Irish1975 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 9:50 am
Not sure whether this is being directly asserted, but FWIW I don’t see how the Jesus of gMark could be interpreted as “a teacher.” He teaches nothing, or rather, nothing that is not basic Judaism. He is a kind of anti-teacher. The parables are meant to keep the people in the dark. The disciples (μαθηταὶ, “learners”) learn nothing.
Hence, as you no doubt well know, many gems from Stevan Davies like this one:
When Sanders, standing in here for nearly all Jesus research scholars, says, “I do not doubt that he was a great and challenging teacher,” I am baffled. Mark doubts it (4:10-12, 8:17-21), neither Paul nor John pay any significant attention to those teachings, Luke cares little about the matter (taking Acts as representative of Luke’s bottom-line assessment). Scholarship, theological and historical both, is in a state of near conceptual chaos regarding the message of Jesus the Teacher: countercultural wisdom sage, peasant Jewish Cynic, Pharisaic rabbi, antipatriarchal communalist, eschatological preacher? If he had a coherent message and neither we nor his known near contemporaries know for sure what it was, he ought not to be thought, first and foremost, to have been a great and challenging teacher. -- Jesus the Healer p. 13
But there is another perspective, one that steps back from the Jesus figure within the narrative (where he often seems to cause fear and confusion as much as anything positive), and one that looks at how Jesus works for readers of the gospel.
Mark 1:27 is confusing - the people are astonished and ask "What new teaching is this?" Within the confines of the narrative itself, Jesus has taught nothing. But I think there is a major teaching for the reader: Jesus is beginning to overthrow the powers of this world and introduce a new kingdom.
Currently I have been trying to catch up with the following works which possibly allow us to justify this viewpoint of whom the gospel Jesus is actually teaching and what he is teaching, especially the first, Yadin's:
The point made by these works (no doubt there are many others) is that Jewish exegetes understood Scripture itself as akin to a personified agent that teaches and saves those who engage with it. Yadin's work is especially relevant since his focus is on the Rabbi Ishmael midrashim from the late first and early second centuries.
Scripture was seen as a person, an agent. Even the Voice of God which could be "seen" at Mount Sinai, and which itself spoke to Moses in Numbers 7:89, was a kind of personified agent and mediator between God himself and Israel. We can disagree on that interpretation but that's how some early Jewish exegetes interpreted it -- and Scripture more generally.
All of Scripture -- even passages describing actions rather than speeches -- was a "teaching", and was in fact (somewhat) personified Scripture teaching those who read or listened to it.
Other passages can be understood as making the Word or Wisdom of God identical with the "Son" of God. Later Jewish "sages" themselves were said to embody, literally, the Scriptures, and not only every word they spoke but every action they were seen to perform were an expression of Scripture -- embodied or incarnate Scripture. Neusner places this development very late (post 700 CE) but there is a case to be made that it drew upon the same tradition that led to what became Christianity (and that was long resisted by other Jews within the Roman empire despite their common foundations).
If we think of the Gospel of Mark as being written in the same kind of tradition as other Jewish narratives, both canonical and extracanonical, that were interpreted by early Jewish exegetes as personified expressions of the Word and Teaching of God, then we have a scenario where a teaching from God can be not only words of wisdom but equally acts of power, healing, salvation, etc.