Messianic form to the earthly life of Jesus. This impulse was, however,
restrained by the impression and tradition of the non‐Messianic character
of the life of Jesus, which were still strong and vivid, and it was
therefore not able wholly to recast the material, but could only bore its
way into it and force it apart, as the roots of the bramble disintegrate a
rock. In the Gospel literature which arose on the basis of Mark the
Messianic secret becomes gradually of more subordinate importance and the
life of Jesus more Messianic in character, until in the Fourth Gospel He
openly comes before the people with Messianic claims.
In estimating the value of this construction we must not attach too much
importance to its a priori assumptions and difficulties. In this respect
Wrede’s position is much more precarious than that of his precursor Bruno
Bauer. According to the latter the interpolation of the Messianic secret
is the personal, absolutely original act of the Evangelist. Wrede thinks
of it as a collective act, representing the new conception as moulded by
the tradition before it was fixed by the Evangelist. That is very much
more difficult to carry through. Tradition alters its materials in a
different way from that in which we find them altered in Mark. Tradition
transforms from without. Mark’s way of drawing secret threads of a
different material through the texture of the tradition, without otherwise
altering it, is purely literary, and could only be the work of an
individual person.
A creative tradition would have carried out the theory of the Messianic
secret in the life of Jesus much more boldly and logically, that is to
say, at once more arbitrarily and more consistently.
The only alternative is to distinguish two stages of tradition in early
Christianity, a naive, freely‐working, earlier stage, and a more
artificial later stage confined to a smaller circle of a more literary
character. Wrede does, as a matter of fact, propose to find in Mark traces
of a simpler and bolder transformation which, leaving aside the Messianic
secret, makes Jesus an openly‐professed Messiah, and is therefore of a
distinct origin from the conception of the secret Christ. To this
tradition may belong, he thinks, the entry into Jerusalem and the
confession before the High Priest, since these narratives “naively” imply
an openly avowed Messiahship.
The word “naively” is out of place here; a really naive tradition which
intended to represent the entry of Jesus as Messianic would have done so
in quite a different way from Mark, and would not have stultified itself
so curiously as we find done even in Matthew, where the Galilaean Passover
pilgrims, after the “Messianic entry,” answer the question of the people
of Jerusalem as to who it was whom they were acclaiming, with the words
“This is the Prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee” (Matt. xxi. 11).
The tradition, too, which makes Jesus acknowledge His Messiahship before
His judges is not “naive” in Wrede’s sense, for, if it were, it would not
represent the High Priest’s knowledge of Jesus’ Messiahship as something
so extraordinary and peculiar to himself that he can cite witnesses only
for the saying about the Temple, not with reference to Jesus’ Messianic
claim, and bases his condemnation only on the fact that Jesus in answer to
his question acknowledges Himself as Messiah—and Jesus does so, it should
be remarked, as in other passages, with an appeal to a future
justification of His claim. The confession before the council is therefore
anything but a “naive representation of an openly avowed Messiahship.”
The Messianic statements in these two passages present precisely the same
remarkable character as in all the other cases to which Wrede draws
attention. We have not here to do with a different tradition, with a clear
Messianic light streaming in through the window‐pane, but, just as
elsewhere, with the rays of a dark lantern. The real point is that Wrede
cannot bring these two passages within the lines of the theory of secrecy,
and practically admits this by assuming the existence of a second and
rather divergent line of tradition. What concerns us is to note that this
theory does not suffice to explain the two facts in question, the
knowledge of Jesus’ Messiahship shown by the Galilaean Passover pilgrims
at the time of the entry into Jerusalem, and the knowledge of the High
Priest at His trial.
