The Christian Mission of Jesus

By Don Wesley Davis

The Gospel of Mark begins with the author telling his readers that Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God and that he had something very specific to say about his upcoming ministry in Galilee. Mark gives his readers the exact wording of Jesus' mission statement in Mark 1:15, which are words that Jesus would have spoken almost four decades prior to Mark's time of writing. Scholars have treated the quote as a mix of possible 'authentic' remembrances of Jesus, on the one hand, and as the views of the early Church, on the other. Few, however, have considered the possibility that the entire mission statement was crafted by the author for a uniquely Christian purpose, using the Jewish scriptures as his source and writing to the community in Jerusalem, who were under Roman attack at the time the Gospel was finished. This book considers that possibility, as well as the reasons why the author may have done this. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: LUDLOW PUBLISHING
• Release date: Sep 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215780183

Don Wesley Davis

Don Wesley Davis, B.A., MA.R., M.Res., Ph.D., is a critical biblical scholar and university instructor of Biblical Interpretation and the Hebrew Bible. He was an undergraduate at the University of Washington in Seattle and subsequently studied ancient languages and liguistics at Fuller Theological Seminary and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is currently a member of the Doctoral College of the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David and is an active member of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Book preview

Preface

The research for this book was conducted at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David as part of a master’s program that culminated in this dissertation, which was first published electronically by the university and shortly thereafter made available as an eBook. The piece touches upon an authenticity question in the Gospel of Mark, regarding certain statements that the author attributes to Jesus, which are more reminiscent of early Christian traditions that developed after his death, than they are of the historical Jesus himself.

As a teacher of biblical interpretation in the United States, I often find that many, if not most students come to university introduction courses believing that the red-letter words in their New Testament Bibles are the exact sentiments of the historical Jesus, which were recorded by eyewitnesses during the years of his ministry and passion. Of the students who have read the Gospel of Mark, almost none are initially aware of its central importance and primacy as the first gospel written of the New Testament. Many students for example, do not understand that the gospels of the NT were all written after Paul had completed his full corpus of writings and that Mark was written after Paul’s death and that Matthew and Luke later relied upon Mark for much of the content of their own productions.

Happily, for teachers, Mark’s Gospel is a rather shocking ancient book, which makes it exciting, if not somewhat disquieting, to teach to undergraduates. The liberties that the author takes, if one can say such a thing about a sacred book, in narrating the story of Jesus, are breathtaking, if we take the perspective of one of Mark’s initial readers (or hearers) back in the day. He is for example, the first writer to quote Jesus at length and to provide a chronology and context for his sayings and deeds.

Why a thematic and contextual narrative like this was not undertaken earlier, in the years before Mark’s work was completed, by someone like Paul or Peter or perhaps even James or Barnabas is a great mystery. Why it took a second or perhaps third generation Christian to narrate the story of Jesus, in writing, in the period following the deaths of the great Apostles is a perplexing question.

Scholars point to the possibility that other, earlier written works, that perhaps included proto gospels, may have existed prior to Mark, but none have ever been found. Much has been written on the mysterious Q, which contains material not included in Mark, but was used by both Matthew and Luke in their gospel accounts. Most critical scholars agree that Q, if it in fact ever existed, was probably written after Mark and not before, since Mark seemed unaware of it.

The frustrating reality is that the New Testament gospels reflect not Jesus’ exact words, but rather the words attributed to him by the New Testament writers, which may or may not reflect Jesus’ original teachings. What we know of these writers is that they were devotees who authored very thematic narratives that were consistent with the traditions of the early Church at the time of writing, several decades after the events they describe.  

Scholarly attempts to discover the authentic words of the historical Jesus have of late come into question. Critical scholars have for many years, employed various authenticity criteria to determine what Jesus may have once said by deriving conclusions from the rather incomplete evidence in the NT narratives about him. These reasoned efforts are fraught with conjecture and do not deliver certain results.

As disappointing as this may be for many, it is an opportunity for scholars to rethink their analysis and to dive more deeply into the human aspects of the gospels as literature. 

Somewhat troubling for students who wish to read Mark as actual history, is the presence of rather obvious anachronisms in the writings that attribute Christian ideas to the historical Jesus. The Marcan Jesus, for example, warns his followers that they will have to carry their own crosses one day, and explains in rather specific detail what will happen in Jerusalem when the city is besieged, and the Temple is destroyed there. These observations best fit Mark’s own time and circumstances and are not consistent with the time of the historical Jesus.

This short book wrestles with some of these problems and attempts to highlight and explain what might be going on behind the scenes, regarding Mark’s method and purpose in the first Gospel. Rather than conduct an exhaustive analysis of the entire Marcan text, I have chosen to focus on a single, iconic verse of the narrative, where the author’s imperative and goal is evident, and where the anachronisms and conflations are most glaring. The hope here is that Bible students of all ages may realize the value of digging deeper into the text rather than simply accepting it as history and eyewitness testimony at face value.

Mark reports the very first public words spoken by Jesus in Mark 1:15. Yet these words appear to be anything but original to Jesus. The author seems to have crafted the words for a uniquely Christian purpose, for use in his own time and circumstance.  

This is where I will focus the analysis.

