Jesus is not the Christ: A Reading of Mark

[StephenGoranson]

Yes, the "not necessarily myth" comment was pace, e.g., Giuseppe.

[rgprice]

I don't know about your proposed interpretation of BarAbbas Giuseppe.

Mark 14:
32 They came to a place named Gethsemane; and He *said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” 33 And He *took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. 34 And He *said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” 35 And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. 36 And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”

Mark 15:
6 Now at the feast he used to release for them any one prisoner whom they requested. 7 The man named Barabbas had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the insurrection. 8 The crowd went up and began asking him to do as he had been accustomed to do for them. 9 Pilate answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he was aware that the chief priests had handed Him over because of envy. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to ask him to release Barabbas for them instead. 12 Answering again, Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Him whom you call the King of the Jews?” 13 They shouted back, “Crucify Him!” 14 But Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has He done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify Him!” 15 Wishing to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas for them, and after having Jesus scourged, he handed Him over to be crucified.

So, shortly before the introduction of "bar Abbas" the writer translates the word Father for the reader so that the reader will know that Abbas = Father.

In the prayer of Mark 14:36 Jesus asks to "remove this cup from me" and basically says, "let your will be done".

What is the cup? It appears to be a reference to Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 25:15 For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, says to me, “Take this cup of the wine of wrath from My hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it. 16 They will drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword that I will send among them.”

17 Then I took the cup from the Lord’s hand and made all the nations to whom the Lord sent me drink it: 18 Jerusalem and the cities of Judah and its kings and its princes, to make them a ruin, a horror, a hissing and a curse, as it is this day;

This is in line with the reference to Jeremiah in the Temple Cleansing scene and with other references in final chapters of Mark, most of which have to do with God sending punishment on the Israelites to destroy their kingdoms and the temple by foreign armies.

BUT, what is the role of Jesus? He dies to take on the sins of others.

Romans 5:
6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11 And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Here is the connection between the prayer, Barabbas, and the Crucifixion.

Christ dies "in place of" the "sinner". This is straight Pauline theology. Why is he called "Barabbas"? Not because he is secretly some other Christ or something, but because he is supposed to represent that even sinners are "children of God", which, BTW, comes from Romans 8:

15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

The symbolism here is that Jesus is dying "for the ungodly", who are nevertheless adopted as "children of God".

God's wrath will come upon Jerusalem, making them a ruin, but the people can nevertheless be saved from their sins, just as Barabbas was.

[Giuseppe]

Your reading (a traditional reading insofar it makes Barabbas only a symbol of generic sin, apostasy, militant messianism, etc, with or without the midrash from the two goats of Leviticus 16) has to be not mutually exclusive with what has been proposed by Stahl/Couchoud and resumed by Magne so:

Y a-t-il ironie dans le fait que les Juifs rejettent Jésus prétendu messie et réclament Jésus Barabbas, c'est-à-dire Jésus Fils du Père, que le sanhédrin a condamné comme blasphémateur? Le récit ne serait-il pas plutôt la transposition d'une opposition à la messianisation, ou "christianisation", du Seigneur Jésus, Fils de Dieu, au sein du mouvement qui plus tard, à Antioche, prendra le nom de christianisme? "Fils du Père" est le titre que revendique Jésus en appelant Dieu son Père. Il lui est attribué dans la Deuxième Epître de Jean (v. 3), et chaque jour encore des milliers de voix pieuses l'acclament "Filius Patris" dans la récitation liturgique du Te Deum et du Gloria in excelsis.

translated:

Is there irony in the fact that the Jews reject the so-called messiah Jesus and wanted free Jesus Barabbas, that is, Jesus Son of the Father, whom the Sanhedrin condemned as a blasphemer? Would the story not rather be the transposition of an opposition to the messianization, or "Christianization", of the Lord Jesus, Son of God, within the movement which later, in Antioch, would take the name of Christianity? “Son of the Father” is the title that Jesus claims when calling God his Father. It is attributed to him in the Second Epistle of John (v. 3), and every day still thousands of pious voices acclaim him Filius Patris in the liturgical recitation of the Te Deum and the Gloria in excelsis.

Put simply, the Barabbas episode is the transposition on paper of a real conflict that opposed the adorers of Jesus from the people, among them, who wanted that Jesus was identified with the Jewish Messiah. It is a simple reading and I don't understand why one should reject a such reading, that has the merit, inter alia, to explain why in the Passion story the 'correct' Jesus is called 'Christ'/king of the Jews' not one, but a lot of times.

[rgprice]

Except Barabbas is never called Jesus. Is this an inference based on Matthew?

“Whom do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?”

