British New Testament Society

Mark 7:1-23 provides a largely accurate representation of an event in the life of the historical Jesus and a very accurate representation of Jewish legal practices. It is best understood as a rejection of the transmission of impurity from hands to the eater via food and liquid, the way in which impurity was transmitted if hands were not washed according to Jewish sources. Moreover, it is also possible that Mark 7:19 is accurately summarising the words of Jesus but not as someone who rejected the biblical food laws but as a Jew who declared clean all food permitted to eat in the Torah. Echoes of this kind of view are found right across the synoptic tradition and it was a crucial part of the historical Jesus' ministry to people such as the 'sinners'.

This paper argues that scholarship has been seriously remiss in rejecting the possibility that Jesus thought of himself as a (high) priest. The impetus for a re-evaluation of this axiom comes from: (1) a fresh examination of the theology of high priesthood in biblical and post-biblical literature; (2) the realisation that the (high) priesthood has a central role in the political theologies of all Second Temple Judaisms and, therefore, that the New Testament guild's preoccupation with Davidic/Royal messianism has blinded us to the unavoidably priestly reality of Jesus' messianic and eschatological options; and (3) my working hypothesis (discussed at an earlier BNTC) that the Son of Man of Jewish expectation is a priestly figure.

With respect to (2), the absence of a royal messianism in Jesus' Jewish world reflects the fact that the high priest was a figure of greater importance for the competing visions of Israel's ideal polity. Jews could do without a king, as was the case for the Mosaic dispensation, but not a high priest. Whether with or without a royal messiah, eschatological hopes focused on the temple and, where necessary, the restoration of the ideal priest to the office, under which any king would have to serve. In this context Jesus must have had a view of the true priesthood and his relationship to it. His use of Psalm 110 (and Daniel 7:13) suggests he thought that he was himself the true eschatological high priest and king.

With these general considerations in hand, I offer as a case study for Jesus' priestly consciousness an examination of Mark 1-6. Here, I argue that priestly categories dominate Mark's presentation of Jesus. Jesus is the Holy One of God (1:24); an epithet peculiar to Aaron (Psalm 106:16; Num 16:7). Jesus heals through a contagious holiness those who otherwise communicate impurity to any who touch them (a leper, a zaba, and bearers of corpse impurity). For Jesus' power to overcome impurity and bring restoration to a state of purity the OT provides a clear precedent in the ontology of priesthood for whom contagious purity is a manifestation of their embodiment of divine presence (Ezek 42:14; 44:19; Exod 30:29, cf. Wisdom of Solomon 18:20-25). Jesus the Son of Man mediates forgiveness of sins (Mark 2:1-12) in a way proper to the high priest who, in Exod 28:38 is said to 'bear', 'remove', or 'forgive' sins (cf. Lev 10:17). In Mark 2:23-28 as the true eschatological high priest - the Son of Man - Jesus brings to a Galilean cornfield the transcendence of space and time proper to the temple, thus legitimising his disciple's 'work' on the Sabbath.

Finally, it is suggested that this all explains what it means that the kingdom of God has drawn near (Mark 1:15) to the towns and villages of Galilee. Where, in the past, the onus has been on God's people to draw near to God in his palace (the temple sanctuary) in Jerusalem, God, in Jesus' priestly ministry, is now taking the initiative in bringing his presence outside of the kingdom-as-temple to the inhabitants of the land.

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Jesus and the High Priest

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Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism

The use of criteria in historical Jesus research gives the enterprise an appearance of scientific objectivity that may be deceptive. A particular case in point is the use of multiple attestation to establish the near certainty that the historical Jesus was a healer and exorcist (as, for example, J.P. Meier argues). Logically, there is little reason why multiple attestation should indicate historical reliability, and there may not be as many useful independent sources for Jesus' miracles as Meier supposes. Jesus may well have been a healer and exorcist, but if so, this needs to be established on other grounds.