Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§15.4 Who Did They Think Jesus Was?
fairly confident, therefore, that one of the central props of Wrede's thesis is unsound.
If the 'messianic secret' is indeed part of Mark's secrecy motif, then it is
not because the secret was intended to cloak the fact that the idea of Jesus as
Messiah had been conceived and achieved only as a result of Easter. Could this
be the Messiah, the son of David? If the tradition reviewed above has any historical
value, that question must have occurred to many who witnessed or heard of
Jesus as his mission moved towards its climax before it became the formal
ground for his execution.
15.4. A Role Declined
The conclusion just reached obviously poses the follow-up question: How did Jesus
respond to such speculation? If the issue of Jesus as Messiah was indeed
raised during at least the latter part of his mission, as seems most likely, then it
can hardly have escaped Jesus himself. He must have been confronted with the
issue. In which case it is inconceivable that his disciples did not recall and reflect
on his reaction to it. Did he share that speculation? Did he regard himself as Messiah,
son of David? The same episodes offer an interesting answer to these questions
too. It will make better sense on this occasion to follow the sequence in
most likely chronological order.
a. The Feeding of the 5000
The episode highlights two findings. (1) There was abroad, at least in the region
of Lake Galilee itself, a popular conception of the royal Messiah, who would
echo the great events of Israel's first liberation of Canaan 156 and fulfil the prophetic
hope of a prosperous new age under a new Davidic king. Such a king, we
might note, Pilate would certainly want to crucify for obvious political and military
reasons. Jesus was probably seen by many in Galilee as at least potentially
such a Messiah. (2) More interesting, however, is the clear implication that Jesus
reacted against this role. The reaction presumably implies that he saw the role as
a misleading or false characterisation of his mission. 157 And even if the role had
156. We recall the two figures who attempted to repeat the miracles of the initial conquest
of the Promised Land — the crossing of the Jordan and the fall of the walls of Jericho
(Josephus, Ant. 20.97, 169-70).
157. Cf. Witherington, Christology 98-101, who also suggests that the feeding of the five
thousand was the last act of Jesus' Galilean ministry (117). This suggestion would meet
Fredriksen's argument that a messianic claim could not have been voiced in Galilee (she places
the feeding on the lake's western shore) without provoking Antipas to suppress it (Jesus 215-18).
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