A holy man, the King of the Jews, climbs up the Mount of Olives to escape from a plot to end his life instigated by somebody he loved. He has been betrayed by one of his closest advisers. He must find himself on the holy Mount in order to once again become righteous in the eyes of God. Taking a few of his most loyal companions with him, he must convert from the ways of the flesh and realize what he has to do to once again gain favor in the sight of the Lord, this includes suffering humiliation and doubt. If you think I’m talking about Jesus, you are wrong. I am in fact referring to David.
In 2 Samuel, David has been usurped by his son Absalom who reigns supreme over Jerusalem and has anchored a plot to kill his father. Fleeing from those who would kill him, David treks to the Mount of Olives to pray to God. He takes some of his most loyal companions with him, realizing that his chief advisor, Ahithophel, has betrayed him and sides with his son, now his enemy. David sends three of his servants to Absalom in Jerusalem to offer fictional advice to stall his plot and to destroy his reign. Along the way to the summit he is challenged by obstacles that test his faith. Shimei pelts David with stones. One of David’s men, Abishai, offers to cut off Shimei’s head, but David stays his hand acknowledging that it is God’s will that Shimei must ridicule him. When Hushai, one of the three David sends back to Jerusalem, arrives, he offers counsel to Absalom. Upon David’s friend besting Ahithophel’s advice, Ahithophel realizes that Absalom’s rule is not according to the will of God. Ahithophel then takes his own life by hanging from a tree. Absalom, Israel’s false king, also dies a death from hanging by a tree and is pierced by spears of soldiers while still partly alive. David, hearing the news is saddened and mourns the loss of his son, even as an enemy. But his kingdom is now his again, through the work of his God and through his conversion and journey up the Mount of Olives.
What does this have to do with my dialog with James? Well, recently James has posted up on his blog one of the events in the Gospel of Mark he deems to be historical (or, as he puts it, contains a “historical core”). The event in question is Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives. James makes a common error that I have called to light on numerous occasions (see my article here for example), that being the fragmentation of the text as a whole. What James does is single out a few verses from the whole chapter (e.g. Mark 14:35-36). By doing this, James makes it nearly impossible for one to know the context, and is in fact removing the context to force a case for historicity. He cites only the words of Jesus in Gethsemane, without realizing their Psalmic nature, and deems them historical on the following grounds:
I wonder how many modern readers actually register the significance of this from the perspective of later Christianity. By Paul's time, the church had already made a virtue out of a necessity, making sense of the otherwise unintelligible fact of the crucifixion by claiming that it was an essential act for the salvation of humankind. In the story in Mark, Jesus is depicted as praying for that not to happen.
While the first part may be true (i.e. that by Paul’s time, the church—really we can only say Paul since he is the only witness we have from the period—had made the crucifixion and resurrection a necessity), it is only true because the belief in a righteous savior who would have to be killed by a conquering nation for the salvation of mankind had been a belief established hundreds of years before the time of Paul, by the authors of the book of Isaiah.
The second part of the statement—that Jesus is praying for the crucifixion not to happen—is really a misinterpretation of the whole chapter. James is of the mindset that Mark is recounting a historical core to this story, primarily because this event is embarrassing. It’s an embarrassment, per James, because it would negate the whole importance of the crucifixion and the salvation of mankind (according to the “Christians” of Mark’s time) yet it is included in the story. The conclusion James has apparently come to as a result of this analysis is that the only reason this could have been included in the Gospels is if this were a bonafide memory of a historical Jesus (and therefore making it important to include). This would be a fine explanation if it weren’t completely based upon a misinterpretation of the chapter and a very damning assumption.
What is really happening in this scene? The whole of the chapter tells a tale familiar to any Jew who would have read it. Judas (the Gospel’s Ahithophel and Absalom) betrays Jesus for thirty silver pieces to the Sanhedrin who seek to kill Jesus silently. Jesus breaks bread with the disciples (which comes right out of 1 Corinthians 15) and notes that somebody has betrayed him. He now heads to the Mount of Olives, bringing with him three of his closest companions and has them keep watch. Jesus then goes off to pray alone, speaking from the words of David’s psalm (this allusion is made clear to us at Mark 14:26, “And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives”). Jesus must be tempted as David was tempted. He makes this clear when he talks to the three who have fallen asleep (another Paulism; but originally from Isaiah 52). “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mark 14:37-38) Jesus prays three times (a common Markan theme; using triadic symbolism) reciting the same words in the same way and by having Jesus speak these words, the author of Mark alludes his full-knowing reader to the story of David and Absalom discussed above.