We can only touch on the question whether any one who wished to date back
in some way or other the Messiahship into the life of Jesus could not have
done it much more simply by making Jesus give His closest followers some
hints regarding it. Why does the re‐moulder of the history, instead of
doing that, have recourse to a supernatural knowledge on the part of the
demoniacs and the disciples? For Wrede rightly remarks, as Bruno Bauer and
the “Sketch” also do, that the incident of Caesarea Philippi, as
represented by Mark, involves a miracle, since Jesus does not, as is
generally supposed, reveal His Messiahship to Peter; it is Peter who
reveals it to Jesus (Mark viii. 29). This fact, however, makes nonsense of
the whole theory about the disciples’ want of understanding. It will not
therefore fit into the concealment theory, and Wrede, as a matter of fact,
feels obliged to give up that theory as regards this incident. “This
scene,” he remarks, “can hardly have been created by Mark himself.” It
also, therefore, belongs to another tradition.
Here, then, is a third Messianic fact which cannot be brought within the
lines of Wrede’s “literary” theory of the Messianic secret. And these
three facts are precisely the most important of all: Peter’s confession,
the Entry into Jerusalem, and the High Priest’s knowledge of Jesus’
Messiahship! In each case Wrede finds himself obliged to refer these to
tradition instead of to the literary conception of Mark.(262) This
tradition undermines his literary hypothesis, for the conception of a
tradition always involves the possibility of genuine historical elements.
How greatly this inescapable intrusion of tradition weakens the theory of
the literary interpolation of the Messiahship into the history, becomes
evident when we consider the story of the passion. The representation that
Jesus was publicly put to death as Messiah because He had publicly
acknowledged Himself to be so, must, like the High Priest’s knowledge of
His claim, be referred to the other tradition which has nothing to do with
the Messianic secret, but boldly antedates the Messiahship without
employing any finesse of that kind. But that strongly tends to confirm the
historicity of this tradition, and throws the burden of proof upon those
who deny it. It is wholly independent of the hypothesis of secrecy, and in
fact directly opposed to it. If, on the other hand, in spite of all the
difficulties, the representation that Jesus was condemned to death on
account of His Messianic claims is dragged by main force into the theory
of secrecy, the question arises: What interest had the persons who set up
the literary theory of secrecy, in representing Jesus as having been
openly put to death as Messiah and in consequence of His Messianic claims?
And the answer is: “None whatever: quite the contrary.” For in doing so
the theory of secrecy stultifies itself. As though one were to develop a
photographic plate with painful care and, just when one had finished,
fling open the shutters, so, on this hypothesis, the natural Messianic
light suddenly shines into the room which ought to be lighted only by the
rays of the dark lantern.
Here, therefore, the theory of secrecy abandoned the method which it had
hitherto followed in regard to the traditional material. For if Jesus was
not condemned and crucified at Jerusalem as Messiah, a tradition must have
existed which preserved the truth about the last conflicts, and the
motives of the condemnation. This is supposed to have been here completely
set aside by the theory of the secret Messiahship, which, instead of
drawing its delicate threads through the older tradition, has simply
substituted its own representation of events. But in that case why not do
away with the remainder of the public ministry? Why not at least get rid
of the public appearance at Jerusalem? How can the crudeness of method
shown in the case of the passion be harmonised with the skilful
conservatism towards the non‐Messianic tradition which it is obvious that
the “Marcan circle” has scrupulously observed elsewhere?
If according to the original tradition, of which Wrede admits the
existence, Jesus went to Jerusalem not to die, but to work there, the
dogmatic view, according to which He went to Jerusalem to die, must have
struck out the whole account of His sojourn in Jerusalem and His death, in
order to put something else in its place. What we now read in the Gospels
concerning those last days in Jerusalem cannot be derived from the
original tradition, for one who came to work, and, according to Wrede, “to
work with decisive effect,” would not have cast all His preaching into the
form of obscure parables of judgment and minatory discourses. That is a
style of speech which could be adopted only by one who was determined to
force his adversaries to put him to death. Therefore the narrative of the
last days of Jesus must be, from beginning to end, a creation of the
dogmatic idea. And, as a matter of fact, Wrede, here in agreement with
Weisse, “sees grounds for asserting that the sojourn at Jerusalem is
presented to us in the Gospels in a very much abridged and weakened
version.” That is a euphemistic expression, for if it was really the
dogmatic idea which was responsible for representing Jesus as being
condemned as Messiah, it is not a mere case of “abridging and weakening
down,” but of displacing the tradition in favour of a new one.
