Son of God, Son of Man: On the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke

By Eduardo P. Olaguer Jr.

Son of God, Son of Man is a reflection on the gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke that, like a diptych icon, presents two complementary images of Jesus as the New Joshua and the New Temple. The entire panorama of Israels history after the Exodus, from the entry into the Promised Land to the rebuilding of the Temple after the Babylonian Exile, is thus encapsulated in the life of Christ. This unique work builds on the authors previous commentaries on the gospels of John and Matthew, which portrayed Jesus as the New Genesis and the New Moses.

The Second Vatican Council called on Catholics to read the Bible in the same spirit in which it was written. Pope Benedict has led the way into a genuinely post-critical scholarship that respects the many levels of meaning present in the sacred books. Eduardo Olaguer has followed the guidance of tradition and the leadership of the Pope in writing Gospel commentaries that take account of modern scholarship even as they reveal the depths of the divine Word. By connecting each passage of Scripture with others in both Old and New testament, he reads the Bible as the Church Fathers did, seeing the unity that comes from the Spirit working through the human authors and the events they describe. Full of extraordinary insights, this is the commentary that many people have been waiting for.

-Stratford Caldecott

Editor of Second Spring

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 6, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469103587

Eduardo P. Olaguer Jr.

Dr. Olaguer is a layman with a keen interest in Scripture and Catholic Theology. He holds an S.B. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has worked as an environmental scientist for over twenty years. His previous theological publications include: Born From Above: A Commentary on St. John’s Gospel (Ambassador Books, 1998), The Old and the New: A Dual Commentary on Genesis and the Gospel of St. Matthew (Writers Club Press, 2002), and Letters to the Churches: Catholic History and The Revelation to John (Queenship Publishing, 2005).

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Copyright © 2008 by Eduardo P. Olaguer, Jr..

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Contents

PREFACE

PART I

PROLOGUE

1     

2     

3     

4     

5     

6     

7     

EPILOGUE

PART II

PROLOGUE

1     

2     

3     

4     

5     

6     

7     

EPILOGUE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDIX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

To my brothers and sisters

PREFACE

The Bible has been and continues to be the world’s most popular book. Its stories have an amazing resonance, touching the reader at a deep level regardless of belief or unbelief, as evidenced by the way in which these stories have become integrated into the fabric of western culture and idiom. This is especially true of the four gospels, the books of the New Testament that record the teachings and miracles of Jesus Christ. But where does the resonance of the gospels come from? Is it only from the immediate force of their words on the reader’s emotions and intellect? Or is there a deeper reason that these words command respect and attention beyond the weight assigned to them by human tradition?

The answer was provided by Christ as he walked along the road to Emmaus, when he made the hearts of Cleopas and his companion burn by opening their minds to the Scriptures (Lk 24:32).

O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! . . . And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Lk 24:25-27).

In other words, when one reads any of the gospels, one is not merely dealing with a single book, but with several books that have been supernaturally intertwined in Christ. The human mind does not usually see this, preferring to read in the small, or as the prophet Isaiah said: precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little (Is 28:9-10). But the spirit embedded in the human soul¹—that is the invisible organ of communication between the human self and God, often sees what the mind does not. It is the spirit that recognizes in the gospels reflections of the stories of the Old Testament—stories such as the Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, the conquests of Joshua, the kingdoms of David and Solomon, and the great prophet Elijah, who ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire.

The fact is that in reading the Bible, we are dealing not with a mere human compilation, but with the product of an infinite intelligence that shows itself in the vast number of internal rhymes interconnecting the various biblical stories. By imbibing these stories, we feed our spirits with the supernatural substance of the Word of God that transforms our lives and gives them the same density of meaning contained within the Scriptures. Christ himself quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 in saying, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Mt 4:4).

