Disobeying Jesus

A Puzzling Element in the Messianic Secret Motifs1

JEREMY F. HULTIN Of the various secrecy motifs that have been discussed under the rubric the “messianic secret,”2 one feature often deemed an oddity or exception is in fact peculiar enough to warrant its own investigation: namely, the fact that several of Jesus' injunctions to silence following healings are explicitly disobeyed. Indeed, of the three times in Mark that Jesus orders the benefi-ciaries of his healings to remain silent (1:43–44; 5:43; 7:36), twice the command is expressly said to have been broken (1:45; 7:36), and in the latter instance, the violation is inversely proportional to the force with which Jesus issued the injunction: “Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it” (Mark 7:36). Mark thus draws attention to Jesus’ inability to silence those who had witnessed his healings. In a similar manner, Mark notes that even when Jesus sought privacy, he was “unable to escape notice” (7:24). Since the gospels rarely depict Jesus failing at his intentions,3 and since the vio-

1 It is a privilege to contribute an essay to this volume in honor of Harold Attridge,

from whom I have had the good fortune to learn as he served in the roles of professor, Doktorvater, and dean.

2 It has long been debated how many of the disparate motifs of secrecy, silence, and esotericism should be understood as belonging to a broader, unifying theme. William Wrede listed five distinct categories of secrecy themes (William Wrede, The Messianic Secret [trans. J. C. G. Greig; Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1971], 34–36); cf. the lists in Gerd Theissen, “Die pragmatische Bedeutung der Geheimnismotive im Markusevangelium: Ein wissenssoziologischer Versuch,” in Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions (ed. Hans G. Kippenberg and Guy G. Stroumsa; SHR 65; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 225–45, here 226; and David F. Watson, Honor Among Christians: The Cultural Key to the Messianic Secret (Minneapolis, Minn.: For-tress, 2010), 2–3.

3 One thinks of two instances that were not part of this secrecy theme, and both were evidently the source of some discomfort. In Mark 6:5 (“And he could not [ou0k e0du/nato] do any deed of power there”), Mark clearly felt the need to explain that the lack of faith

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lation of Jesus’ commands seems to undermine any purpose the secrecy motifs were meant to achieve, this aspect of the messianic secret presents a puzzle.4 Why would some passages draw attention to Jesus’ inability to silence the beneficiaries of his miracles and to avoid recognition?

The traditions about Jesus were circulating during a time when the rights and well-being of Jewish communities throughout the Roman Em-pire could be endangered by any hint that Jews might threaten the pax Romana. In fact, in an effort to maintain good relations with Roman au-thorities, some Jews proactively reported or handed over figures who wanted to gather around themselves great crowds, since such figures could have been deemed seditious or disruptive and, as such, would have put en-tire Jewish communities at risk. Thus, to many Jews in Palestine or the Di-aspora, it might have appeared that the Jerusalem authorities had exhibited prudence and wisdom in arresting Jesus before the Romans had to inter-vene directly. The peril that Jesus’ wonderworking reputation presented – and the predicament faced by Jewish authorities – is nicely captured by the Gospel of John when it has Caiaphas say, “If we let him go on like this . . . the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation” (John 11:48).

In such an environment, those who wanted to proclaim Jesus’ mighty deeds faced a dilemma. They could not simply pass over his wonderwork-ing, for it was his miracles, after all, that had persuaded so many that he “did all things well” (Mark 7:37). But proclaiming stories about a charis-matic Galilean who drew crowds by his miraculous activity would have made Jesus sound reckless – and either shamefully naïve about, or callous-ly indifferent to, the risks such activities posed to Judaeans everywhere. My proposal is that the motif of Jesus’ inability to maintain his own secret arose as a response to precisely this dilemma. I believe that in some ac-counts of his healings, it was claimed that Jesus tried to keep his activity secret; it was the beneficiaries of and witnesses to his miracles who, con-trary to Jesus’ best efforts, had spread the word about him. Thus, the motif of disobedience to Jesus’ silencing and the motif of Jesus’ inability to con-ceal himself can be understood as attempts to absolve Jesus of his apparent recklessness, while still maintaining that he was a mighty healer who won widespread approbation. in Nazareth (Mark 6:6) was what limited Jesus, and Matthew has softened Mark’s “could not” to “did not” [ou0k e0poi/hsen] (Matt 13:58). Similarly, Mark 6:48 (“He intended to pass them by” [kai\ h1qelen parelqei=n au0tou/j]) is omitted by Matt 14:25 and Luke 6:19.

4 Ulrich Luz, an expert both on the Gospel of Matthew and on the messianic secret, admits to being baffled by the motif of disobedience. In his massive commentary on Mat-thew (Matthew 8–20: A Commentary [trans. James E. Crouch; Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2001], 49), Luz says of Matt 9:30b–31 simply: “The command to silence and its immediate violation are difficult to interpret”!

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To argue this thesis, I will start by surveying the passages that present Jesus as incapable of maintaining secrecy. Second, I will consider how various approaches to the messianic secret have tried to account for this peculiar motif. Third, I will give an overview of the dynamics of Jewish communities vis-à-vis their Gentile neighbors and the Roman colonial au-thorities, demonstrating that Jewish rights and well-being could be threat-ened by just the sort of campaign of signs and wonders that Jesus conduct-ed. In an appendix, I will note the evidence that suggests that the motif in question was present already in the traditions used independently by Mark and Matthew, something that helps to account for the sporadic and seem-ingly inconsistent use of this motif in the gospels.

“The more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it” (Mark 7:36)

The majority of Jesus’ injunctions to silence are not disobeyed. For in-stance, when he silences the demons who know him to be the Son of God,5 they do not violate the commands.6 Similarly, Jesus orders his disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Christ.7 After the transfiguration, he orders Pe-

5 Mark 1:25//Luke 4:35; Mark 1:34//Luke 4:41; Mark 3:11–12. There is a parallel of

sorts to Mark 3:12 in Matt 12:16. But in fact, Matt 12:15–21 is quite different from Mark 3:7–12 except for the command to silence (Matt 12:16), and even the silencing has been changed, for in Matthew the command is issued to the (human) recipients of healings, not to demons. On the difficult source-critical questions this passage poses, see Luz, Mat-thew 8–20, 190–94.

6 The silencing of the demons is generally agreed to have originated in the rite of ex-orcism itself. See Otto Bauernfeind, Die Worte der Dämonen im Markusevangelium (BWANT 44; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1927); cf. Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (trans. John Marsh; rev. ed.; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), 209 n. 1, 223; Erik Sjöberg, Der verborgene Menschensohn in den Evangelien (SUKHVL 53; Lund: Gleerup, 1955), 150; Gerd Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Chris-tian Tradition (ed. John Riches; trans. Francis McDonagh; SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983), 144; Rudolf Pesch, Das Markusevangelium (2 vols.; HTKNT 2.1–2.2; Freiburg: Herder, 1976–1977), 1:123. But clearly Mark has adapted this traditional si-lencing to his own, different purposes. See the careful analysis of relevant parallels in Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2007), 165–70. H. C. Kee finds in the “rebuke” (e0pitima~n) to demons evidence of the broader pattern of God’s battle against hostile powers (“The Terminology of Mark’s Ex-orcism Stories,” NTS 14 [1968]: 232–46).

7 Mark 8:29–30//Matt 16:16–20//Luke 9:20–21.

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ter, James, and John not to reveal what they have seen until the resurrec-tion.8 These commands are never broken in the narrative.9

On the other hand, Jesus also forbids some recipients and witnesses of his healings from speaking to anyone (Mark 1:43–44; 5:43; 7:36; Matt 9:30) and these commands are violated more often than they are kept (Mark 1:45; 7:36; Matt 9:31). After considering the passages that include unequivocal violations of commands to silence, we will also look at other healings in which there is some uncertainty about whether Jesus is de-manding secrecy (e.g. Mark 8:26), and passages where others issue inef-fectual commands to silence (Mark 10:46–52).

The first episode in which Jesus’ command to silence is expressly diso-beyed occurs in Mark 1:40–45.10 In Mark 1:40–42, a leper approaches Je-sus and pleads to be made clean. At Jesus’ touch and his word, the leprosy departs. Jesus then “snorts” at the man and “drives him away” (1:43),11

8 Mark 9:9//Matt 17:9; cf. Luke 9:36. (Luke does not have a command to silence, but

simply states: “They kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.”)

9 Because the commands to the demons and to the disciples have to do explicitly with maintaining the secret of Jesus’ identity as Son of God and Messiah, they are often viewed as constituting the true core of the messianic secret (so, e.g., Ulrich Luz, “The Secret Motif and the Marcan Christology,” in The Messianic Secret [ed. Christopher M. Tuckett; IRT 1; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983], 75–96; Pesch, Markusevangelium, 2:37). Of the other themes sometimes thought to belong to the messianic secret – Jesus’ teach-ing his disciples privately, the disciples’ incomprehension and lack of faith, the “mystery of the kingdom of God,” and the “parable theory” – none portrays Jesus as incapable of maintaining secrecy, and hence will not be discussed here.

10 For a review of how scholars writing about the messianic secret deal with this pas-sage, see Heikki Räisänen, The “Messianic Secret” in Mark (trans. Christopher Tuckett; SNTW; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 144–49.

11 e0mbrimhsa&menoj au0tw~| eu0qu\j e0ce/balen au0to/n. This verse bristles with difficulties; many regard it as secondary (e.g., Karl Kertelge, Die Wunder Jesu im Markusevangeli-um: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung [SANT 33; Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1970], 67–68), and neither Matthew nor Luke has it in his account of the leper. It is not easy to find a well-attested meaning of e0mbrima&omai that would fit in this context. If it represents anger (as in Mark 14:5; cf. John 11:33, 38; BDAG s.v. 2), it is unclear why Jesus would still (cf. Mark 1:41 variant: o0rgisqei/j) be angry after the cleansing has been achieved. Some have suggested he was angry because he foresaw that the man would disobey the ensuing injunction to silence (so William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974], 87; Stählin, “o0rgh/,” TDNT 5:419–47, here 5:427–28; Dietrich-Alex Koch, Die Bedeutung der Wundererzählungen für die Christologie des Markusevangeli-ums [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975], 76–78), or angry at those who simply wanted miracles (Georges Minette de Tillesse, Le secret messianique dans l’Évangile de Marc [LD 47; Paris: Cerf, 1968], 149). Alternatively, e0mbrima&omai could bear its classical meaning of snorting (LSJ s.v. 1) if, as Jeremias claimed (without adducing much evidence), it point-ed to a gesture in which one blew through the lips with the hand placed over them to de-

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telling him to say nothing to anyone, but to go directly to the priest (1:44).12 Contrary to these firm instructions, the man “went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly.”13 mand silence (Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology [New York: Scribner, 1971], 92 n. 1; so Pesch, Markusevangelium, 1:145). The most suitable meaning in this context would be “rebuke” (BDAG s.v. 1), roughly equivalent to the e0pitima&w in other com-mands to silence (Mark 1:25; 3:12; 8:30). The explicit contents of the “rebuke” would then come in 1:44.

