The Secret Life of the Messiah

Rethinking the “Messianic Secret” in the Gospel of Mark

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Reading through the gospel of Mark is quite the journey, for anyone who hasn’t done so lately. Many modern readers report that the gospel of Mark features a Jesus that feels a bit more human than the others.

Jesus is a bit rougher with people, showing anger and frustration and generally not having as much “time to waste” as people have argued that he does in the other gospels. He does everything quickly and in a hurry!

Additionally, the gospel of Mark has frequent encounters with unclean spirits. These unclean spirits seem to know exactly who Jesus is and are possessing people before having a conversation with Jesus and getting driven out.

The disciples seem to have no clue who Jesus is and are confused and bumbling for almost the entire book. Jesus is speaking in parables and his disciples are unable to figure out what he is saying.

Jesus even forbids his disciples from speaking or telling others about him. This seems like an interesting strategy for someone trying to “spread the message/good news”, which you would think should be available to all.

When you put all of these elements together, the gospel of Mark can seem fairly confusing. What is going on here that makes things so different than how they appear in the other gospels?

Cue the “Messianic Secret”.

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The Messianic Secret

The Messianic secret is a theory by the German scholar William Wrede (pronounced VRAY-duh if you want to impress your friends) in his work at the beginning of the twentieth century entitled (appropriately) “The Messianic Secret”.

In his work, Wrede sought to explain the element of “wonder” (i.e. crowds being amazed at Jesus when they saw him), the secrecy (“forbidding people to talk about him”) and the misrecognition (“when his disciples or others don’t understand who he is”).

Interestingly, Wrede complains that his colleagues talk about Jesus as if they have known him for twenty years, saying “Jesus would have done this and not that” and “that is not consistent with who he was”, which he criticizes as trying to act as a psychologizing factor.

As opposed to this approach, Wrede promises to really engage the texts, looking at the primary sources and not counting on the interpretive frameworks that others have put in place to make decisions for him.

But then, Wrede goes on to say “Jesus thinks this” and “Jesus didn’t think that” in almost the same way that he had just argued that his colleagues did. The reality is that the temptation to speak for Jesus got to Wrede anyway.

The Messianic secret, then, attempts to explain Jesus’s attempts to make everyone be quiet after witnessing his miraculous deeds using a literary approach to argue that Jesus was delaying his recognition as Messiah until “the timing was right” in his ministry.

This approach sets up the gospel of Mark as one that intentionally delays the revealing of Jesus as “the Messiah” until the end of the book, when things become more explicit and the time is right for this to be revealed.

It also provides a good explanation for a pressing question that a reader might have when they are encountering the gospel of Mark for the first time, which is why no one around Jesus seems to recognize that he is “the Messiah”.

It is an approach that does smuggle in an assumption though. It assumes that Jesus knew that he was the Messiah all along and walked around with that idea as well as complete foreknowledge of the fact that he would be crucified if he told anyone (or even that he would be crucified later).

That is quite an assumption and one that probably needs some revisiting. It seems as though that assumes that Jesus was omnipotent and was walking around the earth with the brain of a god, so to speak.

Jesus’s humanity would be greatly undermined if he possessed the ability to just know what the result of every action that he took was and to see his future without any possible hindrance, as a god would.

The Messianic secret has been the dominant model amongst scholars for over a century now.

I say that we take a look at some of the passages typically quoted in support of the Messianic secret and then see if we can rethink the reasons for the wonder, secrecy and misrecognition that we see in the gospel of Mark.

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Say Nothing to Nobody!

“A man with a skin disease came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I am willing. Be made clean!” Immediately the skin disease left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded as a testimony to them.”

But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly but stayed out in the country, and people came to him from every quarter.” (Mark 1:40–45 NRSVue)

Note: I recently wrote an article arguing that the text above should read “moved with anger” instead of “moved with pity” based on the evidence of the direction of scribal influence in the above passage.

This passage is an example of Jesus telling a man with a skin disease that it is essential that he say “nothing to nobody”. This is a good starting point for thinking about the Messianic secret in the gospel of Mark.

It has traditionally been one of the strongest proofs of the Messianic secret because it occurs right at the outset of Jesus’s ministry. Surely he wouldn’t want anyone to tell people about him right away, in case the Romans deem him a troublemaker, right?