But if Jesus was not condemned as Messiah, on what grounds was He
condemned? And, again, what interest had those whose concern was to make
the Messiahship a secret of His earthly life, in making Him die as
Messiah, contrary to the received tradition? And what interest could the
tradition have had in falsifying history in that way? Even admitting that
the prediction of the passion to the disciples is of a dogmatic character,
and is to be regarded as a creation of primitive Christian theology, the
historic fact that He died would have been a sufficient fulfilment of
those sayings. That He was publicly condemned and crucified as Messiah has
nothing to do with the fulfilment of those predictions, and goes far
beyond it.
To take a more general point: what interest had primitive theology in
dating back the Messiahship of Jesus to the time of His earthly ministry?
None whatever. Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly
life of Jesus was regarded by primitive Christianity. The discourses in
Acts show an equal indifference, since in them also Jesus first becomes
the Messiah by virtue of His exaltation. To date the Messiahship earlier
was not an undertaking which offered any advantage to primitive theology,
in fact it would only have raised difficulties for it, since it involved
the hypothesis of a dual Messiahship, one of earthly humiliation and one
of future glory. The fact is, if one reads through the early literature
one becomes aware that so long as theology had an eschatological
orientation and was dominated by the expectation of the Parousia the
question of how Jesus of Nazareth “had been” the Messiah not only did not
exist, but was impossible. Primitive theology is simply a theology of the
future, with no interest in history! It was only with the decline of
eschatological interest and the change in the orientation of Christianity
which was connected therewith that an interest in the life of Jesus and
the “historical Messiahship” arose.
That is to say, the Gnostics, who were the first to assert the Messiahship
of the historical Jesus, and who were obliged to assert it precisely
because they denied the eschatological conceptions, forced this view upon
the theology of the Early Church, and compelled it to create in the Logos
Christology an un‐Gnostic mould in which to cast the speculative
conception of the historical Messiahship of Jesus; and that is what we
find in the Fourth Gospel. Prior to the anti‐Gnostic controversies we find
in the early Christian literature no conscious dating back of the
Messiahship of Jesus to His earthly life, and no theological interest at
work upon the dogmatic recasting of His history.(263) It is therefore
difficult to suppose that the Messianic secret in Mark, that is to say, in
the very earliest tradition, was derived from primitive theology. The
assertion of the Messiahship of Jesus was wholly independent of the
latter. The instinct which led Bruno Bauer to explain the Messianic secret
as the literary invention of Mark himself was therefore quite correct.
Once suppose that tradition and primitive theology have anything to do
with the matter, and the theory of the interpolation of the Messiahship
into the history becomes almost impossible to carry through. But Wrede’s
greatness consists precisely in the fact that he was compelled by his
acute perception of the significance of the critical data to set aside the
purely literary version of the hypothesis and make Mark, so to speak, the
instrument of the literary realisation of the ideas of a definite
intellectual circle within the sphere of primitive theology.
The positive difficulty which confronts the sceptical theory is to explain
how the Messianic beliefs of the first generation arose, if Jesus,
throughout His life, was for all, even for the disciples, merely a
“teacher,” and gave even His intimates no hint of the dignity which He
claimed for Himself. It is difficult to eliminate the Messiahship from the
“Life of Jesus,” especially from the narrative of the passion; it is more
difficult still, as Keim saw long ago, to bring it back again after its
elimination from the “Life” into the theology of the primitive Church. In
Wrede’s acute and logical thinking this difficulty seems to leap to light.
Since the Messianic secret in Mark is always connected with the
resurrection, the date at which the Messianic belief of the disciples
arose must be the resurrection of Jesus. “But the idea of dating the
Messiahship from the resurrection is certainly not a thought of Jesus, but
of the primitive Church. It presupposes the Church’s experience of the
appearance of the risen Jesus.”
