The Messianic Secret

David Paul

One of the major Christological works of the 20th century. I honestly thought this was already available in Logos.

David Paul

Surprised there hasn't been any response to this suggestion, so I'm going to push a little harder. Assuming Mark was produced first (not sure if that's true or even matters; I always assumed each gospel was independantly inspired by YHWH), then Mark's "take" has a sort of gatekeeper effect in terms of achieving anything like an adequate understanding of Yeishuua`, ':Elohhiym, and Scripture. I see 3 traits that I combine under the "Messianic Secret" rubric: 1) Yeishuua`'s repeated admonition to his disciples and the individuals with whom He engaged to not spread His identity as Messianic miracle-worker; 2) Mark's repeated use of the word "immediately" to describe Yeishuua`'s movement through the narrative space; 3) Mark's droning insistence that the disciples were denser than dolomite, and fundamentally incapable (at that time—and in general principle) of understanding much of anything that Yeishuua` was saying or doing, which is/was a prophesied necessity of YHWH's plan…that is still in effect today. All of this stuff is "in there" (i.e. Mark), and it has been addressed by numerous scholars since, but Wrede was the first to comprehensively address this intuitive oddity. For all their disconnection, the rabbis have acknowledged something I have found to be true with regularity over the years, which is that wherever Scripture produces "difficult", "unexpected", or counter-intuitive data, that's where the juice is. Logos needs to include this resource, because, to amend Woody Allen, "we need the juice."