Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Mark

[Kubota]

In Luke, we have Mary being visited by an angel who explicitly tells her in detail that she is favored by God and will bear a son who will literally be called the Son of God and who will be King over his nation forever. Later, Mary does have a child miraculously without ever being with her husband.

He went to a woman who had never had a man. Her name was Mary. She was promised in marriage to a man named Joseph. Joseph was of the family of David. The angel came to her and said, “You are honored very much. You are a favored woman. The Lord is with you. You are chosen from among many women.”

When she saw the angel, she was troubled at his words. She thought about what had been said. The angel said to her, “Mary, do not be afraid. You have found favor with God. See! You are to become a mother and have a Son. You are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the place where His early father David sat. He will be King over the family of Jacob forever and His nation will have no end.”

Mary said to the angel, “How will this happen? I have never had a man.” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come on you. The power of the Most High will cover you. The holy Child you give birth to will be called the Son of God.
But then we have the passages in Mark where Jesus' mother and his brothers come to pull him away from his preaching because they think he is "out of his mind". In other passages, we are told that even many in his hometown think his teachings are wrong. In an interesting turn, Jesus actually turns away his mother and suggests that his true family is anyone who follows God's word according to his teachings.

When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

I think I can only see one response to this. We might be able to suggest that Jesus' mother still had absolute faith in his teachings, and that he was the Son of God, but she thought he was "out of his mind" for gathering such big crowds. But if we're going to take the Bible's claims seriously about Mary's "conception", then we are bound to ask further questions.

Mary was told, verbatim, from an angel of God, that her son was going to become an extremely powerful man. So powerful that he would rise to become the final and eternal King of the family of Jacob. Are we really to believe that Mary witnessed all of these completely incredible miracles (one that sprung from inside her own body) and the flawless completion of the angel's prophecy, only to become so frightened that this new, unstoppable King of eternity was attracting so much attention that she thought he was crazy?

[jimwalton]

The most helpful place to look is Mark 3.21. The Greek verb translated "out of his mind" is ἐξέστη, from ἐξίστημι. It's a compound word with ἐξ meaning "out of" and ίστημι meaning "to stand." It literally means "to stand outside of." It can be translated "lose one's mind; be out of one's senses," but it can also be translated "to thrown out of position" or "to displace." Well, that can change the scene, for sure. It is used to someone who's in an ecstatics sense of psychic derangement (2 Cor. 5.13; Acts 26.24), where it is used of Christians who use intellectual arguments to persuade people of the truth of the Gospel. The accusation is not necessarily that Jesus is deranged; it could also possibly indicate that his message is not being well received, or even that he is so dramatic and passionate about his message—a radical, charismatic, untempered enthusiasm for his work. Maybe it's just that his brothers misunderstood his mission (John 7.5, since Mk. 3.21 doesn't really specify that Mary was in on the accusation), or that they were experiencing some public harassment. Remember that Jesus had walked away from his father's construction business, he was having collisions with the religious leaders, and was even attracting some political attention.

It's possible, though, that Mary thought he might be exhausted and hungry, and she wanted to take him home, out of the excitement, to give him a chance to rest and eat. She also knows that some people's response to him has been quite hostile (as is evidence by Mark 6.1-6). And of course we can't rule out fear on the part of Jesus' family that his ministry would draw undesired (and unfavorable) attention to them on the part of the Romans.

Why the word choice (ἐξέστη: "out of his mind; displaced")? It fits very well with Mark's agenda, juxtaposed with the story where he is being accused of being demon possessed. Mark loved writing in a style that's called "intercalation". He sandwiches one story in the middle of another story because he's making a point about both. Here we see his family (Mk. 3.20-21 & 31.34) as the slices of bread around the PB&J of the demonic accusation. Mark has several points to make:

1. Jesus being rejected by his own brothers (family) mirrors the rejection by his own brothers (nation, the people of Israel).

2. Jesus makes the point in Mk. 3.25 that a house divided against itself can't survive. He uses it to speak of the God vs. Satan contest, but also there's an immediate application to his own "house". We'll see in vv. 33-34 that he walks away from his own biological family, just as he's walking away from the religious establishment of hypocrites, to create a new family that is NOT divided: the kingdom of God.

Given all the information we have about Mary, there's no reason to assume she thought Jesus was wacko. His brothers easily could have. It's altogether reasonable to think that they have come to "take charge of him" with different motives and for different reasons.

[Kubota]

Thank you for the thoughtful response.

