Wrede's Messianic Secret as anti-Pagan apology: a Lublinski's idea

[Giuseppe]

The Messianic Secret as advanced by William Wrede assumes that:

I accept fully that there is an unrealistic tension in the gospel of Mark between Jesus telling his healing recipients to be quiet and them repeatedly proclaiming the news, with Jesus going right back to telling them to be quiet again, even though this tactic has never worked before.

The contrast between public notoriety and invitation to silence is perfectly exemplified also by this logion found in Matthew 11:12:

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been suffering violence, and the violent have been seizing it by force.

I am inclined to agree with Wrede about the idea that not even "Mark" (author) was perfectly aware of that tension, contra factum that it is there.

So that tension was in the same DNA of the earliest Gospel propaganda.

Proponents of Marcionite priority know already the answer: the public notoriety is intrinsic in the idea itself of the "good news", a marcionite invention. It had to be mitigated in order to not appear a so disturbing "surprise", quasi a dynamite, in the (by mere opposition: darkly monotonous) world of the Creator.

The mythicist Samuel Lublinski doesn't mention Marcion in this regard, but he advances the possibility that the tension was born as effect of an anti-Pagan apology: an excessive public notoriety of the Jesus's mirabilia could paradoxically 'reduce' him to a mere Pagan hero to be added in the Pagan pantheon, pace the Jewish monotheism. So the secrecy could be used to mitigate this public notoriety and to prevent the Jesus's absorption in the common Pagan pantheon: Jesus himself "reduces" his own claims to a higher status, to leave room to the idea that he is 'only' the second god, so that YHWH remains the only supreme god (monotheism).

This is the same logic in action behind Mark 10:18:

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.

The readers had to be remembered that Jesus is only the second god, YHWH alone rules.

If Lublinski's view is correct, then a strong impulse to euhemerization was also the need of reducing the divine status of Jesus to remark, by mere contrast of background, the truth of the monotheism.

This would be the same logic in action against Barabbas: he is the purely divine Jesus, exalted in a manner such that the same monotheism is seriously compromised (the Son of Father is god as well as YHWH, if not even more than YHWH). Hence the more humble "so-called king of the Jews" wins Barabbas 2-1.

[Giuseppe]

So the need of defending the original monotheism was what humanized ultimately Jesus in the gospel of Mark.

Without that primal need, the Jesus of the earliest gospel would have been portrayed as "too much perfect to be true", just as the Pagan demigods, and accordingly enumerated naturaliter among them.

Dennis MacDonald's homeric thesis may be part and parcel of the same basic competition with the Paganism: Jesus as new Odysseus, but in the same time as the anti-Odysseus. Even when the midrash is made from Pagan sources, some measures are necessary: the latter go all in the sense of making Jesus more humble than Odysseus, to leave room to YHWH's supremacy.

This observation raises partially the suspicion that the Jesus of the earliest gospel was indeed portrayed as a "too-much-perfect hero", as a Pagan-like hero, with late authors à la Mark taking the opportune measures.

[lsayre]

An interesting point is brought up here. Why does Jesus have the efficacious power to silence demons, and fail to have the efficacious power to silence mere humans?

[Giuseppe]

An interesting point is brought up here. Why does Jesus have the efficacious power to silence demons, and fail to have the efficacious power to silence mere humans?

the latter point is simply not true. In Mark 5:43 and 9:9 it is assumed, in the fiction, that the people were really silent as per Jesus's command.

[neilgodfrey]

Don't overlook Mark 7:36 where it is said that the more Jesus commanded silence the more people broadcast the news. (Also, Mark 5:43 doesn't make narrative sense: how could the miracle be hidden when everyone would see that the girl had come back to life. 9:9 is restricted to the inner disciples.)

[Giuseppe]

(Also, Mark 5:43 doesn't make narrative sense: how could the miracle be hidden when everyone would see that the girl had come back to life. 9:9 is restricted to the inner disciples.)

it is assumed, in the fiction, that the silence would have been broken only after the Resurrection, only by who would have "understood".