The psychologist will say that the “resurrection experiences,” however
they may be conceived, are only intelligible as based upon the expectation
of the resurrection, and this again as based on references of Jesus to the
resurrection. But leaving psychology aside, let us accept the resurrection
experiences of the disciples as a pure psychological miracle. Even so, how
can the appearances of the risen Jesus have suggested to the disciples the
idea that Jesus, the crucified teacher, was the Messiah? Apart from any
expectations, how can this conclusion have resulted for them from the mere
“fact of the resurrection”? The fact of the appearance did not by any
means imply it. In certain circles, indeed, according to Mark vi. 14‐16,
in the very highest quarters, the resurrection of the Baptist was believed
in; but that did not make John the Baptist the Messiah. The inexplicable
thing is that, according to Wrede, the disciples began at once to assert
confidently and unanimously that He was the Messiah and would before long
appear in glory.
But how did the appearance of the risen Jesus suddenly become for them a
proof of His Messiahship and the basis of their eschatology? That Wrede
fails to explain, and so makes this “event” an “historical” miracle which
in reality is harder to believe than the supernatural event.
Any one who holds “historical” miracles to be just as impossible as any
other kind, even when they occur in a critical and sceptical work, will be
forced to the conclusion that the Messianic eschatological significance
attached to the “resurrection experience” by the disciples implies some
kind of Messianic eschatological references on the part of the historical
Jesus which gave to the “resurrection” its Messianic eschatological
significance. Here Wrede himself, though without admitting it, postulates
some Messianic hints on the part of Jesus, since he conceives the judgment
of the disciples upon the resurrection to have been not analytical, but
synthetic, inasmuch as they add something to it, and that, indeed, the
main thing, which was not implied in the conception of the event as such.
Here again the merit of Wrede’s contribution to criticism consists in the
fact that he takes the position as it is and does not try to improve it
artificially. Bruno Bauer and others supposed that the belief in the
Messiahship of Jesus had slowly solidified out of a kind of gaseous state,
or had been forced into primitive theology by the literary invention of
Mark. Wrede, however, feels himself obliged to base it upon an historical
fact, and, moreover, the same historical fact which is pointed to by the
sayings in the Synoptics and the Pauline theology. But in so doing he
creates an almost insurmountable difficulty for his hypothesis.
We can only briefly refer to the question what form the accounts of the
resurrection must have taken if the historic fact which underlay them was
the first surprised apprehension and recognition of the Messiahship of
Jesus on the part of the disciples. The Messianic teaching would
necessarily in that case have been somehow or other put into the mouth of
the risen Jesus. It is, however, completely absent, because it was already
contained in the teaching of Jesus during His earthly life. The theory of
Messianic secrecy must therefore have re‐moulded not merely the story of
the passion, but also that of the resurrection, removing the revelation of
the Messiahship to the disciples from the latter in order to insert it
into the public ministry!
Wrede, moreover, will only take account of the Marcan text as it stands,
not of the historical possibility that the “futuristic Messiahship” which
meets us in the mysterious utterances of Jesus goes back in some form to a
sound tradition. Further he does not take the eschatological character of
the teaching of Jesus into his calculations, but works on the false
assumption that he can analyse the Marcan text in and by itself and so
discover the principle on which it is composed. He carries out experiments
on the law of crystallisation of the narrative material in this Gospel,
but instead of doing so in the natural and historical atmosphere he does
it in an atmosphere artificially neutralised, which contains no trace of
contemporary conceptions.(264) Consequently the conclusion based on the
sum of his observations has in it something arbitrary. Everything which
conflicts with the rational construction of the course of the history is
referred directly to the theory of the concealment of the Messianic
secret. But in the carrying out of that theory a number of self‐
contradictions, without which it could not subsist, must be recognised and
noted.