> it could also possibly indicate that his message is not being well received

This seems a bit strange, since the text makes it clear that Jesus was surrouned by people eager to hear his message. As he refuses to see his family, he even gestures to the crowd and suggests his spiritual brothers are his real family, as you allude to later in your comment.

I do think it is possible to read the verse as Mary being worried about the attention of the Roman authorities, but that is really part of my whole point here. Mary had an angel of God directly speak to her and let her know that the eternal King of all the Jews was going to be born from her miraculously. After witnessing everything the angel said come true, we're supposed to believe that Mary is suddenly concerned Jesus is attracting too much attention? God has literally told her that Jesus will overthrow the Roman authorities. This is all exactly in line with what was prophesied to her.

> Well, that can change the scene, for sure. It is used of someone who's in an ecstatics sense of psychic derangement (2 Cor. 5.13; Acts 26.24), where it is used of Christians who use intellectual arguments to persuade people of the truth of the Gospel.

I can't find ἐξίστημι in Acts 26:24 - either in Nestle-Aland or Textus Receptus. It seems like they just use the word for madness: "Ταῦτα δὲ αὐτοῦ ἀπολογουμένου ὁ Φῆστος μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ φησιν, Μαίνῃ, Παῦλε: τὰ πολλά σε γράμματα εἰς μανίαν περιτρέπει."

> Jesus being rejected by his own brothers (family) mirrors the rejection by his own brothers (nation, the people of Israel).

It's interesting that the text gives us no reason to separate Mary from Jesus' brothers in their reasons for trying to "arrest" him from the crowds, but you suggest it is a given. And I would never deny that the authors of the gospels were often trying to make theological points with their stories. I just find no reason to believe they all have to fit together into a coherent narrative. So the anonymous author of Mark may in fact have been trying to use the story for his own purposes, while still contradicting what was written in Luke.

There are even cases where it appears the later gospel writers even purposefully created a contradiction. We have John placing Jesus' death on a different day. The day that just so happens to coincide with the traditional sacrifice of the Passover lamb. It is not a pure coincidence that John pushed the text in this direction. Either John didn't realize the contradiction he was creating or he believed emphasizing the analogy between the killing of Jesus and the slaughter of the Passover lamb was so important that the details should be changed. Or maybe he believed the previous authors were in error, because God just couldn't have passed up such a great analogy between the sacrifice of Jesus and the sacrifice of the Passover lamb.

> We'll see in vv. 33-34 that he walks away from his own biological family, just as he's walking away from the religious establishment of hypocrites, to create a new family that is NOT divided: the kingdom of God.

Yes, he walks away from his mother. That is really the core of the contradiction I'm getting at here. If there was one human being on the entire planet who was almost assured to have total faith in Jesus, it was his mother. Not just for the normal motherly reasons, but because she had one of the most personal experiences with God that a human has ever been claimed to have. So was told verbatim by an angel that her son would beceme the King of all the Jews forever. That God himself, through a proxy, would impregnate her. There is no room in there for an "oops moment", where he says the wrong thing in front of a crowd and gets killed too soon, or even just overworks himself. It is the special place of Mary in this story that makes it so improbable in my view. That is why I specifically tied the contradiction to the visiting in Luke 1:27.

It seems that you somewhat understand this contradiction, and that is probably why you prefer to treat Jesus' brothers differenty than her in the story despite the fact they are all talked about together with no distinctions. I would claim you are doing exactly what the compilers of the Bible hoped you would do when confronted with a contradiction. They hoped you would look through the rest of the canon in an effort to find similar notions that can help you split the difference, but, crucially, they intended for this process to completely overrule the process where you actually focus on the contradiction. So, like with John's day of death for Jesus, this contradiction doesn't really matter at all to believing biblical scholars. Yes, it is clear that one of the author's lied or at least misrepresented the story that was passed down to them. It was probably John, because he was later and his choice of day makes a very convenient theological point. So the conversation shifts to the abstract notions that John is trying to emphasize and we stop worrying about the actual factual error he inserted to make his argument stronger.

The problem is that this technique is used highly selectively, and almost never in a situation where it would weaken a biblical point.

[jimwalton]

Mark's Gospel shows a progression of three things (and much more, but I wish to speak of 3):

1. Jesus' popularity rising until about the middle of the book, and then falling through the end. Picture a plot line like a mountain peak.

2. Jesus' opposition rising continually from beginning to end. The more he says and does, the more trouble rises against him, until he is murdered. Picture a straight line at a 45-degree angle upward.