The choice of e0kba&llw – more suitable for “driving out” a demon than “sending away” a cleansed leper – is also puzzling. Theissen (Miracle Stories, 64) and Robert A. Guelich (Mark 1––8:26 [WBC 34A; Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1989], 75) suggest there may originally have been an exorcism. But note Mark 5:40, where the same verb is used for “sending away” potential witnesses to a miracle.

12 The command not to tell anyone in 1:44a may originally have been simply an ex-pression of urgency, emphasizing that the man must report directly to the priest (so Wal-ter Schmithals, Das Evangelium nach Markus: Kapitel 1,1–9,1 [2nd rev. and enl. ed.; ÖTBK 2.1; Gütersloh: Mohn, 1986], 137–38; Collins, Mark, 177). But the pattern of si-lencing, disobedient proclamation, and resulting publicity is exactly what we find in Mark 7:36; certainly Mark understands the command as part of Jesus’ broader efforts at secrecy. Bultmann, History, 212, and Minette de Tillesse, Le secret, 41–51, think the commands to silence in both 1:43 and 1:44a are secondary additions by Mark (see further in Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 146 n. 11). Luz (“Das Geheimnismotiv und die Marki-nische Christologie,” ZNW 56 [1965]: 9–30, here 15–16) notes that although much of the vocabulary of 1:43–44 is uncommon for Mark, the cleansing of the leper in Papyrus Egerton has no command to silence; but this can hardly prove that no other pre-Markan tradition had such commands (rightly Theissen, Miracle Stories, 146 n. 52; Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 147 n. 12).

13 J. K. Elliott, “The Conclusion of the Pericope of the Healing of the Leper and Mark i:45,” JTS n.s. 22 (1971): 153–57, building on G. D. Kilpatrick, “Mark i. 45 and the Meaning of logo/j,” JTS 40 (1939): 389–90, has argued, against the majority of transla-tions and commentators, that in Mark 1:45a the grammatically ambiguous expression o9 de\ e0celqw_n h!rcato khru/ssein polla_ kai\ diafhmi/zein to\n lo/gon refers not to the leper telling the “tale” about his healing, but to Jesus preaching “the message.” (For older exponents of this view, see Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 147 n. 15.) On Elliott’s interpretation, Mark 1:44 concludes the pericope of the leper’s cleansing (cf. Matt 8:4), and Mark 1:45 is simply a Markan summary. In support of this interpretation he argues that the particle de/ would be insufficient to mark a change of subject from Jesus to the leper, especially since Jesus is again the subject of the conclusion of the sentence (w#ste mhke/ti au0to\n [namely Jesus] du/nasqai fanerw~j ei0j po/lin ei0selqei=n). Elliott also notes that for Mark lo/goj typically means not “the tale” (e.g., of the cleansing), but rather “the Christian message” (e.g., Mark 2:2, 4:33, 8:32), and that in Mark the subjects of the verb khru/ssein are rarely “outsiders” (John the Baptist [Mark 1:4, 7]; Jesus [Mark 1:14, 38]; the disci-ples [3:14; 6:12; 13:10; 14:9]). Hence, he claims that 1:45 represents a simple summary: following the cleansing of the leper, “Jesus began to proclaim the message.”

Against these arguments we may note that de/ is used disjunctively to mark the diso-bedience to Jesus’ command to silence in Mark 7:36 (where the meaning is unambigu-ous), and in the same passage the verb khru/ssein is used of the “outsiders” who “preach”

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In the Lukan parallel (Luke 5:14–16), the leper’s disobedience is elid-ed,14 but Luke still makes it clear that the word about Jesus spread contra-ry to his wishes: Jesus orders the leper to tell no one, “but the word about him spread all the more” (dih/rxeto de\ ma~llon o9 lo/goj peri\ au0tou=), and, just as in Mark, the report about him leads to an influx of crowds that forc-es Jesus to depart to deserted places (Luke 5:16). In Matt 8:1–4, on the other hand, there is no indication either that the leper disobeyed Jesus or that the miraculous cleansing was disclosed. At first glance, this seems to be in keeping with Matthew’s general lack of interest in – some would say distaste for – Mark’s secrecy motifs.15 But the language of silencing and disobedience from Mark 1:43–45, including some rare words, appears in an entirely different context in Matthew (9:27–31), where the Markan par-allel (Mark 10:46–52; cf. Matt 20:29–34) lacks any reference to Jesus’ or-dering silence. (See further analysis in the appendix, p. 25.)

Mark’s second instance of disobedience (Mark 7:31–37) is even more striking. Having healed a man who was deaf and mute, Jesus forbids the witnesses from telling anyone, but to no avail: “Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it” (7:36). The result of the report is widespread acclaim: “They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even

about Jesus’ miracle (this is acknowledged by Willoughby Charles Allen, The Gospel According to Saint Mark: With Introduction, Notes, and Map [Oxford Church Biblical Commentary; London: Rivingtons, 1915], 64, who defended the same reading as Elliott). Furthermore, lo/goj can certainly mean “the story” or “the tale”; and in fact, the parallel to Mark 1:45 in Luke 5:15 (dih/rxeto de\ ma=llon o9 lo/goj peri\ au0tou~) suggests that Luke understood the present passage from Mark in this way (cf. 1 Macc 8:10; Acts 11:22; and note especially Matt 28:15, which not only uses lo/goj as “tale” but also uses the same (rare) verb as Mark 1:45: kai\ diefhmi/sqh o9 lo/goj ou[toj). Finally, Elliott’s claim that Mark 1:44 concludes the pericope because the parallel in Matt 8:1–4 lacks anything like Mark 1:45 fails to consider the fact that the language of Mark 1:45 does appear in Matt 9:30b–31 (a passage Elliott does not address). See James Swetnam, “Some Remarks on the Meaning of o9 de\ e0celqw&n in Mark 1,45,” Bib 68 (1987): 245–49.

14 That Luke has omitted the explicit reference to the leper disobeying Jesus “due to his respect for the authority of Jesus” (I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Com-mentary on the Greek Text [NIGTC; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978], 210) seems likely, especially when we observe that when people other than Jesus issue a command to silence and it is disobeyed, Luke follows the Markan wording very closely (Mark 10:48//Luke 18:39). The tendency to downplay the disobedience to Jesus seen here in Luke was to have a long history; cf. Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 32.1 (ad Matt 9:30–31).

15 Luz’s opinion represents the consensus: “Matthew has no interest in most of the material that is associated with the Markan messianic secret” (Matthew 8–20, 190); Wrede, Messianic Secret, 151–64, goes through the Matthean passages in detail and con-cludes that the secret “no longer has the importance for Matthew that it has for Mark” (154). Luke is closer to Mark in many passages (see Wrede, Messianic Secret, 164–79).

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makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak’” (7:37). In the parallel heal-ing in Matt 15:29–31, there is no command to silence; Luke has no parallel at all, as this falls within the “Great Lukan Omission.”

Mark also augments the motif of Jesus’ inability to keep people from speaking about him by stating that he could not escape public notice de-spite his effort to do so (Mark 7:24).16 Here we are told that when Jesus was in the region of Tyre, “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there [ou0de/na h!qelen gnw~nai]. Yet he could not escape no-tice.” This idea is found nowhere else. It is passed over in the parallel in Matt 15:21; Luke has no parallel; and even in Mark 9:30, which has a very similar statement about Jesus “not wanting anyone to know” (kai\ ou0k h!qelen i3na tij gnoi=) his whereabouts, there is no indication that Jesus was unable to maintain secrecy.17

One other passage in Mark includes an ineffectual silencing, albeit in this case not issued by Jesus. When blind Bartimaeus18 cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” the crowd of pilgrims19 orders him to be silent. Just as in Mark 7:36, the rebuke provokes even greater cries: “but he shouted even more loudly,20 ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” Despite the resemblance to Jesus’ ineffective rebukes, there is general scholarly consensus that the crowds’ silencing of Bartimaeus is fundamen-tally unrelated to other messianic secret themes in Mark.21 Among the im-portant differences: characters other than Jesus order the silence; it is is-sued prior to the healing;22 and the verb siwpa~n (“to be silent”) is not typ-

16 So Simon Légasse, L’Évangile de Marc (2 vols.; LD 5; Paris: Cerf, 1997), 1:446:

“On reconnaît là [namely, Mark 7:24], sous une forme particulière, le theme marcien qu’exprime ailleurs l’ordre donné aux maladies de ne pas divulguer leur guérison, ordre transgressé sur-le-champ: le pouvoir et la gloire du Christ éclatent quand bien même il voudrait les dissimuler.” Similarly Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 167.

17 Mark 9:30 differs from 7:24 in that it explains why Jesus sought privacy – namely, because he was teaching the disciples about the fate of the Son of Man (9:31).

18 Mark 10:46–52//Luke 18:35–43//Matt 20:29–34 (in Matthew, of course, there are two blind men).

19 Mark: “the masses” (polloi/); Luke 18:39: “those who were in front” of the throng (oi9 proa/gontej); Matt 20:31: “the crowd” (o9 de\ o1xloj).

20 o9 de\ pollw~| ma~llon e1krazen (Mark 10:48); so Luke 18:39: au0toj de\ pollw~| ma~llon e1krazen; slightly modified in Matt 20:31: oi9 de\ mei=zon e1kracan. The wording of Mark 7:36 is different: au0toi\ ma=llon perisso/teron e0kh/russon.

21 Thus even Wrede, though generally inclined to see all references to concealment as contributing to a united theme, believes Mark 10:48 has “its own special significance” (Messianic Secret, 38; cf. 279–80). See the survey of opinions in Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 229–30.

