Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§15.2 Who Did They Think Jesus Was?
generation to the fact of redaction and swung the pendulum of critical opinion
away from the older view of Mark as earliest source and therefore most historical
source for a life of Jesus. 46
The nub of Wrede's argument 47 is that Jesus' repeated commands that demoniacs
and those healed by Jesus keep silence 48 are historically incomprehensible
(Jesus' reputation was already widespread); only as a unified theological concept
do they become understandable in Mark's Gospel. 49 The secret in view is
that Jesus is a supernatural being, the Son of God; 50 that is why the secret is revealed
only by spiritual beings (demons) and by heavenly revelation (baptism
and transfiguration), 51 episodes whose historical value was generally discounted
by historical scholarship. But that he was such a being is Christian and postresurrection
belief, 52 it being initially believed that Jesus only became Messiah at
and as a result of his resurrection. 53 Wrede's explanation, then, is that the idea of
Jesus' messiahship first emerged in the early community, not with Jesus himself.
Had Jesus proclaimed himself as Messiah, the messianic secret could never have
arisen. 54 The clue is given by Mark 9.9: Jesus' messianic sonship should not,
could not be known more widely until after his resurrection; 'the phrase "until he
should have arisen from the dead" tells us plainly enough that we are dealing
here with a "viewpoint" and not with history'. 55
This conclusion, that the messianic secret is a theological (and therefore
unhistorical) construction, quickly became an established result of twentiethcentury
critical scholarship, particularly in Germany. The consequence is that at
46. Both Charlesworth ('Messianology to Christology' 34-35) and Wright (Jesus 28)
cite Norman Perrin's 'The Wredestrasse Becomes the Hauptstrasse: Reflections on the Reprinting
of the Dodd Festschrift', JR 46 (1966) 296-300.
47. One of the best summaries of Wrede's argument is in H. Räisänen, The 'Messianic
Secret' in Mark's Gospel (Edinburgh: Clark, 1990) 38-48. The book is a revision of his Das
'Messiasgeheimnis' im Markusevangelium. Ein redaktionskritischer Versuch (Helsinki, 1976)
incorporating the substance of his earlier Die Parabeltheorie im Markusevangelium (Helsinki,
1973). See also Christopher Tuckett's 'Introduction' to his edited volume, The Messianic Secret
(London: SPCK, 1983) 1-28 (3-7 on Wrede).
48. Mark 1.23-25, 34, 43-45; 3.11-12; 5.43; 7.36; 8.26.
49. Wrede, Messianic Secret 48-53, 67-68. Wrede was fully aware of the implausibilities
of some of the commands (49-52, 125-28); Räisänen justifiably criticizes my earlier
study at this point (Messianic Secret 44 n. 22; referring to my 'The Messianic Secret in Mark',
TynB 21 [1970] 92-117, as abbreviated in Tuckett, ed., Messianic Secret 116-31).
50. Wrede, Messianic Secret 72-80.
51. Mark 1.11; 9.7.
52. Wrede, Messianic Secret 218-20.
53. The texts in view are Acts 2.36; Rom. 1.4; Phil. 2.6-11 (Messianic Secret 215-16).
54. Wrede, Messianic Secret 220, 227-28.
55. Wrede, Messianic Secret 68-69.
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