Is there anti-marcionism in Mark's Temptation story?

[Giuseppe]

The Temptation story is so similar, in its puerile feature, to the birth stories found in canonical Luke and Matthew, that the suspicion is rightly raised that it was designed for a similar anti-marcionite intent.

I follow Bruno Bauer's idea that the Temptation story is a mere expedient by "Mark" to explain why Jesus didn't return directly to home in Galilee after the baptism: had he done so, Jesus would be returned to the his original status of a pious Jew not still aware of being god (or possessed by god). "Mark" wanted that Jesus returned to Galilee as a god (more precisely: as the god predicted by John the Baptist), not as a mere human being.

But precisely in the writing of Mark, who usually does not leave any part of his account unmotivated, we should expect to be told the purpose for which Jesus was driven into the wilderness. The more violent the way in which the Spirit brought (ἐκβάλλει) Jesus into the wilderness, the more certain we can be that there must have been a special reason for this stay in solitude. Mark cannot mean to say that Jesus stayed in the wilderness for a long, indefinite time; for (C. 1, 9.) Jesus comes from Galilee to the baptism, and he returns to Galilee when the Baptist was arrested. Therefore, Mark had to say necessarily why and how long Jesus had kept himself away from his home

Corollary: the Temptation story is organically connected with the Baptism story: without the first, you cannot have the second, et vice versa.

This says us that the entire baptism + temptation story is so elaborated, that the suspicion is again raised about the possibility that the entire effort was made to react against *Ev.

Mark and *Ev agree about Jesus entering as a god in Galilee.

Where they diverge:

• *Ev makes Jesus enter in Galilee as an unknown god.

• Mark makes Jesus enter in Galilee as a known god: the god made known by the entire baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.

I often wonder about how even under the Markan priority, Mark has in advance the answer against *Ev. There is something diabolical about this ability by Mark to answer against *Ev even before that *Ev was written.

[Giuseppe]

Klinghardt makes quasi the same identical point:

• *Ev makes Jesus enter in Galilee as an unknown god.

• Mark makes Jesus enter in Galilee as a known god: the god made known by the entire baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.

...when he writes (my emphasis):

The beginning of *Ev is comparatively straightforward. After establishing the timeline, *Ev has Jesus go ‘down to Capharnaum’. *Ev describes Jesus’ teaching in the local synagogue (‘with authority’) and Jesus’ first exorcism (*3,1a; *4,31- 37). The first statement on Jesus’ identity is uttered by the demon: ‘I know who you are, the Holy One of God’ (*4,34). After *4,36f (possibly contained in *Ev, see reconstruction), the crowd heard this identification. However, the crowd does not react to the declaration of the demonic spirit but to the λόγος … ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ καὶ δυνάμει, which horrifies them. Thus, the demon’s declaration remains the basis of the religious qualification of Jesus in the subsequent narrative. The demonic declaration is in contrast to the following account of Jesus’ rejection in his hometown. The identification of Jesus by the synagogue visitors (*4,22c: ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’) plainly expresses their distance and Jesus’ inadequate qualification. After that, the demons declare again who Jesus really is: ‘You are the Son of God’ (*4,41). This applicable identification of Jesus – uttered of all things by the demons – is unwieldy. Perhaps the opposition between the demons with the correct identification and the humans with the false one is intended, but that is not likely. The witnesses of the exorcisms in Capharnaum bring the sick and the possessed to Jesus (*4,40), and they beseech him later at the lake of Gennesaret ‘to hear the word of God’ (*5,1). They seem to have understood immediately that Jesus is proclaiming the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ (*4,43). Opposed to the Nazarene synagogue visitors, the crowd readily espoused the assertion of the demons. From the beginning, *Ev anticipates the readers’ knowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that his mission lies in proclaiming the basileia. *Ev anticipating his readers’ principal knowledge of Jesus is less striking than *Ev not even trying to make plausible this knowledge and to imbed it narratively in some way.

Mark, quite differently, tries to position the entrance of Jesus into a framework that transparently conveys knowledge of him.

(p.321)

The part by me put in bold is precisely what the Markan prioritist Bruno Bauer had realized in his Criticism of the synoptic Gospels.

Klinghardt sees Jesus in *Ev not so much as unknown but as already known only by the readers (hence not in need of further clarifications). If ex hypothesi some Martians had to read *Ev, then Jesus in *Ev would become ipso facto unknown to these new readers, since they would lack "the readers’ knowledge that Jesus is the Christ".

But de facto Klinghardt converges with me about Mark fearing not so much *Ev per se, but *Ev fallen in the hands of Marcion, since only in this way it is explained the Markan efforts, recognized independently by Bruno Bauer, designed to "transparently conveys knowledge of" Jesus as the son of YHWH.

Ça va sans dire, I think that this is a strong argument for *Ev's priority over Mark.

[Giuseppe]

The argument says basically:


You don't care to fabricate a framework (in the incipit) that transparently conveys knowledge of Jesus (as the son of YHWH) unless you are obliged to make so because you fear that someone (Marcion) is profiting from the apparent ambiguity of a previous incipit (in *Ev).