Stefan Kristensen wrote: ↑Thu Dec 14, 2017 5:37 amAgain, it is interesting to look at the Stephen case. Because here it also consitutes a form of blasphemy, "slanderous words against Moses and God", that Stephen "never stops speaking words against this holy place and the Law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.” These things, which "this Jesus of Nazareth" has apparently said, according to Stephens false accusers, seems to me to be exactly what Jesus does (also in gMark) in the eyes of his Jewish opponents. They think it constitutes blasphemy to speak against the temple and Moses and God and wanting to destroy the temple and change the customs of the Law of Moses. The law of Moses was the product of the holy spirit, everyone agreed, which means that this could be considered slander of the holy spirit and God, or "blasphemy against the holy spirit". Stephen accuses the Jews themselves of "opposing the holy spirit" (7:51).
It seems significant to me that the proceedings against Stephen do not end the way that those against Jesus end:
Acts 7.54: 54 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began gnashing their teeth at him. 55 But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; 56 and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57 But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse. 58 When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul.
This is basically a lynch mob by this point. No verdict ever gets handed down, nothing to correspond to what we find in Mark: "And they all condemned him to be deserving of death."
All of this seems perfectly explicable if one takes the Mishnah somewhat seriously here: "A blasphemer is not guilty unless he mentioned the proper name of God." Blasphemy can mean all sorts of things, and Jesus gets accused of it earlier in his career (Mark 2.7) with no death sentence. Why? Because, as the Mishnah says, the only kind of blasphemy which counts in a capital case is the kind involving the divine name. Stephen apparently does not utter the divine name (he speaks of the "right hand of
God," which is fine; and "God" is Stephen's
usual circumlocution in Acts 7); therefore no verdict is laid against him. Instead, he gets swept out of court by officials turned vigilantes.
Not so with Jesus. The entire passion sequence in Mark is at pains to show that Jesus not only
knew what was going to happen but indeed
made it happen to some extent, making sure to be in the right place at the right time to be arrested, for example. At his hearing before the priests, which is not actually a hearing for capital blasphemy
yet, he sees that a guilty verdict is not going to be rendered (it being too apparent that the witnesses were false, since their testimony did not agree), so he takes matters into his own hands and utters the divine name (thus explaining the circumlocutory use of "power" here for the one and only time in Mark; reports of this oral blasphemy would use a circumlocution, just like the Mishnah does; one key here is that "power" is not the usual circumlocution on Jesus' lips; "God" is, thus signaling to the savvy reader, along with the high priest's reaction, that something is different this time). That is all that anybody needs to hear. That is the one kind of blasphemy which automatically conveys a death sentence. There is now no need for witnesses, as the high priest points out, since the accused has committed the offense himself, right in front of everybody. Thus they all judge him "to be deserving of death."
Secondly, I think it's clear, that the reason the high priest asks Jesus of this, is because it can be considered a legal offense (in the eyes of the council) to do it, i.e. to claim to be "the Messiah, the son of the Blessed". If the high priest thought it wans't a punishable offense, then he surely wouldn't have asked him of this, in this manner.
So it is a punishable offense in the eyes of the high priest, this accusation against Jesus, that Jesus claims to be "the Messiah, the son of the Blessed". But why then does Mark have the high priest ask this question at this point? Why didn't they ask Jesus about this to begin with? Why didn't they have false witnesses 'testifying' to this to begin with?
I have a different take on this, as well. The priests are not originally seeking to hang Jesus on blasphemy charges; they are seeking to charge him with something that Pilate and the Romans can sink their teeth into, like sedition (hence the false testimony about Jesus saying that he will destroy the temple). When those charges fail (due to the false witnesses having been insufficiently schooled beforehand, apparently), the high priest tries to prove his point
indirectly by getting Jesus to admit that he was the Messiah. This is not a capital offense, but it would be a step
in the direction of getting Jesus to confess to something that can be equated with sedition (since messianic claims can imply sedition when viewed in a certain light). But Jesus gives the high priest more than he asked for: he
both admits to being the Messiah
and utters the divine name. The blasphemy of the name is what leads directly and inevitably to the Jewish verdict of guilty (as well as to the stereotypical rending of garments), but before Pilate that will mean
nothing, so the priests translate the messianic claim to which Jesus has confessed into the threat to the Roman commonwealth that they had been trying to lay against Jesus all along: Jesus, as King of the Jews, would be trying to overthrown Roman rule in Judea. Crucify him! (Even this is not enough, of course, since King of the Jews may be a mere title rather than a solid plot against Rome, which the priests had been unable to obtain, and it takes a bloodthirsty crowd to persuade Pilate to do the deed.)