Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

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Stefan Kristensen
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Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by Stefan Kristensen »

It is almost universally exclaimed by interpreters and commentators, that the centurion at the cross is the first person in the story of Mark who actually understands Jesus' identity, the Son of God. Mark apparantly starts his story with an incipit telling the audience that Jesus is "the son of God" (Mark 1:1), and all the way through the story the spiritual beings have similarly revealed this to the audience, but Jesus has been silencing them lest they reveal it to the characters in the story, but then, finally, it is at his death on the cross that one of the characters understands who he is. This accords well with the theme in Mark's story that Jesus' identity must only be understood in light of his suffering and death.

But does this really make sense? For me, if the centurion is meant to have come to an understanding of Jesus' identity, a full, true understanding, then that means we can't take Mark's narrative universe seriously. Jesus' full, true identity is of course the risen Lord sitting at the right hand of God. Without the resurrection there can be no understanding of who Jesus really is. Maybe this is where Mark disagrees, but I doubt it.

I don't see the commentators really dealing with this question. How can the centurion have come to the realisation of Jesus' true identity, when Jesus hasn't even been resurrected?

Either:
1) Mark has just not cared to compose his story to be 'realistic', and he doesn't care at all about this gross anachronism, that this guy suddenly grasps the whole truth about Jesus, without even knowing about the resurrection (which hasn't happened yet)
2) or else, for Mark the resurrection is irrelevant for understanding Jesus.

Is there another third solution?

I think there is: The event happened as a 'parable', and it is symbolic of Gentiles coming to faith. This Gentile was not actually exhibiting true, Christian faith in Jesus, but this happened, Mark would say, in order to be symbolic of God's new covenant with humans at large (in principle including Gentile Roman executioners), which replaces his old covenant with Israel centered around the temple. But if the event is symbolic what about the actual centurion? What does he mean, then, if he's not expressing the Christian faith in Jesus as son of God? Wouldn't the most 'realistic' solution be that he sees Jesus' death with the darkening, and then concludes that Jesus was "a son of God" in the sense a Roman soldier would understand: like the great men of Rome's history? At least that's an explanation that takes into account both the fact that the resurrection hasn't happened yet in the story, and the fact that this centurion does conclude that Jesus "was (a) son of God".
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DCHindley
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by DCHindley »

I think this is just a case of the Centurion expressing something that the author of Mark took to be ironic. What the original meaning/context of his supposed statement (however the author of Mark came to know of it) was supposed to be we will never know. We just know that the author of that part of Mark thought it was ironic.

Same goes with the supposed titulus that read "The King of the Jews" (Mk 15:26). The Romans and the crowds mocked him for accepting such a claim about him, but the author of Mark "knew" that Jesus was *really* the savior of mankind. This is sublime irony, and perhaps only evident to a Christian of Mark's age. No one knew that the Judean nation would ultimately be crushed until much later, despite the brief rule of king Agrippa along the way.

That happens to be how irony works. It just takes a while for the rationalization process to morph a failed royal claimant into a divine redeemer, even greater than a Roman approvedtm king of the Judeans (Agrippa).

Who knew?

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rakovsky
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by rakovsky »

Matthew 16:
15 “But what about you,” He asked; “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

My research on the prophecies of the Messiah's resurrection: http://rakovskii.livejournal.com
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MrMacSon
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by MrMacSon »

.
Most verses or passages in Mark 15 are contradictory or 'sliding door' type events, situations, or comments or passages ...


Jesus refusing to tell Pilate whether he was the King of the Jews or not in Mk 15:2-5.


In Mk 15: 8-15, again no direct answers to Pilates questions -

8 So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. 9 Then he answered them, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he realized that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed him over. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them instead. 12 Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with [the man you call] the King of the Jews?” 13 They shouted back, “Crucify him!” 14 Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!” 15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.


Then Mk 15:17 'they clothed him in a purple cloak', yet -

Mk 15:20 'After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes [back] on him'


Then Mk 15:11 They compelled a 'passer-by', who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene ...
  • There is a hidden message there^ - Simon of Cyrene is unlikely to have been a passer-by in this event ...

Then, at Golgotha, Mk 15: 23 And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it.


Mk 15:28 And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.[+/- v28 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “And he was counted among the lawless”.]


Pointing out the contradictions of destroying the temple and supposedly being able to [re-]build it in 3 days; and that he could save others, but not himself -

29 Those who passed by derided [or blasphemed] him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself .."


33 When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land/earth (until three in the afternoon).


36 " let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” 37 [but] Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.


39 Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was a son of God!”


42 When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.


44 Then Pilate 'wondered' if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he had been 'dead for some time'.


45 When he 'learned' from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph [who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God].



