It has become something of a commonplace within recent scholarship on the Gospels to hear that Mark the evangelist is ambivalent about Davidic sonship. Yet, rarely have scholars explored the rationale underlying this ambivalence. This article probes the status quaestionis on Jesus' Davidic status in Mark's Gospel via a history-of-interpretation survey of the Davidssohnfrage (Mk 12.35-37). It demonstrates that, despite their varying approaches and ideological commitments, all participants in the Son-of-David debate have assumed a foundational methodological principle: one assesses Mark's position on Davidic messiahship by isolating pericopes with the name 'David'. This explains why the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10.46-52) has long been fixed as the de facto crux interpretum for Davidic sonship in Mark.
This article reappraises the underlying logic of Jesus’ trial in Mk 14.53-65. I propose that the ‘false’ charge that Jesus intends to build the naos acheiropoie-tos (‘sanctuary not made with hands’, 14.58) evokes not a people but a place, the sanctuary in the heavens. Mark thereby invites the audience to envisage the Son of Man’s ascension and enthronement (cf. 14.62), interpreted through the lenses of Dan. 7.13 and Ps. 110 (109 LXX), as the installation of a heavenly priest. This in turn suggests that the ‘blasphemy’ charge in 14.64 is not a piece of abstract Christology, but a grander christological and socio-political exposition of the implications of Christ’s heavenly session for the evangelist and his auditors.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.