Being and Knowing in Messianic Space

von Carolsfeld, woodcut for "Bibel der Bildern" (Image via Wikipedia)
von Carolsfeld, Woodcut for "Bibel der Bildern" (Image via Wikipedia)

The story of Jesus’ raising Jairus’s daughter appears in all three synoptics (Matt 9:18–19, 23–26; Mark 5:21–24, 35–43; Luke 8:41–42, 49–56), but only Mark and Luke report a closing admonition about the event’s further dissemination (Mark 5:43; Luke 8:56). In Luke 8:56, Jesus instruction focuses on the fact that the witnesses, perhaps especially the parents, should not themselves engage in describing what happened. By contrast, in Mark 5:43, Jesus warns those around him ἵνα μηδεὶς γνοῖ τοῦτο (so that no one would know this*).

Certainly, μηδείς (no one) does not have an absolute sense here so that Jesus is envisioning that even those who were present would forget what had happened. Such would hardly make sense in the narrative; rather, the intention seems to be that no one else besides those who were present at the event should know what had happened. Nevertheless, Mark’s crowd has a very clear knowledge that Jairus’s daughter was, in fact, dead (Mark 5:38–40a; France, Mark, 239; Lane, Mark, 196–97; cf. Matt 9:23–24Luke 8:52–53). Therefore, that the girl had been restored to life could scarcely be avoided as a natural conclusion once the crowd became aware that the girl was alive (Brower, “Who Then Is This?” EvQ 81.4 [2009]: 301; France, Mark, 240; Goodacre, “Messianic Secret”; Lane, Mark, 198–199; cf. Jerome, Epist., 108.24 [NPNF2 6:208–9]; Jerome, Jov., 2.17 [NPNF2 6:401]; Theodoret of Cyr, Dial., 2 [NPNF2 3:198]). Consequently, in Mark’s ἵνα μηδεὶς γνοῖ τοῦτο (Mark 5:43; so that no one would know this), τοῦτο (this) seems to focus on how the girl was restored to life (Lane, Mark, 199n77).

Yet, those who are intended not to possess this knowledge are not simply “other people.” They are those who are outside (Mark 5:40). To be sure, they are outside the physical space ὅπου ἦν τὸ παιδίον (Mark 5:40; where the child was), but they are also outside the messianic space within which Jesus has acted and restored the girl to life (Lane, Mark, 197–98; cf. Brower, “Who Then Is This?” 302–3). Even in the interposed healing of the woman with the issue of blood, the woman recognizes that her own healing came about when she touched Jesus’ clothing in the midst of the crowd (Mark 5:29), but those around are not parties the miracle itself (Mark 5:28, 30–32; France, Mark, 237–38; Lane, Mark, 192–93; cf. Brower, “Who Then Is This?” 304). Instead, they have the woman’s testimony of healing from what was probably, on this occasion, a publicly unnoticed condition, and they have Jesus’ interaction with her by which to know what has happened (Mark 5:29–34; cf. Brower, “Who Then Is This?” 303–4; Bruce, “Gospels,” 375; France, Mark, 236–37; Lane, Mark, 191–92). What or how much the crowd or different parts of it (e.g., the disciples) might have recognized regarding Jesus from this interchange isn’t stated in this case. But, the division between “insiders” and “outsiders” becomes even sharper as the narrative’s setting transitions into the physical context of Jairus’s home. Certainly in metaphoric, but perhaps also in somewhat parabolic fashion (cf. Mark 4:11; Lane, Mark, 196–97), Jesus describes the girl as “sleeping” to those who mock and whom he shuts outside (Mark 5:39–40). In Mark, a key component of discipleship is “being with” Jesus (cf. Mark 3:14; 4:11), and to varying degrees, “being with” opens the door to the “inside” of “knowing as” (e.g., Mark 4:11; 5:37, 43; 8:27–30; cf. Ladd, Theology, 179–80). Thus, in this case, being with Jesus allows those in the place where the child was to recognize him as the one who can dispel even another’s death as easily as sleep (Brower, “Who Then Is This?” 301–2, 304–5; cf. Bruce, “Gospels,” 376; France, Mark, 239; Lane, Mark, 199; Wright, Jesus, 191–97).


  • Mark’s τοῦτο (this) is presumably equivalent to Luke’s τὸ γεγονός (Luke 8:56; what had happened).

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6 responses to “Being and Knowing in Messianic Space”

  1. Kirk Lowery Avatar

    I really enjoy these exegetical postings. However, I find the in-line citation style to be distracting, making the text hard to read. Please consider using footnotes instead.

    Thanks!

    1. David Stark Avatar

      Thanks for the comment, Kirk. I’ve never been a fan of parenthetical citations either. Their main value here is admittedly simply that they are easier to compose in WordPress. Zotero needs a WordPress plugin like Zemanta. 😉 Maybe the next post, though, I’ll try writing in LibreOffice and then see how copying and pasting it over goes. All else being equal, my preference would be for endnotes here too.

      Thanks, again.

      1. Kirk Lowery Avatar

        I don’t know what kind of control you have over your WordPress blog, but I use the plugin “FD Footnotes” http://flagrantdisregard.com/footnotes-plugin/.

        It’s simple to use:

        Some text [1. Which must be documented] and then move right along.

        1. David Stark Avatar

          Well, now I’m drooling a bit over such a nice solution, but plugins aren’t available for WordPress.com hosted blogs :-(—http://en.support.wordpress.com/plugins/.

  2. Kirk Lowery Avatar

    I was afraid of that. Well, you could do it manually: insert a superscript, and then put the citation at the end of the post. 😮

    No way you could host your own blog?

  3. David Stark Avatar

    I actually tried the manual route a while back but dismissed it because it seemed to be too time consuming for the value that it added to a given post. Similarly, I wouldn’t be opposed to hosting the site elsewhere and using WordPress.org. That might, in fact, be preferable all things being equal, but alternative hosting options that I’ve found just haven’t yet seemed to involve a sufficient ROI. :-/

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