It is the will of God that Jesus is betrayed just as it was the will of God that David was betrayed, and both must convert back to the way of the Lord in order to fulfill their destinies. This conversion happens on the Mount of Olives for both David and Jesus. Jesus comes away a third time and has found his path again. “The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Awaken, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand." (Mark 14:41-42) That Jesus must die and be restored to the glory of the father is something that has to happen. Just as Jesus’ trek up Gethsemane must happen, because Jesus must “let the Scriptures be fulfilled.” (Mark 14: 49) The words of Jesus are not of a historical memory but of an interpretation of Psalm 116:
What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,…Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, I am your servant; (Psalm 116:10-15)
I cannot find a reason why James’ point would hold ground here. The question of the use of the Aramaic “Abba” in this context is because Jesus must call God by his name, and his name is Father. It may benefit James to realize that Mark is taking this Aramaic phrase directly from Paul, who in turn is also interpreting scripture. “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15) and “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:6-7) In Romans it is not Jesus who is reciting these words, but those who have converted through the spirit. Paul never suggests or implies these words come from Jesus anywhere. They come from God, through the spirit. In Galatians, Paul is happy to explain what he means by adoption through the spirit while in the process making my case for a nonhistorical Jesus (savior) much clearer. (See my article here for more details about Galatians 4 and Paul’s meaning)
Paul uses ‘Abba’ because he is referencing the Jewish God. He is talking to Jews (albeit in Greek), and in recalling the passage in Malachi, “Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal. 2:10), Paul is making our adoption under God explicit. There is no need to assume anything special beyond this, no need to play into the use of Aramaic over Greek. The very importance that James applies to these passages does not come from a historical core to the nonhistorical Gospel account, but from Paul and Mark, who are getting it from the Jewish scripture.
Jesus is to be tested as David was, which is why Mark has Jesus go up to the Mount of Olives, in mortal fear, and once more find his path (the straight path, i.e. god’s path, yashar, the root for the eponymous name Israel). The whole of the scene is modeled from 2 Samuel, while much of the theology of the scene comes from Paul. The disciples “sleep” and are “awakened” by Jesus, but when Jesus departs, failing to recognize the importance of the tests, fall back asleep, succumbing to the flesh. Jesus commands the disciples to “wake up” because it is time for him to be delivered as the Son of Man, the salvation from God, which almost comes right from Paul’s words verbatim, “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” (Romans 13:11) This “awake/spirit” and “asleep/flesh” analogy comes from Paul. (cf. 1 Cor. 15:34) This language did not come about ex nihilo, but from the scriptures that Paul is interpreting. Indeed, the very chapters in Isaiah that Paul builds his savior (Jesus) from uses this very language.
Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion!...How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news (Gospel), who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:1, 7)
The foundation of James’ example depends primarily on his assumption that Jesus’ death happened and was an embarrassment. This position is held as if they were a priori, but this is not the case. James must remember he is trying to prove this position, thus he needs to stop assuming the case in point when coming to conclusions such as this, which ultimately can be shown to reflect plot design by the author using scripture and don’t necessarily stem from a historical memory or tradition. James would have to prove they do in fact stem from these traditions by presenting a solid case for it; this means he cannot simply dust himself off from my interpretations, but rather he must show how they are less probable interpretations by using actual historical methodology. And although James may claim that those of us who suspect that these stories are formed from imaginations rather than history have failed “to understand what was going on in the development of early Christianity,” what has been shown here is James’ failure to understand how ancient Jewish authors (who never called themselves Christians, but rather, Christians called them Christians) used scripture as a model to create new stories and fictions. One must then ask themselves, “who is really failing to understand early Christianity here?”
Concerning James’ use of the Criterion of Embarrassment, for James to continuously ignore the explicit use of scripture and the fact that these early “Christians” did not seem to mind converting into “Christianity” he is now showing us his own failure to understand “what has happened.” While making the baseless (and contradictory) assumption that the Jews would have found this repulsive and embarrassing may seem compelling and accurate, this glosses over the reality of the past. It’s a neglectful assumption, because it fails to understand the reality of the early “Christian” movement—people did in fact see a crucified savior as the messiah (Some Jewish sects were in fact waiting for the death of a righteous individual to fill the role of Isaiah’s Son of Man), regardless of what the status quo of the elite society would have felt. As Dr. Richard Carrier aptly points out, it was embarrassing for somebody to castrate themselves willingly, but despite how much of an abomination it was to the Roman elite, there was a rather large following of Roman citizens who willingly did castrate themselves for the cult of Attis (the Eunuch). So whether or not James is embarrassed by the supposed physical death of his messiah is truly irrelevant. What matters is what the early Christians (converts) said about it and how they felt about it. The very fact that they converted into it points away from James’ position that the embarrassment of Jesus’ actions makes them true. It’s not grounded in any sound reason. (See my previous response to James on this very subject here)
This brings us around full circle. Is the prayer at Gethsemane a historical incident? No. It is exactly what the rest of the Gospel is; it is interpreted scripture and the reinvention of Jewish tradition.
