What Has Mark’s Christ to Do with David’s Son? A History of Interpretation

Abstract

It has become something of a commonplace within recent scholarship on the Gospels to hear that Mark the evangelist is ambivalent about Davidic sonship. Yet, rarely have scholars explored the rationale underlying this ambivalence. This article probes the status quaestionis on Jesus’ Davidic status in Mark’s Gospel via a history-of-interpretation survey of the Davidssohnfrage (Mk 12.35-37). It demonstrates that, despite their varying approaches and ideological commitments, all participants in the Son-of-David debate have assumed a foundational methodological principle: one assesses Mark’s position on Davidic messiahship by isolating pericopes with the name ‘David’. This explains why the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10.46-52) has long been fixed as the de facto crux interpretum for Davidic sonship in Mark.

Keywords

Gospel of Mark Son of David Christology Christ/messiah messianism narrative criticism imperial ideology (blind) Bartimaeus

Introduction

It has become something of a commonplace within Gospels scholarship to hear that Mark the evangelist is ambivalent about Davidic sonship. Trocmé, for example, speaks on behalf of a large swathe of interpreters when he writes, ‘“Christ”—and the cognate titles “Son of David” and “King of the Jews”—is to say the least ambiguous in the eyes of the evangelist… It carries no special stress, even though it is not as drastically rejected as some think’ (1973: 7). In fact, ‘indifference without outright rejection’ could well be the slogan that summarizes the dominant position on Mark’s view of Davidic messiahship. Yet, as Trocmé alludes, there are ‘some’ who would go further. For these interpreters, Mark is not simply indifferent towards, or ambivalent about, Davidic sonship; rather, he rejects the notion outright.

This article offers an account of why some scholars conclude that Mark’s Christ cannot be David’s son. A natural fixed-point for such an inquiry is, of course, the so-called Davidssohnfrage (‘Son-of-David question’): How can the scribes say that the messiah is David’s son when David himself calls him ‘my Lord’ (Mk 12.35-37)? Since this curious saying occurs in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, it seems worth investigating why its presence in Mark—as opposed to Matthew or Luke—has proven to be so explosive. What is it about the Second Gospel in particular that permits, or perhaps even invites, anti-Davidic interpretations? I suggest that in order to answer this question we need to begin with Reimarus and Wrede, two scholars who fundamentally shaped the modern Son-of-David debate. My thesis is twofold: first, every negative assessment of Davidic sonship in Mark is based on a set of arguments which can be traced back to Reimarus and Wrede; second, all participants in the debate tacitly agree with Wrede on an essential methodological point—the best way to assess Mark’s position on Davidic messiahship is by isolating pericopes with the name ‘David’.

Shaping the Son-of-David Debate: From Reimarus to Wrede

Every student of ancient messianism and early Christology remains indebted to the work of Reimarus. While previous sceptics had already begun to assail the notion that the historical Jesus could be aligned with the second person of the Trinity, Reimarus was the first to do so by locating Jesus within the broader milieu of Second Temple Judaism. He contended that, ‘to be called “Son of God” and “Christ the Messiah” meant one and the same thing’ (1971: 83); and that the Davidssohnfrage discloses that messiah is superior to David, ‘but only insofar as he as Messiah is to establish a kingdom for which all the dead, including David himself, would be awakened by God’ (p. 87). Moreover, Reimarus reasoned that if Jesus was in fact the ‘Son of David’, he would have had but one option: he must cast off the Roman yoke and usher in the long-awaited ‘political’ kingdom of God (p. 138).

The reception of Reimarus’s proposal was mixed. On the one hand, many scholars—particularly those within the German-speaking world—followed his attempt to interpret christological categories within the framework of Second Temple Judaism, irrespective of doctrines and creeds. This meant that, along with ‘Son of David’ and ‘messiah’, ‘Son of God’ was routinely treated as a messianic epithet derived from the language of the Jewish scriptures (see B. Weiss 1882: 78-81; 1883: 283-86; Gould 1896: 12; Wellhausen 1903: 6-7; Holtzmann 1911: 1:336-37, 340, 352). On the other hand, virtually no one was willing to follow Reimarus’s assertion that Jesus capitulated to the ‘political’ expectations facing any would-be messiah. Instead, New Testament scholars lined up to argue that Jesus eschewed the messianic Zeitgeist of his time, adducing the Davidssohnfrage as an important piece of evidence in support of the conclusion that he rejected the baggage that came along with the Son-of-David label (see J. Weiss 1971: 83, 102-103; Wellhausen 1903: 104; Holtzmann 1907: 27 n. 4).

The year 1901 witnessed the publication of Wrede’s Das Messiasgeheimnis and Schweitzer’s Das Messianitäts- und Leidensgeheimnis. As Schweitzer would conclude several years later, the viability of the quest for the historical Jesus had reached a crossroads: either one must follow Wrede’s scepticism, or one must embrace the profoundly un-Germanic eschatological world of Second Temple Judaism—‘Tertium non datur!’ (2005: 335). While the Schweitzer–Wrede split was primarily over the viability of the so-called ‘Quest for the historical Jesus’, it had profound implications for Markan Christology as well. Whereas Schweitzer, in agreement with Reimarus before him, located the historical Jesus within the broader messianic expectations of Second Temple Judaism, Wrede argued that Mark’s Jesus belonged not to history but to ‘die Dogmengeschichte’ (‘the history of dogma’) (1901: 131).