22 This is brought out especially in Theissen’s form-critical analysis (Miracle Stories, 143–44).

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ical of the other terminology for Jesus’ silencing.23 In general, the episode more nearly resembles the disciples’ rebuke to those who brought children to Jesus (Mark 10:13): both the disciples and the crowds mistakenly be-lieve that Jesus should not be bothered by these insignificant figures.24 Hence Bartimaeus’s persistence in crying out demonstrates a laudable faith;25 and the theme of the pericope does not belong to the apologetic motive that I am proposing lay behind Jesus’ own failed efforts at silenc-ing.

It must be clearly stated that in Mark there is real inconsistency with re-spect to Jesus’ commands to silence being violated. When Jesus heals Jairus’s daughter,26 he first seeks privacy for the healing,27 and then, hav-ing raised the girl from the dead, orders the parents “that no one should know this.”28 The story is often cited as an instance in which Jesus’ silenc-ing seems particularly artificial, understandable only as an effort on Mark’s part to add to the air of secrecy, but frankly absurd when consid-ered historically. The house was thronged with mourners who had just laughed at Jesus for claiming that the girl was merely sleeping. How were her parents to prevent anyone from learning that their daughter was again

23 Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 231. 24 So Wrede, Messianic Secret, 280; Henry Barclay Swete, Commentary on Mark: The

Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indexes (Kregel Reprint Library Series; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 1977), 244 (citing patristic interpretation along these lines); Vin-cent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Indexes (London: Macmillan, 1952), 448; cf. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988–1997), 3:107: “one supposes that the crowd, hardened to roadside beggars, thinks the man a nuisance.”

25 Cf. Mark 7:28. Most scholars recognize that the episode emphasizes Bartimaeus’s praiseworthy faith and persistence (so Paul J. Achtemeier, “‘And He Followed Him’: Miracles and Discipleship in Mark 10:46–52,” in Early Christian Miracle Stories (ed. Robert W. Funk; Semeia 11; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1978): 115–45, here 118–19).

26 Mark 5:21–43//Matt 9:18–26//Luke 8:40–56. 27 Mark 5:37, 40//Luke 8:51. Matthew says nothing about the healing being done in

private. But the motif of Jesus’ seeking to perform healings out of the public eye is gen-erally viewed as belonging to pre-Markan tradition. So Martin Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel (trans. Bertram Lee Woolf; New York: Scribner, 1935), 94: the miracle worker “does not allow his action, i.e. God’s action, to be seen by profane eyes”; see also Theis-sen, Miracle Stories, 60; Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Mark (Rich-mond, Va.: John Knox, 1970), 65; Luz, “Secret Motif,” 77. Bultmann, History, 214, ad-duces further grounds for the pre-Markan nature of 5:37.

28 Mark 5:43: diestei/lato au0toi=j polla_ i3na mhdei\j gnoi= tou=to; Luke 8:56: o9 de\ parh/ggeilen au0toi=j mhdeni\ ei0pei=n to\ gegono/j. Luke’s language of “not telling anyone” is typical of other passages in Mark (1:44; 7:36).

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alive?29 In light of such a setting, it is remarkable that Mark has omitted any mention of disobedience to Jesus’ demand for secrecy, where, for once, it would have been entirely understandable.30

Similarly, Mark reports no disobedience in the healing of the blind man in Mark 8:22–26. Here again Jesus seems to want to perform his healing privately, for he leads the blind man “out of the village” (8:23) and, having healed him, sends him “to his home” with orders not to enter the village (8:26). In light of Jesus’ retreat from the village, it is likely that, for Mark, Jesus’ instructions were tantamount to a command not to publicize the miracle;31 certainly the manuscript tradition, which has tended to add an explicit command not to speak to anyone, understood Jesus to be enjoining silence.32 In any event, the man is not said to have disobeyed Jesus’ in-structions.

In addition to these instances in which the healed do not violate Jesus’ commands to secrecy, we should note that in most cases Jesus does not even issue such commands.33 Jesus does not order silence in the healings at Mark 1:29–31; 2:1–12; 3:1–6; 5:25–34; 9:14–27; or 10:46–52.34 Although

29 Matthew omits the command to the parents not to tell anyone, but states that the re-

port about the event spread (Matt 9:26) – as it inevitably would have! 30 The absence of any violation of the command to secrecy is a problem for the “epi-

phanic” interpretation of the messianic secret (see below). So, for instance, Hans Jürgen Ebeling, an exponent of the epiphanic interpretation, is forced to argue that Mark intend-ed the reader to assume that the parents would disobey Jesus and the secret would get out (Das Messiasgeheimnis und die Botschaft des Marcus-Evangelisten [BZNW 19; Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1939], 133; cf. Kertelge, Wunder Jesu, 119). For Luz this episode actual-ly pertains to the secret of Jesus’ identity as Messiah, and hence the fact that this miracle is kept secret is no exception, since the secrecy about Jesus’ identity is typically pre-served (he claims that the raising of a dead person was so clearly the act of the Messiah that this miracle effectively revealed who Jesus was).

31 Bultmann (History, 213) and Theissen (Miracle Stories, 148) think that the original story concluded with the man simply being sent home, without any nuance of secrecy. On this interpretation, Mark has added the words “do not go into the village” to incorpo-rate this episode into his secrecy theme, “home” being for Mark the opposite of “vil-lage,” as private from public. Räisänen (Messianic Secret, 163–65) thinks 8:26b is actu-ally original to the pre-Markan story and does implicitly demand silence, but he thinks this is related to the secret of Jesus’ identity rather than his healing activity. Earl S. John-son, “Mark 8:22–26: The Blind Man from Bethsaida,” NTS 25 (1979): 370–83, argues that 8:26b should be distinguished from Mark’s secrecy motifs.

32 Indeed, a significant minority of textual critics regards the command not to speak to anyone (found in a variety of forms in important early manuscripts) as the original read-ing. See the thorough discussion of the thorny textual issues in Collins, Mark, 389–90.

33 Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 155–60, reviews the passages that appear to lack any demand for secrecy.

34 In fact, even the demons are not always silenced (Mark 5:7). For an attempt to show that such instances do not constitute genuine contradictions or inconsistencies, see

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Jesus sometimes seeks privacy before performing a healing,35 he also heals under the direct scrutiny of crowds and authorities (Mark 2:1; 3:1).36 Alt-hough he tells the leper to talk to no one, he also orders the Garasene de-moniac to announce “all that the Lord had done.”37 It would be tempting to understand this particular reversal of Jesus’ silencing policy as an excep-tion stemming from ethnic or geographical considerations: the demoniac is in Gentile territory, and he tells of Jesus’ deed in the Decapolis.38 But in Mark 7:24, Jesus seeks secrecy in Tyre. Thus, no pattern is easily dis-cerned.39 And whatever the functions of the injunctions to secrecy, the nar-rative makes no effort to conceal the fact that secrecy about Jesus is not maintained: his reputation spreads quickly (Mark 1:28), attracting crowds (Mark 1:45), so that Jesus and the disciples cannot even eat (Mark 3:20; 6:31). Jesus’ hometown had heard of his miracles (Mark 6:2-3), as had Herod Antipas (Mark 6:14). Even in Jerusalem people knew him as “Son of David” (Mark 10:48) and as a messianic claimant (Mark 14:61).40

Jack Dean Kingsbury, The Christology of Mark’s Gospel (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress, 1983), 13–21.

35 Mark 5:37, 40; 7:33; 8:23. 36 The public nature of these healings cannot even be dismissed as incidental: these

miracles must be public, for they are meant to legitimate the Son of Man’s authority (so Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 156).

37 Mark 5:18–20//Luke 8:38–39. It has been claimed that this episode actually con-forms to the pattern of silencing and disobedience found in Mark 1:43–45 and 7:36. Wrede (The Messianic Secret, 140–41), Dibelius (Tradition, 74), and Theissen (Miracle Stories, 68, 146–47) find a note of disobedience in the contrast between Jesus’ instruc-tion “go to your home” (ei0j to\n oi]ko/n sou, Mark 5:19) and the man’s subsequent procla-mation in the Decapolis (5:20). It is true that oi]koj can have connotations of secrecy in Mark, as in Mark 7:24, where Jesus enters a house to avoid notice, and in 8:26, where the healed man is sent “to his home” (ei0j oi]kon au0tou=) in explicit contrast to entering “into the village” (ei0j th\n kw&mhn). But since in Mark 5:19 Jesus instructs the man to go to his “home” and to his “people,” Mark surely implies that the man was meant to address a wider circle (Taylor, Mark, 284). Furthermore, there is a kai/ between Jesus’ command and the demoniac’s departure, not the disjunctive de/ of 1:45 and 7:36 (Sjöberg, Mensch-ensohn, 153).

38 So Taylor, Mark, 285; Wrede, The Messianic Secret, 140 n. 30, lists older scholars of this opinion.

39 Cf. E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress, 1985), 159: “It is not to be supposed that Mark or any of the other evangelists knew the actual interconnec-tions among Jesus’ fame, his intention, his healing and his preaching.” For further criti-cism of any appeal to a precise geographical schema that would eliminate inconsisten-cies, see Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 154–56.

40 On the Markan passages that note the spread of Jesus’ fame, see Kingsbury, Chris-tology, 78–80, and Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 224–41.

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The Place of Disobedience in Theories of the Messianic Secret

Thus one of the puzzles of the secrecy motifs is the sheer inconsistency with which they are worked out. Jesus is presented as striving for secrecy, but he is also well known. William Wrede famously argued that the secre-cy motifs – which he insisted were pre-Markan in origin (hence the incon-sistency of their deployment) – were meant chiefly to account for two dif-ferent ways of conceiving Jesus’ messiahship. In the original conception, Jesus became Messiah only at his resurrection (Acts 2:36; Rom 1:4). At a later point in time, when Jesus’ earthly life was “being filled materially with messianic content,”41 some explanation was needed for why he had not been known as Messiah during his lifetime. The various motifs of se-crecy were efforts to deal with this disparity: although Jesus was already Messiah, this was not widely known because his disciples failed to under-stand him, and because he silenced those who recognized him.42 Wrede also found in Jesus’ instructions to the disciples not to speak of the trans-figuration until the resurrection (Mark 9:9) the key to unlock the variegat-ed secrecy motifs, for this pointed to the conviction that who Jesus truly was could be understood only after the resurrection;43 prior to that there was only secrecy, misunderstanding, and parables.44

It will be immediately clear that the instances in which people disobey Jesus’ commands to be silent are singularly ill-suited to address the chris-tological discrepancy Wrede identified, for they portray many people talk-ing about who Jesus was and what he could do, and talking about him dur-ing his lifetime – precisely what, ex hypothesi, had not been taking place.45

41 Wrede, The Messianic Secret, 229 (emphasis removed). 42 In a variation of Wrede’s thesis, Dibelius also argued for an apologetic function: ef-

forts at secrecy were meant to account for why Jesus was so often rejected (Tradition). For a more recent variation on the apologetic explanation, see Francis Watson, “The So-cial Function of Mark’s Secrecy Theme,” JSNT 24 (1985): 49–69.

