MARK WROTE OF JESUS AS A MORTAL

A very different vision of Jesus is to be found in the Gospel of Mark, namely that Jesus was a mortal, born of Joseph and Mary, who came to fulfill the prophecies as interpreted by the Jewish community at that time (a view inconsistent with the actual Old Testament texts as understood by the people for whom they were written).[1]  The first Church fathers debate quite heatedly the nature of Jesus:  was he like Mark held, a mortal unto whom the spirit of God entered upon baptism, or he born the son of God and thus purely divine but sent on a mission disguised as a mortal.  The latter position won out and thus the additions to the work of Mark of the Nativity found in Matthew and Luke.[2]  Certain passages were dropped ("Our present edition of Mark, with vestiges of the secret tradition still visible, Mark 4:11; 9:25-27; 10:21, 32, 38-39; 12:32-34; 14:51-5--Barnstone, 340).   This debate did not end with the establishment of an organized body that among other things established dogma and attack those who resisted.  The Arians, for example, held that Jesus was not really one with God, but a mixture of human and divine.   These "heretics" nearly split the Church.  The had a large following from the 3rd to the 8th centuries.  Mark simply wrote of Jesus as the greatest of prophets in a way that was consistent with the literary usage of his time.   

Mark held Christ to be mortal, thus there was no miraculous birth, no divine spirit impregnating Mary.  The book of Mark begins with John the Baptist, a fanatic who like the Jewish Essenes required of initiates a baptism.  John acknowledges that one would be coming who is greater than him.[3]  It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.  On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him.  (Mark 1: 9-11).  One who already knew the secrets of heaven and who already was divine would not have the divine spirit enter him a second time.  Thus it was not an omission by Mark of the Nativity story, but rather that the story would have conflicted with the story of how the spirit of God entered Jesus.  Marks view, like the Gnostics was that Jesus was a mortal who was the greatest of prophets and teachers.

Matthew and Luke included this chapter of Marks, but they for quite different reasons added the Nativity account; namely, to fulfill then current beliefs about all the Old Testament prophecies.  One such prophecy was about virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14).  Randel Helms in Gospels Fictions in detail lists the deliberate ways passages of the Gospels were written to prove that Christ fulfilled these OT prophecies.  The nativity story served other purposes, among them to contradict the Gnostics a rival sect that held Jesus to be, like Mark held, the greatest of mortal prophets:  A prophet who through faith in him the initiate would receive the mysteries of the spiritual world and be saved.   Matthew and Luke, however, were not satisfied with Jesus the mortal revealing the secrets of heaven because God chose him.  They elevated Jesus to be partially divine through his birth, and later Church fathers made Jesus totally divine, that is, one with Yahweh.

Matthew and Luke realize the potential contradiction between  the nativity story with the baptisism scene and thus they modified the passage so that Jesus is baptized not to gain powers (he already had them according to Luke and Matthew) through the dove entering a mortal Jesus, but merely because  as Jesus said, it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness (Mat 3:15).  Mathew and Luke have through this and other changes removed the harmony between Mark's Gospel and the position of the Gnostic Christians.

That Mark uses the phrase "son of God" is no solice for Christian commentators, for its ancient meaning is quite different than its modern translation.  The following was said of the meaning of the Son of God in the Catholic journal Notre Dame Magazine:  "On the point is clear from the outset: our understanding of divine man or Son of God is different today than it was to the world in which Jesus lived.  It was not an uncommon designation in those days.  Nor was it uncommon to have gods impregnate mortals who yielded divine offspring often the human partner was a virgin woman." 

          Divine heroes were conventional mythological characters familiar figures in the culture in which the scriptures were composed.  Pythagoras, Plato, and Alexander the Great were all born of a woman by the power of a holy spirit.  Hercules, too, was the child of the Greek god Zeus and a human woman.  In 48 BCR, Julius Caesar was proclaimed god manifest, savior of human life, and divine man.  Augustus, during whose reign Jesus was born, was said to have been sent by God.  The beliefs, as illustrated by their stories, are quite different from todays.[4]  Thus the meaning of the phrase the Son of God, does not given then current usage entail such being to be in fact a God, but rather one who through apotheosis is risen to a new status. 

To say that a great prophet who was a mortal was the "son of God" (as Mark does) would be entirely consistent with the usage of that period.  Greater claims about Jesus came after Mark.

One should not consider the Gospels to recording events.   "The Gospels have no historical content; The Gospels are, it must be said with gratitude, works of art, the supreme fictions in our culture, narratives produced by enormously influential literary artists who put their art in the service of a theological vision" (Randel Helms, 11).  For this theological service the prophet of the Christian sect was called the Son of God.  Such appellation was frequently used by the Gnostic Christians for Jesus.    It was only later that Jesus was raised to an even higher status.[5]

Given the Hellenization of that region with over 2 centuries of Greek and Roman domination, and the fact that it was considered a normal expression of sexuality for a man to have sexual union with a sexually mature lad, such an act by the teacher of the mysteries (Jesus) would to them seem no worse than for him to have intercourse with a lady.  But to the Church fathers who had taken the theological position that Jesus was not a mortal with the spirit of God entered into him at his baptism, it was necessary for them to delete certain passage from Mark, including this one which had Jesus behave all too human. 

A close relationship between Mark and St. Peter is suggested by the greetings from my son Mark in 1 Peter 5:13; furthermore, the Apostolic Father Papias of Hierapolis says that Mark's treatise (presumably the Gospel) was based on Peter's teaching about Jesus.  Encyclopedia Britannica, Mark, DVD version 2002.