The Gospel of Mark As a Fulfilment of Isaiah’s New Exodus

14 thoughts on “The Gospel of Mark As a Fulfilment of Isaiah’s New Exodus”

1. (That explains why, when the disciples were afraid seeing Jesus walking on the water, that the reason for their fear and lack of comprehension was that they had not understood the miracles of the loaves. Those miracles were demonstrations of the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, the one who feeds his people in the wilderness.)

   First, Dr. Godfrey, I apologize if I’m intruding too often these pages, but I have little to say because I am only interested in search of the myth of the Gospels and the last two threads are particularly suitable to a my speech of mythical character. The opportunities to introduce mythical exegesis are very few.

   To which quest is Rikki Watts referring?
   This is what I assume with the fouth quest, pure mithology and allegory:

   The disciples, who see Jesus walking on water, cry, “he is a ghost!” because Jesus-sun died the night before and now at dawn he reappears. Here’s my exegesis in solar key (in parentheses the possible interpretation).
   Mk 6,45-49:
   “And straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people (Bethsaida was on the eastern shore of the lake of Tiberias),
   And when he had sent them away (of course a narrative pretext as there are no logical reasons why he was left alone on the other side of the lake).
   he departed into a mountain to pray (the sun sets in the West).
   And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land (the sun being gone was down in the land).
   And he saw them toiling in rowing; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night (the fourth watch of the night corresponds before dawn),
   he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea (the sun rises in the East),
   and would have passed by them (and rising seemed to overcome them).
   But when they saw him walking upon the sea (seeing the reflection of the sun on the sea),
   they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out.

   The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, described by Mark, finds a suggestion in 2Kings 4,42-44 but the author of the Gospel story uses it to present another stellar reference. The episode is repeated twice almost identically (Mk 6,38-44 and 8,5-9) except for small variations in the numbers of persons, breads available and baskets remaining. No mathematical correlation is possible between these numbers for which the only possible meaning is to be found in the number of baskets remaining: twelve in the first case, seven in the second miracle.
   Mk 8,19-21: “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied. “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They answered, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”.
   The purpose of the double narrative was just this: to highlight the two sacred numbers of the myth, the twelve constellations of the zodiac and the seven heavenly bodies that roam between them and which are the subject of both the ancient astrologies that of the modern.

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2. Whew! I was getting worried there. Thanks to Tim for filling the gap too.

   OT for this post, but right on target for the blog – Steven Pinker tweeted a link to this recent paper reviewing Donald Brown’s 1988 book, Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature: The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness. The opening sentence of the review says this book “ought to be assigned in every course dealing with historiography for undergraduates and graduate students in history and read by all professional historians.” How’s that for high praise! The reviewer claims that post-modernism crowded out its message. But maybe you’ve read it already?

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   1. I haven’t read it, but it does look interesting. Your comment led me to another article that I also find most interesting: http://www.scribd.com/doc/54234472/Human-Nature-and-History-Donald-e-Brown In principle, I sometimes wonder if human history should be very different in the way it works itself out than are the happenings among other social animals. (In the case of Christian origins there does appear to me to be a large dose of romanticism at heart of most explanations, whether those of theologians or atheists. Brown seems to have something to say that could shed light on that.)

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3. Another question – what is the first evidence of Mark’s Gospel being attested to in an extant source? That is, what is the last plausible date that Mark must have been written by and why?

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   1. Ah, this is one of my favourite mysteries. How reliable or authentic are all the details in the texts by Irenaeus? Can we reliably infer that Basilides (himself or a later generation of followers) knew the Gospel of Mark?

      Polycarp (who or whatever that name represents) has been cited as containing the earliest quotation from Mark. See http://web.archive.org/web/20150402190728/http://www.ntcanon.org/table.shtml — The phrase, “servant of all”, is used pejoratively in Mark by Jesus but as an honorable expression in Polycarp. Did both Polycarp and Mark draw it from the LXX of Isaiah 53:11?

      The reference in the same table to Valentians, i.e. Marcus, once again teasingly avoids explicit identification of Mark.