43 Wrede, The Messianic Secret, 114. 44 Several other scholars, although differing from Wrede in important details, have

shared the view that Mark 9:9 must hold the key to Mark’s use of secrecy motifs. But rather than finding here an apologetic motive, they have argued that, in one form or an-other, the secrecy motifs are meant to point to a theology of the cross, either countering a divine man Christology and an undue emphasis on Jesus’ miracles, or even functioning as a polemic against particular factions of the nascent Christian movement (especially the Jerusalem church). See the discussion of Percy, Strecker, Conzelmann, Weeden, and Luz in The Messianic Secret (ed. Christopher M. Tuckett; IRT 1; Philadelphia, Pa.: Fortress, 1983), 15–19; and cf. Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 154–55.

45 See the criticism offered by James D. G. Dunn, “The Messianic Secret in Mark,” in Tuckett, The Messianic Secret, 120–22; cf. Tuckett, The Messianic Secret, 26 n. 48, for a list of scholars who have expressed similar objections.

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It is not clear how the portrayal of people disobeying Jesus’ injunctions to silence would address the fact that he was not widely known as Messiah.

Along lines similar to Wrede, Dibelius argued that the commands to se-crecy were intended not only to explain why Jesus was not more widely known as Messiah, but also “to show that Jesus did not wish Himself to be honoured as a miracle worker.”46 But again, such a view struggles to ac-count for the disobedience to Jesus’ commands to silence. How could Mark be correcting a miracle-worker Christology when he draws attention to the profound impression Jesus’ miracles made on all who heard about them (Mark 7:36–37)?47

One analysis of the messianic secret that did focus on the breaking of the commands to silence was that of H. J. Ebeling.48 Ebeling argued that this theme was a literary device whereby the reader is shown that Jesus’ glory is ultimately irresistible.49 According to his interpretation, the motif of secrecy primarily increases the value of the revelation for the reader.50 Ebeling’s claim – that Jesus’ inability to keep his own secret was intended to emphasize the value of the revelation – has been adopted in various ways even by scholars who are critical of certain aspects of his study.51

Wrede himself acknowledged the problem created by the disobedience of Jesus’

commands to silence, remarking that this seems to wreck any consistent purpose for the secrecy motif and therefore to indicate that these notices are not a Markan creation (Mes-sianic Secret, 17, 125–29); part of the explanation, suggests Wrede, could lie in the fact that Mark has taken over various traditional materials, only some of which included the motif of secrecy (125). But in Wrede’s view, the pattern of command to secrecy and vio-lation of this command cannot fully be accounted for by appeal to Mark’s sources. Wrede insists that Mark does take Jesus’ commands to silence seriously, and yet Mark cannot have wanted to convey that Jesus’ “most characteristic intention was frustrated” (127). Since Mark repeatedly draws attention to the fact that Jesus’ commands to secrecy were violated, this must be “an idea of positive value to the author,” and not a matter of mere inconsistency. The positive value Wrede describes as follows: “[Jesus’] glory emerges from the fact that he wanted to remain hidden yet is at once confessed. The simple reader of the Bible understands the evangelist when he encounters in these remarks something with a triumphant ring about it” (128). Here Wrede essentially anticipates the thesis of Ebeling, on whom, see below.

46 Dibelius, Tradition, 223. 47 See especially the critique by Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 154. 48 Ebeling, Das Messiasgeheimnis. 49 Ibid., 135–36, 170–72. 50 Minette de Tilesse, Le secret, 249–51, sees all the injunctions to silence – of de-

mons, disciples, and the healed – as Markan creations, in explicit agreement with Ebeling.

51 In particular Luz, “Secret Motif,” and Adela Yarbro Collins, who has impressively augmented and refined the insights of Ebeling and Dibelius by means of a comparative history of religions approach (“Messianic Secret and the Gospel of Mark: Secrecy in Jewish Apocalypticism, the Hellenistic Mystery Religions, and Magic,” in Rending the

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Yet Ebeling’s “epiphanic” theory cannot easily explain why the com-mands to silence are often obeyed,52 why the secrecy was demanded only until the resurrection (Mark 9:9),53 or why there are so many miracles in which Jesus does not enjoin silence. If this were a literary device on Mark’s part to bring out the irrepressible glory of Jesus, why not have the commands broken more regularly? Furthermore, it is unclear how Ebe-ling’s theory accounts for the fact that the disciples – despite everything they get wrong – never break Jesus’ command to conceal his identity. In short, it is this combination of secrecy and secrecy broken that creates problems for various interpretations of the messianic secret.54

I believe that this inconsistency is one of several indications that the se-crecy motifs had disparate origins (e.g., exorcistic rites, esoteric teaching, concealing r9h/seij barbarikai/, and so on) and predate Mark (see further in the appendix). But setting aside for the moment the question of origin, we must now address the question of purpose. What problem could the motif of Jesus’ trying to maintain secrecy but failing to do so have addressed? What previously has not been proposed is that this motif arose in response to a particular set of social and political realities, and was intended to ex-onerate Jesus of his apparent disregard for the way his reputation as a wonderworker would have endangered his fellow Jews. When political factors have been invoked in addressing the messianic secret, it has usually been to claim either that Jesus sought secrecy to avoid having a popular, “political” conception of messiahship forced on him,55 or else that Jesus Veil: Concealment and Secrecy in the History of Religions [ed. Elliot R. Wolfson; New York; London: Seven Bridges, 1999], 11–30; and eadem, Mark, 170–72, 180, 374). Many scholars acknowledge that Ebeling’s theory works nicely for individual passages. So, e.g., Kertelge, Wunder Jesu, 70: in Mark 1:45 and 7:36, breaking the command is the goal of each pericope; Guelich, Mark, 79: “The man’s conduct in 1:45 would then repre-sent not so much an act of disobedience as the impossibility of Jesus’ healings remaining hidden”; Légasse, L’Évangile de Marc, 1:142–43 (on Mark 1:45): by contravening the order to be silent, the recipients of miracles trigger popular enthusiasm, and thus work for the glory of their benefactor. Cf. Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 62 n. 101. Some ancient commentaries already suggested that violating the commands was primarily meant to have an impact on the reader; Bede drew a practical exhortation from the disobedience in Mark 7:36: volebat ostendere quanto studiosius quantoque ferventius eum praedicare debeant quibus iubet ut praedicent, “Mark wants to show how much more diligently and fervently those who are commanded to preach him should do so” (cited in Swete, Mark, 162 [my translation]).

52 See the trenchant criticisms of Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 60–62, 168, and Guel-ich’s critique of Luz (Mark, 76); see also my comments above in note 30.

53 Noted by Georg Strecker, “The Theory of the Messianic Secret in Mark’s Gospel,” in Tuckett, The Messianic Secret, 58.

54 Tuckett, The Messianic Secret, 15; Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 168. 55 So Johannes Weiss, Das alteste Evangelium: Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des

Markus–Evangeliums und der ältesten evangelischen Überlieferung (Göttingen: Vanden-

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avoided publicity to keep himself from harm.56 To my knowledge no one has suggested that this was a motif meant to show that Jesus was con-cerned for how his activity might have endangered others.

We turn now to review some of the evidence that illustrates the “politi-cally precarious situation of urban Jewish communities . . . dependent as they often were on protection from Rome.”57 Throughout the first century, in the Diaspora as well as in Palestine, there was a mutually reinforcing oscillation between local Gentile hostility and misguided or malicious government policy toward Jewish communities.58

The Politically Precarious Situation of Jews in the First-Century Mediterranean World

Various Roman leaders had guaranteed the right of Jews to live according to their ancestral customs, including the ability to make annual donations to the temple, the right to settle disputes within their own communities, and freedom from obligations on the Sabbath.59 But there is also evidence

hoeck und Ruprecht, 1903), 236; W. Sanday, “The Injunctions to Silence in the Gos-pels,” JTS 5 (1904): 321–29 (especially 324); Oscar Cullmann, Shirley C. Guthrie, and Charles A. M. Hall, The Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia, Pa.: Westmin-ster, 1959), 124; W. Manson, “The Life of Jesus: Some Tendencies in Present-day Re-search,” in The Background of the New Testament and Its Eschatology (ed. W. D. Davies and D. Daube; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 211–21, here 216; Dunn, “Messianic Secret,” 127.

56 So Taylor, Mark, 377 (“counsel of prudence”), but cf. ibid. 123. Theissen, “Prag-matische Bedeutung,” 227, also notes that as Jesus’ secret gets out, the danger to him increases. So already Origen, Cels. 1.61: “But it is not disgraceful carefully to avoid run-ning straight into dangers . . .”; Cels. 1.65: Jesus “was careful not to meet dangers unnec-essarily or at the wrong time or for no good reason” (trans. Chadwick).

57 Paula Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another look at Galatians 1 and 2,” JTS n.s., 42 (1991): 532–64, here 558.

58 One thinks of the opening of Emil Schürer’s chapter on the Roman procurators: “It might be thought, from the record of the Roman procurators . . . that they all, as if by secret arrangement, systematically and deliberately set out to drive the people to revolt” (The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ [175 B.C.–A.D. 135] [rev. and ed. Géza Vermès et al.; 3 vols. in 4; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973], 1:455). Richard Horsley (Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus [Minneapolis, Minn.: Winston, 1985], 35) is more generous in his assessment: “The Ro-mans took considerable care to be sensitive to Jewish religious scruples in their handling of Palestinian Jewish affairs. Nevertheless, as was virtually inevitable in a situation of imperial domination . . . they blundered into occasional provocations. . . .”

