What Manner of Man Is This?

I've been doing my daily Bible reading from the King James Version, I guess partly because I feel like I'm finally smart enough to understand most the words. So today I read Mark 4, which at the end contains an account of Jesus stilling the storm. This surprising power from their master baffles the disciples, who then ask, "What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" 

I stopped at that "What manner of man is this," because those precise words were familiar to me, but not from the Bible. But let me explain why reading from the KJV was important to this insight. The Bible I carry with me to church is the NRSV, which says here, "Who then is this?"—a very close approximation of the Greek. It's the same in the ESV, and the NET Bible, which are the only ones I have checked. So until today I didn't realize that the same question was expressed in the most popular English version ever with the words "what manner of man is this?" 

When I read those words at the end of Mark 4, I immediately thought of a man locked in a castle in Transylvania, looking out his window to see his captor crawl out of a lower window and down the castle wall in lizard fashion. I'll let Jonathan Harker explain. 

What I saw was the Count’s head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall.

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear—in awful fear—and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of....

This is the end of Jonathan Harker's diary entry from May 12, in chapter 3 of the novel Dracula. It is at this moment that Harker realizes that the being who has confined him in the castle is no ordinary man. Well, there have been previous hints, but this crawling along the wall—though Harker himself goes on to accomplish the same feat, twice—provides the strongest clue. 

I don't know if Bram Stoker had the disciples' bewildered query in mind when he wrote of Harker's own shock, but I can imagine that the phrasing stuck in his head and he decided to reuse it in a very different context. Perhaps I am underselling how ordinary the expression is, particularly 130 years ago, but it does strike me as plausible that Harker's expression has been influenced somehow by the Bible reading that Stoker has experienced in church. 

Just about every October, I listen to this reading of Stoker's wonderful novel (I've listened to it 10-12 times), so there has been plenty of opportunity for phrasings from the novel to stick in my mind. You can hear the reading of the passage quoted above in this video, starting at about 20:30. This past October I gave a chapel speech on the novel (available at FaceBook). 

I wonder if this is the first time that someone reading the Bible has thought, that sounds like Dracula, rather than the reverse. 

The Stilling of the Storm and OT Resonances

Yesterday morning I sat in a Bible class that covered the stilling of the storm pericope from Mark 4:35–41, and it got me thinking about the OT echoes in the story. Of course, I was thinking about this because I recently read Richard Hays' Reading Backwards (as I've mentioned before). As I thought about the story of a person asleep during a raging storm at sea, the narrative of Jonah popped into my head as obviously relevant. I couldn't remember that Hays had mentioned this, and I can now confirm that Jonah does not appear in the index. Hays' discussion of this episode in Mark appears on pp. 22–23, where he emphasizes Psa 107:23–32 as the most prominent echo. In his n. 13 on p. 117, he also mentions Job 26:10–12; 38:8–11; Psa 65:7; 89:9; 104:5–9; 106:8–12; Isa 51:9–11. So, no mention of Jonah, though I wouldn't want to dispute that Hays has correctly identified the most prominent echoes. It does seem to me, however, that the Markan author could have had Jonah in mind--just in terms of the person with the power to end the storm instead sleeping through it, though Jonah's power over the wind and waves is of a much different nature than that of Jesus. Of course, the stories end very differently, but even that might support Hays' overall point (the demonstration of the divine identity of Jesus in the Gospels). In the Jonah story, God obviously controls the wind and waves; Mark shows that Jesus has this authority.

Maybe there's something there. 

And he was with the wild beasts...

Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him. (Mark 1:12-13)

Why does Mark give us this little detail about the wild beasts? Matthew (ch. 4) and Luke (ch. 4) both omit the phrase in their own accounts of the temptation narrative.

Is Mark emphasizing the loneliness of Jesus--"no one was around except for the animals"? Maybe.

I wonder if Mark has Isaiah 11 in mind. The vision in that chapter is one of universal peace, even between man and animals, at the time that the root from Jesse appears. Or even if not this precise chapter, maybe Mark is thinking of this theme of universal peace, which is a feature of other eschatological passages (Hos. 2:18). Jesus in the wilderness, even while he's being tempted by Satan, experiences a foretaste of the messianic peace that his own ministry will usher in.