Does Magne infer that there was an underlying narrative in which the question was, “Whom do you want me to release for you? Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?”

[Giuseppe]

There was no underlying narrative. Simply the Barabbas episode is a late interpolation introduced in all the our Gospels, with the merit, inter alia, to exonerate even more Pilate from the responsability of being the material killer of Jesus.
Under the Markan priority, probably the Barabbas episode has been interpolated in proto-Mark by the Catholic editors.
The Fourth Gospel (of which there is no doubt that the author was a Gnostic, a marcionite or even a cainite) preserves a trace of the absence of Barabbas in its original layer.

[rgprice]

I don't think so. The interplay between Mark 14 and Mark 15 is too complex for a late orthodox modification. The symbolism is also too subtle. Matthew and other later orthodizers were much too blunt and crude.

[Giuseppe]

I think that, if the Barabbas episode is innocent (i.e. not a translation on paper of a theological conflict against marcionites), then what remains unexplained is the opposition between Jesus called Christ (I assume that 'king of the Jews' is only another term for 'Christ', i.e. that Matthew realized perfectly that, in Mark, 'called king of the Jews' means merely 'called Christ') and the Jesus-who-is-not-the-Christ, i.e. the Son of Father (Barabbas). The only sin of the "Son of Father" is not his being a robber and a killer, his only sin is ultimately to be not called the Christ.

• It is true that Barabbas is condemned morally because he is not the Jewish Messiah.

• It is false that Barabbas is not the Jewish messiah because he is condemned morally.

[Peter Kirby]

What you're describing involves a more-than-passing familiarity with the positions of the Christians, which of course some would have. But it's too particularized and detailed to be a generalization about how "the pagans" "thought" about Christians. It is, as you put it, how they usually would have thought about the topics you mention, if they were introduced to them as part of what Christians believed.

What, then, did people find most objectionable about Christians, in general?

The most salient feature in that regard was their refusal to participate in honoring the gods, with all that entailed.

I think that's correct, and why Christians were called "atheists". In a polytheistic society, Christ would have been just one more god. So it's the rejection of the Roman gods that caused the problem. In fact, Justin Martyr points out that there were Christians who weren't persecuted. Perhaps those Christians' Good God was able to include the Roman pantheon. They had no need to reject the Roman gods while still remaining Christians. Justin Martyr writes in his First Apology:
https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ ... ology.html

There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto... And a man, Meander, also a Samaritan, of the town Capparetaea, a disciple of Simon... And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds--the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh--we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions.

In broad outline, one of these two explanations suggest themselves, if Justin is correct here:

(1) What you hypothesize: they were "able to include the Roman pantheon" and live as polytheistic pagans among pagans

(2) They were considered to be Jews by the Romans

Assuming that we reject the first option, this could be evidence for Stephan Huller's opinion that the Marcionites weren't ultra-gentilic, as it is commonly assumed. This could be evidence that the Marcionites were "more Jewish" in some sense than other Christians, which allowed them to be convincingly considered Jews by the Romans.

[Secret Alias]

Remember there were three classes of people in the Jewish world at the time

1. Jews
2. Hebrews (proselytes)
3. Gentiles

Somewhere in Book Three of Adversus Marcionem Tertullian says that the Marcionites appealed their message to the proselytes. What a strange place to develop an anti-Jewish doctrine. Like standing outside steak houses selling memberships for a vegetarian delivery service. The Marcionites used texts which used terminology related to Israelite religion. They thought of themselves as the "new Israel," they employed most of Paul's allegories that were derived from the Pentateuch, they even had interpretations of passages of the Old Testament (cf. Dialogues of Adamantius).

The Marcionites clearly sought the prosleytes to tell them that Jesus had come for them. We learn from Eznik that they had a whole story that Jesus came for those in the underworld who hadn't yet received the law of Moses. So this idea is related to the appeal to the proselytes. They said that Jesus's coming wasn't as the messiah of the Old Testament. That doesn't mean that they didn't use prophesy to justify Jesus's appearance necessarily. Remember we as a society have bought into this ridiculous narrative that Moses was a Jew or his religion was "Judaism." Fucking retarded.

Jerusalem isn't mentioned in the Pentateuch. The focus is Samaria and Samaritan locales. The anti-prophetic message that gets filtered through the Church Fathers might have been related to Samaritanism or not. I don't know. But the Marcionites seem to have understood Jesus as someone other than the messiah awaited by the Jews.

[davidmartin]

it depends what Marcionite's 'promise' was that apparently they were loud in proclaiming had arrived (Tertullian)
if the promise wasn't messianic was it that to Abraham or one from a good god that was nothing to do with Abraham?
maybe this is the sort of thing Marcionites disagreed about