Quotations of Jewish Scripture - The Gospel of Mark

This continues a survey of quotations of Jewish Scripture in different gospels, which to this point has covered some collections of alternative gospels. We have now come to the first survey of a document that is recognized by the Christian church as a reliable record of Jesus' life: the Gospel of Mark.

A Note On Methods (Skip to the next heading if you're not interested in the technical stuff)

And here, for the first time, it becomes important to note: there are many cases of references or allusions which are not being included in this analysis, because this analysis is focused specifically on quotations. This was less of an issue in the previous documents that we surveyed since there were relatively few references to the Jewish scriptures. But as we come to the Gospel of Mark it becomes necessary to clarify how to distinguish a quote from other kinds of reference. One way that I’m using to distinguish other references from quotations is by the fact that a quote repeats the original material, where another type of reference may not repeat the original material so much as mention it. An example is that Moses allowed a man to divorce his wife: here we can find a reference to Jewish Scripture but it would be overstating the case to call it a quotation. Another situation that I do not count as a quotation here is finding such a short set of words that it’s not clear whether it’s intending to repeat the original material or reference it. The identification of something as a quotation is reserved for passages where there’s not a serious doubt: where not only is there a reference to earlier Scripture but also there are more than a few words involved or it was introduced in the document as a quotation (e.g. “it is written”).

Quotations of Jewish Scripture in the Gospel of Mark

1. .. as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

“I will send my messenger ahead of you,
    who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
    make straight paths for him.’”

 2. “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
    and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

3. He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’

4. For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’

5.  “‘the worms that eat them do not die,
    and the fire is not quenched.’

6. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”

7. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

8. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

9. Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture:

“‘The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

10. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

11. “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

12. While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked, “Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared:

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
    “Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
    under your feet.”’

13. “You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written:

“‘I will strike the shepherd,
    and the sheep will be scattered.’

14. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

 

Analysis

In the very first quotation in Mark, we see something we hadn't seen in the documents surveyed previously: the quote is attributed to a particular prophet, Isaiah. While the second part of the quote is from Isaiah, the first part is from Malachi, so the attribution doesn't completely satisfy. Despite the mixed-source quote with attribution for only part of it, it’s the most precise we’ve seen yet: it's the first instance we’ve seen of the author trying to be specific about the previous author. While that was the first instance, as we continue in the Gospel of Mark we see that it's not too unusual here, where we have various quotes attributed to Isaiah, Moses (or the Book of Moses), and David. 

Most quotes of Jewish Scripture are included as having been spoken by Jesus. We also see some independent application by the author of the gospel. There is an instance of Jewish Scripture by some of the people in the crowd during Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem. For the most common case -- instances where Jesus quotes the Jewish Scripture -- some of these uses of Scripture are embedded in conversations which revolve around the right understanding or application of Jewish Scripture. The other people in the narrative are shown to have their own knowledge of or interest in Jewish Scripture.  

Quotations of Jewish Scripture are more plentiful here than was typical in the alternative gospels. Fourteen passages in Mark contain quotes of Jewish Scripture, compared to a combined total of seven in the previous eight documents surveyed.

Quotations of Jewish Scripture - Non-Canonical Gospels, Other than Gnostic Gospels

This continues a survey of non-canonical gospels and their quotations of Jewish Scripture. Here we review the quotations of Jewish Scripture in four non-canonical gospels that are not generally classified as Gnostic: the Gospel of the Savior, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Proto-Evangelium of James, and the Gospel of Peter.

Again, people who have read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are familiar with how conscious the writers could be -- and how conscious the people within their narratives could be -- of the background of Jewish Scripture that shaped Jewish culture and informed Jewish thought. Do the authors and the people within the alternative gospels share the same culture and worldview?

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is mentioned only because it belongs to the collection of documents being reviewed, but does not contain any quotations of Jewish Scripture. The remaining three documents under consideration contain these quotations: 

Gospel of the Savior:

For it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” 

Proto-Evangelium of James

They said to him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written." And he let them go.

