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Gospels In Conflict: John and Thomas - Part 6

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Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 5 with the following:

 

(p.42) " At the desolate scene of the crucifixion, Mark tells how Jesus cried out

that God had abandoned him, uttered a final, inarticulate cry, and died; yet a

Roman centurion who watched him die declared, " Truly, this man was a son of

God. " [34] Although to a non-Jew like the centurion, " son of God " might have

indicated a divine being, Jesus' earliest followers, like Mark, were Jewish and

understood that " son of God, " like " messiah, " designated Israel's human king.

During Israel's ancient coronation ceremonies, the future king was anointed with

oil to show God's favor while a chorus singing one of the ceremonial psalms

proclaimed that when the king is crowned he becomes God's representative, his

human " son. " [35] Thus when Mark opens his gospel saying that " this is the

gospel of Jesus, the 'messiah', the 'son of God', " [36] he is announcing that

God has chosen Jesus to be the future king of Israel. Since Mark writes in

Greek, he translates the Hebrew term 'messiah' as 'christos' ( " anointed one " in

Greek), which later becomes, in English, " Jesus [the] christ. "

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas) Chapter 2, p.40-42.

 

Notes:

 

[34] Mark 15:39.

 

[35] Psalm 2:7; discussion of the way such passages are worked into the birth

stories of Matthew and Luke, see Raymond E. Brown, S.J., 'The Birth of the

Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke', 2nd ed.

(New York, 1993).

 

[36] Mark 1:1.

 

Here now, is Part 6.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Gospels In Conflict: John and Thomas - Part 6

 

(p.42) In Mark, Jesus also characterizes himself as " son of man, " (p.43) the

meaning of which is ambiguous. Often in the Hebrew Bible, " son of man " means

nothing more than " human being " (in Hebrew, 'ben adam' means " son of Adam " ). The

prophet Ezekiel, for example, says that the Lord repeatedly addressed him as

" son of man, " often translated " mortal " ; [37] thus when Mark's Jesus calls

himself " son of man, " he too may simply mean " human being. " Yet Mark's

contemporaries who were familiar with the Hebrew Bible may also have recognized

" son of man " as referring to the mysterious person whom the prophet Daniel saw

in a vision appearing before God's throne to be invested with power:

 

I saw in the night visions, and behold, coming with the clouds of heaven was one

like a 'son of man', and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before

him. And to him was given dominion and glory, and kingdom, so that all peoples,

nations, and languages should serve him...an everlasting dominion, which shall

not pass away. [38]

 

Mark says that when the high priest interrogated Jesus at his trial, and asked,

" Are you the messiah, the son of God? " Jesus answered, " I am; and you will see

the son of man...'coming with the clouds of heaven.' " [39] According to Mark,

then, Jesus not only claimed the royal titles of Israel's king ( " messiah, " " son

of God " ) but actually quoted Daniel's vision to suggest that he--or perhaps

someone else whose coming he foresaw--was the " son of man " whom the prophet saw

appearing before God's throne in heaven. Matthew and Luke follow Mark in

describing Jesus both as a future king ( " messiah, " " son of God " ) and as a mortal

invested with divine power ( " son of man " ).

 

(p.44) None of these titles, however, explains precisely who Jesus is. Instead,

the gospel writers invoke a cluster of traditional terms to express their

radical conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was a man raised to unique--even

supernatural--status. Luke suggests, however, that it was only after Jesus'

death that God, in an unprecedented act of favor; restored him to life, and thus

'promoted' Jesus, so to speak, not only to " messiah " but also to " Lord " --a name

that Jewish tradition ordinarily reserves strictly for the divine Lord himself.

According to Luke's account, written ten to twenty years after Mark's, Peter

dares announce to the " men of Jerusalem " that Jesus alone, of the entire human

race, returned alive after death, and that proves that " God 'has made him both

Lord and messiah'--this Jesus whom you crucified. " [40]

 

Yet John, who wrote about a decade after Luke, opens his gospel with a poem

which suggests that Jesus is not human at all but the divine, eternal Word of

God in human 'form' ( " in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God,

and the word was God " ). [41] The author whom we call John probably knew that he

was not the first--and certainly not the only--Christian to believe that Jesus

was somehow divine. Some fifty years earlier, the apostle Paul, probably quoting

an early hymn, had said of Jesus that

 

although 'he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God as a

thing to be grasped', but emptied himself, 'taking the form of a servant, being

found in the likeness of a human being.' [42]

 

Unlike Luke, who depicts Jesus as a man raised to divine status, John, as does

the hymn Paul quotes, pictures him instead as a divine being who descended to

earth--temporarily--to take on human 'form'. (p.45) Elsewhere, Paul declares

that it is the holy spirit who inspires those who believe that " Jesus is Lord! "

[45] Sixty years later, one of Paul's admirers, the Syrian bishop Ignatius of

Antioch, anticipating his impending martyrdom, wrote that he passionately longed

to " imitate the suffering of my God " [44]--that is, of Jesus. So Pliny, the

Roman governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor, probably was right when, after

investigating suspicious persons in his province, he wrote to the the emperor

Trajan (c. 115) that these Christians " sing a hymn to Jesus as to a god "

[45]--perhaps it was the same hymn that Paul knew.

 

This is why some historians, having compared the Gospel of Mark (written 68 to

70 C.E.) with the gospels of Matthew and Luke (c.80 to 90), and then with that

of John (c. 90 to 100), have thought that John's gospel represents a transition

from a lower to a higher Christology--an increasingly elevated view of Jesus.

These historians point out that such views developed from the first century on

and culminated in phrases like those enshrined in the Nicene Creed, which

proclaims Jesus to be " God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. "

 

Yet Christian teaching about Jesus does not follow a simple evolutionary

pattern. Although John's formulations have virtually defined orthodox Christian

doctrine for nearly two thousand years, they were not universally accepted in

his own time. And while the claims of Jesus' divinity by Paul and John surpass

those of Mark, Luke, and Matthew, Thomas's gospel, written perhaps around the

same time as John's, takes similar language to mean something quite different.

Because the Gospel of Thomas diverges from the more familiar pattern found in

John, let us look at it first.

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas)

Chapter 2, p.42-45

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

Notes:

 

[37] See, for example, Ezekiel 2:1; 2:8; 3:1; 3:4; 3:10; 3:17; 3:25; and

throughout the oracles of Ezekiel.

 

[38] Daniel 7:13.

 

[39] Mark 14:61-62.

 

[40] Most scholars agree that the author of Luke also wrote the New Testament

Acts of the Apostles; see Acts 2:22-23, 32-36.

 

[41] John 1.1.

 

[42] Philippians 2:7-8.

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