Jesus Framed by George Aichele

Author:George Aichele [Aichele, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415138635
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1996-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

5 JESUS'S FRANKNESS

THE DISCOURSE OF JESUS

[He] began to explain to them that the son of man must suffer much and be rejected by the elders and the high priests and the scribes, and be killed, and rise up after three days. He was telling them frankly.

(Mark 8:31-2a)

The first of Jesus’s three passion predictions in the gospel of Mark comes immediately after Peter identifies Jesus as “the Christ” and immediately before the exchange of rebukes that ends when Jesus identifies Peter as “Satan.” The larger unit that contains this passage, the dialogue of Jesus and the disciples at Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27-9:1), has often been regarded as a narrative hinge joining together the two halves of Mark. In the first half of this gospel, Jesus apparently reveals himself to both demons and disciples as the miraculously powerful son of God, in Galilee and its vicinity. However, in the second half of Mark, Jesus’s weakness and frustration grows as he moves toward apparent defeat and death in Jerusalem.

This brief passage is therefore a crucial one, a culmination and turning point in the identification of Jesus and therefore in the plot of Mark’s story. Its significance is both theological and narratological. The passage’s importance in this respect makes particularly troublesome two of the ambiguities which characterize the passage: first, that Jesus was speaking these words “frankly,” ton logon elalei parrêsia, to the disciples, and second, that anyone could speak frankly of “the son of man” at all. Only in Mark could Jesus speak frankly of the son of man, because only in Mark is Jesus’s frankness a signifier of the disruption and breakdown of denotative meaning. “Frankness” here opens up not the connotative meaning of the text, but rather a textual abyss into which meaning vanishes.

It has long been observed that the gospel of Mark appears to be an incomplete, fragmentary text. However, the arguments have usually centered upon the alleged awkwardness of Mark’s style and especially the abrupt ending of the gospel at 16:8. Soon after Mark was written, early readers attempted to rewrite and repair this ending with various supplements. The beginning of Mark is also less than satisfactory, especially when compared to the other biblical gospels. Mark’s endings and its beginning are discussed further inchapter 2. However, the incompleteness of Mark is more farreaching than what is apparent at its end or its beginning. Mark’s incompleteness is also to be found in this saying of Jesus which Mark 8:32 underlines as “frank,” as well as at numerous other points where the narrative in effect confesses its own failure.

Why is it strange and confusing that Jesus should speak frankly, parrêsia, to his disciples? The translation in which this word appears is that of Richmond Lattimore. Both the RSV and the New English Bible (NEB) translate parrêsia as “plainly”; other translations use “openly” (Jerusalem Bible, Scholars Version) or “very clear” (TEV). “Frankly” as used in Lattimore’s text seems stiff and formal, out of place in this confrontation between Jesus and the disciples.

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