actually goes back to Jesus himself"[8]. One possible historical explanation might be that Jesus wished to fulfill the envisaged role of the Jewish messiah only selectively: although he was the 'anointed one', or Christ, he did not appear as a military leader. It is also reasonable to believe that Christ might want to suppress public fervor about himself until the opportune time. According to the Gospel, he was already a celebrity in Palestine. He might want to retain some measure of anonymity in order to be able to move about Judea without a multitude of followers.[3]
  • Literary/theological explanations: a prominent example is proposed by Wilhelm Wrede.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c William Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des Markusevangeliums, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901); English edition, William Wrede, The Messianic Secret, trans. J. C. G. Grieg (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1971).
  2. ^ a b c John M. DePoe, The Messianic Secret In The Gospel of Mark: Historical Development and Value of Wrede's Theory, http://www.johndepoe.com/Messianic_secret.pdf.
  3. ^ a b James L. Blevins. The Messianic Secret in Markan Research, 1901-1976. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1981. ISBN 978-0-8191-1606-2
  4. ^ William Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 1907).
  5. ^ Albert Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1906); English edition, Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan, 1948).
  6. ^ a b Adolf Jülicher, Neue Linen in der Kritik der evangelischen Uberliefrung (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1906)
  7. ^ Johannes Weiss, Christ: The Beginning of Dogma, trans. V. D. Davis (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1911)
  8. ^ a b W. R. Telford. The New Testament, a Short Introduction, pp. 139. Oneworld. Oxford. 2002. ISBN 978-1-85168-289-8
  9. ^ Bart D. Ehrman. The New Testament, a Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Third Edition. pp. 72. OUP. 2004. ISBN 978-0-19-515462-7
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