Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

violently
     attack the kingdom of heaven’ or ‘… the rule of God.’ ”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?
    On the expectation among the Jews in first-century Palestine for Elijah’s return and
     the inauguration of the messianic age, see John J. Collins,
Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls
(London: Routledge, 1997). On Jesus’s deliberate imitation of Elijah, see John Meier,
Marginal Jew
, vol. 3, 622–26.
    Unlike Matthew and Luke, who report a change in the physical appearance of Jesus in
     the transfiguration (Matthew 17:2; Luke 9:29), Mark claims that Jesus was transfigured
     in a way that only affected his clothes (9:3). The parallels toExodus in the transfiguration account are clear: Moses takes Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu
     to Mount Sinai, where he is engulfed by a cloud and given the Law and the design for
     building God’s tabernacle. Like Jesus, Moses is transformed on the mountain in the
     presence of God. But there is a great difference between the two stories. Moses received
     the Law from God himself, whereas Jesus only sees Moses and Elijah while physically
     receiving nothing. The difference between the two stories serves to highlight Jesus’s
     superiority over Moses. Moses is transformed because of his confrontation with God’s
     glory, but Jesus is transformed by his own glory. The point is driven home for Morton
     Smith by the fact that Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, appear as Jesus’s
     subordinates. See “The Origin and History of the Transfiguration Story,”
Union Seminary Quarterly Review
36 (1980): 42. Elijah, too, went up a mountain and experienced the spirit of God
     passing over him. “The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence
     of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore
     the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not
     in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
     After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the
     fire came a gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:11–12). It should be noted that Smith thinks
     the transfiguration story to be “from the world of magic.” His thesis deals with his
     concept of Jesus as a magician “like other magicians.” Smith, therefore, believes
     the transfiguration to be some hypnotically induced mystical event that required silence;
     consequently, the spell was broken when Peter spoke. Mark’s attempt to use this story
     as a confirmation of Jesus’s messiahship is, for Smith, an error on the part of the
     evangelist. All of this demonstrates Mark’s notion that Jesus surpasses both characters
     in glory. This is of course not a new notion in New Testament Christology. Paul explicitly
     states Jesus’s superiority over Moses (Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 10:2), as does the
     writer of Hebrews (3:1–6). In other words, Mark is simply stating a familiar belief
     of the early Church that Jesus is the new Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18:15. See
     also Morna D. Hooker, “ ‘What Doest Thou Here, Elijah?’ A Look at St. Mark’s Account
     of the Transfiguration,”
The Glory of Christ in the New Testament
, ed. L. D. Hurst et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 59–70. Hooker sees great
     significance in the fact that Mark’s gospel presents Elijah first, stating that Moses
     was with him.
    The term “messianic secret” is a translation of the German word
Messiasgeheimnis
and is derived from William Wrede’s classic study,
The Messianic Secret
, trans. J.C.G. Greig (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Theories about the
     messianic secret can be divided into two schools of thought: those who believe the
     secret can be derived from the historical Jesus and those who consider it a creation
     of either the evangelist or the early Markan community. Wrede argued that the messianic
     secret is a product of the Markan community and aredaction element of the gospel itself. He claimed that the messianic secret stems
     from an attempt by Mark to reconcile a primitive Christian belief in firstcentury
     Jerusalem that regarded Jesus as becoming messiah only after the resurrection, with
     the view that Jesus was messiah throughout his life and ministry. The problem with
     Wrede’s theory is that there is nothing in Mark 16:1–8 (the original ending of the
     gospel of Mark) to suggest a transformation in the identity of Jesus other than