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Chapter 5 A Temporary Presence in God’s Providence If Jesus saw his death as a possibility and could see his death in connection to the arrival of the Final Ordeal, the great tribulation, the next step in our study is to determine if his thoughts moved beyond possibility to probability. Did Jesus, in other words, not only comprehend that the eschatological coursing of time could put his life in jeopardy, but also that it would almost inevitably make his death a likelihood? Was this coursing of history part of God’s plan for his life? Was his death a way for him to absorb the blows of that Final Ordeal? A scattering of Jesus traditions raises these issues in one form or another, and evidently from both earlier and later parts of his life. While these texts never broach the issue of a theory of atonement, they each do suggest that Jesus thought his death would be premature. We examine then those texts that, if authentic, speak to Jesus’ death as a part of God’s plan for Israel’s history. A TEMPORARY PRESENCE MARK 2:19-20 In a tradition found in all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus defends his and his followers ’ practice of not fasting and, in doing so, suggests that he might not be around for a normal life span (Mark 2:18-22; par. Matt 9:14-17; Luke 5:33-39): 18Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” 19Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. 121 122 Jesus and His Death 21“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. 18And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.” All scholars are agreed that Mark 2:18-22 is an expanded tradition, but most also argue that there is very little evidence of Markan redaction;1 instead, the tradition has grown into the present unit prior to Mark. Many would argue that Mark 2:18-19a and 2:21-22 were the original unit, with 2:19b-20 added later, but prior to Mark.2 What matters for our study is whether or not the traditions are plausibly authentic. Norman Perrin pounded in the stake in front of the little pond of this pericope and pinned to it the sign “No Fishing” (read: inauthentic), but soon thereafter a big group of scholars (the Jesus Seminar) ignored his sign, came upon the pond, tossed in some lines, and found fish (read: authentic).3 The ground for concluding that 2:19a and 2:19b are authentic is that Jesus’ disciples did not fast, while the disciples of other Jewish leaders at the time did fast. The logion simply expresses this social fact. It is reasonable to argue that, if Jesus and his disciples did not follow customary fasting practices,4 he offered some sort of defense.5 Thus, that defense can be seen in 2:19a-b: Jesus is with them, it is time to celebrate (cf. Q 7:31-35); the kingdom is here, but the days are coming when it won’t be appropriate to fast. According to this same branch of scholarship, Mark 2:20 makes explicit in a parenthetical aside that fasting would resume when Jesus died (cf. also Acts 13:2-3; 14:23; Matt 6:16-18). But, that verse according to most is a later piece 1 J. Gnilka finds Markan redaction only in Mark 2:18a and “the new from the old” phrase of 2:21 (Markus, 1:111–13), while E.J. Pryke finds Markan redaction only in “and the Pharisees were fasting ” as well as in the “and the disciples of the Pharisees” phrase in 2:18 (Redactional Style in the Marcan Gospel [SNTSMS 33; London: Cambridge University Press, 1978], 154). 2 On this, cf. the studies of R. Pesch...

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