I wonder if the centurion is a foil, contrast, or metaphor for something ...
Last edited by MrMacSon on Thu Nov 30, 2017 10:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:43 pmThen Mk 15:11 They compelled a 'passer-by', who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene ...
  • There is a hidden message there^ - Simon of Cyrene is unlikely to have been a passer-by in this event ...
Why is that?
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MrMacSon
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by MrMacSon »

.
Matt 27: 50-54 -

50 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city, and appeared to many people.

54 When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”


LUKE 23.47 -

"Now, when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying: Certainly this was a righteous man."

Note. -- The centurion here spoken of is the one who, according to Roman custom, presided over the execution (hence called by Seneca centurio supplicio præpositus; or by Tacitus, exactor mortis). This centurion, the captain in Capernaum (Matt. viii.), and the captain Cornelius at Cæsarea (Acts x.), form a triumvirate of believing Gentile soldiers in the New Testament.

The confession, "Truly this (or this man, as Mark has it) was a Son of God" (theou huios), may be taken (with Meyer) in a polytheistic sense, or equivalent to demigod; an interpretation which is supported by the absence of the definite article before huios, and by the parallel passage of Luke, who substitutes dikaios for the theou huios of Matthew and Mark.

But Lange and Alford maintain that the centurion used the expression in a Jewish or Christian sense, acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah. It is by no means improbable that he was previously acquainted with the Jewish expectations and the claims of Christ. Compare the remarks in Lange's "Matthew," Am. ed., p.518.

http://biblehub.com/library/schaff/the_ ... _cross.htm
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MrMacSon
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:52 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:43 pm
Then Mk 15:11 They compelled a 'passer-by', who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene ...
  • There is a hidden message there^ - Simon of Cyrene is unlikely to have been a passer-by in this event ...
Why is that?
Robert M Price, in The Amazing Colossal Apostle says G.Mark "contains not only the episode of Simon substituting for Jesus" and refers to "an earlier version in which Simon of Cyrene’s identity was that of Simon Magus."

He had previously discsused and argued that the 'pre-Christian cult of Paul' was the 'Simonian cult'.

[eta: I'm pretty sure elsewhere he also argues Simon C Paul is Simon M is Paul ..]
What do we know of the pre-Christian cult of Paul? It was the Simonian cult! It is his devotees who are in view in 1 Corinthians 1:11-14 when we hear the shout, “I am of Paul!” Call him what you will, but call on his name by all means. He is Simon Magus, who claimed to be a savior, the Great Power.

Justin Martyr tells us that the Magus was widely worshipped for decades. He had not converted to Christianity any more than the historical Baptist had endorsed Jesus as the one who was to come. It means, too, that Christianity failed to co-opt and absorb Simonianism. But it tried. It will come as no surprise that the followers of Simon Magus returned the favor, trying their best to assimilate Christianity. Simonianism sought to co-opt the competing Jesus movement by claiming it was someone named Simon who was crucified, albeit only seemingly.

We see this depicted, for those who have eyes to see, in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. These Gospel writers, with no discernible narrative motivation, claimed that Simon of Cyrene was pressed into service to carry the cross in Jesus’s stead.[43]

I do not mean to say that the Gospel writers would have recognized the significance of this oral tradition, but the Gnostics did. In Samaria, Simon said he had been worshipped as Jehovah (“the Father”) in Old Testament times. Now he was being manifest to the gentiles as the Holy Spirit. Bingo!

There is the Pauline mission to the gentiles. But among Jews he had gone to the cross where he appeared to be crucified, that is, as Jesus ...
When Simon Magus claimed to have been the divine Son[44] and the reappearance of a historical figure, who did he have in mind? crucified albeit only in appearance, what historical frame did he have in mind? ? Jewish sources included some Talmudic references to a Jesus who was a disciple of second-century BCE Rabbi Jeschu ben-Perechiah. Epiphanius of Salamis reported on heretical accounts of Jesus that placed his death at about 100 BCE. There was a Jewish Gospel satire called the Toledoth Jeschu (Generations of Jesus) that put the Jesus story at about the same time, a hundred years prior to the conventional dating.

I think the Simonian claim that Simon had suffered as the Son (Jesus) fits this time frame best. In claiming to have appeared among the Jews as the Son, Simon must have been referring back to the scenario presupposed in the Toledoth Jeschu. There the revolutionist and magician Jeschu sought audience with Queen Helena, widow of Alexander Jannaeus, and in fact did win her over to faith in him. She was somewhat fickle, too ready to listen to the warnings of the Sanhedrin against Jeschu, but sympathetic in the end. No one can miss the pattern: again we would have the transmigrating Magus seeking out and finding his soul-mate, Queen Helen, this time Queen of the Jews.

The climax to the Toledoth features an aerial dogfight, the soaring magician Jeschu battling his erstwhile disciple Judah, a secret agent for the Sanhedrin and hero of the story for its intended audience. Jeschu owed his powers to the forbidden knowledge of the Tetragramaton (divine name) which he had obtained in the temple. Judah gained it too, in order to be able to defeat the false prophet, and he did, sending Jeschu plummeting earthward, where his foes arrested him.