59 This summary is drawn from John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Atti-tudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 41. See the collection of ancient texts establishing Jewish rights (with bib-

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of periodic hostility toward Jews on the part of emperors and local rulers, as well as on the part of the Jews’ Gentile neighbors. The overall situation has been construed quite differently. To cite but two representatives of the scholarly divide: Erich Gruen concludes from his broad and careful study that Jews lived with “self-assurance and comfort in the Greek-speaking lands of the Mediterranean”;60 H. Dixon Slingerland, on the other hand, perceives a pattern of “continuous imperial antipathy towards the foreign cult” of the Jews.61 Naturally, the different conclusions result from differ-ent assessments of the data. For instance, the record of Greek and Roman opinions about Jews and Judaism includes both expressions of admiration and expressions of mistrust, hostility, and even loathing.62 How wide-spread were these respective views?63 How relevant, for instance, would the negative stereotypes of Jews be for a Jewish embassy to the emperor?

liography) in Jewish Life and Thought among Greeks and Romans: Primary Readings (ed. Louis H. Feldman and Meyer Reinhold; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1996), 81–92. Josephus, in particular, describes at great length the rights guaranteed to the Jews (Ant. 14.185–267; 16.160–178). For scholarly analysis, see E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews un-der Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian (SJLA 20; Leiden: Brill, 1981); Tessa Ra-jak, “Jewish Rights in the Greek Cities under Roman Rule: A New Approach,” in Studies in Judaism in Its Greco-Roman Context (vol. 5 of Approaches to Ancient Judaism, ed. William Scott Green; BJS 32; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1985), 19–35; Tessa Rajak, “Was There a Roman Charter for the Jews?” JRS 74 (1984): 107–23; Aryeh Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt: The Struggle for Equal Rights (rev.; TSAJ 7; Tü-bingen: Mohr, 1985); Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev, Jewish Rights in the Roman World: The Greek and Roman Documents Quoted by Josephus Flavius (TSAJ 74; Tübingen: Mohr, 1998); Hannah M. Cotton, “Jewish Jurisdiction under Roman Rule,” in Zwischen den Reichen: Neues Testament und Römische Herrschaft (ed. Michael Labahn and Jürgen Zangenberg; TANZ 36; Tübingen: Francke, 2002), 13–28.

60 Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 212; cf. H. Dixon Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking and the Early Imperial Repression of Judaism at Rome (SFSHJ 160; Atlanta Ga.: Schol-ars Press, 1997), 11 n. 11, who gives a representative series of quotations from historians who view Roman policy toward the Jews as generally favorable.

61 Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking, 87. 62 The largest collection of evidence is Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on

Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1984). Feldman and Reinhold, Jewish Life, have conveniently divided sample quo-tations into categories such as “Pro-Jewish Attitudes by Intellectuals” (105–22) and “Criticism and Hostility towards Jews” (305–95), with topical bibliography.

63 Slingerland emphasizes both the currency and the potency of the slander; Gager and Gruen emphasize the positive assessment of the Jews and suggest that the more fantastic slurs against them were never taken seriously. Cf. the survey of past scholarship on these questions in Leonard Victor Rutgers, “Review: Attitudes to Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period: Reflections on Feldman’s Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World,” JQR 85 (1995): 361–95; and the response: Louis H. Feldman, “Reflections on Rutgers’s ‘Attitudes to Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period,’” JQR 86 (July, 1995): 153–69.

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Slingerland reaches his own more pessimistic conclusion as a result of reading between the lines of Philo’s Legatio and Flaccus; he notes how hard Philo must work – and how many unpleasant episodes he must omit – to make it appear that imperial policy toward Jews had been generally be-nevolent. Philo and Josephus attempt to claim that, with the exception of the occasional bad governor or emperor, Jewish rights were widely re-spected; but the facts seem to tell a less encouraging story.64 So far as offi-cial Roman policy goes, Leonard Rutgers reached the judicious conclusion that “the constant factor in Roman policy toward the Jews was that there was no such constant factor.”65 The Jews’ independence, right to practice their ancestral customs, and indeed their very safety, were sometimes threatened; on more than one occasion Jews were the victims of imperial decrees and of mob violence. Some of the historical details are muddled in our sources, and are subjects of scholarly controversy. However, for the present thesis, it will be sufficient to show that throughout the time that traditions about Jesus were circulating and the gospels were being written, Roman authorities dealt vigorously with any disturbance to order. As a re-sult, many Jews were at pains to present an image of themselves as peace-ful defenders of that order, and tried to deal preemptively with potential troublemakers lest Rome intervene directly.

According to several ancient sources, in 19 C.E. Jews were expelled from Rome.66 The ancient accounts and the modern evaluations67 vary so significantly that even summarizing the facts is difficult. Whether the problem was excessive Jewish proselytism (so Dio Cassius; Smallwood), or some sort of unruly behavior (Williams), or a Roman hostility to foreign rites,68 what is clear is that “Rome was determined to restore law and or-

64 Note for instance that Philo fails to mention the fact that Jews were banished from

Rome under Tiberius (John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan [323 BCE–117 CE] [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996], 298 n. 41). Slingerland points out how little of these Jewish troubles we would know were we reliant solely on Philo and Josephus (Claudian Policymaking, 15).

65 Leonard Victor Rutgers, “Roman Policy towards the Jews: Expulsions from the City of Rome during the First Century C.E.,” Classical Antiquity 13 (1994): 56–74, here 73.

66 Josephus, Ant. 18.63–84; Tacitus, Ann. 2.85; Suetonius, Tib. 36; Dio Cassius 57.18.5.

67 Cf. M. H. Williams, “The Expulsion of the Jews from Rome in AD 19,” Latomus 48 (1989): 765–84; Rutgers, “Roman Policy”; Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule, 202–10; Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking, 51–63.

68 The followers of Isis were simultaneously expelled. For doubts that this expulsion arose from proselytism, see Martin Goodman, “Jewish Proselytizing in the First Centu-ry,” in The Jews among Pagans and Christians: In the Roman Empire (ed. Judith Lieu, John A. North, and Tessa Rajak; London: Routledge, 1992), 53–78, here 70.

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der”69 and, toward this end, expelled Jews. (In the same year, Germanicus deprived Alexandrian Jews of their share of the grain distribution [Jose-phus, C. Ap. 2.63–64].)

A decade later, Sejanus’s much more ambitious and menacing designs against the Jews70 must have created a significant scare, and likely per-suaded many Jews that they “could no longer be confident about the em-peror’s attitude to their concerns. . . .”71

Under Claudius there was also an expulsion of Jews from Rome. The sources for this event (or events) are thoroughly confusing.72 Claudius may have expelled the Jews,73 or forbidden them to meet together.74 It is diffi-cult to determine whether the ancient reports refer to two separate events (repression in 41 C.E. and expulsion in 49), or are somewhat garbled refer-ences to a single event. What is clear is that Claudius’s “actions underlined the insecurity of the political status of the Jews in Rome and rendered them susceptible to suspicion or scorn.”75 Slingerland has forged an im-pressive argument that Claudius was, in fact, consistently hostile to Jewish interests; and at the same time that he was setting upon Jews in Rome, he also responded harshly to the Jewish delegation from Alexandria.

The Jews of Alexandria had suffered terrible pogroms in 38 C.E.,76 and Flaccus declared Jews “foreigners and aliens” (Flacc. 54). The ensuing embassy to Gaius, headed by Philo, received no favorable response. Ra-ther, it first endured the terrifying prospect of Gaius erecting his statue in the Jerusalem temple (Leg. 184–196; cf. Josephus, Ant. 18.259–309), and

69 Rutgers, “Roman Policy,” 65. 70 According to Philo (Leg. 159–61), Sejanus invented slanders against the Jews be-

cause he wanted to destroy the entire nation. If Philo also devoted an entire work (now lost) to events under Sejanus, as indicated by Leg. 1 and Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.5.6–7, then “the threat was presumably serious” (Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 202 n. 5). (On the likelihood that Philo did write a work on Sejanus, see Pieter Willem van der Horst, Philo’s “Flaccus”: The First Pogrom: Introduction, Translation, and Commen-tary [PACS 2; Leiden: Brill, 2003], 70.)

71 Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 301; on Sejanus’s policy, see Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 165–66, 201–2, 208–9; Horst, Philo’s Flaccus, 89–90.

72 Cf. Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking, 89–129; Barclay, Jews in the Mediterra-nean Diaspora, 303–6; Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 210–16.

73 So Acts 18:2; Suetonius, Claudius 25.4; and Orosius, Adv. Pag. 7.6.15–16, who places the event in 49 C.E.

74 So Dio Cassius 60.6.6–7, who seems to place this in 41 C.E. 75 Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 306. 76 Philo, Flacc. 53–96.

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suffered the indignity of his anti-Jewish slurs (Leg. 361).77 Gaius also im-prisoned Philo’s brother, Alexander the Alabarch (Josephus, Ant. 19.276).

In 41 C.E. Claudius finally heard the embassies from Alexandria. In Jo-sephus’s telling, this old friend of Agrippa I sided squarely with the Jews.78 But Claudius’s actual letter (P. Lond. 1912; CPJ 153) suggests that he was rather more threatening toward the Jewish faction. Claudius did command the Alexandrians to behave “gently and kindly toward the Jews,” and to allow them to observe their religious customs (CPJ 153.82–87). But when he turns to the Jews, his tone is of “utmost violence.”79 He declared that he held within himself “a store of immutable indignation against those who renewed the conflict” (CPJ 153.78), referring in all likelihood to the Jews, who had, upon his ascension, taken revenge on the Greeks (Jose-phus, Ant. 19.278–79). He was indignant that the Jews had sent two em-bassies (CPJ 153.90–91), and he warned them not to bring other Jews into Alexandria from Syria or Egypt, “or I shall be forced to conceive graver suspicions.” Should the Jews disobey, he would “proceed against them in every way as fomenting a common plague for the whole world” (CPJ 153.96–100).

Although Claudius urged both the Jews and the Alexandrians to live peaceably, the door was now open for charges against Jews to be especial-ly explosive. The Alexandrian Isidoros took advantage of precisely this readiness “to conceive graver suspicions” when he accused the Jews, be-fore Claudius, of “wishing to stir up the entire world.”80 This anti-Jewish tactic was used multiple times in the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs.81 Like-

77 On the events in Alexandria from 38 to 41, see Smallwood, Jews under Roman

Rule, 220–55; Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 48–78. 78 Josephus, Ant. 19.280–85; so Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 246 (but cf.