      Justin Martyr is usually said to be the first to have certain knowledge of the gospel. This is based on Justin’s knowledge of Jesus being said to change the names of Simon to Peter and James and John to the sons of Boanerges. Couple this with references found nearby and elsewhere in Justin to “Memoirs of the Apostles” — a title similar to Xenophon’s Memorabilia which consists of four books — that are usually assumed to be a reference to the four gospels. There has been some doubt raised about the integrity of these latter references in Justin’s dialogue. The Patristic writings were not immune from subsequent “redactions”.

      If this passage about the name-changing is an indication of Justin’s knowledge of Mark and the other canonical gospels, it seems odd that the same passage adds details about the Magi not found in Matthew (elsewhere Justin appears to be drawing upon a story of the Magi that has nothing to do with Matthew), and other details that are at odds with what we read in the gospels, including Mark (e.g. at the baptism of Jesus the Jordan flared up in flame.)

      I think the evidence of Justin ought to be regarded as inconclusive (there is room for Mark having been composed in the wake of the Bar Kochba rebellion — mid 130s — in the life-time of Justin) but most others see Justin’s testimony as decisive that it was in existence before then. By the time of Irenaeus, though, there is surely no doubt about the existence of the gospel.

      (If I ignore Papias it is because we have no idea who or what — a pseudonym for whom? — Papias was. We only have Eusebius talking about something written by this name. And what he quotes does not gell with what we know of the Gospel itself. The Peter tradition is, for several other reasons, clearly (to me) an ideological, not historical, “tradition”. There is no literary warrant for it in Mark itself.)

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      1. Justin Martyr mentions the province of Syrophoenicia, which was created in 193, so if it was not written in the third century, it was at least redacted then. That would weaken its usefulness in dating the Gospels.

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         1. Yes. I do not recall the author or publisher of the article off hand, but I do recall reading one scholarly contribution some years ago presenting a methodical argument that the passages in Justin that speak of the “Memoirs of the Apostles” were later interpolations/”redactions”. That would, I think, include the supposedly explicit reference to the Gospel of Mark — the renaming of the three lead disciples.

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   2. Ah, who wrote what where and when – probably the hardest question to answer in Christian history.
      I like Carrier’s complaint about the difficulties in finding safe base points to anchor subsequent thoughts.
      http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com.au/2008/09/ignatian-vexation.html

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      1. If I may reply with three of my favourite quotations. I copy here from an earlier post, 3 unquestioned assumptions of historical Jesus studies, with the favourite of my favourites in colour:

         Historical Jesus scholars are still operating at the same level as Albrightian scholars once were in relation to King David and the history of the united Kingdom of Israel:

         So far, historical research by biblical scholars has taken a … circular route …. The assumption that the literary construct is an historical one is made to confirm itself. Historical criticism (so-called) of the inferred sources and traditions seeks to locate these in that literary-cum-historical construct. (Philip R. Davies: In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’, pp.35-37)

         It hasn’t helped that those who are interested in the development of historical research in this region have avoided the implications of the mythical and literary overtones that are a constant of all the Bible’s stories. They have chosen rather a rhetoric that supports the assumption of historicity. For example, even when speaking of stories filled with literary fantasy, they speak of a ‘biblical record’ and of the Bible’s ‘account of the past’. This rhetoric of archaeology avoids the useful scepticism that historians usually have ready at hand whenever iron is reported to float on water.

         and

         It is a fundamental error of method to ask first after an historical David or Solomon, as biblical archaeologists and historians often have done. We need first to attend to the David and Solomon we know: the protagonists of Bible story and legend. The Bible does not hesitate to tell these stories as tall tales. (Pages 38 and 45 from T.L.Thompson’s The Mythic Past.)