Don Wesley Davis

Summer 2022

The Christian Mission of Jesus

Abbreviations

1QM:   The War Scroll

11Q:  Melch, The Melchizedek Scroll

Ann.:   Tacitus, Annales

Ant.:   Josephus, Jewish Antiquities

Apoc. Ab.: The Apocalypse of Abraham

As. Mos.: The Assumption of Moses

Ascen. Isa.: The Ascension of Isaiah

BCE:  Before the Common Era (aka, BC)

CE:  Common Era (aka, AD)

DSS:  The Dead Sea Scrolls

En.:  The Books of Enoch

GNV:  Geneva Bible

HB:  Hebrew Bible

Jub.:   Jubilees

J.W.:  Josephus, The Jewish War

KJV:  King James Version

LXX:  The Septuagint

Macc.:  The Books of Maccabees

NASB:  New American Standard Bible

NIV:  New International Version

NKJV:  New King James Version

NRSV:  New Revised Standard Version

NJPS:  The Tanakh, New Jewish Publication Society

NMV:  New Messianic Version

NT:  New Testament

OT:  Old Testament

RSV:   Revised Standard Version

Chapter Headings and Sub-headings

Chapter 1: Introduction    

Chapter 2: Mark’s Use of the Jewish Scriptures

2.1 Introduction to Chapter 2

2.2 What We Can Know of Mark’s Sources

2.3 The Statement as an Anachronistic Declaration

2.4 Mark’s Engagement with the Jewish Scriptures

2.5 Mark’s Allusions to Ezekiel 7     

2.6 Individual Accountability and Repentance

Chapter 3: Textual Analysis of the Mission Statement

3.1 Introduction to Chapter 3 

3.2 The Four Phrases of The Mission Statement 

3.3 The First Phrase: ‘The time has been fulfilled’

3.4 The Second Phrase: ‘The kingdom of God draws near’    

3.5 The Third Phrase: ‘repent’

3.6 The Fourth Phrase: ‘believe in the Gospel’

Chapter 4: The Rhetorical Purpose of the Mission Statement

4.1 Introduction to Chapter 4        

4.2 Mark’s Narrative Cycle     

4.3 The Decision Motif     

4.4 The Purpose of Mark’s Decision Motif    

4.5 The Mission Statement as Baptismal Formulae   

4.6 The Baptismal Tradition of The Early Church   

4.8 Could The Mission Statement Have Originated with Jesus?

4.9 Why We Cannot Know What The Historical Jesus Actually Said

4.10 Mark’s Rhetorical Purpose    

Chapter 5: The Imperative of the Mission Statement 

5.1 Introduction to Chapter 5      

5.2 Mark’s Expansion of The Day of the Lord    

5.3 Daniel’s Son of Man and The Kingdom of God 

5.4 The Historical Context of Mark’s Gospel    

5.5 For Mark, The Action is in Jerusalem   

5.6 Josephus’ Account of The Siege of Jerusalem   

5.7 How Mark’s Apocalyptic Intimations May Have Been Received   

5.8 How Mark Brings His Readers Back to The Decision Motif

5.9 The Fidelity of Suffering Disciples     

Conclusions

Bibliography        

Timeline

Endnotes

Exhibits

Chapter 1

Introduction

The Gospel of Mark begins with the author telling his readers that Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God (1:14) and that Jesus had something very specific to say about his upcoming ministry in Galilee (1:15).

In his presentation of Jesus’ mission statement, the author gives the impression that he is using Jesus’ exact, originally spoken words from over three decades before the Gospel of Mark was written.

Commentators over the years, writing about the Gospel of Mark, have tended to treat the statement as a mix of ‘authentic remembrances’ of Jesus, on the one hand, and as the views of the early Church, on the other. Few, however, have considered the possibility that the entire mission statement is the invention of the author, constructed for his own literary or rhetorical purposes, using the Jewish scriptures and existing Christian traditions as key resources to construct the statement.

This book will consider that possibility, as well as the reasons why the author may have done this. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the author, who will be referred to as Mark, constructed the mission statement of Jesus for a rhetorical purpose, namely, to warn his audience of the apocalyptic times they were living in and to strengthen them for what was about to happen at the end of the age, at the eschaton.

I will argue that Mark constructed the mission statement of Jesus (1:15) as part of a decision motif, using the Jewish scriptures, to bring his readers to Christian baptism and committed discipleship in preparation for the Parousia of Jesus, that he regarded as imminent.

The book will comprise of five chapters and a conclusion. Each chapter will begin with an introduction. In Chapter 1, the research question will be articulated, as summarized above, followed in Chapter 2 by an analysis of Mark’s use of material from the Jewish scriptures, particularly – I will propose – from Ezekiel and Daniel, to provide a rhetorical framework for the mission statement in Mark 1:15.

It will be argued that Mark constructed the mission statement using Ezekiel’s imagery of Israel’s doom on the Day of the Lord (Ezek. 7:7) and conflated that imagery with an allusion to Daniel’s ‘one like a Son of Man’ (Dan. 7:13) to support his theological and rhetorical goals.

In Chapter 3 the text of the mission statement will be examined in detail, with each word and phrase evaluated for their possible meaning, application, and context within the Gospel of Mark. This part of the analysis will form the basis of the investigation as conducted in the rest of the book.

Careful attention will be paid to the vocabulary attested in the mission statement of the Marcan Jesus, given that the Greek words and phrases in question will have either been translated from a source and interpreted or perhaps, as will be fully examined, wholly constructed by Mark to establish his rhetorical purpose.[1]

I will consider whether some of the phrasing used by the writer may plausibly represent a cultural memory of Jesus’ original teaching[2] on the subject of his Galilean ministry, one that perhaps resonated in his sources or in his community, while other phrases in the statement may reflect certain early Christian traditions, such as baptismal traditions, that developed after the death of Jesus. In the third chapter, I will also evaluate the strong possibility that the statement has, mostly, a post-Easter meaning and significance.[3]

Although