250). Slingerland, Claudian Policymaking, argues, with considerable force, that Jose-phus’s portrait of Claudius as friendly to the Jews has been received too credulously by modern historians. On Claudius’s letter to the Alexandrians, in particular, see ibid., 131–50.

79 Arnaldo Momigliano, Claudius: The Emperor and His Achievement (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981), 34. Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, 326, views Claudius’s tone as less severe.

80 o3lhn th\n oi0koume/nhn tara&ssein (Acta Isidori Rec. C col. ii.23 = Musurillo, Pagan, 23). On this incident, see Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 250–55 (who notes that the date of the trial is not entirely clear), and H. I. Bell, “Anti-Semitism in Alexandria,” JRS 31 (1941): 1–18, here 9–13. One can easily recognize the potency of the charge Ter-tullus brings against Paul before Felix in Acts 24:5: eu9ro/ntej ga\r to\n a1ndra tou=ton loimo\n [cf. no/soj in Claudius’s edict] kai\ kinou=nta sta&seij pa~sin toi=j 0Ioudai/oij toi=j kata_ th\n oi0koume/nhn.

81 Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs: Acta Alexandrinorum (Oxford: Clarendon, 1954), 58: “the impious Jews” are a risk to “attack and ravage our well-

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wise Apion, in his polemic against the Jews, claimed that they lacked loy-alty to Rome and should be regarded with suspicion.82

Josephus mentions tensions between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria from 41 C.E. onward, resulting in huge loss of life in the riots under Tibe-rius Julius Alexander (B.J. 2.489–498).83 The Alexandrians, planning a delegation to Rome (no doubt carrying further accusations against the Jews),84 claimed that the Jews in their midst were “spies” and “enemies” (B.J. 2.490–491). The resulting fracas was settled by Roman troops in the most savage manner.

If the charge that Jews were a menace to society got traction in the first half of the first century, it was to become even more forceful after the war with Rome. The element I would like to draw attention to here is that the Jewish desire to distance themselves from any hint of sedition exhibits it-self in their proactively policing the sorts of troublemakers who might in-vite Roman intervention. For instance, Josephus states that following 70, some Sicarii escaped to Alexandria. In response to this “infiltration,” “the leaders of the council of elders, thinking it no longer safe for them to over-look their proceedings, convened a general assembly of the Jews and ex-posed the madnesss of the Sicarii” (B.J. 7.412). These leaders advised the assembly “to beware of the ruin with which they were menaced by these men and, by delivering them up, to make their peace with the Romans” (B.J. 7.412–414). This was surely sensible: the mere report of ongoing dis-turbances in Egypt led Vespasian, “suspicious of the interminable tenden-cy of the Jews to revolution,” to shut down the temple at Leontopolis (B.J. 7.420–436).

In Cyrene, one “Jonathan the Weaver” led people85 into the desert for “signs and apparitions.”86 The Jewish reaction reveals the social and politi-

named city.” On the anti-Jewish tenor that runs through the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs, see ibid. 256–57, 263–64.

82 Josephus, C. Ap. 2:33–78; A.J. 18.257–259; note especially C. Ap. 2.68 for the ac-cusation of “fomenting sedition.”

83 Cf. Robert A. Kraft, “Tiberius Julius Alexander and the Crisis in Alexandria Ac-cording to Josephus,” in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, In-tertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins (ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin; College Theology Society Resources in Religion 5; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990), 175–84.

84 See Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary: Vol. 1b: Judean War 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 353 n. 3010.

85 Josephus, eager as ever to restrict such behavior to the rabble, says that Jonathan drew followers “from the indigent classes” (tw~n a)po/rwn, B.J. 7.438).

86 On the episode we are, unfortunately, reliant solely on Josephus (B.J. 7.437–450; Vita 424). Cf. Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 369–70; Christoph Riedo-Emmenegger, Prophetisch-messianische Provokateure der Pax Romana: Jesus von Na-

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cal pressure to appear loyal: they reported Jonathan’s movements to the Roman governor: “The men of rank among the Jews reported his exodus and preparations to Catullus, the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis” (B.J. 7.439). Thus for this individual to go out into the wilderness in expectation of miraculous signs was perceived as endangering even those Jews not in-volved with his activity. (Many of those who did follow Jonathan were killed by Roman troops [B.J. 7.440].) Roman suspicions of the Jews were sufficiently high that the moment was ripe for false accusations. According to Josephus, Catullus took advantage of this state of affairs to deal with private grudges and to confiscate property by having Jonathan impugn some Jews in Alexandria and in Rome (Josephus himself was named!) with the charge of sedition. Vespasian did not believe the story and Jona-than was tortured and burned alive (B.J. 7.450).87

If we turn from Rome and Alexandria to Antioch similar threats are found. According to Johannes Malalas, there was an anti-Jewish riot in Antioch in 39–40 C.E.88 Again in 67, one Jew accused his fellow Jews of wanting to burn the town; as a result of the suspicions this aroused, ob-servance of Sabbath was itself viewed as indicating treasonous intent, and, according to Josephus, the day of rest was abolished not only in Antioch, but for a while, also in other cities (B.J. 7.51–53).89 Following the war, the Greeks availed themselves of the opportunity to request that Jewish rights be diminished.90

In Palestine the nature of the relationship with Rome was, of course, different, but still Jewish leaders understood that it was their duty to main-tain order lest the Romans intervene.91 A few examples illustrate the pres-

zaret und andere Störenfriede im Konflikt mit dem Römischen Reich (NOTA 56; Fri-bourg: Academic Press, 2005), 257–60.

87 Riedo-Emmenegger’s observations about this episode confirm precisely the point I am trying to make: “Dabei zeigt Josephus auch ganz genau, was in solchen Fällen die Aufgabe der lokalen jüdischen Eliten ist: das aufmerksame Beobachten umstürzlerischer Aktivitäten und deren rechtzeitige Meldung an die verantwortlichen römischen Behör-den. Damit erweisen sich die lokalen jüdischen Eliten nicht nur als loyale Provinzbewoh-ner, sondern sie leisten auch einen bedeutsamen Beitrag zur Sicherheit und Stabilität ei-ner Provinz und damit der römischen Sicherheitsinteressen. Nur mit einem solchen Ver-halten werden sich die Juden und Jüdinnen auch weiterhin der religiösen Privilegien im römischen Imperium erfreuen können” (Prophetisch-messianische, 260).

88 Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 360–61; Glanville Downey, A History of An-tioch in Syria: From Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Universi-ty Press, 1961), 193–95.

89 Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 361–64. 90 B.J. 7.54–62; Smallwood, Jews under Roman Rule, 363–64. 91 See E. P Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane/Penguin,

1993), 25–27, 265–68. In Palestine there were also hostilities with Gentile neighbors, and indeed the extent of latent hostility felt by Greeks toward the Jews in Palestine and Syria

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sure on the high priest to maintain order. Around the year 50 C.E. fighting broke out between Samaritans and Jews from Galilee and Judaea (B.J. 2.232–246; Ant. 20.118–136). The “rulers and magistrates” from Judaea tried to prevent the people of Jerusalem from joining the mayhem. They pursued the youth in sackcloth and ashes, warned them that by their impet-uous actions they would “bring down the wrath of the Romans on Jerusa-lem,” and also urged them to “take pity on their country and sanctuary, on their own wives and children” (B.J. 2.237). When the dust settled, it was Jewish notables, including the former high priests Jonathan and Ananus, who were summoned to Rome to give an account of their people’s conduct (B.J. 2.232–246).

Because the Jewish aristocracy might be held accountable for disruptive behavior, it made sense for them to report insurgents to the Romans lest their own loyalties be called into question. Even the random prophet pre-dicting doom for the temple, as in the case of Jesus son of Ananias, war-ranted the attention of the Jewish leaders. In this case they interrogated and flogged Jesus, and handed him over to the Romans (B.J. 7.300–309). The leaders wanted to show that they were doing their part to maintain order, even when it concerned only an unarmed prophet.

This survey should be sufficient to demonstrate that, as Paula Fredrik-sen has put it, when the proclamation about Jesus reached the ears of the Gentile urban populations, it posed a risk for Jews. “Armed with such a report, they [Gentiles] might readily seek to alienate the local Roman co-lonial government, upon which Jewish urban populations often depended for support and protection against hostile Gentile neighbours. The open dissemination of a Messianic message, in other words, put the entire Jew-ish community at risk.”92

As a result of this risk, it is easy to understand the image of their com-munities that Jews were eager to put forth to Romans: they supported the Roman order;93 they did not like seditious elements, whom the Romans had every right to punish;94 and they were allies in maintaining peace. A

can be seen in the number of Jewish casualties at the outbreak of the war with Rome: 20,000 in Caesarea; 2,000 in Ptolemais; 10,000 or 18,000 in Damascus (this point is made by Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope,” 56).

92 Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope,” 556 (emphasis added).

93 Philo, Flacc. 86–94; Leg. 230, 312. This included supporting the emperor (Flacc. 48–49, 97–98; Leg. 133, 141–154, 231–232, 279–280, 355–356); see Horst, Philo’s “Flaccus,” 149, for literature on Philo’s encomia toward the emperors.

94 When Philo criticizes those who offend rulers, he notes that they endanger not only themselves but all those around them: “Surely then they are all lunatics and madmen who take pains to display untimely frankness, and sometimes dare to oppose kings and

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central plank in Philo’s argument in Flaccus was that Jews were a peaceful people.95 Would it not have been difficult in such an environment to speak of Jesus’ activities without provoking those who wanted to emphasize Jew-ish orderliness? To speak of Jesus’ drawing crowds by his miracles would be to speak of precisely the sort of activity that had endangered Jewish rights.

To draw this section of the argument to a conclusion: there is ample ev-idence that throughout much of the first century Jews could be vulnerable to the accusation of disloyalty to the empire. Conversely, any disfavor on the part of the authorities could expose Jews to violence from Gentiles. Hence, Jews who wanted to negotiate this delicate situation were eager to claim that they were a people who would never be a source of instability in the empire, and would turn over potentially inflammatory elements.

