Mark's Jesus Research Paper

Mark’s Jesus is an enigmatic messiah. Jews would have expected a messiah to exhibit supernatural powers, possess a priestly command of divine word and law, and be vindicated by God, as is the case with Mark’s Jesus (Ehrman 104). Additionally, Mark’s first readers would have recognized it as a biography, as biographies celebrating the qualities of great figures were common in the Greco-Roman world (Ehrman 97-99). However, the qualities in Jesus that Mark celebrates confuse those who encounter him in the gospel of Mark. Mark’s messiah is thus misunderstood: people are amazed by his words and deeds, but they do not understand that the messiah must suffer and die and that the vindication Jesus brings is a moral victory over sin and not a military

Jews would expect a biography of the “messiah” to celebrate the traits of a great leader of Israel who would, like King David, establish Israel as a nation, or they would expect him to be a divine force from God to vindicate God and the righteous and punish sinners (Ehrman 104). But Jesus does not lead Israel to any great victory but is executed like a common criminal and mocked with a crown of thorns and a sign on his cross that says, “The King of the Jews” (Mark 15:17-26). Jesus does exhibit supernatural powers—he heals people (e.g., Mark 1:29-31), raises the dead (e.g., Mark 5:35-42), casts out demons (Mark 5:1-20), walks on water (Mark 6:45-56), and makes a few loaves of bread feed thousands of people (Mark 6:30-44)—and he is supernaturally vindicated by God in the end (Mark 15:38). However, he does not use those powers to defeat the enemies of Israel but to show that his kingdom is of heaven, not earth (Mark

He tells people who witness his miracles not to tell anyone about them (e.g., Mark 1:44) because he fears he will be misunderstood. Jesus’s own disciples do not understand him. They seek glory in their status as Jesus’s disciples—one of them even betrays him for profit (Mark 14:10-21)—and they argue over who is the best disciple (Mark 9:33-41), showing they do not understand Jesus’s message. Peter says that Jesus is the Christ or “anointed one” (Mark 8:29), but he rebukes Jesus when he reveals that the messiah must suffer and die (Mark 8:31-32). The disciples fall asleep while Jesus prays at Gethsemane, and Peter denies he knows Jesus three times after Jesus is arrested (Mark 14:66-72). The only people who understand Jesus is the son of God are the women who discover that his body has miraculously vanished from his tomb (Mark 16:1-8) and the Roman centurion who sees the “veil of the temple” torn in two (Mark 15:38-39). Jesus arises from the dead to give the disciples instructions to preach his message, but it remains unclear if they understand it (Mark