A: You've said that Paul's Temple teachings were very different from your own Kingdom teachings -- so much so that when your great-nephew "Mark" read what Paul had written in the letter called First Corinthians, he blew a gasket and started work on his own version of your teachings. Why was Mark so upset about Paul's Temple teachings?
J: Mark knew that one of my basic teachings had been about the Jerusalem Temple and the stranglehold the Temple and its priests exerted on regular Jewish people. It was much the same equation as Martin Luther faced when he decided to go public with his rejection of Papal and Vatican corruption in the early 1500's. Luther didn't reject the idea of faith in God -- far from it. But he rejected a number of official claims made by the Church. He thought the Church was no longer representing the ideals of true Christian faith. So he protested.
A: This was part of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
J: Yes. But Luther was protesting from within the Church, not from outside it. He was an Augustinian monk and priest, highly educated and highly devout. He held a doctorate in theology. So he wasn't easily dissuaded from the idea -- once he saw it -- that the Church wasn't "practising what it preached." I had the same problem with the Jerusalem Temple and the priestly hierarchy in my time. Once I saw the problem, I wasn't easily dissuaded. Much to the chagrin of my aristocratic family.
A: You've said your mother was descended from the priestly bloodline. That must have given your family a lot of status, a lot of authority.
J: My family was somewhat on the fringes of the power and authority that priestly families were entitled to. This was partly due to the fact that my mother's line wasn't descended from the "first son of the first son." We were related to the "junior sons," so to speak -- pretty good as far as pedigrees go, but not "the best of the best." Another factor was our geographical location. I wasn't born and raised in Jerusalem -- one of the hotbeds of Jewish political intrigue. I was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia, on the other side of the River Jordan. It was a Hellenized city, but also quite Jewish in its cultural norms, so I was raised with a strange mix of values and religious teachings. That's what allowed me, when I reached adulthood, to be more objective about trends in Jewish thought -- by that I mean the blend of religious, political, cultural, and social ideas that were intertwined in people's hearts and minds. I was far enough away from the Temple -- physically and geographically -- to be sceptical about the grandiose claims being made by the Temple priests.
A: In the Gospel of Mark, it's quite apparent what the author thinks of the Temple. Mark shows you visiting all sorts of Jewish and Gentile locations to teach and heal, but the one place you don't visit till the end is Jerusalem. Things start to go badly for you as soon as you get to David's city. This is a strange claim to make if you're trying to promote the idea that Jesus is the prophesied Saviour of the Jewish people.
J: Well, my great-nephew did think I was an important teacher, a rabbi who could help the Jewish people become free from oppression, but his understanding of my role was not the traditional Jewish understanding of who -- or what -- the Messiah would be. Mark was a very spiritual fellow -- a free thinking Jewish scholar who made his own observations and his own decisions. He got a little carried away, I think, with the idea that I was an important teacher, but on the whole he embraced my ideas about the Kingdom and did his best to live them.
A: Mark wrote his gospel before the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE.
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| “Jesus said: Grapes are not harvested from thornbushes, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. A good person brings forth good from his treasury; a bad person brings forth evil things from his mind’s corrupt treasury, and he speaks evil things. For out of the excesses of his mind he brings forth evil things” (Gospel of Thomas 45 a-b). The photo shows a marble Mithraic relief, (restored), from Rome 100-200 CE on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Mithraic Mysteries, in so far as we know what they entailed, showed uncanny similarities to the teachings of Paul. The teachings of Jesus, meanwhile, explicitly rejected the occult practices and secret rituals of mystery cults. Photo credit JAT 2017. |
J: Yes. And this is an important detail to bear in mind. Paul and Mark both wrote their comments about the Temple before the Temple was physically destroyed. This fact is important to bear in mind, especially when you're trying to understand what Mark is saying. Mark was seriously -- and I mean seriously -- pissed off about Paul's "moveable Temple." For Mark, as for me, the only way to free the Jewish people to know God and be in full relationship with God was for us to confront the harm and the hypocrisy of the Jewish Temple -- a huge, bloated, phenomenally expensive physical structure that had robbed people of their livelihood through high taxes and ongoing dues, payments, sacrifices, and obligatory pilgrimages. Herod the Great spent a fortune -- a literal fortune -- on his building projects. His children continued his habit of profligate spending on status symbols to impress the rest of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, the widows and orphans and foreigners we were supposed to look after -- according to Exodus -- were going hungry and selling themselves into slavery because of their poverty. This was unacceptable to me and to many others. I certainly wasn't alone in being outraged at the unfairness, the hypocrisy, the status addiction, and the corruption.
A: Chapter 13 of Mark has long puzzled Christian scholars. It's viewed by reputable scholars such as Bart Ehrman as a "little apocalypse" because it seems to prophesy the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. They use this chapter as part of their proof that you yourself claimed to be an apocalyptic prophet. How do you respond to that?
J: Without wishing to be harsh, I'd say these biblical scholars need to refresh their memory on what the earlier Jewish prophetic books and Jewish apocalypses actually said about the role of the Temple in the prophesied End Times. It's clear that highly revered earlier writers such as First Isaiah and Second Isaiah and Zechariah believed the physical Temple on Mount Zion (i.e. Jerusalem) would be absolutely central to the ideal future restoration of Judah in the End Times. Yet Mark uses imagery from apocalyptic texts like Daniel to turn these predictions on their head. Mark 13 shouldn't be called the "little apocalypse": it should be called the "anti-apocalypse" because of the way it intentionally subverts and repudiates the prophecies of Zechariah. Mark may be attacking Paul's theology throughout his own gospel, but he uses well-known Hebrew prophecies to do it. Mark's own Jewish audience would have understood these references. They would have understood that Mark was openly attacking traditional Jewish teachings about the future End Times when God would one day return and "fix everything."
A: Traditional teachings that Paul continued to endorse in his letters (1 Corinthians 15).
J: Yes. Paul enthusiastically taught his followers about the coming End Times -- a traditional Jewish teaching in itself -- and on top of that he added a wonderful new theological guarantee. He promised people that if they gave themselves over fully to a belief in Christ, then God's Spirit would be able to live inside of them in the "Temple" (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20). Paul took the sacredness of the Jerusalem Temple and made it "moveable," an inner sanctuary of purity for the Spirit, just as the Essenes had already done in their Charter (1QS 3 and 1QS 8). He didn't try to undermine the importance and authority of the Jerusalem Temple. He actually added to it (as the Essenes had done) by elevating it to an inner mystical state that could only be known to true believers who followed Paul's teachings. This is a simplified version of Paul's Temple theology, but you get the picture. He's offering his followers the ultimate in "easy salvation." "You no longer have to go to the Temple; the Temple will come to you."
A: And once you have the Temple, you can access all those spiritual goodies that Paul promises (1 Corinthians Chapters 2, 12, and 14).
J: It's a theology that's very appealing to people who want all the benefits without doing the hard work.
A: I've said it before and I'll say it again -- your teachings are much harder to stick to than Paul's are. It's impossible to follow your recommendations for connection with God without making spiritual commitment a regular part of everyday life. Once a week on Sundays -- or twice a year at Christmas and Easter -- won't do it. You ask a lot of regular people.
J: Only because I have faith in you. Only because I have faith.
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