Wrede charts a similar course in his programmatic essay, ‘Jesus als Davidssohn’ (in Wrede 1907). After acknowledging that Davidic descent is at the bedrock of early Christian tradition (cf. Rom. 1.3), Wrede devotes the first half of his essay to whether this tradition, or any other piece of evidence for Davidic descent, can be traced back to the historical Jesus. As one might imagine, he is suspicious that it can (1907: 149-66). And so he shifts course to‚ ‘die Geschichte der Davidssohnschaft Jesu in der ältesten Christenheit’ (‘the history of Davidic sonship in oldest Christianity’) (p. 166). Here, Wrede argues that the Davidssohnfrage offers demonstrable evidence that Jesus’ Davidic descent was rejected by some of the earliest Christians (p. 171). The Epistle of Barnabas, in particular, forms the bedrock of his argument (Barn. 12.10-11). By emphasizing a fundamental disjunction between the ‘Jewish’ messianic idea and the ‘Christian’ notion of divine sonship, Pseudo-Barnabas captured what Wrede perceived to be the ‘plain meaning’ of Davidssohnfrage (p. 173).

Wrede’s approach to the Son-of-David question sets a clear agenda for subsequent research: one attempts to identify an author’s position on this ‘Jewish’ desideratum by isolating (a) genealogical material, and (b) titles and scriptural proof texts containing the name David. In the case of Matthew’s Gospel, Wrede conceded that there was simply too much counter-evidence to conclude that the evangelist embraced the ‘plain meaning’ of the Davidssohnfrage. But, in the case of Mark’s, he concluded that the paucity of support for Davidic descent opens up the possibility that the evangelist agreed with the tradition he inherited that the Christ cannot be David’s son. The lone piece of evidence that gave Wrede pause was Mark’s inclusion of a tradition in which Jesus is heralded ‘Son of David’ (Mk 10.46-52). ‘Wie ist neben dem allen unsere Perikope innerhalb des Markus zu begreifen?’ (‘How, in light of all our pericopes in Mark, ought we understand [Mk 10.46-52]?’), asks Wrede. He answers his question: ‘die Frage ist nicht leicht’ (‘the question is not easy’) (1907: 176). Subsequent scholarship, as we will see, would be less content to leave the question open-ended.

Although no one from this period was particularly interested in Mark’s position on the Davidssohnfrage, the landmark studies of Reimarus and Wrede had clearly set the terms of the debate. Reimarus opened up a Pandora’s Box that continues to haunt New Testament scholarship to this day: Does the confession of Jesus as a ‘Jewish’ messiah undermine the Christ of the church’s creeds? Many scholars have approached Reimarus’s challenge that ‘Son of God’ signifies ‘Messiah’ rather than ‘second person of the Trinity’ as if it demands one’s participation in a zero-sum game. This is why conservative scholars, who were much closer to Reimarus (and Schweitzer) than Wrede on the question of the historical Jesus, have tended to side with Wrede (and the religionsgeschichtliche Schule after him), over and against Reimarus (and Schweitzer), that Son-of-God language in Mark has nothing to do with the description of the anointed king in Psalm 2 (see Schlatter 1935: 30, 230; Rawlinson 1936: l-li; Lagrange 1942: cxvii-cxlix, 11; Taylor 1952: 120-21). Reimarus also aided scholars of various theological commitments to unite on another point: no one wanted Jesus to be the ‘Son of David’ if that entailed associating him with the violent ethnocentric messianism of his time. That the ‘problem’ of messianism remains the dominant explanation for why Mark’s Christ cannot be David’s son is yet another sign that Reimarus’s influence still looms large in New Testament scholarship.

Wrede’s influence on the Davidssohnfrage is even more direct. He popularized the notion that the Davidssohnfrage, when read on its own terms, has a ‘plain meaning’: the Christ cannot be David’s son. Not only did Wrede convince subsequent generations to set out on a quest for a putative ‘non-messianic’ community responsible for producing this tradition; he also set the agenda for what should count as evidence that an evangelist accepted, rejected or augmented its Christology. When it came to the Son-of-David question in Mark, he highlighted the problem but did not solve it. ‘[D]ie Frage ist nicht leicht’ (‘the question is not easy’, p. 176), he conceded, and was content to leave it up to others to work it out. Yet it is a testament to Wrede’s ongoing influence that the vast majority of scholars over the past century have assumed that traditions with the name ‘David’ form the only evidence that counts in the Son-of-David debate.