         A hundred years ago New Testament scholars issued the same warnings that have gone unheeded:

         This warning about the need for New Testament scholars to understand the nature and provenance of their sources was issued over a century ago by E. Schwartz in a discussion about the evidence (still) used to support the claims of Papias about gospel traditions — and which applies equally to the unsupported assumptions underlying Gospel historical studies:

         With regard to the recurrent inclination to pass off Papias’s remarks about the first two Synoptists as “ancient information” and to utilize them in some fashion or other, a somewhat more general observation may not be out of place. The history of classical literature has gradually learned to work with the notions of the literary-historical legend, novella, or fabrication; after untold attempts at establishing the factuality of statements made it has discovered that only in special cases does there exist a tradition about a given literary production independent of the self-witness of the literary production itself; and that the person who utilizes a literary-historical tradition must always first demonstrate its character as a historical document. General grounds of probability cannot take the place of this demonstration. It is no different with Christian authors. In his literary history Eusebius has taken reasonable pains; as he says in the preface he had no other material at his disposal than the self-witness of the books at hand. Not once was he able to say anything about the external history of the works of Origen, in which he was genuinely interested, apart from what he found in or among them. And if in the case of authors who as individuals and sometimes as well-known personalities stood in the glare of publicity there is so little information about their production, how much more is this not the situation in the case of the Gospels, whose authors intentionally or unintentionally adhered to the obscurity of the Church, since they neither would nor could be anything other than preachers of the one message, a message that was independent of their humanity? . . . . General grounds of probability cannot take the place of this demonstration. It is no different with Christian authors. In his literary history Eusebius has taken reasonable pains; as he says in the preface he had no other material at his disposal than the self-witness of the books at hand . . . . (the underlined portion is Abramowski’s emphasis)

         This is from an academic paper delivered in 1904 by E. Schwartz: “Uber den Tod der Sohne Zebedaei. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Johannesevangeliums” (= Gesammelte Schriften V, 1963,48-123). It is cited in a 1991 chapter by Luise Abramowski titled “The ‘Memoirs of the Apostles’ in Justin” pp.331-332 published in “The Gospel and the Gospels” ed. Peter Stuhlmacher.

         And more recently Albert Schweitzer had enough understanding of historical methodology to write:

         In reality, however, these writers are faced with the enormous problem that strictly speaking absolutely nothing can be proved by evidence from the past, but can only be shown to be more or less probable. Moreover, in the case of Jesus, the theoretical reservations are even greater because all the reports about him go back to the one source of tradition, early Christianity itself, and there are no data available in Jewish or Gentile secular history which could be used as controls. Thus the degree of certainty cannot even by raised so high as positive probability. (From page 401 of The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 2001, by Albert Schweitzer.)

         Schweitzer was by no means a proponent of a mythical Jesus argument, of course. This quotation comes from a book in which he critiques arguments for a mythical Jesus in his own day. (He did so in a strangely civil and knowledgeable manner quite foreign to how we see academics tackle the arguments today.)

         But he did at least recognize the methodological problem of relying on documents without external controls to support the historicity of their narratives. This point appears to be lost on modern historical Jesus scholars. McGrath and Sanders and others simply assume that history is to be found simply by analysing the plot and narratives of the Gospels.

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4. Isaiah 53 and Jews:-

   Jews say that the servant is Jewish people, but if we read verse 3, we find that the text says, He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of pains, we find here two words (men) and (man) in the original Hebrew word men came (eshim) and the word man came (esh) The formula (im) is the plural form, which means that the first word is a plural of the second word. So this servant is a single person punished from a group of men, The same verse says we esteemed him not, the original Hebrew says (Hashbanhow), which means we accounted him not , Depending on the verse 4 “Surely our diseases he did bear” shows that who meant in them in saying (we) are the Jewish people, So Isaiah says that the Jewish people despised and did not account this servant, so how this servant is the Jewish people?, And verse 6 and 7 say he did not open his mouth and verse 9 says he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth, and these descriptions never apply to an entire people component of both ages and both genders,This servant carries the sins of others, the book says that no one carries the guilt of the other Ezekiel Chapter 18, which carries the guilt of others only a sin offering.

