Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: ↑Wed Nov 15, 2017 2:42 pmIt would be interesting to know what Ben is thinking at the moment and how we can move forward.
In the stead of what I wrote before, there is another possibility that has occurred to me early and often. I hesitate to present it here because it does not reach my customarily desired level of evidentiary proof. But this is all a work in progress anyway, so perfectionism be damned for the time being....
The strength of the position that Jesus is
not the son of David seems to be the discussion of Psalm 110.1 (lord of David versus son of David). The strength of the position that Jesus
is the son of David seems to be the nonchalant way in which the concept is introduced by Bartimaeus and the fact that Jesus does nothing to contradict him; well, this and the fact that Christ = son of David is such an easy, common equation to make.
On the other hand, the Bartimaeus episode does not explicitly
state that Jesus is the son of David, nor does the Psalm episode explicitly
deny it. It is as if both passages are operating with certain assumptions in place that the author does not feel he has to spell out for his readers; the catch is that the assumption behind the one passage and the assumption behind the other
are not the same. This implies to me the following chain of events:
1A. Somebody tells the Bartimaeus story and has Bartimaeus call Jesus the son of David because that is what the storyteller thinks, who has no reason to make clear what is obvious to him (that is, that Jesus is the descendant of David). (Matthew and Luke agree with this approach.)
1B. Somebody else recounts the Psalm 110 paradox and has Jesus mitigate the Davidic sonship of the Messiah because that is what the recounter thinks (that is, that Jesus is not his descendant), who has no reason to make clear what is obvious to him. (The epistle of Barnabas agrees with this approach.)
2. "Mark" (the author/redactor/editor/compiler of the gospel) puts both episodes in his gospel, not necessarily realizing that their underlying assumptions conflict. Just as modern adherents to either view can justify both stories in the same gospel, so too can Mark. If I had to guess his
own stance, it would either be that he does not care (as you have suggested, Kunigunde) or that he thought of Jesus as the son of David and considered the Psalm 110 paradox as simply making clear that Jesus is Lord, too.