June 01, 2007
Mark 12.35-37
After that nobody ventured to put any more questions to him; and Jesus went on to say, as he taught in the Temple, "How can the teachers of the Law maintain that the Messiah is 'Son of David'? David himself said, when inspired by the Holy Spirit, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool." ' David himself calls him 'Lord'; how can he also be David's son?"
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3 comments:
Okay, was Jesus literally descended from David?
I don't see it as relevant: We know whose son David was, and he wasn't a king.
But if Jesus was in David's literal line, he didn't prove it to the priests.
And we do see it here as an element of contention, whether this was an actual report or a reflection of later arguments with non-Christian Jews.
The messianic expectations likely related to Herod and to Caesar NOT being David's son -- thus a claimant with a Davidic pedigree is essentially an attack on Empire.
It is interesting Jesus is here attacking the Davidic requirement. Implicitly -- -- if this is authentic (or rooted in authentic tradition) then he wasn't and the whole rigmarole gets added later.
In effect, Yeshua's rhetorical case, just because I'm not Davidic doesn't mean I'm not messianic, gets inverted, and becomes, he is Davidic he is messianic. Then we get to glue all the soteriology -- Jesus Saves-- stuff to the guy and voila! -- the Christ we all know and love and underwrites the Christian Empire.
The "salvation" that was supposed to come with the Messiah was precisely salvation from slavery--near literal slavery, not some vague jingoistic discontent--to pagan rulers like Herod (essentially, despite his PR efforts to get right with his Jewish subjects while pursuing an Hellanistic agenda) and Caesar.
I'd say the only plausible explanation (within their system of thought) for God's failure to repeat what he did with Moses in Egypt--was that this time Israel was too sinful to warrant such mighty deeds. This is where "salvation from sin" started reworking their concept of the Messiah's job.
Mainly, though, when the Christian movement started spreading through a Roman audience, a mystery-cult type sacrificed-savior from "sin" became the more popular idea. Not an improvement, to my mind, but a good sugar-coating for getting everyone dosed with the hidden medicine in the message.
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