William Wrede (1859-1906), in his groundbreaking 1901 study,
The Messianic Secret, proposed that the secrecy theme in the Gospel of Mark was not original to Jesus' ministry but rather a theological addition added by the writer of the Gospel. Wrede's argument was that the Gospel of Mark had to come up with a convincing explanation for why Jesus did not seem like a messiah during the course of his life. By emphasizing secrecy, Mark could simultaneously claim that Jesus was the messiah and that nobody knew it until after he had died, and that it was only through his resurrection that his messiahship was revealed.
A researcher here at Cambridge University told me this morning that rumor has it that Wrede changed his mind on this issue shortly before his death. Apparently, Wrede acknowledged and explained this change of mind with students at Tübingen, Germany. Is this really so? Can anybody confirm this?
4 comments:
Have a look in either the preface or the first chapter of Hengel's Der messianische Anspruch Jesu for the details.
Whoever this is - thanx! Probably a Cambridge Scholar...
Frederik
Aaaahhh - got it! Is it not highly significant that Wrede could make such a dramatic u-turn? Not a very good translation but here we go:
"I am more inclined than before to believe that Jesus considered himself chosen as the Messiah... William Wrede wrote on 2 January 1905 to Adolf von Harnack almost two years before his death on 23 November 1906" (Martin Hengel & Anna Maria Schwemer, Der messianische Anspruch Jesu und die Anfänge der Christologie, 2001, ix).
No worries. The letters have been published, quite recently.
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