The Religionsgeschichtliche Schule

Building on Wrede’s project, the religionsgeschichtliche Schule sought to trace the development of christological concepts from their Palestinian origins into the wider Hellenistic world. The paragon of this approach is Bousset’s Kyrios Christos. For Bousset, the messianic idea of Second Temple Judaism oscillated between two poles: while the majority of Jews expected a political messiah—the ‘Son of David’—the category of Jewish apocalyptic had forged the notion of a transcendent messiah—the ‘Son of Man’ (1970: 31-32; see also Mowinckel 2005: 280-450). Bousset thus poses the question: ‘Did it [i.e., the Palestinian community] adopt the earthly political ideal of the Messiah as the Son of David or that strange transcendent ideal of the Messiah, or perhaps even in essence a blending of the two pictures of the Messiah?’ (p. 32)

He answers his question by turning to the Synoptic Gospels. These documents, as Wrede’s study had shown, indicate that ‘the primitive community people were at best indifferent and even distrustful toward the ideal of the Son of David’ (1970: 35). Rejection of the populist Son-of-David strand of messianism left the Palestinian community with but one viable option:

The first community of the disciples of Jesus viewed him as the Messiah, in that they, half-consciously rejecting the Son-of-David ideal, adapted to him the Jewish apocalyptic figure of the Son of Man. From this point all previously made observations draw their inner unity: the complete subsidence of the title of the Son of David, the polemic against the idea of Christ’s being a son of David, the less frequent use of the name Christ, the dominance of the Son-of-Man title… The messianic faith of the primitive community could be formed after the death of Jesus in no other form than that of the ideal of a transcendent Messiah. The hope that Jesus as an earthly man would take over the role on earth of the king from David’s tribe was once and for all shattered. (1970: 49)

Bousset was less certain, however, about how Son-of-God language fit within this schema. Although the language seemed to be drawing on biblical idioms about the Davidic king, he felt that it has ‘a much too mythical ring’ to align with the Christology of the Palestinian community (p. 93). To account for this dissonance, he posited that ‘an early influencing of primitive Christian messianology of Deutero-Isaiah’, represented by the designation ‘my servant’ (παῖς μου), lay beneath the designation ‘my son’ (υἱὸς μου) (pp. 96-97). This, of course, means that Son-of-God language, as we have it in the Synoptic Gospels, has ‘nothing more to do with Jewish-primitive Christian messianology’ (p. 97).

Although he was not particularly interested in Mark’s Christology as such, Bousset’s iteration of Jewish messianism as consisting of two competing poles offers an explanation for why some Palestinian Christians might embrace an ‘apocalyptic’ form of messianism, even if the ‘political’ hope for the ‘Son of David’ had been nailed with Jesus of Nazareth to the cross. In addition, his proposal that a ‘servant’ Christology lay behind the Synoptic Gospels’ ‘Son-of-God’ Christology came to be widely accepted as the framework within which one could still conceive of Mark’s baptismal account as a messianic event (cf. Mk 1.9-11). How this suggestion would affect Mark’s Christology would vary, but one of its side effects was a prolonged downplaying of what many scholars would now accept as a clear allusion to Psalm 2 (see, e.g., Jeremias 1967: 678-717; Cullmann 1963: 66; Fuller 1965: 169; Lentzen-Deis 1970: 186).

Bultmann finds fewer vestiges of the Palestinian community’s faith in Mark than did Bousset. While he detects a trace of the ‘Hellenistic Jewish’ notion that Jesus became the Messiah at his resurrection in Mark’s transfiguration account (cf. Mk 9.7), Bultmann concludes that the Jewish messianic idea is largely superfluous to the evangelist’s purposes (2007: 50). Rather, Mark’s central aim is ‘the union of the Hellenistic kerygma about Christ, whose essential content consists of the Christ myth as we learn of it in Paul (esp. Phil. 2:6ff.; Rom. 3:24) with the tradition of the story of Jesus’ (1963: 347-48, his emphasis). Mark achieves this feat, according to Bultmann, via the ‘Hellenistic’ concept of the divine-man (θεῖος ἀνήρ) signified by the christological title ‘Son of God’ (2007: 1.130-31). The Davidssohnfrage functions as an early protest piece against Jesus’ Davidic sonship, which Mark has taken over from his sources (1963: 137; 2007: 1.49-50). Whether or not this reflects Mark’s own position, Bultmann does not say.

The American scholar Bacon, however, offers an indication of what ‘the union of the Hellenistic kerygma about Christ…with the tradition of the story of Jesus’ might entail for the Davidic status of Mark’s Christ (Bultmann 1963: 347-48). Bacon writes, ‘This nationalistic [i.e., “Davidic”] type of Messiah is explicitly repudiated by Paul; considerately and tactfully in Rom. 1:3 f., more peremptorily in II Cor. 5:16 as “a Christ after the flesh”’ (1925: 222). He continues several pages later: ‘[Mark’s Christology] presupposes factors identical with some presupposed by Paul, and in almost the same relation. Mark manifestly knows the Son of David Christology, though his attitude toward it is even more hostile than Paul’s’ (p. 225). The Davidssohnfrage not only indicates that the Christ need not be David’s offspring; it also exposes this way of thinking as Satanic (cf. Mk 8:33) (p. 225). ‘Mark has small respect for the little caliphate at Jerusalem’, Bacon concludes. ‘He has perhaps even less respect for the Son of David Christology’ (p. 226).

Bacon thus goes beyond Wrede, Bousset and Bultmann in situating the Davidssohnfrage within Mark’s broader theological and christological aims. Yet, he assumes, as did Wrede, that the only Markan material worth investigating are pericopes containing the name David. Whereas Wrede stops short of ascribing the ‘plain meaning’ of the Davidssohnfrage to Mark himself, Bacon interprets the title ‘Son of David’ (Mk 10.46-52) and the ensuing ‘triumphal entry’ (11.1-11) as a sign of Bartimaeus’s and the crowd’s blindness (p. 225). As such, Bacon anticipates a line of interpretation that would reach its apex with the redaktionsgeschichtliche proposals for why Mark needed to correct a misguided ‘Jewish’ Christology.

