The Confession and other Gospels (Mark 8:31-38/Lent 2B)

Some of my readers who know that I employ historical-critical methodologies in my Bible study may be surprised to know that one of my most useful books on the gospels is Darrel Bock’s Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels.

There is a simple reason for this.  I believe that before you can properly understand a critical view of a passage, you have to understand the passage in relation to others, and know how it has been interpreted in the past.  Many people reject views of scripture without understanding them.  They reject chronologies based on the early geneaologies of Genesis 5 & 11, but have often never read them.  On the other hand, people reject source theories of the Pentateuch without actually being able to state the theories themselves.  In the gospels, many reject a reconciling approach to the various synoptic passages without every trying to do it.

Now in the end, I think the reconciliation of these passages tends to fail.  There’s no complete reconstruction that is actually historically probable, even if one allows miracles.  At the same time there are two benefits at least to checking out how passages are reconciled.  First, the church has used this approach for centuries, and it’s worthwhile understanding how it was done.  Second, attempting reconciliation helps fill out the complete picture of how a set of passages can relate.  Before you have done that, you are on questionable ground if you choose a particular understanding of the history of the passage in question.

So having spent that much time on why I want to do this occasionally, what does Bock have to say about this passage?

There are two elements that I’d like to mention. To get all the details you’ll need the book as he outlines the items where Matthew, Mark, and Luke differ on this passage. These differences are not that great.

The first issue is the authenticity of the story. For many historical Jesus scholars, it is a basic criterion of authenticity that Jesus never claims to be the Messiah during his lifetime. I think this is not so much a criterion as a conclusion, and it is a conclusion that is questionable at best. So I wouldn’t reject the authenticity of this saying on that basis. It clearly comes from a single source, i.e. all three gospels are working from the same material.

Bock notes three reasons to regard this as authentic (p. 232):

1. There is already a pattern of response that shows opposition. I would note that this indicates that Jesus was something more than an innocuous teacher; he roused opposition.
2. There is the precendent of John the Baptist. In other words, it is not unreasonable for Jesus to expect that such a fate might await him if he continued his activity.
3. The prediction itself presents an ambiguity. If you were creating a prediction after the fact, would you not make it a bit more ironclad?

While none of Bock’s reasons for regarding this as authentic are absolutely conclusive, they are suggestive, and again tend to make me question the certainty with which some scholars maintain that Jesus never made such a claim but that it was made for him after the fact.

The second area of interest is in the prediction that some there would not taste death. Bock points out the differences in the predictions. Mark says “the kingdom of God has come with power.” Luke simply says “the kingdom,” while Matthew says “Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” There is ambiguity here as well, though I think most hearers would interpret this as saying that there might be suffering now, but eventually the son of man would come in his kingdom. The disciples would have heard it as an early inkling that there would be a second appearing. There must be some other way to handle the meaning of the passage, such as the conditional nature of prophecy (Jonah, Jeremiah 18).