Walter Hicks wrote:
>
> george murphy wrote:
>
> > 3) Having said that, it's clear that some of the material in the gospels is
> > due to the reflections of the early church & the gospel writers, & this simply
> > from the internal evidence. To take just one important example, the confession
> > of Peter at Caesarea Phillippi. Mark's account gives the impression that Jesus
> > rejected the title "Messiah" while in Matthew he praises Peter's attribution to
> > him of this title as a gift of God. It can't be both ways. There are many
> > other examples.
>
> In Matthew, I read:
>
> 15"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
> 16Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ,[2] the Son of the living God."
> 17Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed
> to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. 18And I tell you that you are
> Peter,[3] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[4]
> will not overcome it.[5] 19I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven;
> whatever
> you bind on earth will be[6] bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth
> will be[7] loosed in heaven." 20Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that
>
> he was the Christ.
>
> In Mark, I read:
>
> 29"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
> Peter answered, "You are the Christ.[2] "
> 30Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
>
> Why do you get the impression that he rejected the title in Mark? (Matthew makes the
> same comment about not telling anyone.) and Mark 14:61-63 does not sound like a
> rejection of the tittle.
>
> I agree that there some differences but don't see this one.
It's important first to try to read each of the gospels on its own terms without
unconsciously being influenced by what we remember of the other gospels. If we do that
with Mark there is, at least, no positive affirmation by Jesus of the statement that he
is the Messiah and it would be a reasonable reading of the text to say that he did not
accept the title - though I agree that this is not certain. In Mt, OTOH, there is a
very positive affirmation of the title.
It's hard to account for this difference if we think that the purpose of the
gospels is to provide an accurate historical record. Either Mk has given the exchange
more of a negative (or at least neutral) slant than it actually had by omitting Jesus'
praise of Peter's confession or Mt has made it more positive than it was by adding these
words. The situation is exacerbated by other differences:
a. In Mt Jesus is called not ony "Christ" but "Son of the living God".
b. In Lk there's a kind of intermediate confession, "the Christ of God."
c. It's likely that Jn.6:66-71 stems from the same incident as the synoptic
passages. (See Brown's Anchor Bible commentary for details.) But here the setting &
wording are very different.
Of course this will upset those like Mr. Eisele who think that I'm simply
looking for "errors in the Bible." I'm not. But while the Bible does deal with
historical events, its primary purpose is to convey the theological significance of
those events, and the different gospel writers do that in different ways because they
have different theological concerns. I think we can hold as historical fact that at a
crucial point in Jesus' ministry Simon Peter, as the _de facto_ leader of the disciples,
stated a belief that Jesus was the Messiah of Israel or something functionally
equivalent to that. This was wrong if "Messiah" meant the Davidic hero who would throw
out the Romans & establish a Jewish empire. From the standpoint of the early church -
inspired by the Spirit of Jesus - the confession that Jesus was the Messiah & Son of God
was inarguably true. The different gospel writers are opering within those boundaries.
As to the question "What did Jesus really say to Peter?", I don't think we can
be certain. My own inclination, & I think that of many biblical scholars, would be that
Mk is closest to historical accuracy in this regard. But that doesn't mean we should
only read the Marcan account. The whole of scripture is authoritative, not just the
parts we can agree by some criterion or other were spoken by the historical Jesus.
(The latter notion might be called the Red Letter Bible Heresy.)
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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