Read an Excerpt
The Existential Jesus
By John Carroll Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Copyright © 2007 John Carroll
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-921753-89-3
CHAPTER 1
THE SOWER
When he appeared, as Mark tells it, in his early or middle thirties, he came out of nowhere, with no past — except for a single reference to Nazareth in Galilee, his hometown. There is no birth narrative. There is no Virgin Mary, mangers, shepherds by night, or three wise men from the east. In this, the first story written about his life, he has no childhood. The only mention of kin is an early, dismissive refusal by him to see any of them — 'Who is my mother or my brothers?' No trade is noted, or education. He is what will become, in the culture of the West, the mysterious stranger. The implication is that his earlier life, about which we are told nothing, was inconsequential. Whether it was ordinary, wayward, or wasted, it did not contribute to who he is. His presence will be known, for as long as he remains, through his mission, which starts now.
Yet Mark's opening words are about birth or, rather, genesis: In the beginning was the Story.
These first words of Mark read tersely in the original Greek: Arche tou euaggeliou. John, whom I am taking to be the great interpreter of Mark, provides his midrash: En arche en ho logos — 'In the beginning was the word.' Mark's third word, euaggelion, translates as good message or good tidings, travelling into Old English as godspel or gospel. Hence the attributed title, The Gospel of Mark. John adapts euaggelion into logos, which is usually translated as 'word', but which might equally be rendered 'story'. As we shall see, John means both. By the end of Mark's narrative it will be apparent that the good message is the story itself, as told here.
The Story is what was, in the beginning. It is the source of all things that are. Creationis being recast — in contrast and in opposition to Genesis in the Old Testament, which has God in the beginning creating all things. This is a tactical opening — to supersede the Hebrew Bible. The implication is clear: that Bible got it wrong. Forget the past! Scrap the holy texts! This Story is a new start. It abolishes the old.
God is replaced by the man whose Story is about to be told. Mark opens by setting up the answer to the first of the big questions, 'Where do I come from?' John, in his opening chapter, will likewise make it clear that Jesus replaces God.
It was around the year 30, in a remote province of the Roman Empire during the reign of Tiberius. Suddenly he was there, by the river Jordan:
And he was baptised in the river, by the preacher from the deserts, John, who came clothed in camel's hair bound with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. John, given to the preacher-way of lecturing, 'Sinners repent, or be damned!' now said, 'One is coming after me, greater than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to bend down and untie. I baptise with water, but he will baptise with sacred pneuma.'
As he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens split open and pneuma descended upon him, like a dove. A voice came from above, 'You are my beloved son in whom I delight.'
Immediately, the pneuma drives him into the wilderness — for forty days. There among the wild beasts he was tempted by Satan, and the angels served him.
From the outset, he is on his own. The solitariness is stark. Many are around, but he alone sees the heavens part. He alone senses the pneuma descending over him — it, rather than the water, is the medium of his baptism. He is bathed in pneuma — his first companion. He alone hears the voice.
'Sacred pneuma' is traditionally translated from the Greek — pneuma hagion — as 'Holy Spirit' or 'Holy Ghost'. In the original Greek it is not capitalised. The church tendency to conceptualise it as an entity loses the pneuma associations with wind, breath, and spirit — its range of Greek meanings. I shall leave 'pneuma' untranslated throughout.
Pneuma is 'the wind that bloweth where it wills, and thou hearest its sound, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth'. This is how John, taking Mark's cue, will timelessly project it. It is the charged wind, the cosmic breath, the driving spectral force. It is also the directing power that drives the stranger into the wilderness. And it manifests itself in unsound forms within deranged individuals. John will refer to 'pneuma the god'.4
Propelled by his ethereal companion, he strays through the desert, where nothing grows. It is the territory of John the Baptist, the wild man who watered his head, outside the bounds of human law and community. Is he lost? Is he resisting the call to become whoever he is, to do whatever is demanded on the path he does not yet foresee? Maybe, like any man, he fears the enormity of what is to follow, that even he might not be up to it. He may be wishing for an ordinary life; or at least some power, given his special being, over worldly affairs.
He is tempted, but we are not told by what — apart from Satan. He enters into some state of darkness — perhaps mania or madness. Is he tempted by power or desire, the realm of sin and damnation that the wild man preaches against? If so, is he tempted to counter his own human instincts by becoming the preacher, and speaking from out of the source of his own weakness? Then, at least, he would know where he was going. Meanwhile, benevolent higher powers — angels — look after him.