   Isaiah since he said that the arm of the Lord will appear in chapters 51 and 52, Isaiah 53: 1 is achieving for coming this arm, Isaiah 51: 4-5 is intended here coming King Messiah as the judge arm of the peoples, eternal salvation and righteousness, the isles waiting for him, Isaiah 51: 9 – 11: arm will hold a miracles as Moses see Deuteronomy 18: 15-18, Deuteronomy 34: 10 – 12, the prophet (Messiah) alone who would resemble Moses in miracles, Isaiah 51: 11 moved literally from Isaiah 35: 10, and this indicates to the same idea, Isaiah 35 speaks of the miracles of Jesus the way (Highway), Isaiah 52 begins to talk about how to return the people of Babylon, but from Isaiah 52: 7 – 10 starts prophet talking about another time, a time of good news which means Gospel, then they see God eye to eye as face-to-face, which means the incarnation of God, Isaiah 52: 10, came in Psalm 98: 1 – 2 which occurs when the Nations glorify God and this is when the Messiah comes see Isaiah 55: 3 – 5. So the arm of the lord in Isaiah 53: 1 is talking about what will happen to the arm that Isaiah predicted about it in chapters 51 and 52 when it came, And its the messiah.

   Jewish sayings in verse 8 “a plague befell them” and verse 9 ” with his kinds of death” or “his deaths”:-

   Verse 8: a plague befell them came in Hebrew “Nega lamo”, Nega: stroke – Adjective, Lamo: to them ,for them , It came like this in the Masoretic text which between 6 century – 10 century AD, And we can understand the text that the servant was cut off from the land of the living because of the transgressions of the people of Isaiah a stroke for them, Which means that the servant is a stroke for Isaiah’s people, But if we read the old texts Qumran and Septuagint we find that the word nega was noga which means (he was stricken), Lamo came in Qumran as (lamo) which means for them. So Qumran says he was stricken for them, Lamo came in Septuagint as (lamot) which means to death, So Septuagint says he was stricken to death.

   Verse 9: with his kinds of death or his deaths came in Hebrew “Bemotao”: his deaths, The same problem that the text came like this in Masoretic text which between 6 century – 10 century AD as plural form, But if we read the old texts Qumran and Septuagint we find it bemoto which means his death singular form.

   Text origins don’t help what Jews say.

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   1. In short, you are arguing that Isaiah contains genuine prophecies of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels and the Jews don’t know how to read their own scriptures? Only believing Christians do?

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5. Is it correct to say that Book of Isaiah presents the following demographic: An enclave(s) of Jews/Israelites in Galilee surrounded by Gentiles of the Coastal Plains, Transjordan, and the Gentile environs of Galilee. Which is reflected in a similar fashion per Gospel According to Mark?

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   1. • “. . . πέραν τοῦ Ιορδάνου Γαλιλαία τῶν ἐθνῶν τὰ μέρη τῆς Ιουδαίας” —Isaiah (LXX 8:23), may translate as:

      the Jewish parts of Transjordan and “Galilee of the nations”.

      or perhaps how Mark saw it.

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6. OP: “Rikki Watts finds an answer in Isaiah: Mark is following the theme of bringing in the Jews/Israelites from among the nations/gentiles — even if this does allow a few gentiles to be converted along the way.”

   • Isaiah 66:19 and the Isaianic Servant Songs anticipate human emissaries to preach the word of God to the Gentiles. see: Schnabel, Eckhard J. (2004). Early Christian Mission: Jesus and the Twelve. 1. InterVarsity Press. p. 85. ISBN 978-0-8308-2791-6.

   Ware, J. Patrick (2005). The Mission of the Church: In Paul’s Letter to the Philippians in the Context of Ancient Judaism. BRILL. p. 59, n. 5. ISBN 90-04-14641-5.

   The relationship of God of Israel to the nations is in Isaiah, to a greater degree than in any other book of the Old Testament, a prominent and consistent theme. [The importance of the nations throughout the book of Isaiah, a feature of the work often neglected in modern scholarship, is demonstrated by G.I. Davies, “The Destiny of the Nations in the Book of Isaiah,” The Book of Isaiah (BETL 81; ed. Jacques Vermeylen; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1989) 93–120; cf. Christopher R. Seitz, Isaiah 1–39 (Louisville: John Knox, 1993) 39–40, 125–26; H.F. van Rooy, “The Nations in Isaiah: A Synchronic Survey,” Studies in Isaiah (ed. W.C. van Wyk; Pretoria: NHW Press, 1980) 213–29; and Norbert Lohfink and Erich Zenger, The God of Israel and the Nations: Studies in Isaiah and the Psalms (Collegeville, MN: Glazier, 2000) 42–57.]

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