Redaktionsgeschichte and ‘Corrective Christology’

If previous generations had been largely content to treat Mark’s Gospel as a collection of stratified traditions, Redaktionsgeschichte marked a new phase in which scholars attempted to discern how the evangelist qua theologian arranged and manipulated his material. For many redaction critics, one of the primary objectives was to study christological titles with the aim of distinguishing among those that the evangelist authorized and those that he rejected. Schreiber’s 1961 article offers an example of this approach. Augmenting Bultmann’s proposal, Schreiber maintains that Mark’s central christological title, ‘Son of God’, does not signify a θεῖος ἀνήρ, but the savior figure of the gnostic redeemer myth. According to Schreiber, Mark rejects the titles ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of David’, and severely attenuates the ‘apocalyptic’ title ‘the Son of Man’ (1961: 164-66), a proposal that supports the Bultmannian supposition that Mark is a ‘Hellenistic Christian’ of the Pauline sphere whose aim is to wrest Christ away from the misguided Christology of the Jerusalem community (1961: 178; cf. 1993: 238-40).

Kelber agrees with Schreiber that ‘Son of God’ ‘emerges victorious’ over the other christological titles, and that the evangelist finds the titles ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of David’ particularly suspect (1974: 80-81; cf. also Vielhauer 1964: 199-214). Indeed, Kelber proceeds to treat Mk 10.46–12:37 as a systematic deconstruction of Davidic messiahship:

Mark dissociates the acclamation from Jerusalem and places it into an anti-Jerusalem, anti-Davidic context. One can almost detect a progressive exposure of the inadequacy of the title as Jesus approaches the seat of Davidic hopes: the confession of Blind Bartimaeus at Jericho, the wrong acclamation at the outskirts, and Jesus’ personal rejection in the temple. (1974: 96)

The evangelist’s aim ‘is to break the myth of Davidic messianism and to dissociate the Kingdom from the temple’, in order to reorient the Markan community to Galilee (p. 105). This ‘gospel’ message was of great exigency, according to Kelber, since Mark’s community had just witnessed the collapse of the ‘Peter-Christians’, a group of ‘apocalyptically incited Jewish Christians’, who, anticipating ‘the restoration of the “Kingdom of our father David”’, joined their fellow Judeans in ‘the final battle against the armies of Satan’ (p. 137).

According to Weeden (1995), the evangelist’s message is equally exigent but for quite another reason: Mark writes for a community that had been bombarded by ‘heretical’ missionaries claiming apostolic authority. Mark 1.1–8.29, summarized by Peter’s messianic ‘confession’, articulates the ‘heretical’ position. This then offers a foil for Mk 8.30–16.8, wherein Jesus takes up the evangelist’s theologica crucis. Perrin basically agrees with Weeden, but suggests that Mark ‘uses Christ and Son of God to establish rapport with his readers, and Son of Man to interpret and give content to those titles’ (1995: 137). Perrin believes that the titles ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of David’ are problematic for Mark, though, he concedes, ‘I have no firm opinion with regard to the function of the Son of David pericope in the Gospel of Mark’ (1995: 131-32).

Achtemeier agrees with Perrin that ‘Son of Man’ is Mark’s preferred christological designation (1980: 481), and with Schreiber and Kelber that Mark staunchly repudiates Davidic messiahship (1978). After concluding that the Davidssohnfrage represents the only clear statement on Davidic sonship in Mark, he proceeds to examine every pericope containing the name ‘David’ (Mk 2.23-27; 10.46-52; 11.1-11), arguing that, in each case, the evangelist misses key opportunities to clarify that Jesus is a descendent of David (1978: 126-31). Like Kelber, Achtemeier concludes that ‘[t]he point then [of Mk 10.46–12.37] appears to be the growing denial of Jesus as son of David, rather than a growing affirmation of that fact’ (p. 127).

While there is nothing inherent to Redaktionsgeschichte that necessitates locating ‘conflicting Christologies’ in Mark (see, e.g., Schweizer 1970; Pesch 1976–77), the assumption that the evangelist’s aim is to correct a misguided ‘Jewish-Christian’ Christology predominates much of the secondary literature from the 1960s and 1970s. The line from Wrede through the form critics and the religionsgeschichtliche Schule to the redaction critics is not difficult to trace. Christological titles, evaluated within the ongoing development of early Christian dogma, function as receptacles of christological ‘ideas’ drawn from different cultural spheres. As a good theologian of the Hellenistic sphere, Mark has no patience for a Christ according to the flesh (cf. Rom. 1.3), and so only incorporates a Son-of-David Christology, already prevalent in the Jewish-Christian sphere, in order to repudiate it. Each of the redaction critics surveyed above assumes, with Wrede, that one can arrive at Mark’s position on Davidic sonship by isolating passages containing the name David. Yet they go beyond Wrede and the Schule in attributing Mark’s polemic against a Son-of-David Christology to forces directly threatening the existence of the evangelist’s community. It is noteworthy that each reconstruction of Mark’s putative Sitz im Leben involves an oppositional group (typically represented by the Twelve) whose ideology is funded by the ‘triumphalist spirit’ inherent to the Jewish hope for a Davidic messiah.

