Saturday, August 3, 2024

Maurice Casey on the Authenticity of Mark 11:27-28

  

The temporary hesitation of the authorities did not prevent them from asking an obvious question. Mark's account is again sound, though his use of the definite articles gives an impression of hordes of chief priests, scribes and elders, when a manageable group is not only more likely, but will also have been the intention of his source.

 

And they came again to Jerusalem. And he was walking in the Temple, and (the) chief priests and (the) scribes and (the) elders came to him, and they said to him, 'By what authority do you do these things? Or who gave you this authority to do these things?' (Mk 11.27-8)

 

Jesus' reply is revealing. It implies both his known support for John the Baptist, and an indirect claim that his own ministry was divinely inspired, like that of John. ‘I will ask you one thing, and answer me and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, (was) it from heaven or of men? Answer me!' (Mk 11.29-30).

 

There is no way that such a response would have been produced by the early church! This is the true tradition of Jesus' words, in which he defended his prophetic action by direct reference to the divine authority of the prophet who baptised him. Mark's account also informs us that John still had considerable popular support, and had been opposed by these same authorities (Mk 11.31-3, cf. Mt 21.31-2). This means that the cultural nexus of severe opposition between these authorities and the prophetic stream of Judaism was already in place, and had already led to the death of a much revered prophet. At this stage, Jesus' powerful opponents were sensible enough to bide their time and ask awkward questions, as Mark portrays them. The important point for our purposes is that their opposition is predictable, given the Cleansing of the Temple, coming after a ministry in which Jesus had already incurred the opposition of scribes and Pharisees, in a social context of known opposition of the authorities to John the Baptist. After inserting a collection of Jesus' teaching, some of which is due to the early church, Mark again makes the main point with clarity: 'And (the) chief priests and (the) scribes were looking for ways to arrest him by trickery and kill him, for they said, "Not in the festival (crowd), in case there is a riot of the people'" (Mk 14.1-2). It is this dilemma which Judah of Kerioth solved for them by betraying him in the garden of Gethsemane, where there was no crowd to riot, and little enough opposition to his arrest (Mk 14.41-52).

 

One problem remained. What could they kill him for? They were not arbitrary murderers, and it was in their interests that they were not held responsible for the death which they brought about. Some of them may have felt that Jesus' action in the Temple was blasphemous, but it was not contrary to any law of blasphemy, and neither that nor anything else that Jesus had done was contrary to a law that carried the death penalty. The Roman governor was however in Jerusalem, with a force of troops. He always came at Passover, in case of any breach of the peace. This gave the authorities their chance. They handed Jesus over to Pilate. Since he was crucified as 'king of the Jews', we must infer a charge of sedition, and Jesus' preaching of the kingdom must have been employed to make the charge stick. At this point, Mark fails us. His account of the meeting of the Sanhedrin is so unsatisfactory that we must infer that he did not know what had happened there. Up to that point, however, he is coherent. The incident of the Cleansing of the Temple is comprehensible in itself, and all its consequences are understandable. (Maurice Casey, is John’s Gospel True? [London: Routledge, 1996], 7-8)

 



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