3. The complete failure of Jesus' disciples. Barely a positive thing is said about them in the entire book. The one notable exception is Peter's declaration in 8.29. Other than that, virtually everything said about his disciples is words of failure, even the story of the resurrection in 16.1-8. Picture a deep pit with a wavy line in its trough.

Since the text in question is in chapter 3, it's pretty soon in the book. Chapter 1 is introductory, and Jesus is an explosively popular guy. IN chapter 2 the opposition begins (2.7, 16, 18, 24; 3.6 [where they start to plot to kill him]). It's not a stretch to say his message is not being well received on all fronts, and that his family can be guaranteed to be ignorant of the pot Jesus is stirring up. Jesus is presumably in Capernaum in 3.1-6 where the plot against his life is inaugurated. In verse 20 he could be back in Capernaum or perhaps a location closer to Nazareth, since his family appears on the scene fairly quickly.

But was there fear of Romans authorities? It's hard to say for certain. Luke is the most politically-charged of the Gospels, though Matthew mentions they had to run for their lives to escape Herod's murder of Jesus. Luke's story of the angels at Jesus' birth is a direct political reference to the Priene Inscription, and Mary's "Magnificat" (Lk. 1.47-55) is distinctively political. John the Baptist attracts the negative attention of Herod and Hernias, and Jesus is perceived in the same way. It's hard to know exactly to what extent Jesus is stirring the Roman pot. He does recruit a Zealot to his team of disciples, which may raise some eyebrows in the Roman camps.

It's true that "Mary had an angel of God directly speak to her and let her know that the eternal King of all the Jews was going to be born from her," but remember the Jews were expecting a political messiah who would throw off Roman rule and establish Jerusalem as a political capital. The angel's announcements to her didn't address this issue, only that he would save the people from their sins. But since Mary's Magnificat is politically-oriented, it's safe to assume she had political thoughts about Jesus' kingdom.

"God has literally told her that Jesus will overthrow the Roman authorities." Where?

You're right that Acts 26.24 doesn't contain the term, but only the same concept. It supports my point, but you're right that it's not the same word. Acts uses the word Μαίνῃ, meaning "stark raving mad; insane."

You're also right that the immediate text doesn't specify any distinction between Mary and the brothers. I don't consider it a given, but a probable. We know that Mary "pondered all these things in her heart" (Lk. 2.20). She heard the annunciation, Elizabeth's words (Lk. 1), about Joseph's vision, and the words of Simeon and Anna in the Temple (Lk. 2.21-38). She has to have been on a different plane than the brothers who "did not believe in him" (Jn. 7.5). She has to have been. Her words are not recorded for us in Mk. 3.21; we don't know who the spokesman was. I certainly see nothing advancing the idea of a purposeful contradiction.

There is no reason to assume any nastiness or contradiction in Jesus' proclamation of Mk. 3.34. Mark uses tons of Isaiah references, and this is another one. Isa. 49.18-21 and 60.4 express hope for eschatological restoration of the family in terms that are similar to Jesus' expression here. Zion will see her children restored to her. Jesus is making a prophetic and theological pronouncement that those who have the right to become his "family" are those who hear the word of God and put it into practice. Mark is also setting up the parables that will come in chapter 4 about the kingdom of God and who belongs to it. Jesus is making it clear, in a culture that is driven by kinship relationships and right of belonging by ethnic birth, that the family of God is not based on ethnic identity or family ties, but on a relationship with God through himself. Staunch religious leaders may not be included, while outcasts may be—the family of God belongs to those who receive the message of salvation. It's a radical call to discipleship, not a disrespectful comment against his mother. And we can assume she didn't understand it as such. She was at the foot of the cross, where he treated her tenderly (Jn. 19.25-27), and she was identified as a believer and a follower in Acts 1.14.

I don't see a contradiction at all, and certainly not a lie or misrepresentation. None of those contingencies are necessary to understand the texts.

[Kubota]

I feel like we're getting caught between two purposes here. You've written a lot about the intentions of the author of Mark. I'm not denying that this author had a number of theological purposes. I'm simply saying it appears that his intentions clashed with the intentions of the other gospel writers. From a secular perspective, we wouldn't have expected anything else. Even when people conspire they rarely produce a perfectly airtight argument. The problem is that the Christian establishment goes one step further with these writings. They claim there was a guiding hand ensuring that they all held to some kind of consistent message. This dramatically shapes the way the texts are read.

