Limina Volume 1 Spring 2014 test drive. Today, try to look at a person who has been marginalized the way God does. Does this understanding open up new horizons? Raise questions about yourself? Deepen a relationship? Reveal to you a part of yourself that you would rather not have seen? If so, then run with it – there is a result of historical criticism that you can use. If it does nothing, just assume that this insight, while it may be one accurate to the first century context, just does not bear fruit for you. That is okay; the Church would be terribly boring if we were all the same. “The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”24
Pamela Hedrick, Ph.D., teaches biblical and spirituality courses at Saint Joseph’s College Online. She recently published “Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and Dialectic” in Lonergan Review Vol. 4 (2012). Dr. Hedrick currently is working on a manuscript on faith and reason in the first century. She and her husband, Dr. David Hammond, also a member of the theology faculty, make their home in North Carolina.
The "Messianic secret" as Pedagogical Entryway into the Gospel of Mark. Giovanna Czander With the publication of Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien in 1901, William Wrede brought to the fore the existence of a secrecy motif in the Gospel of Mark. The whole Gospel of Mark, pointed out Wrede, is built around the attempt to conceal and then progressively reveal Jesus’ identity. Only after Jesus’ death and resurrection did the disciples understand who Jesus was, his true identity. Wrede’s position has met with much criticism almost since the beginning25. Current scholarship tends to downplay the relevance of the so-called “Messianic secret” which for Wrede was the main principle underlying the Marcan narrative, and to mention it only as a marginal motif within the Gospel. In this article, I argue that the “messianic secret,” understood as a literary tool and read from a reader-response perspective, can be used as a pedagogically effective entryway into the gospel of Mark. I have used it in this way both in undergraduate and graduate teaching and always found it quite effective. Approach Wrede’s approach to the messianic secret was primarily literary but also historical-critical. His questions were mainly centered around understanding whether this motif could shed light on the historical Jesus and on the communities of his early followers. His attempt has been proven to be inconclusive but had the merit of bringing to the fore the secrecy motif in the gospel of Mark. What is the messianic secret? The messianic secret is a narrative device used for theological purposes.26 It is the attempt, throughout the gospel stories, to conceal Jesus’ identity from the twelve who are in his closest circle, from the followers in his outer circle, and from the 25
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Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, trans. Stephen Mitchell (New York: Vintage, 1984) 34.
David E. Aune, “The Problem of the Messianic Secret” in Novum Testamentum, Vol. 11, ½ (Jan-Apr 1969) 26 W.R. Telford, The Theology of the Gospel of Mark, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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