For they all saw him,
and were troubled. And immediately, he talked with them, and saith unto them,
Be of good cheer: it is I (εγω
ειμι);
be not afraid. (Mark 6:50)
. . . three pieces of
evidence support our claim that Mark is intentionally drawing on this
septuagintal tradition (and thus is offering more than a mere “it is I”). The
first is Mark’s virtual citation of Job 8:9 in his description of Jesus walking
on the water, a text in which YHWH alone is described as walking on the water.
The second is Mark’s allusion to prominent theophany stories in the scriptures
with his inclusion of Jesus’s intention to pass by his disciples, closely
associating Jesus’s actions with YHWH’s act of self-revelation. The third is
closely tied to the Exodus theophany story. In the account of YHWH appearing to
Moses on Mount Sinai, he tells Moses that he will pass by him while speaking
his (YHWH’s) very name. In this Markan episode, it is then significant that as
Jesus is passing by his disciples, he speaks to them, εγω ειμι ,
thus drawing this form of self-identification even closer to YHWH’s own
self-identification.
Any one of these
details on their own might not be enough to conclude that Mark intends to
present Jesus as the YHWH of Israel’s scriptures, but when all three are taken
together, the case becomes virtually undeniable. The reader that was steeped in
the septuagintal tradition would not miss the profound claim this story is
making about Jesus’s identity, that he is the YHWH of Israel. While many
interpreters have identified all of these significant intertextual features,
very few are willing to reach what seems to be the most obvious conclusion,
namely that Mark narrates that Jesus is YHWH. From this evidence, some will
conclude that Mark depicts Jesus as acting like YHWH, but refuse to make direct
connection between the two. While such a conclusion might be adequate if Mark
only depicted Jesus as walking on water, the inclusion of details that link
Jesus to YHWH’s acts of self-identification, that is, passing by while saying,
“I am,” yields such a position untenable. How is one able to merely act like
YHWH while engaging in the act of YHWH’s self-revelation? By connecting Jesus
with YHWH’s acts of self-revelation, it seems no other conclusion is offered
the reader other than to conclude that Jesus is YHWH. (David
E. Wilhite and Adam Winn, Israel’s Lord: YHWH at “Two Powers” in Second
Temple Literature [Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2024], 246-47)
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