So the whole idea that the rejection of Jesus by his family played into Mark's narrative well really doesn't touch my argument at all. In fact, my argument for the contradiction really is strengthened by the fact that each author can be demonstrated to want to emphasize different aspects of the story. This would encourage the creation of contradictions, since they each had their own purposes while writing. I think the example of John's day of death for Jesus demonstrates this perfectly. Jesus didn't die the day before the Passover and on the day of. But John thought the analogy to the killing of the Passover lamb was just too good to leave out. A contradiction was the price he paid, but the Bible was written by very intelligent people. They knew enough to put lines like this in the canon:

"And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

This will help ensure that every time a contradiction creeps up, a good reader of the Bible will remember this passage and use it to favor the interpretation that fits with who God really is in their own mind. If Jesus calls a foreign woman a "dog" who is trying to steal scraps from his children, then many modern Christians simply think, "That's not my Jesus." And if they pursue it any further, they'll talk to their pastor, and he might give them some apologetics that help explain how Jesus wasn't being as ruthless and cold and xenophobic as he sounds in that passage. But the simple answer is that Jesus was an ancient Jew. It would be a miracle if he didn't foster some bigotry.

> She has to have been on a different plane than the brothers who "did not believe in him" (Jn. 7.5). She has to have been.

She has to have been if you demand that the entire biblical canon has some kind of mystical consistency underlying it that we can always return to when things get murky. By quoting John's gospel in defense of a contradiction between Mark and Luke, you've done exactly what I was trying to highlight in the last comment. You've reached out into the canon to find a way to pull the other gospels in line with each other. You're saying Mary must have been different from Jesus' brothers in her belief in Mark, because in John it suggests it.

Mary, in Mark, clearly thought something serious was wrong with, or about to happen to, Jesus because of his preachings. This is quite easy to understand if we think of Mary as a real mother who has a son who is saying things that would attract dangerous attention. If Mary was just a regular woman who wasn't visited by the angel Gabriel, then it is perfectly understandable why she would think Jesus was completely out of his mind. He was causing a political disturbance and Mary would have known quite well what happened to Jews who caused trouble for the Roman authorities.

It seems likely to me that the gospel writers had a certain number of well-known facts about Jesus that they had to find a way to fit into their narratives. For instance, most scholars think the whole universal census conveniently placing Jesus in Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy almost had to be made up for theological reasons. So the inconvenient fact is that most people knew Jesus came from Nazareth. In the same way, it was probably known, as the early gospels record, that Jesus' family and his hometown didn't accept his preachings. So this had to be woven into the narrative somehow. We don't really need many assumptions beyond relying more on the older, less theologically developed, gospels when conflicts occur.

[jimwalton]

I wouldn't say that their intentions "clashed". It makes it seem that they were at odds with each other, when in fact the Gospels are of quite common theme: Jesus was the Suffering Messianic king of prophecy, successor to both David and Moses, and God in the flesh. They all perceived him that way, but emphasized different aspects in their work, as any biographer would. I don't see them as contradictions at all, but the richness that comes from a variety of perspectives. Any detective hopes there are more than one eyewitness to a crime, because their varying perspectives give a more complete picture of what happened.

If we had only one Gospel, people would accuse, "Well, you can't base anything on that. It's just one person's writing, and we have no corroboration of it." And if we had multiple Gospels, but they were all identical, people would accuse, "Well, what's the point of that?" or accuse the writers of collusion. And so we have four gospels that are slightly different, and people accuse, "Well, the differences show it's not true." Seriously? It has to be one of the three, and frankly, the 3rd is the best choice. But there aren't contradictions, just variance. The first century was a rhetorical oral culture, where slight variations in the story were immaterial to the telling. So what if in one account Jesus is going into Jericho and in another he is coming out? So what if in one account the rooster crows once and in another he crows twice? That doesn't make them contradictory. Luke, in the book of Acts, has three accounts of Paul's conversion, and they're all different. That was the nature of the culture, and it doesn't mean contradictions.

We don't have to deny any part of the Mary biography to put this all together. She was a regular woman who was visited by an angel, but not given a whole lot of information. She had to watch and learn like everyone else. Her normal humanity shows, but so does her devotion to her son as God (Jn. 2.3; 19.25-27; Acts 1.14).

> It seems likely to me that the gospel writers had a certain number of well-known facts about Jesus that they had to find a way to fit into their narratives.

This is certainly not true. John 21.25 says, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." Each writer got to choose from a large body of events what they wanted to include. It shows how John's Gospel can be so different from the other three.