Upon being fed habitually with the Word of God, we begin to realize that the events surrounding us are no mere coincidence, but are artfully arranged for our benefit, regardless of pain or pleasure. As St. Paul taught, We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him (Rom 8:28). The gospels themselves are full of reverberations and echoes of God’s word in the Old Testament that make up the very substance of Christ’s human life. No one can appreciate this living incarnation of the Word of God without hearkening to St. Augustine’s teaching that the New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.²

Son of God, Son of Man is the last of a series of gospel commentaries whose major theme is the interpenetration of the Old and New Testaments. Two works preceded it, namely Born From Above: A Commentary on John’s Gospel, and a second entitled, The Old and the New: A Dual Commentary on Genesis and the Gospel of St. Matthew. The latter was intended to provide a relatively complete commentary on the Torah—that is the Law of Moses consisting of the first five books of the Bible, which are the hidden referent of St. Matthew’s gospel. Son of God, Son of Man continues this approach in demonstrating that the gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke closely correspond to the narrative books of the Old Testament that describe the history of God’s chosen people from the conquest of the Promised Land to the end of the Babylonian Exile.

There is yet another key to the meaning of the gospels apart from the Old Testament. This key involves structural features within the gospels themselves. In the gospels of Mark and Luke, these features are the inclusio (the sandwich structure) and the diptych (the side-by-side placement of two related images). The combination of structural keys and the links between the Old and New Testaments reveals secrets that would otherwise remain hidden from the naked eye. For example, knowing that St. Luke’s gospel references a series of diptychs from the historical books of the Old Testament (i.e., the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles) sheds an intense light on these remarks of Jesus to his disciples as recorded by Luke:

Blessed are the eyes which see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it (Lk 10:23-24).³

Son of God, Son of Man is itself a diptych that provides two complementary images of Christ. Through the eyes of St. Mark and St. Luke, we perceive with greater clarity and intimacy the divine and human natures of Jesus, so that from these combined perspectives Christ emerges as a living presence worthy of adoration.

May the reader of this work be enlightened by the Holy Spirit to perceive the riches hidden within the gospels, so that the light of Christ may truly shine forth in him for the greater glory of God.

PART I

THE SON OF GOD

ON THE GOSPEL OF ST. MARK

The sum of your word is truth.

Psalm 119:160

PROLOGUE

THE GOOD NEWS OF MARK

The Synoptic Gospels

A gospel is a divinely inspired book describing the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. There are four gospels in the New Testament, each authored by one of the four evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The first three of these books are known as the synoptic gospels, because their authors view the life of Christ with the same eye. Matthew, Mark, and Luke present the story of Jesus within a similar framework; they even use many of the same words. The Gospel of John, on the other hand, differs markedly from the synoptic gospels in its mystical style and its singular description of certain events, such as the wedding at Cana and the raising of Lazarus.

The Gospel of Mark is the shortest of the four gospels. When St. Thomas Aquinas assembled the Catena Aurea, a medieval compendium of comments on the four gospels by the Fathers of the Church, he devoted the least space to St. Mark. This ancient neglect may be due to the few unique details that distinguish Mark’s gospel from the longer gospels of Matthew and Luke. Since the nineteenth century, however, Mark has become much more important to scripture scholars. Mark is now viewed by many, though not all, biblical experts as both the earliest gospel and one of two main sources for the other synoptic gospels.⁴ Unfortunately for the Christian reader, modern commentaries tend to dwell on how Mark was written, and say very little about what Mark’s gospel means that cannot also be learned from Matthew or Luke. To understand St. Mark in depth, one must take seriously every difference between his work and the rest of the gospels.

The Christian should not shy away from admitting differences in wording among the gospels resulting from gaps in human memory. These differences are tremendously important in understanding the true mind of Christ, who is a divine and eternal person, and not merely a shadowy historical figure. As Christ took on a seemingly weak human nature in comparison to his deity, he also allowed his divine word to be subject to the normal limitations of historical transmission. A gospel, after all, is not a photographic recording. Nevertheless, the four gospels are historically accurate according to the standards of the ancient world in which they were written. Beyond that, they supernaturally convey the thoughts of God as he intended them to be revealed, despite obvious human weakness. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor 1:25).

St. Mark’s own weakness is evident from his bad Greek as compared to the more literary style of St. Luke (see Table 1). Luke was a physician who wrote for an educated audience typified by his patron, the most excellent Theophilus (Lk 1:3). Mark, on the other hand, wrote to the common person in an accessible style that emphasized action and emotion, much like a mass media reporter of today. Moreover, as tradition indicates that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome, many members of his targeted audience would have been Gentiles rather than Jews. This fact establishes an important difference between Mark’s gospel and that of St. Matthew, who wrote to a Jewish audience familiar with the conventions of the Law of Moses and the stories of the Old Testament.