The Narrative Turn: Shared Strategies, Different Ideologies

The studies examined thus far have been primarily interested in Mark’s Gospel either as a source for the historical Jesus, or as a window into strands of early Christology and the social debates of the evangelist’s community. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that they treat the Davidssohnfrage as a question that can be isolated to a discrete section of Mark’s Gospel (10.52–12.44). In this section, I examine the ways in which the turn toward narrative criticism has affected recent arguments for why Mark’s Christ cannot be David’s son. One would anticipate that a method aimed at counteracting the formsgeschichtliche portrait of Mark as a ‘scissors-and-paste-man’ (Anderson and Moore 2008: 7) and the redaktionsgeschichtliche portrait of the evangelist as a ‘creative genius’ might bring fresh perspective to the Son-of-David debate. Before proceeding, however, I need to clarify briefly what I mean by ‘narrative criticism’.

Powell has recently proposed that narrative criticism is best conceived of as a ‘reading strategy’, which a variety of Markan interpreters employ to different hermeneutical ends (2011: 19-23). For Powell, those who use narrative critical tools may be subdivided into three groups: (1) author-oriented narrative criticism seeks to discern the evangelist’s aims and intentions through careful attention to the narrative (pp. 26-32); (2) text-oriented narrative criticism is concerned primarily with the meaning effects that the narrative has for the ‘implied audience’, though scholars who take this approach do make judgments about the position of the ‘implied author’ (pp. 33-36); and, (3) reader-oriented narrative criticism includes any attempt ‘to read texts from the perspective of any posited reader’ (p. 39), an umbrella category that has the potential to cover not only a broad range of reading strategies, but also studies that explore Mark’s narrative ‘in performance’.

For the purposes of this article, I have narrowed the scope to three scholars who are representative of Powell’s three strands of narrative criticism: Boring (author-oriented), Malbon (text-oriented), and Horsley (reader/audience-oriented). Their approaches to Mark’s Davidssohnfrage may be seen as representative of a broad and diverse body of scholarship (see, e.g., Lührmann 1987: 208-209; Macrae 1987: 174; Hamerton-Kelly 1992: 477; Breytenbach 1997: 205-208; Karrer 1998: 58, 188-90, 195-96; Telford 1999: 35-41; Moloney 2002: 209, 244; Black 2011: 260-61; Peppard 2011: 125-26; Rhoads, Dewey, and Michie 2012: 110, 149).

Author-Oriented Narrative Criticism: Boring’s Narrative Christology

In his 2006 commentary, Boring treats Mark’s Gospel as a seamless narrative written to communities of Christians in Syria or Galilee during the turbulent years of the Jewish War (66–70 ce). ‘Christology’, Boring contends, ‘is the generative and driving force of the Markan narrative’ (2006: 248). He provides the following description:

Mark uses a broad spectrum of titles, designations, and imagery to communicate the significance of Jesus. All are derived from tradition and influenced by their previous biblical, religious, and cultural contexts; none are created by Mark himself. Titles are important, but their meaning can be explicated only in terms of the Markan narrative. Mark’s Christology functions as narrative Christology, and cannot be grasped by cataloging and explicating the traditional meaning(s) of various titles, as though each title were a univocal theological package. Thus each title and image must be examined with regard both to its traditional connotations and function in the Markan narrative. (2006: 248-49)

One detects here an appropriate correction of the naïve idealism endemic to the titular Christologies produced by the Schule and carried forward by the redaction critics. Mark’s christological titles, Boring maintains, are not conduits of ‘ideas’ produced by different cultural spheres of Christianity. They have a particular meaning within a particular context—Mark’s narrative.

When it comes to assessing the Davidssohnfrage, however, Boring seems to revert back to the assumptions of the Schule and the redaction critics. First, echoing Kelber, he avers that, ‘[t]he events of 66–70…had made it impossible to believe in Jesus as Messiah in traditional Davidic terms’ (2006: 348, my emphasis). Second, channelling Bousset, Boring argues that what is at stake in the Davidssohnfrage ‘is the general image and mission associated with messianic faith: Son of David empowered by God to bring the kingdom “from below,” or suffering Son of Man who will return from heaven to establish God’s kingdom “from above”’ (p. 348); and, again: ‘the point is the Christ is understood—as a David-like one who will fulfill Israel’s national hopes, or as the transcendent Lord who will come again as Son of Man’ (p. 349; so also Lührmann 1987; Telford 1999). Third, Boring adheres to the Wredean position that there is minimal counter-evidence in Mark to offset the ‘plain meaning’ of the Davidssohnfrage (p. 256). On the few occasions when Mark broaches the topic of Davidic sonship, the evangelist provides ‘evidence’ that this image is to be rejected. For example, Bartimaeus’s cry, ‘Son of David have mercy on me’ (Mk 10.47-48), cannot be trusted as an accurate representation of Jesus’ identity because it comes from a blind man who is seated ‘beside the way’ (παρὰ τὴν ὁδόν), the place where the sown word falls prey to the clutches of Satan (cf. Mk 4.4, 15) (p. 305). Just as Jesus demands that Peter repent of his satanic desire for the ‘Davidic’ messiah (cf. Mk 8.31-33), so too he heals Bartimaeus from his misguided hope for the ‘Son of David’. These events, when viewed retrospectively in light of the Davidssohnfrage, indicate that Mark rejects the acclamation of Bartimaeus and the subsequent cry of the Passover crowd.

