Drew Williams

5/12/2016

REL 317

Throughout the gospel of Mark, the disciples are depicted time and time again not understanding Jesus’ message. The story continually relates the ignorance of his disciples about the true ideas surrounding the teachings of Jesus. In multiple parts of the Gospel, the disciples are told by Jesus that there are receiving special knowledge from Jesus about the Kingdom of Heaven. Even though they were receiving what Jesus called “secret” knowledge in the gospel, they still are depicted as not understanding. This lack of understanding seems ultimately contrary to how an author would want to portray the disciples. Compared to the other gospels, one can argue that the depiction of the disciples is significantly lower in the fact that they are shown as almost incompetent at times. The Gospel writer of Mark must have wanted to depict the disciples as unworthy in some ways of the message that Jesus was providing to them. However, another idea for this depiction of the disciples in Mark that is put forward by White on page 279 is that Mark wished to criticize the Jewish beliefs about what the messiah is. White suggests that the author of Mark uses the disciples as the embodiment of Jewish thought at the time about the Messiah to have Jesus criticize as not understanding the true nature of the messiah’s attributes. White states this when he writes, “The simple answer is that, because he believed Jesus to be the Messiah, Peter did not understand that Jesus must die.” (White 278). He states the point again when he writes, “It means that Peter, like Judas and most other characters in the story, assumes that the Messiah is a primarily Davidic royal figure who will bring about a new kingdom.” (White 278). Here White states that in Mark that the disciples are wrong for holding the mainstream Jewish belief about the Messiah and that the true nature of the Messiah is unalike what they previously thought.

The stories of Bartimaeus and the unnamed woman relate to mark’s depiction of Jesus by showing the attributes of true disciples and how the should act and believe. The Blind man Bartimaeus is used as an example of one of the attributes of a disciple because he had fervent faith in the Messiah-ship of Jesus and did not need any logical justification for his belief. He truly believed in Jesus’s identity and through this he was healed. Likewise the unnamed woman started to prepare Jesus for his burial by anointing him with oil. She was scolded by the other disciples but they were told that she has true faith because she already believes in the death and resurrection of Jesus, something the other disciples do not fully understand and accept. These two individuals can be seen as models for the attributes of true disciples. They embody the  thoughts and actions of what mark’s Jesus would refer to as true disciples. The Parable of the sower is important in understanding of where mark’s Jesus sees his disciples. After analyzing the early stories of the disciples and what mark’s Jesus sees as the attributes of true disciples, it would seem that the disciples of Jesus were analogous to the second placement of the seeds. The second placement of the seeds is on the rocky soil where the seeds are denied good soil and cannot take root and because of this grow, wither and blow away. The reason I see the disciples as analogous to these seeds is the fact that they are shown as having a shallow understanding of the messiah and do not have solid “Roots” in Jesus’ teachings. However, Bartimaeus and the unnamed woman are the seeds that fall on good soil and have strong roots in the understanding of the attributes of the Messiah and the teachings of Jesus altogether.
I would say that a true disciple to Mark is someone who like Bartimaeus and the unnamed woman have faith without need of justification or logical  reasoning. However, they have have a solid understanding  of the teachings of Jesus and the true attributes of the Messiah and his mission altogether. The twelve disciples may be analogous to the contemporary audience of Mark’s community who may have lacked faith and true understanding of Jesus’ message. They could have been still too entrenched in  the mainstream Jewish idea of the messiah and needed convincing and logical explanation of Jesus’ message and the Messiah in order to truly have faith, something Mark would seemingly condemn altogether.

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