According to my thesis, Jesus should be depicted as attempting to keep quiet those activities that were liable to disturb the pax Romana. Because the motif under question depicts Jesus as unable to conceal his wonder-working,96 we should also note that the Romans viewed popular Jewish prophets – especially when they drew crowds – as a threat to the stability of their rule.97 Promise of miraculous signs was provocation enough to in-vite Roman intervention,98 as the following episodes make clear.99

tyrants in words and deeds. They do not perceive that not only like cattle are their necks under the yoke, but that the harness extends to their whole bodies and souls, their wives and children and parents, and the wide circle of friends and kinsfolk united to them by fellowship of feeling, and that the driver can with perfect ease spur, drive on or pull back, and mete out any treatment small or great just as he pleases. And therefore they are branded and scourged and mutilated and undergo a combination of all the sufferings which merciless cruelty can inflict short of death, and finally are led away to death itself” (Philo, Somn. 2.83–84, Colson and Whitaker, LCL, emphasis added).

95 On this theme in the Flaccus, see van der Horst, Philo’s “Flaccus,” 17–18. Philo (Flacc. 89–90) claims that Flaccus’s absurd search for weapons among the Jews turned up nothing because the Jews not only hid no arms but lacked even ordinary kitchen knives!

96 The political volatility of his miracles would have been all the more pronounced if, as is often claimed, they were taken as evidence of a messianic identity (so already, Wrede, The Messianic Secret, 80; see below on John 6 and 11).

97 So Riedo-Emmenegger, who notes that the fact that the Romans reacted with con-siderable military force even against unarmed prophets demonstrates conclusively that such figures were viewed as serious threats to Roman order: “Das rasche und harte Ein-greifen der römischen Besatzungsmacht in diesen Fällen beweist, dass die politisch Ver-antwortlichen diese Gruppen als ‚anti-römisch‘ und als schwere Gefährdung der römi-schen Ordnung einschätzten” (Prophetisch-messianische, 310). Cf. Rutgers, “Roman Policy,” 70.

98 Theissen’s rhetorical question (Miracle Stories, 233), “Wie konnte er trotz so vieler Wunder am Ende hingerichtet werden?” has the matter backwards: Jesus’ wonders drew

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When the Samaritan prophet promised to uncover the sacred vessels Moses had bur-

ied on Mt. Gerizim, Pilate put to death both the leaders and the “influential” among the fugitives (A.J. 18.85–89).

Under Cuspius Fadus (44–46) Theudas promised to part the Jordan. Roman soldiers killed or imprisoned many of his followers, and sent Theudas’s head back to Jerusalem (A.J. 20.97–99; cf. Acts 5:36).

Felix (52–60) punished various prophets who promised “marvels and signs” (A.J. 20.167–68; B.J. 2.258–60). And Felix used the heavy infantry to put a halt to the adven-tures of the Egyptian prophet (A.J. 20.169–172; B.J. 2.261–263; cf. Acts 21:38).

Under Festus (60–62), a prophet promised “salvation” and an end of evils if people would follow him into the desert. Festus had him and his followers put to death (A.J. 20.188). The Gospel of John preserves the connection, on the one hand, between miracles and political aspirations, and, on the other hand, between miracles and the violent intervention of the Romans. In John 6, after the feeding of the five thousand, the people conclude that Jesus is “the prophet,” and want to make him king by force (John 6:14–15).100 The political implica-tions of the miracle – and the volatile situation thereby created – are un-mistakable.101

Similarly in John 11:47–51, the Jewish leaders give voice to the fear that Jesus’ signs – most recently, his raising of Lazarus – constitute a threat to the nation:

So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our na-tion.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You

the (unwelcome) attention that led to his arrest and execution; it is not despite the mira-cles, but because of them.

99 For the sociology of these prophets and their followers, see Horsley, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs, 160–89.

100 On implicit logic of the passage, see Wayne A. Meeks, The Prophet-King: Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology (NovTSup 14; Leiden: Brill, 1967). That John has Jesus remove himself from the scene at precisely this moment is perhaps functionally equivalent to the motif under discussion: it claims that Jesus tried to avoid such precari-ous situations.

101 That John 6:14–15 has a kernel of sound history has often been argued. Cf. David Rensberger, “The Politics of John: The Trial of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 103 (1984): 395–411 (especially 396 and the literature cited in note 5); Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John (2 vols.; AB 29–29A; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966–1970), 1:249–50; C. H. Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 213–16; Dunn, “Messianic Secret,” 123.

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know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” As E. P. Sanders has put it, “When Caiaphas ordered Jesus to be arrested, he was carrying out his duties, one of the chief of which was to prevent uprisings.”102 Had Caiaphas not intervened, the whole nation might have come to harm. In the eyes of those Jews who worried about figures such as Jonathan the Weaver, it would have been Caiaphas, not Jesus, who ap-peared to have acted with prudent concern for his people. That is, unless Jesus had at least tried to conceal his miraculous activities.

Thus, there is evidence that the Romans saw a potential threat to their order in miracles and in excessive charismatic popularity. Jews also under-stood that what was a threat to the Romans was, in turn, a threat to them. The Johannine Caiaphas cannot have been the only one who could draw such a conclusion: a person performing “signs” and gathering crowds was inviting Roman intervention, and Roman intervention generally meant col-lateral damage. In short, people behaving like Jesus would give the Roman leaders reasons, in Claudius’s words, “to conceive graver suspicions.”

Given such political realities, how were those who spread the news of Jesus’ wonders to tell their stories without depicting him as irresponsible or even reckless? They could not very well avoid narrating Jesus’ wonders (and the crowds they attracted), for these formed a central plank in the presentation of the one who “did all things well.” Followers of Jesus want-ed to talk about those miracles. I propose that some of them claimed that Jesus tried to keep his own miraculous deeds secret, to keep his own light under a bushel. He was not trying to put the leaders in an impossible situa-tion; he was not flirting with military intervention; he was not unaware of the fact that Rome demanded order from the Jewish aristocracy.

Conclusion Jesus did attract crowds, and he awakened in them some of the same hopes as did other miracle workers and prophets. The threat such popularity posed was perceived by the Jewish authorities, who had Jesus arrested. In a time when Claudius could make a menacing threat against Jews in Alex-andria and expel the Jews from Rome; when Roman prefects and procura-tors in Judaea searched for and killed popular prophets; when the high

102 Sanders, Historical Figure, 268; cf. ibid., 273: Caiaphas acted “because of his principal political and moral responsibility: to preserve the peace and to prevent riots and bloodshed. It was Jesus’ self-assertion, especially in the Temple, but also in his teaching and in his entry to the city, that motivated the high priest.” If this is so, then Jesus’ “teaching and self-assertion” – and, we may add, his miracles – forced Caiaphas’s hand.

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priest could be asked to account for any significant disturbance; when Jews in Cyrene and Alexandria felt the need to prove their loyalty to Rome by exposing dangerous elements in their midst – during such times, to tell the tales of Jesus’ wonderworking was to talk about a man who seems to have failed to consider how his actions would have affected others.

We might pose the following hypothetical question: How would the supporters of Jonathan the Weaver have told Jonathan’s story if they had wanted it to sound noble and tragic? How could they celebrate his popular-ity and his promise of signs and deliverance when it was precisely this popularity that had moved prudent Jews to hand him over?

I am proposing that the supporters of Jesus faced this very dilemma, and that some of them improvised the following, in many ways awkward, solu-tion: they claimed that Jesus had tried to keep his miraculous deeds quiet, tried to avoid crowds, tried to restrict the knowledge of his messianic iden-tity. Presenting Jesus in this way was meant to address a problematic ele-ment in their hero’s activities. If they could claim that Jesus “wanted se-crecy and only became all the more well known,”103 then he would appear less immediately responsible for his own fate and for the way he endan-gered other Jews.

Certainly this proposal does not solve all the problems of the messianic secret motifs. I have cited Wrede often enough that I may cite him once more: “I am not asserting that I have provided a proof to remove every ob-scurity.”104 My hope is that this proposal sheds new light on just one of the mysterious motifs of the “messianic secret.”

Appendix: The Pre-Markan Origin of the Disobedience Motif

The majority opinion holds that the explicit violation of commands to si-lence originated with Mark, either as Markan redaction (Mark 1:43–45; Mark 7:36)105 or Matthean use of this Markan material (Matt 9:30b–31).

103 Wrede’s formulation (The Messianic Secret, 127). 104 Ibid., 230. Cf. Heikki Räisänen, “The ‘Messianic Secret’ in Mark’s Gospel,” in

Tuckett, The Messianic Secret, 132–40, here 135: “Whoever claims to know precisely what Mark was aiming at with his secrecy theory is probably over-reaching himself”; Luz, “Secret Motif,” 75: “The messianic secret is still a mystery.”

105 Attributing Mark 1:45 to Mark are Dibelius, Tradition, 73–74; Sjöberg, Menschen-sohn, 159; Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 148 n. 16 (but see below). Luz thinks the spread-ing of the word is Markan (“Secret Motif,” 79), but of Mark 7:36–37, he says that the command to silence is Markan and the spreading of the word is traditional; so Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus (2 vols.; 3rd rev. ed.; EKK 2; Zürich: Benziger, 1989), 1:213; Kertelge, Wunder, 119. Attributing Mark 7:36 to Mark are Erich Kloster-

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Many scholars view even Jesus’ commands to silence in the case of heal-ings as Markan creations, but these injunctions have more often been as-cribed to pre-Markan tradition106 than have the notices of disobedience. Only rarely has it been argued that the commands to silence and the imme-diate violation of those commands originated prior to the composition of Mark.107 Although there is not enough evidence to overturn decisively this consensus, several reasons for viewing this motif as pre-Markan in origin may be adduced.

First, as we have already seen, there are significant inconsistencies in-volved in Mark’s deployment of this motif, and this is more easily under-stood if Mark has passed along notes of disobedience where he received them in his traditions than if he created them. Second, several elements of Mark 1:45 and 7:36 are uncharacteristic of Mark, such as the use of khru/ssw for “outsiders” and the use of lo//goj to designate “story” rather than “message”108 (see further below for other distinctive elements of Mark 1:43–44). Third, if the related theme of Jesus’ inability to escape no-tice in Mark 7:24 is pre-Markan,109 this suggests a pre-Markan origin for mann, Das Markusevangelium (4th ed.; HNT 3; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1950), 74; Ernst Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus (17th ed.; KEK 1.2; Göttingen: Vanden-hoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 151; Walter Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Markus (3rd ed.; THKNT 2; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1965), 201; Kertelge, Wunder, 157; Gnilka, Markus, 1:296; Bultmann, History, 213; and Räisänen, Messianic Secret, 150 n. 22.