Forty is the number of punishment. Forty days he foundered in the void.
Then he regained his balance. To summarise Mark, he returned to Galilee to begin — John the Baptist had just been imprisoned. At first he preached, like the preacher, as if feeling his way, not quite knowing how or where. He also went to the temple where he taught, for he discovered he was a teacher. In fact, teacher will quickly become his major role. Drawing many to him, he spoke with an inner presence, not like the others repeating doctrine out of books.
In these early days he discovered he had special powers. When he chose, he could miraculously heal the sick. For a brief interlude he did so — first a man convulsed with unsound pneuma, then a leper, a quadriplegic, and a man with a withered hand. His reputation spread. Masses flocked to him, in spite of the fact that he had taken to the road. They flocked from Galilee; from Judea; from the coastal towns; from beyond the Jordan; and even from Jerusalem, a hundred and fifty kilometres away. He had begun a ceaseless journeying — at the pressured, impatient pace that would mark his short time.
Still unsure himself about how to proceed, unclear about his mission and who he is, he goes up the mountain. When he comes down, he tries out a new tactic — to teach through parables:
He began to teach again, by the sea. Because of the size of the crowd he got into a boat, to sit in the sea, with the crowd nearby on the land. He taught them many things in parables.
'Listen,' he said to them, 'See! The sower went out to sow. Some seed fell by the road and birds ate it. Some fell on stony ground, and immediately it sprang up, for there was no depth of earth, but the rising sun scorched it, and because it had no root it withered. Some fell among thorns where it was choked. But other seed fell on good earth and it thrived. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!'
When he was alone later, those around him, including the twelve, asked him about the parable. He said, 'To you, it has been given to know the mystery of the divine kingdom. But to those outside all things are created in parables, so that [and he continued by quoting Isaiah]
'Seeing they may see and not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not understand; lest they turn and their sins be forgiven them.'
Then he questioned them, 'Do you not know this parable? If not, how will you know all parables?'
The only part of this episode that is not puzzling is the parable itself — of the sower. The parable is clearly elaborated while everything that surrounds it is cryptically condensed. He has engineered an extravagantly vivid physical setting. He sits by himself, on a boat, separated by water from the crowd pressed together along the shore. Behind them is the mountain. Behind him is the open Sea of Galilee. This sea is more like a lake, which still today has a timeless, otherworldly enchantment to it. He has chosen a place of rare beauty and serenity as the site for his teaching. In this particular scene, he has sat himself in a boat as Lord of the Lake.
The size of the crowd is stressed. Slightly later in the story, Mark will be specific: five thousand follow him to a remote, inhospitable spot behind the Sea of Galilee, not far from where the current crowd has gathered. Five thousand was a huge assembly for the time. Its like would only have been seen with armies massing for battle. Further, the crowd would have been drawn mainly from a sparsely populated region of rural villages and fishing hamlets — where travel was by foot. A modern scholar has estimated the population of Nazareth, one of the few 'towns', at around two hundred people. Capernaum, at the north end of the Sea of Galilee, chosen by the teacher for his base, could not have been much larger. The enormity of the crowd crammed by the water signals the potency of his charisma, and reputation, from early on in his mission.
He starts with a beguiling invocation, like a shaman storyteller, in the form of a double imperative: 'Listen!' and 'See!' Seeing and hearing are later picked up in his riddle to the twelve, as he twists the words of Isaiah, ripping them out of context, into a paradox.
But this parable seems straightforward — unparadoxical. Does surface clarity hide a deeper mystery? He seems to say that he will use the parable as a teaching device, so that those who see will not gain insight; so that those who hear will not understand. If this is the case, why does he bother? Teaching would seem to be pointless.
He enacts a division of people into types. Within the crowd there are twelve special followers whom he has chosen, most of them simple fishermen from around the Sea of Galilee. They constitute some sort of elite. Within them he has selected a favourite three, nicknaming them. Simon he renamed Peter or, in Greek, Petros — which means 'rock' or 'stone'. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, he called, enigmatically, 'sons of thunder'. Thus there was a new identity, as if reborn, and the warmth of personal names. It seems he hoped for trust and intimacy with his chosen twelve, an inner circle that he could train to act on his behalf, forging a sacred bond that would steel their resolve. And also, perhaps, he hoped that this community around him might ease his solitariness.
'Listen!' and 'See!' introduces a dualism. There are those who understand the mystery, and this group is initially identified as the twelve and a few others. They are the insiders. Insiders already know. Then there are the outsiders. It is necessary to speak to them in parables, which he proceeds to do. But, don't imagine, he warns obscurely, that this is so they might gain some understanding. On the contrary!