Gospel of Peter:

For it is written in the Law, "The sun must not set upon one who has been executed.'"

For it is written that, "The sun should not set upon him that hath been executed."

And the Lord cried out aloud saying, "My power, my power, you have forsaken me."

The Proto-Evangelium of James is a borderline case because it doesn't quite quote the verse that it references, but because this is a survey and since it's close enough to a quotation to inform the question of quotations, I'm including it for present purposes.

Here are some points of interest in these documents compared to the Gnostic gospels. In these non-Gnostic alternative gospels we see:

• Awareness of, and reference to, the written Scriptures as such: the phrase "it is written" occurs in all three of the documents that reference the Jewish Scriptures. This is in contrast to the Gnostic documents, where there was no clear indication that the authors were aware they were quoting Jewish Scripture.
• Other people besides Jesus also have an interest in Jewish Scriptures, whether out of adherence to the Law or interest in a prophecy. While two of these quotations are presented as spoken by Jesus (the first and last listed above), the others are not, meaning that we have more people than just Jesus with an interest in the Jewish Scripture. Again, this is in contrast to the Gnostic documents, where all the quotations of Scripture were preserved only in sayings of Jesus. 
• There is no sign of the authors independently applying Scripture quotations. This is like the Gnostic documents, where the interest in Jewish Scripture comes completely from the people inside the narrative, and that interest does not seem to be shared by the authors.

The Proto-Evangelium of James

The Proto-Evangelium of James is the only document here that does have quotations of Scripture but has none through a quotation from by Jesus. That's easily enough understood when we keep in mind that the Proto-Evangelium of James does not quote any words from Jesus, as it focuses mainly on the time before Jesus' birth.

The Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Peter calls attention to itself in its handling of quotes: first that it has three quotes (more than the rest of the pack combined), and second that there are sourcing or translation problems with all three. One of the quotes, given twice, is that the sun should not set on someone who has been executed. While that was probably the effective practice, that's not a direct quote from the Jewish Scripture that I can find. The closest that I have yet found is

Deuteronomy 21:23  His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) so that your land is not defiled, which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance.

In case that wasn't the intended reference, I also looked at some applications of burials after an execution in the book of Joshua, and in these cases there is an explicit reference to the sun as seen in the Gospel of Peter:

Joshua 8:29  And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcass down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raise on it a great heap of stones, that remains to this day. 

Joshua 10:27  And it came to pass at the time of the going down of the sun, that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast them into the cave wherein they had been hid, and laid great stones in the cave's mouth, which remain until this very day.

So two of the quotes mentioned in the Gospel of Peter may not be quotes of Jewish Scripture, even though they are introduced with "it is written". One more thing deserves mention at this point: the New Testament gospels don't point out that it was Jewish practice to bury an executed person on the day of death. There's some reference in the New Testament gospels to making sure that Jesus' death occurs before the feast, but the Gospel of Peter may show some sign of a question coming up about why the burial was so prompt, coming from the perspective of a culture that was not familiar with Jewish execution-and-burial customs. The first of these quotations is interestingly sourced to Herod, who would have been familiar with Jewish customs for a burial after an execution.

Also in the Gospel of Peter, we have the cry from the cross. It's unclear whether the author of the Gospel of Peter was aware that it was a quotation. It seems less likely when we consider how badly mistranslated it is ("My power, my power, you have forsaken me" as opposed to "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?").

Summary

This initial survey suggests that the author of the Gospel of Peter was aware that Jesus was executed in a time and place and culture where people were familiar with the Jewish Scripture and ordered their lives according to it, but the author himself does not seem to have been as familiar as someone who fully shared that time and place and culture.


The Proto-Evangelium of James and the Gospel of the Savior show awareness of Jewish Scripture but, at one quote each, again we have too small a sample to draw any more general assessment from that alone. When we expand the study later into other areas of Jewish culture, we'll have more resources to review.