106 Theissen argues on formal grounds that all of the silence commands belong to the stories themselves, as parallels from the magical papyri demonstrate that they were an integral part of the healings (Miracle Stories, 68–69, 140–51); so Pesch, Markusevange-lium, 1:313, 398; Samson Eitrem, Some Notes on the Demonology in the New Testament (SO Fasc. Supplet. 12; Oslo: A. W. Brøgger, 1950), 73; cf. Collins, Mark, 286, 374. Pesch (Markusevangelium, 1:313) and Guelich (Mark, 303–4, 396–97) also argue on sty-listic grounds that the commands to silence are pre-Markan.

107 Räisänen, “‘Messianic Secret’ in Mark’s Gospel,” 134, argued explicitly for this position: “Mark developed the idea of the miracle secret in a different direction from that of the messianic secret, so that the stress now lies on the disobeying of the command and the ensuing publicity (7:36). This motif too was at his disposal in the tradition (1:45, cf. Matt. 9:30f)” (emphasis added). (Other scholars sharing this view are cited below in note 111.) But Räisänen later revised his opinion. In the 1990 English edition of The “Messi-anic Secret” in Mark, 147, he argues that Mark 1:45 “can hardly come from the same milieu as the basic substance of the story”; and he adds (148) that one cannot find in Mark 1:43-45 and Matt 9:30 “the existence of a common pre-Markan tradition which already contained the motif of an injunction to silence which was disobeyed.”

108 See note 12 above. Cf. Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu: Literarkritische Untersuchungen zur ältesten Jesusüberlieferung (Berlin: Trowitzsch, 1919), 66, and Taylor, Mark, 190.

109 The language is not typical of Mark: Kai\ ei0selqw_n ei0j oi0ki/an ou0de/na h1qelen gnw~nai, kai\ ou0k h0dunh/qh laqei=n. Note that h0dunh/qh is an Ionic form used only one other time in the NT, and lanqa/nw is used nowhere else by Mark. The traditional (pre-

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the disobedience motif as well. Finally, and perhaps most important, this motif appears in Matthew in a non-Markan context.

As was noted earlier, Matthew has dropped many of the Markan com-mands to silence (e.g. Mark 1:25, 34; 7:36), and even where he retains such commands, as in the case of the leper (Matt 8:4), Matthew mentions neither disobedience nor even the fact that Jesus’ reputation spread.110 But the very fact that Matthew has so often omitted this motif, where he had it in Mark, makes it all the more striking that he has Jesus’ command to se-crecy being broken in Matt 9:27–31, a passage unique to Matthew (alt-hough a doublet of the blind man at Jericho [Matt 20:29–34], which is par-allel to Mark 10:46–52).

There are remarkable similarities between Matt 9:30–31 and Mark 1:43–44a and 1:45:

Matt 9:30–31

kai\ e0nebrimh/qh au0toi=j o9 0Ihsou=j le/gwn: o9ra~te mhdei\j ginwske/tw.

oi9 de\ e0celqo/ntej diefh/misan au0to\n e0n o3lh| th=| gh=| e0kei/nh|

Mark 1:43–44a

kai\ e0mbrimhsa&menoj au0tw~| eu0qu\j e0ce/balen au0to\n kai\ le/gei au0tw~|: o3ra mhdeni\ mhde\n ei1ph|j Mark 1:45

o9 de\ e0celqw_n h1rcato khru/ssein polla_ kai\ diafhmi/zein to\n lo/gon.

Most of the common material is uncharacteristic of either evangelist: di- afhmi/zw occurs elsewhere in the NT only in Matt 28:15; e0mbrima&omai oc-curs only here in Matthew and only once more in Mark (14:5); and only here is a command to silence begun with the imperative of o9ra&w. If both evangelists here preserve pre-Markan tradition, this would account for the similarity of the vocabulary and for the fact that this language appears in

Markan) origin of this verse is defended by Pesch, Markusevangelium, 1:387 and Collins, Mark, 364–65; cf. Bultmann, History, 64 (“may well have been in Mark’s source materi-al”). Among those who view 7:24 as Markan are Kertelge, Wunder Jesu, 151; Luz, “Se-cret Motif,” 77; Schweizer, Mark, 152; Gnilka, Markus, 1:290; Räisänen, Messianic Se-cret, 166.

110 For an evaluation of how the messianic secret passages bear on the synoptic prob-lem, see Peter M. Head, Christology and the Synoptic Problem: An Argument for Markan Priority (SNTS 94; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 233–55. It is inter-esting to note that Wrede felt that, judged by their respective treatments of this theme alone, one would have thought that Mark was posterior to Matthew and Luke (Messianic Secret, 148).

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different contexts. Furthermore, that Matt 9:30–31 includes the very motif Matthew elsewhere passes over gives additional reason to believe that this was part of the tradition that Matthew inherited independently.111 Alterna-tive hypotheses fail to persuade. For instance, Luz thinks that Matthew drew his language from Mark 1:43 and 1:45 since Matthew had omitted this material when first using Mark 1:40–45 in Matt 8:1–4.112 This assumes that Matthew was determined to find some way to incorporate even those elements from Mark – such as Jesus’ strong emotion, secrecy, and inability to impose his will – that he clearly found problematic. Bultmann views all of Mark 1:43 and o3ra mhdeni\ mhde\n ei1ph|j in 1:44a, as well as all of 1:45, as Markan additions to the original story of the cleansing of the leper.113 But this would mean that when Matthew used Mark 1:40–45 in Matt 8:1–4, he edited out precisely the Markan additions to the original story, only to reintroduce these secondary elements when narrating a different mira-cle! It is easier to imagine that Matthew and Mark had independent access to the same material; this would account for its appearing in different con-texts, as well as for their both using the same uncommon vocabulary.114

Thus, the existence of pre-Markan traditions of Jesus’ inability to si-lence the recipients of miracles would best explain the striking incon-sistency of the motif as it appears in Mark as well as the appearance of this motif in Matthew apart from its Markan contexts. This was apparently not a particularly widespread motif; nor was it one that won much of a follow-ing, for none of the gospels employs it extensively or works out its impli-cations consistently.

111 So Räisänen, “‘Messianic Secret’ in Mark’s Gospel,” 134; and idem, Das “Mes-

siasgeheimnis” im Markusevangelium: Ein redaktionskritischer Versuch (Schriften der Finnischen Exegetischen Gesellschaft  28; Helsinki: [s.n.], 1976), 65–68 (a view he later revised; see above, note 107); Walter Grundmann, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (THKNT 1; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1968), 277; Ernst Lohmeyer, Das Evan-gelium des Matthäus (ed. Werner Schmauch; KEK Sonderband; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956), 179; Theissen, Miracle Stories, 152.

112 B. H. Streeter argues along similar lines (The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, Treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, & Dates [London: Macmil-lan, 1924], 170–71).

113 Bultmann, History, 212. 114 The other noteworthy instance of silencing the beneficiaries of healings in Mat-

thew occurs in Matt 12:15–21 (cf. Mark 3:10–12). The details of this pericope diverge considerably from Mark, but Matt 12:16 (kai\ e0peti/mhsen au0toi=j i3na mh\ fanero\n au0to\n poih/swsin) is very similar to Mark 3:12 (kai\ polla_ e0peti/ma au0toi=j i3na mh\ au0to\n fanero\n poih/swsin). Yet in Matthew, the antecedent of au0toi=j is the recipients of Jesus’ healings; in Mark, it is the demons! Matthew tries to account for what he apparently rec-ognized to be an unusual aspect of Jesus’ conduct by introducing a lengthy citation of scripture: “This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, ‘he will not wrangle or cry aloud . . .’” (Isa 42:1–4).

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It is worth making one additional comment about the relative rarity of this motif in Matthew and Luke. We would not expect that Matthew and Luke would slavishly reproduce this motif where they found it in Mark (or in their other sources) – especially if its functions in Mark were puzzling and its presence in other sources was sporadic. But what we would expect to find is some awareness that the crowds’ acclamation of Jesus was prob-lematic and demanded an apologia. In fact, we find precisely this. For in-stance, in Matt 21:15–16, when the children at the temple cry out, “Hosan-na to the Son of David” (cf. 21:9), the chief priests and scribes are indig-nant and address Jesus as though astonished that he would permit such public acclaim. Matthew has Jesus answer in a characteristically Matthean way, identifying the children’s utterances as a sovereign act of God in ful-fillment of scripture (Ps 8:2 [LXX]: “Out of the mouths of infants and nurs-ing babies you have prepared praise for yourself”).115 In the roughly paral-lel episode in Luke 19:37–38, it is a crowd of Jesus’ disciples who hail him as king, and Pharisees116 who urge Jesus to silence them.117 Jesus’ re-sponse – “If these were silent, the stones would shout out” – is materially the same as his response in Matt 21:16: this is the act of God, and nothing more can be done about it.118 In effect, both Matthew and Luke claim that, with Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, his hour has come. What has been whis-pered must now be shouted from the rooftops; to continue to enjoin silence would now be futile.119 What is most important for the thesis of this essay is that Matthew and Luke both sense that the crowds’ acclamation of Jesus would be met with angry and anxious reactions, and with the expectation that Jesus should have done something to stop it. That he did not do so demanded an explanation of some sort. Although Matthew and Luke have made less of the idea that Jesus’ injunctions to silence were disobeyed, each has still preserved further evidence for the very social pressures that I believe contributed to the growth of the disobedience motif.120

115 On the oracular nature of children’s speech, especially in the vicinity of a temple, see Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:143.

116 If we consider this in the light of Luke 13:31, where the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him, it would appear that they here urge Jesus to silence his followers because they believe that, if he did not, he would be killed. It is debated whether Luke 13:31 is meant to depict the Pharisees acting out of genuine concern for Jesus, although I regard this as likely; so M. Rese, “Einige Überlegungen zu Lukas xiii, 31–33,” in Jésus aux origines de la christologie (ed. Jacques Dupont; BETL 40; Louvain: Leuven Univer-sity Press, 1975), 201–25.

117 Luke 19:38: dida/skale, e0piti/mhson toi=j maqhtai=j sou. 118 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke: Introduction, Translation, and

Notes (2 vols.; AB 28–28A; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981–1985), 2:1246. 119 Cf. Minette de Tillesse, Le secret, 291. 120 I would like to thank Joshua Garroway and Jill Hultin for reading a draft of this es-

say and offering much helpful advice.

Jeremy F. Hultin 98