Table 1. A comparison of the language of Mark and Luke using an English translation by Robert Griffith-Jones (The Four Witnesses, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).

And getting up early, in the dark—very early—Jesus came out and came away to a lonely place and there started praying. And Simon and those with him, he hunted him out and they found him and say to him, Everyone is looking for you. And he says to them, "Let’s go elsewhere, to the towns round about, so I can preach there, too; for to this end have I come out.

(MARK 1:35-38)

Coming out when it was day, Jesus left for a lonely place. And the crowds started searching for him and came up to him and held him back from leaving them. But he said unto them, "To the other cities, too, must I proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God; because to this end I have been sent out.

(LUKE 4:42-43)

The differences among the intended audiences of the three synoptic gospels help explain why Mark did not include a genealogy for Jesus as did Matthew and Luke. Matthew was interested in proving that Christ was the legitimate heir of God’s promises in the Old Testament, hence his genealogy established Jesus as the son of David, the son of Abraham (Mt 1:1). St. Luke, on the other hand, behaved like a classical historian in explaining the details of the Incarnation (how God became man). His genealogy reaches all the way back to the dawn of time to call Jesus the son of Adam, the son of God (Lk 3:38). Mark, in contrast to Matthew and Luke, intended to portray Christ as a divine conqueror, a powerful figure even greater than the mortal or semi-divine super-heroes of popular myth and legend familiar to his Gentile audience. Thus, St. Mark began his work by saying: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mk 1:1).

The Proclamation of Peter

Ancient tradition identifies Mark, the evangelist, as the John Mark mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. John Mark’s wealthy mother owned a house in Jerusalem in which Christians met regularly, and which St. Peter visited when he miraculously escaped from prison (Acts 12:12). Mark and Peter were therefore close friends. Mark was also a cousin of the apostle Barnabas (Col 4:10) and an associate of St. Paul (Acts 12:25). He was once the occasion of a quarrel between the two of them (Acts 15:36-40) due to his earlier abandonment of an apostolic mission to Pamphylia (Acts 13:13). Despite this quarrel, Mark was at St. Paul’s side in Rome when Paul was finally in prison, awaiting his sentence of death (Col 4:10; 2 Tim 4:11).

While at Rome, Mark not only assisted St. Paul but also served as St. Peter’s secretary. Peter himself referred to Mark as his son while in Babylon, his codename for Rome (1 Pet 5:13). The historian Eusebius (c. 323 AD) confirmed this relationship in quoting the Apostolic Father, Papias, who had personally known St. John the Evangelist:

Mark, who had been Peter’s interpreter, wrote down carefully, but not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s sayings and doings. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, one of Peter’s. Peter used to adapt his teaching to the occasion, without making a systematic arrangement of the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark was quite justified in writing down some things just as he remembered them. For he had one purpose only—to leave out nothing that he had heard, and to make no misstatement about it.⁵

Eusebius further states:

So brightly shone the light of true religion on the minds of Peter’s hearers that, not satisfied with a single hearing or with the oral teaching of the divine message, they resorted to appeals of every kind to induce Mark . . . as he was a follower of Peter, to leave them in writing a summary of the instruction they had received by word of mouth . . . and thus became responsible for the writing of what is known as the Gospel according to Mark.⁶

These circumstances link the details of Mark’s gospel to St. Peter’s eyewitness account of the life of Jesus. St. Mark’s organization of Peter’s material is not as random as it appears to be at first glance, but reflects St. Peter’s own understanding of the essentials of the gospel, referred to as the kerygma (Greek for proclamation). The kerygma is manifested in Peter’s speeches in the Book of Acts (Acts 2:14-38, 5:30-32, 10:34-43), and can be summarized as follows:

1.   Jesus fulfilled what was foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament.

2.   Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and with supernatural power, and went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil (Acts10:38).

3.   Jesus was delivered to death on the Cross by the set plan of God.

4.   By virtue of his resurrection, Jesus was exalted as Lord and Messiah.

5.   The ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God and subsequent outpouring of the Holy Spirit are proof of Jesus’ heavenly rule.

6.   Salvation is offered to those who repent and believe in the gospel.

7.   Jesus will return to judge the living and the