Jesus Eats with Pharisees

On Sunday mornings I've been teaching a church class about the way the Gospels present the life of Jesus. Over the past couple weeks, we've been exploring his conflicts with the Jewish religious leadership during his ministry. I've made a couple of discoveries that I thought worthy of sharing--though, as I've said many times, I'm not an NT scholar and so these points are probably well-known among those who research such things.

As far as I can tell, the conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees et al. began, at least according to the Synoptics, with the healing of the paralytic carried by his four friends (Mark 2 / Matt. 9 / Luke 5). Actually, it wasn't the healing that caused problems so much as the offer of forgiveness of sins, which was the first thing Jesus said to this paralytic--"Son, your sins are forgiven" (Mark 2:5). As soon as they heard that, the scribes (Mark 2:6 / Matt. 9:3) and the Pharisees and teachers of the law (Luke 5:17) began to question how this man could claim to do something only God could do (Mark 2:7).

In all three Synoptics (I leave John aside for now) this story is presented as the initial point of conflict between Jesus and the Jewish religious leadership. Certainly in Mark, nothing happens before this that could remotely be classified as a controversy with religious leaders. But that's not too surprising since only one chapter of Mark comes before this episode. Matthew relates the story at the beginning of ch. 9, so there is much more potential that I'm overlooking something in the first eight chapters, but again I find no controversy. Luke puts the story half-way through ch. 5. Before this point, Luke does relate some trouble that Jesus experienced in a synagogue in Nazareth, and this very possibly involved some 'religious leaders', but in fact none are referenced, and Luke speaks only of 'all in the synagogue' as being filled with rage and wanting to kill Jesus (4:28-29). So, it seems that in all three Synoptics Jesus' offer of forgiveness to the paralytic is to be seen as the instigation of conflict between Jesus and the religious leadership.

[The episode of this paralytic is located at the home of Jesus in Capernaum, where a crowd of people--Pharisees and scribes among them--gathered to hear Jesus teach. One wonders what the Evangelists intend for us to think about why the scribes and Pharisees joined the others in Jesus' home. Were they at this time excited by the prospect of the kingdom of God coming through this one about whom such great things had already been reported as we read about in Mark 1?]

Now, I've been using this class at church as an excuse finally to read N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God (Fortress, 1996). In the ninth chapter of this book, Wright identifies four major symbols of Judaism--sabbath, food/purity, circumcision, and Temple--and he points out that three of these (not circumcision) featured prominently in controversies between Jesus and the Pharisees (p. 393). The first dispute--about the forgiveness extended to the paralytic--could be interpreted as a response to the symbol of the Temple, where forgiveness of sin was supposed to be offered by God (cf. Mark 2:7--where does God forgive sins?). The Sabbath controversy in Mark is especially prominent in two stories (2:23-28; 3:1-6), and the food/purity laws become the focal point in Mark 7:1-23.

Now, my second discovery. Luke alone among the Synoptics--as far as I can tell--relates three episodes in which Jesus has a meal with Pharisees. Luke 7:37-50 finds Jesus instructing Simon the Pharisee on the relationship between love and forgiveness after a 'sinful' woman wet Jesus' feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. At that time Jesus offered forgiveness to this woman, prompting those with him to ask, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" Thus, this particular meal parallels the controversy surrounding Jesus' offer of forgiveness to the paralytic, which could be interpreted in relation to the symbol of the Temple.

The second meal Jesus takes with a Pharisee in Luke is in 11:37-54. Jesus did not ceremonially wash before the meal, leading to a controversy over the relevance of these purity customs. Thus, this meal corresponds to the episode in Mark 7 (which finds no parallel in Luke).

The third meal is in Luke 14 on the Sabbath. Jesus heals a fellow and thus stirs trouble, corresponding to the other Sabbath controversies related in Mark 2-3.

So, the three meals that Jesus has with Pharisees in Luke each highlights a particular controversy Jesus had with the Pharisees in relation to three symbols of Judaism: Sabbath, Temple, and Purity. These controversies are related in Mark, Matthew, and sometimes Luke in other stories, but they are also concentrated in these meal accounts in Luke.