JoeWallack wrote:Information | Evidence of fiction | Commentary |
that he might bear his cross. | Contrived | Simon the lead disciple abandons Jesus and a different Simon takes up Jesus' stake |
I have agreed that there may be some contrivance in Simon Peter (implicitly) being told to take up the cross in Mark 8.34 and another Simon being forced to take up the cross once the first Simon has fled. But I have to admit that, if there is a contrivance here, I tend to see it as running in the direction opposite to that implied above.
The saying about taking up the cross is paralled, as Crossan points out, in
Epictetus, Discourses 2.2:
For what do you think? do you think that, if Socrates had wished to preserve externals, he would have come forward and said: "Anytus and Meletus can certainly kill me, but to harm me they are not able?" Was he so foolish as not to see that this way leads not to the preservation of life and fortune, but to another end? What is the reason then that he takes no account of his adversaries, and even irritates them? Just in the same way my friend Heraclitus, who had a little suit in Rhodes about a bit of land, and had proved to the judges that his case was just, said, when he had come to the peroration of his speech, "I will neither entreat you nor do I care what wi judgment you will give, and it is you rather than I who are on your trial." And thus he ended the business. What need was there of this? Only do not entreat; but do not also say, "I. do not entreat"; unless there is a fit occasion to irritate purposely the judges, as was the case with Socrates. And you, if you are preparing such a peroration, why do you wait, why do you obey the order to submit to trial? For if you wish to be crucified, wait and the cross will come: but if you choose to submit and to plead your cause as well as you can, you must do what is consistent with this object, provided you maintain what is your own.
Crossan adds: "There is, therefore, no need to take Jesus' saying as either retrojected or projected prophecy. Jesus 'was discussing,' as Leif Vaage put it about Epictetus, 'the (possible) consequences of following a certain philosophy...'" (
The Historical Jesus, page 353).
If all we had were the cross sayings in Matthew 16.24 = Mark 8.34 = Luke 9.23 and Matthew 10.37-38 = Luke 14.25-27 (Q?) on the one hand and the passerby named Simon being compelled to bear Jesus' cross on the other, any coincidence would seem quite unremarkable, I think. It is the juxtaposition of this saying with Peter in Mark 8.33-34 that really raises the question (interestingly, however, Mark 8 nowhere calls him Simon).
Instead of seeing Simon of Cyrene as an invention looking backward to Simon Peter being told to take up the cross, I think it more likely that it is, if anything, Simon Peter being connected to the saying to take up the cross that is an invention looking forward to Simon of Cyrene actually doing so.