It can be no accident that the Acts of Peter has Simon Magus perform the same spectacle of flying, only to be sent crashing to the ground in response to Peter’s prayer. The same feat, with its ensuing downfall, is ascribed to the Antichrist in Christian literature where the apocalyptic figure is acknowledged by most scholars to have been inspired by Simon Magus.
And the sages shared their knowledge and agreed on a greatly erudite man named Simeon son of Cleophas. And they said to him, “We have agreed to pray for you, and (despite the deception we ask of you), you shall surely be numbered among the company of Israel who will share in the age to come. Go and do a great service of mercy to Israel: Remove the radicals from our midst, so they may pursue their own path to destruction.”

So Simeon went from the council at Tiberias to Antioch, principle city of the Nazarenes, and he sent word through the whole territory of Israel: “Let every believer in Jeschu join me!”

When they had assembled to hear him, he announced, “I am the apostle of Jeschu! He has sent me to you, and I will give you a sign just as Jeschu did!” They brought him a leper, and he placed his hand on him, and he was healed. Then they brought him a lame man, and he uttered the Tetragrammaton and placed his hand upon him, and he was healed and stood to his feet.

At once they bowed before him, saying, “Truly you are the apostle of Jeschu, for you show us signs just as he did!” And he said, “Therefore Jeschu greets you, saying, ‘I am at my Father’s side in heaven, yes, at his right hand until he avenges himself upon the Jews, as David says, “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit here on my right till I make your enemies your footstool!’” ([in Toledoth Jeschu] 8:7-41; not all quoted here)

Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (Kindle Locations 4322-4352). Signature Books. Kindle Edition.
Lo and behold: here is a passage which explicitly says Paul had first been known as Simeon. Some manuscripts specify “Simeon bar Cleophas,” the epithet of one of the so-called heirs of Jesus, also known as the pillars of the Jerusalem church (Gal. 2:9). This is even more interesting, because James Tabor argues that the names “Cleophas” and “Alphaeus” are variants of the same epithet, denoting “the replacer, the successor”[49] ...

“James of Alphaeus” originally referred to James the Just, brother of the Lord and his caliph.

“Simeon bar Cleophas” meant Simeon the Caliph of the Lord. But that is not the nuance in the Toledoth Jeschu, where the epithet as connected with “Simeon” must denote Simon Magus, who we may say, if we connect the dots, was the namesake of the one who had substituted for Jesus on the cross. Simon led people away from Judaism, which was also Paul’s mission, when seen from a Jewish perspective. Note that the Toledoth Jeschu depicts Simeon as a miracle worker who produces wonders to lead the gullible astray. That is Simon Magus. And that is Paul.

Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (Kindle Locations 4274-4450). Signature Books. Kindle Edition.
Price then goes on to refer to Marcion and the passage above -
Marcion not only possessed no Gospel but knew nothing of our Jesus tradition. All he would have gleaned from Simonianism was the belief that someone had seemingly undergone crucifixion among the Jews. Isn’t that close enough? Wouldn’t he at least have taken for granted a recent historical Jesus? No, I think not, and for two reasons.

First, our oldest narrative gospel, that of Mark, already contains not only the episode of Simon substituting for Jesus, but it is a version that has been historicized, implying an earlier version in which Simon of Cyrene’s identity was that of Simon Magus.

Second, as we have already seen, the Jesus story in the Toledoth Jeschu is a much better candidate for the Jesus story to which Simon would have appealed in that it has a magus seeking out another Helen. This is not to say that the Toledoth Jeschu was available to Simon, but elements of it may have been.
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:40 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:52 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 7:43 pm
Then Mk 15:11 They compelled a 'passer-by', who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene ...
  • There is a hidden message there^ - Simon of Cyrene is unlikely to have been a passer-by in this event ...
Why is that?
Robert M Price, in The Amazing Colossal Apostle says G.Mark "contains not only the episode of Simon substituting for Jesus" and refers to "an earlier version in which Simon of Cyrene’s identity was that of Simon Magus."
Ah, I see.

I have read Price on that score, and I have never been able to bring myself to buy that argument. (I thought you were referring to historical implausibilities of some kind.)

YMMV.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:47 pm
Ah, I see.

I have read Price on that score, and I have never been able to bring myself to buy that argument. (I thought you were referring to historical implausibilities of some kind.)

YMMV.
I just get a perception that there are various layered stories in the NT and shifting aspects of those stories over time.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Is the centurion at the cross the 'first Christian'?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

MrMacSon wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:50 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Nov 30, 2017 8:47 pm
Ah, I see.

I have read Price on that score, and I have never been able to bring myself to buy that argument. (I thought you were referring to historical implausibilities of some kind.)

YMMV.
I just get a perception that there are various layered stories in the NT and shifting aspects of those stories over time.
I do too.
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