Text-Oriented Narrative Criticism: Malbon’s Christology as Characterization

No scholar has done more to bring the fruit of narrative criticism to bear on the interpretation of Mark than Malbon. Her monograph Mark’s Jesus: Characterization as Narrative Christology assesses the Davidssohnfrage within her account of Mark’s multilayered narrative Christology, including: (1) ‘what Jesus does’ (enacted Christology), (2) ‘what other characters say to and about Jesus’ (projected Christology), (3) ‘what Jesus says in response to other characters’ (deflected Christology), (4) ‘what Jesus says instead of what other characters and the narrator say’ (refracted Christology), and (5) ‘what other characters do that mirrors what Jesus says and does’ (reflected Christology) (2009a: 18). Malbon’s proposal is that the interpreter should reason inductively from these different categories to the perspective of the ‘implied author’.

The primary observation Malbon’s approach adds to the Son-of-David debate is that the three characters whose perspectives come closest to the position of the implied author (i.e., the narrator, the Markan Jesus, and God) never affirm the title Son of David (2009a: 167). She also suggests that a pattern emerges from the sequence of pericopes in Mk 12.28-44: ‘(1) a positive evaluation of what one scribe says and does [12.28-34], (2) a negative evaluation of what scribes generally say [12.35-37], (3) a negative evaluation of what scribes generally do [12.38-40], (4) a positive evaluation of what one poor widow, of the type victimized by scribes, does [12.41-44]’ (p. 164, my emphasis). Beyond these observations, Malbon’s assessment of the Davidssohnfrage largely adheres to the Wredean script. She insists there is a ‘plain meaning’ of the Davidssohnfrage (p. 164). Unlike Wrede, the Schule, and the redaction critics, however, she does not speculate as to why the implied author would hold to such a view. Rather, her concern is that ‘many readers and commentators resolve (or dissolve?) the mystery…by reading Mark’s Gospel against a strong background belief in Jesus as the Son of David that they bring with them to the narrative, a Christian belief that is simply assumed to be in all “Christian” material’ (p. 160). Further, it is clear that the only evidence that counts in interpreting the Davidssohnfrage are passages containing the name ‘David’ (pp. 87-92, 99-101, 159-69). The hermeneutical key, for Malbon, is the recognition that the Markan Jesus ignores the title Son of David, and that Bartimaeus drops the title as soon as he receives his sight.

Malbon does move beyond her predecessors, however, by attempting to link rejection of Davidic sonship with rejection of the concept of kingship. She muses, ‘Perhaps the Markan Gospel is as antikingship in its orientation as the antimonarchical strand of tradition in the David stories in the Hebrew Bible!’ (2009a: 121). While it is difficult to know exactly what Malbon means by ‘the kingship model’ in the Hebrew Bible (there are, in fact, multiple models of kingship in the Hebrew Bible), her proposal seems to rest on an appeal to a traditionsgeschichtliche paradigm. That is, she seems to suggest that the implied author rejects the concept of kingship, because the author is inspired by a strand of the scriptural traditions which some modern scholars would classify as ‘antimonarchical’. This is a good reminder that all interpretations of Mark—even those that claim to prize only that which is ‘internal’ to the narrative—involve significant decisions about the historical and cultural backgrounds informing the evangelist and his audience (cf. Malbon 2009a: 168 n. 62).

Reader/Audience-Oriented Narrative Criticism: Horsley’s Eclipse of Markan Christology

In Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel Horsley expounds Mark’s Gospel as ‘the grounding history of origins of (one branch of) that Jesus movement as a renewal movement of the people of Israel and other subject peoples over against the Jerusalem rulers and Roman imperial rule’ (2001: 23). Based on the evangelist’s social location, Horsley surmises that the traditions informing Mark’s portrait of Jesus must have been prophetic and/or messianic ‘scripts’ rather than the ‘scriptures’ of the scribal elite. (‘Scripts’, for Horsley, are oral traditions about charismatic prophets and revolutionary anointed kings, which must be distinguished sharply from the ‘imperial royal ideology’ represented in the Psalms and the Prophets [2001: 236-53; cf. Horsley and Hanson 1999: 88-134].) It thus follows that Mark’s community could not be interested in written texts such as Psalms 2 and 110, or the ‘scribal’ fantasy of the coming ‘Son of David’ (2001: 251; cf. also Horsley 1992: 294-95). Rather, the options available to the community launched by Jesus’ ministry were either to risk association with other violent revolutionary movements and their ‘messiahs’, or to remember Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet of covenant renewal. Not surprisingly, the community opted for the latter.

