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 Wilhelm Wrede's groundbreaking research published in The Messianic Secret in the Gospels (1901), have made various attempts to explain why this should be so.
Wilhelm Wrede (also known as William Wrede) 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.
Wrede was born in 1859 at Bücken in Hanover. He became an associate professor at Breslau in 1893, and full professor in 1896. He died in office in 1906.
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[edit] 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.
According to Telford (2002, p.139), 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)
- 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)
- 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)
[edit] Attempts to explain the Messianic Secret
Ehrman suggests that in Mark's Gospel, Jesus is generally misunderstood, even by his own family and townspeople (Ehrman 2004: p.72), 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 (Telford 2002, p.140). One possible historical explanation might be that Jesus wished to fulfil 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.
- Literary/theological explanations: a prominent example is proposed by Wilhelm Wrede. (See below).
[edit] References
- Bart D. Ehrman. The New Testament, a Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Third Edition. OUP. 2004. ISBN 0-19-515462-2
- W. R. Telford. The New Testament, a Short Introduction. Oneworld. Oxford. 2002. ISBN 1-85168-289-9
- Wilhelm Wrede. The Messianic Secret in the Gospels. 1901. ISBN 0-227-67717-X
- James L. Blevins. The Messianic Secret in Markan Research, 1901-1976. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1981. ISBN 0-8191-1606-8