Thus, for example, all the prohibitions,(265) whatever they may refer to,
even including the command not to make known His miracles, are referred to
the same category as the injunction not to reveal the Messianic secret.
But what justification is there for that? It presupposes that according to
Mark the miracles could be taken as proofs of the Messiahship, an idea of
which there is no hint whatever in Mark. “The miracles,” Wrede argues,
“are certainly used by the earliest Christians as evidence of the nature
and significance of Christ.... I need hardly point to the fact that Mark,
not less than Matthew, Luke, and John, must have held the opinion that the
miracles of Jesus encountered a widespread and ardent Messianic
expectation.”
In John this Messianic significance of the miracles is certainly assumed;
but then the really eschatological view of things has here fallen into the
background. It seems indeed as if genuine eschatology excluded the
Messianic interpretation of the miracles. In Matthew the miracles of Jesus
have nothing whatever to do with the proof of the Messiahship, but, as is
evident from the saying about Chorazin and Bethsaida, Matt. xi. 20‐24, are
only an exhibition of mercy intended to awaken repentance, or, according
to Matt. xii. 28, an indication of the nearness of the Kingdom of God.
They have as little to do with the Messianic office as in the Acts of the
Apostles.(266) In Mark, from first to last, there is not a single syllable
to suggest that the miracles have a Messianic significance. Even admitting
the possibility that the “miracles of Jesus encountered an ardent
Messianic expectation,” that does not necessarily imply a Messianic
significance in them. To justify that conclusion requires the pre‐
supposition that the Messiah was expected to be some kind of an earthly
man who should do miracles. This is presupposed by Wrede, by Bruno Bauer,
and by modern theology in general, but it has not been proved, and it is
at variance with eschatology, which pictured the Messiah to itself as a
heavenly being in a world which was already being transformed into
something supra‐mundane.
The assumption that the clue to the explanation of the command not to make
known the miracles is to be found in the necessity of guarding the secret
of the Messiahship is, therefore, not justified. The miracles are
connected with the Kingdom and the nearness of the Kingdom, not with the
Messiah. But Wrede is obliged to refer everything to the Messianic secret,
because he leaves the preaching of the Kingdom out of account.
The same process is repeated in the discussion of the veiling of the
mystery of the Kingdom of God in the parables of Mark iv. The mystery of
the Kingdom is for Wrede the secret of Jesus’ Messiahship. “We have
learned in the meantime,” he says, “that one main element in this mystery
is that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. If Jesus, according to Mark,
conceals his Messiahship, we are justified in interpreting the μυστήριον
τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ θεοῦ in the light of this fact.”
That is one of the weakest points in Wrede’s whole theory. Where is there
any hint of this in these parables? And why should the secret of the
Kingdom of God contain within it as one of its principal features the
secret of the Messiahship of Jesus?
“Mark’s account of Jesus’ parabolic teaching,” he concludes, “is
completely unhistorical,” because it is directly opposed to the essential
nature of the parables. The ultimate reason, according to Wrede, why this
whole view of the parables arose, was simply “because the general opinion
was already in existence that Jesus had revealed Himself to the disciples,
but concealed Himself from the multitude.”
Instead of simply admitting that we are unable to discover what the
mystery of the Kingdom in Mark iv. is, any more than we can understand why
it must be veiled, and numbering it among the unsolved problems of Jesus’
preaching of the Kingdom, Wrede forces this chapter inside the lines of
his theory of the veiled Messiahship.
The desire of Jesus to be alone, too, and remain unrecognised (Mark vii.
24 and ix. 30 ff.) is supposed to have some kind of connexion with the
veiling of the Messiahship. He even brings the multitude, which in Mark x.
47 ff. rebukes the blind beggar at Jericho who cried out to Jesus, into
the service of his theory ... on the ground that the beggar had addressed
Him as Son of David. But all the narrative says is that they told him to
hold his peace—to cease making an outcry—not that they did so because of
his addressing Jesus as “Son of David.”