With regard to the Son-of-David question in particular, Horsley represents a class of interpreters that has provided a fresh response to the ‘problem’ of messianism. For these interpreters, the issue at stake in divorcing Jesus from the ‘Son of David’ is not only to avoid associating him with Jewish particularism and revolutionary militarism, but also, sensitive to the insights of postcolonial theory, to avoid associating Jesus with the ideology of ‘empire’ so that he might speak a word afresh to a world under the shadow of ‘Western imperialism’ (cf. Myers 1988; Waetjen 1989; Rhoads, Dewey, and Michie 2012: 148-50). Moore makes the incisive observation that, ‘implicit in Horsley’s reading of Mark is the notion that this gospel, properly understood, is consistently anti-imperial in thrust, and hence a solid basis for theological critique of hegemonic ideologies and institutions, whether those of ancient Rome or the contemporary United States’ (2006: 12). This is precisely what appears to be at stake for Horsley, among others, in the Davidssohnfrage: by rejecting the premise that the Christ is David’s son Mark repudiates the repressive ideology of ‘empire’.

It remains unclear, however, whether anti-imperial interpreters have been rigorous enough in their application of postcolonial theory. As Bhabha famously noted, colonized groups tend to resist their colonizers through a process of ‘colonial mimicry’ (1994: 122). Moreover, it is intriguing that both Moore and Liew agree that the quintessential icon of imperialism in Mark is not the ‘Son of David’, but the glorified ‘Son of Man’ (Liew 1999a, 1999b; Moore 2006)—the very figure whom many thought could rescue Mark from the ‘problem’ of Davidic messianism. Their work thus problematizes the assumption that one solves the ‘problem’ of messianism by shifting the image of an earthly Son-of-David messiah to a heavenly Son-of-Man messiah; it also calls into question the notion that a purge of all things ‘Davidic’ suddenly transforms Mark’s Gospel into an anti-imperial manifesto.

Summary: Many Approaches, Three Common Claims

Despite the diversity of the group surveyed above, every scholar who argues that Mark’s Christ cannot be David’s son—ranging chronologically from Wrede (1907) to Malbon (2009a; 2009b)—justifies this claim by appealing to one or more of the following arguments.

The Davidssohnfrage constitutes Mark’s answer to the ‘problem’ of Jewish messianism. The ‘problem’ to which Mark is responding is either the militaristic and particularistic nature of Davidic messianism or, in some recent studies, the ideology of ‘empire’.

The ‘plain meaning’ of the Davidssohnfrage is that the Christ cannot be David’s son. This argument is logically prior to the others. The moment that one concedes the possibility that the Davidssohnfrage, when read on its own terms, does not constitute a straightforward rejection of Davidic sonship, one loses a stable basis from which she may scrutinize the ‘ambiguous’ evidence in the rest of Mark’s Gospel.

There is no clear counterevidence in Mark to offset the ‘plain meaning’ of the Davidssohnfrage. This argument is integrally related to the previous one. Jesus’ Davidic status is not in doubt in Matthew and Luke because each evangelist offers ‘sufficient evidence’ to ward off the possibility that he employs the Davidssohnfrage to reject Davidic descent (cf. Mt. 22.41-46; Lk. 20.41-44). Therefore, how one determines what counts as counterevidence against the ‘plain meaning’ of the Davidssohnfrage is of immense importance. And, on this point, Wrede continues to set the agenda: the only evidence that counts as counterevidence is (a) genealogical material, and (b) scriptural proof texts and titles with the name ‘David’. This approach inevitably fixes Mk 10.46-52 as the crux interpretum for adjudicating the evangelist’s position on Davidic sonship. And as long as the testimonies of a blind man (10.47-48) and an unwieldy parochial crowd (11.10) are thrown out of the court as inadmissible, all one has to go on is Jesus’ claim that the Christ is not David’s son (12.35-37).

In Defense of David’s Son

Numerous studies attempt to address some or all of the above claims, but the debate has been waged on Wrede’s terms. Hahn, for example, takes a similar religionsgeschichtliche approach as Wrede, but arrives at the opposite conclusion. He argues that Mark is closer historically and contextually to Matthew and Luke than he is to Pseudo-Barnabas, and thus situates the Second Gospel among those early Christian texts that reflected a Zweistufenchristologie (two-stage Christology)—the belief that Jesus was ‘Son of David’ according to the flesh, ‘Son of God’ and ‘Lord’ according to the resurrection (cf. Rom. 1.3-4) (Hahn 2002: 252). Marcus highlights the peculiarity caused by a ‘plain reading’ of the Davidssohnfrage:

The apparent denial in Mark 12:35–37 that the Messiah is the son of David, therefore, represents a puzzling piece of christology that is at home neither in first-century Judaism, nor in first-century Christianity, nor in the flow of Mark’s story. Altering the wording of Mark 12:35b, then, it might be more correct to ask: How can our author say that the Messiah is not the Son of David? (1992: 140) [Emphasis added]

In distinction to Hahn, however, Marcus thinks that the evangelist is quite close to Pseudo-Barnabas’s conclusion that the purpose of the Davidssohnfrage is to subordinate Davidic to divine sonship. Stein largely agrees with Marcus’s solution, but frames the issue even more starkly: ‘If Mark therefore was seeking to teach in this account that Jesus was denying his Davidic descent, he was singularly inept’ (2008: 569). Hahn, Marcus, and Stein thus offer alternative accounts of the historical data to the one offered by Wrede, which in turn function as counterevidence against the conclusion that Mark agrees with a ‘plain reading’ of the Davidssohnfrage.