Even though I am sure that I wasn’t thinking this way when I first encountered the theory, it is interesting that the same result comes from this discussion as if Jesus hadn’t tried to silence the guy.

If simply telling other people about miracles was going to end up getting Jesus crucified, then why didn’t that happen as a result of this man telling everyone in the town and his uncle about Jesus?

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No One Should Know This

“While he was still speaking, some people came from the synagogue leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the synagogue leader, “Do not be afraid; only believe.”

He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the synagogue leader’s house, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him.

Then he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” And immediately the girl stood up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat.” (Mark 5:35–43 NRSVue)

Okay, so this is a passage in which we explicitly see the idea of amazement or wonder as well as the idea that no one is allowed to know “this”, which is a shorthand of talking about what happened.

It is easy to read such passages quickly and skip the “they were overcome with amazement”. It is, after all, a story about a girl being raised from the dead. But is it possible that being overcome with amazement is not just about the deed?

The misrecognition/confusion is also present in the story when they laugh at Jesus for saying “the child is not dead, but sleeping.” It is an interesting narrative element that the whole house goes from crying/wailing to laughter instantly.

This story is interesting in that it has all the elements of the Messianic secret there, but it seems as though the normal explanation of scholars, which is that it was simply an amazing deed, could be insufficient.

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Who Am I?

“Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.” (Mark 8:27–30 NRSVue)

The conversation with Peter in Mark 8 is way above the importance of any other conversation in the Messianic secret, because it represents a climax of sorts. This is the moment when Peter finally understands that Jesus is the Messiah.

This seems like the moment when the cat would be let out of the bag. But alas, Jesus even sternly tells his disciples not to tell anyone about him.

This story might be one that could expose the Messianic secret as an oversimplification of what is going on here. After this point in the gospel, Jesus begins to tell his disciples what must happen to him in the future.

I understand that the Messianic secret is a “literary” explanation of what Mark is doing. But looking at these examples, it seems to be more of an apologetic model that fits things into a neat theological box.

Let’s try another literary path to rethink the Messianic secret.

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The Homer Parallels

The scholar Robyn Faith Walsh has been one of the most vocal about reading the gospels as literature in light of the literature that the gospel writers would have had at their disposal. For the gospel of Mark (or any Greek text of the time), that would have been Homer.

Anyone who wrote a story in Greek in the first century was soaked in Homer, which was a huge part of the education (παιδεία) that Classical authors received during the imperial period of antiquity.

Walsh argues that the themes of wonder, misrecognition and secrecy come from the Odyssey, a work in which Odysseus doesn’t tell anyone who he is for a number of books in order to protect himself.

This is a part of the theme of μῆτῐς (“cunning”) that sees Odysseus consistently trying to hide his appearance in order to protect himself. His identity is a secret to everyone except his own men, which he uses to get out of some tough situations.

The theme of wonder is evident in Homer as well, as the people often wonder who Odysseus is when he is visiting far off lands. The same word describes the wonder in the gospel of Mark as in the Odyssey.

Odysseus has given instructions to his men not to reveal who he is in the same way as Jesus told his disciples in the texts that we have seen above.

I think overall that parallels to Homer (and other Greek and Roman literature, which I don’t have time to address in this article) are a much stronger way to explain the way that the character Jesus is portrayed in the gospel of Mark than the Messianic Secret is.

Conclusion

One of the questions that putting the Odyssey in conversation with the gospel of Mark always begs is whether or not these parallels can be proven. This idea is relatively new in New Testament studies after all.

The typical approach is to appeal to oral tradition to explain where Mark is getting his information from. However, as more scholars understand appeals to oral tradition to be problematic, this is beginning to be rethought.

Because none of the oral traditions survive today, scholars can claim that anything is in these traditions. Their claim is unfalsifiable because there is no way of verifying what was inside these traditions.

In light of this, scholars like Robyn Faith Walsh are starting to suggest that we look in the Greek and Roman literature that we have for similar themes. This is still controversial, especially for conservative Christian scholars who wish for the Hebrew Bible (and perhaps other Jewish literature) to be the only background for the gospels.

However, I find this to be a bit narrow in scope. I am not denying that the Hebrew Bible and second Temple Judaism are important as background to the New Testament.

But I am hoping that scholars will continue to look for parallels in wider Greek and Roman literature. The first step in this, for me, is to start to look at traditional ideas like the Messianic secret, that reinforce certain theological assumptions.