Yet, in order to avoid the charge that they are ‘dissolving the mystery of Mark’s Christology’ (so Malbon 2009a: 160), these scholars recognize that they must also provide demonstrable evidence that Mark affirms Davidic sonship. That this aspect of the debate has also been shaped by Wrede is abundantly clear from Burger’s watershed monograph Jesus als Davidssohn: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (1970). Although Burger arrives at the conclusion that Mark reflects a Zweistufenchristologie (two-stage Christology) (pp. 64-70), his method is unquestionably that of Wrede. Essential for Burger is the observation that, ‘[d]ie spärliche Überlieferung zum Davidssohn ist nicht über das Evangelium verstreut, sondern auf drei zusammenhängende Kapitel konzentriert, die eine geographische und wohl auch theologische Einheit bilden’ (‘[t]he sparse tradition of David’s son is not scattered throughout the Gospel, but concentrated in three interconnected chapters, which form a geographical, and probably also theological, unit’) (p. 59). That is, since Mark has very little Son-of-David material, and since this material is concentrated in one section of the Gospel (10.46–12.37), then, in theory, one should be able to arrive at the evangelist’s position on Davidic sonship by isolating this material. The effect is that the healing of Bartimaeus (10.46-52)—treated as an isolated pericope—becomes load-bearing for Burger’s interpretation of the Davidssohnfrage (pp. 58-63; see also Robbins 1973: 236-43; Chilton 1982: 101-105; Kingsbury 1983: 102-14; Marcus 1992: 140-41; Smith 1996: 527-28; Eckstein 1996: 38-45; Ahearne-Kroll 2007: 138-44).

The situation has not changed with the rise of ‘narrative criticism’. Indeed, Kingsbury’s lengthy chapter, ‘The Christology of Mark: The Davidic Messiah-King, The Son of God’, offers no indication as to why Mark’s Christ is ‘Davidic’ prior to 10.46-52. Moreover, Kingsbury’s argument that Jesus’ decision to heal Bartimaeus equates to his approval of the title has failed to convince others (e.g., Malbon 2009a; 2009b). The problem, then, is clear: every scholar who argues that Mark’s Christ is David’s son rests his/her case, almost exclusively, on the cry of a blind man, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me’ (10.47-48). And for every scholar who claims that Jesus’ decision to heal Bartimaeus indicates that Davidic sonship is being ‘calmly and unhesitatingly accepted’ (Hahn 2002: 252), another claims, with equal certainty, that Jesus’ decision to heal is a sign of compassion in spite of Bartimaeus’s lack of insight (Malbon 2009a; 2009b).

Conclusion: Exegetical Impasse or Methodological Overhaul?

The results of this overview suggest that if one wanted to predict a scholar’s answer to the question ‘What Has Mark’s Christ to Do with David’s Son?’ all one would need to do is to scan how that scholar exegetes Mk 10.46-52. Yet, precisely because of the confidence with which competing interpretations of this passage are espoused, one wonders if the history of interpretation warrants a negative conclusion: when Mk 10.46-52 is treated in isolation, there is no way to adjudicate whether Jesus (and/or Mark) accepts or ignores (in order to reject) the title ‘Son of David’. As long as scholars approach the Davidssohnfrage through the eyes of Bartimaeus, that is, we are likely to continue to witness an exegetical impasse on the issue of Davidic sonship in Mark.

More fundamentally, though, is the question of whether Wrede is right about how one goes about assessing Mark’s position on Davidic messiahship. If isolated study of Markan pericopes containing the name David is the best way to approach the question ‘What Has Mark’s Christ to Do with David’s Son?’ then the status quo will no doubt persist. If, on the other hand, it could be shown that Wrede’s approach is inadequate, then there may be a way to move the discussion forward. To this end, it is worth noting that scholars who pay serious attention to Mark’s use of the Jewish scriptures tend to conclude that Mark’s Christ is a Davidic figure (see esp. Marcus 1992, 2009; Evans 2001; Ahearne-Kroll 2007; Collins 2007; Watts 2007; Hays 2016). Hays’s critique of Horsley hints at why this may be the case. He writes:

Horsley badly underestimates the density and hermeneutical sophistication of scriptural citation in Mark. Precisely for that reason, Horsley also advocates an interpretation of the Gospel that minimizes Mark’s Christology; if the scriptural intertexts in Mark are ignored, a diminished Christology inevitably follows. (2016: 98, my emphasis)

Although Hays’s comments are not specific to the Davidssohnfrage, one still wonders: Are there other ways, beyond just using the name ‘David’, in which the evangelist draws on his scriptures to signal that Jesus is a ‘Davidic’ figure? And how might these signals, if at all, inform an audience’s decision about whether to embrace or reject the claim that Jesus of Nazareth is a ‘Son of David’? Such a line of inquiry could provide a fresh point of entry into a debate that has long been at a stalemate.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article has been published within the framework of the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art funded by the LOEWE research hub ‘Religiöse Positionierung: Modalitäten und Konstellationen in jüdischen, christlichen, und islamischen Kontexten’ at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main/Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.

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