When the twelve question him afterwards about the parable he realises that they have not understood it. It appears he had been deluded in his attempts to collect followers and form a band. The twelve are not insiders. To separate them from the crowd was premature. They do not know the mystery. Worse, they do not even comprehend a simple parable — one that true insiders would see in a blink. So what are they capable of understanding? His separation from the land, the water calm beneath him, gestures to a sense of the precariousness of the footing of others, led by the twelve, all of whom he has left on firm land. Mark describes him as sitting 'in the sea' — he is alone. His enthusiasm about his chosen followers deflates, and he has hardly started.
Another seed is being sown: the seed of his own doubt, as indicated by his abrupt shift in perception of his chosen followers. Does he himself know the nature of the mystery? Does he know how it might be revealed? The only knowledge which counts is that which comes from inside. But what might this mean? The parable is all about seeds. Maybe the encrypted story will reveal the mystery, in spite of what he says about parables. All we can do, at this point, is wait and see. And to follow his double command: listen.
What also does it mean to say that outsiders are born from parables, their seed? Does he refer to encrypted stories? Is it the function of deep stories not to be understood, but just to lodge somehow in the deep substratum of being, and infiltrate the housing psyche? Is he developing a theory of knowledge and interpretation? Is this a first sign about how his own story will work?
After questioning the twelve about what they know, he — the teacher — provides his interpretation of the parable:
The sower sows the word [logos]. Those beside the road are ones who have the word taken away by Satan the instant it is sown in their hearts. Those on stony ground hear the word with joy, but they have no root in themselves, so their era [kairos] is brief. The moment they are put under stress or persecuted, because of the word, they stumble. Those amongst thorns hear the logos, but they are preoccupied by the cares and pleasures of the world, so they choke. The word sown on good ground bears fruit prodigiously.
This interpretation hardly adds anything, seeming almost intentionally dry and lacklustre. It strengthens the sense that this particular parable is easy to understand. Calling the seed the word does no more than beg the question of what it is. Perhaps he is merely underlining his point about parables being inherently paradoxical, and that teaching is the bringing of a fundamental story into focus, then blurring it, lest the listeners gain the impression they understand something.
The interpretation does provide a fragmentary clue to one element of the parable — that concerning stony ground. His sudden uneasiness about the twelve brings to mind his renaming of Simon, which seems to have been rash. The Greek word in this sower parable for stony ground is petrodes — metaphorically, the home of Petros. Simon belongs on stony — or rocky — ground, the matter out of which he is formed.
When Simon the fisherman was called to follow, he heard the word with joy. But the forewarning is that he has no roots, so the moment there is stress, or fear of persecution, he will wither. Outsiders, blind by definition to the mystery, deaf to the word, will stumble. On rocky ground, men stumble. They return to the horizontal, as they were in the beginning. He had hoped that the first among the twelve would be a rock, firmly placed, a sure support for himself and for others; but he is, in reality, stony ground. The Greek verb for stumble, skandalizo, contains the further thrust of 'offend', 'outrage', and 'scandalise'. The heat of the sun is an offence to those with frail roots.
The quick-flourishing seed on stony ground shrivels up the moment the sun comes out. It cannot take heat. Mark had earlier recounted that at Simon's house the teacher had once taken the mother-in-law by the hand — for she was fevered — lifted her up, and restored her.11 This was no act of mercy or confirmation of family ties, but a sign of Simon Peter's future. Fever is fire in the wrong place. It is a cue that his family has a diseased relationship to fire, or heat. Fire will grow in metaphorical significance as this story unfolds, becoming light.
To make further progress in understanding the parable, we need to pause and return to the teacher's two principal acts of healing, carried out earlier. The quadriplegic who walks, and the man with the once-withered hand, both contribute to the fabric of the sower story:
He returned to Capernaum. After a few days news got around he was in a certain house, where many gathered, so there was no room, not even at the door. Four came carrying a paralysed man. When they could not get near because of the crowd they climbed on the roof. They broke through and lowered the bed on which the man lay. When he saw their trust he addressed the paralysed man, 'Child, your sins have been forgiven you.'
The scene is high drama. With hordes of the dis-eased jammed into the room, pressing upon him, he had been interrupted by the ceiling above his head being broken open. A contraption then lurches down on ropes towards him, four faces staring down framing the open sky. Struck by this ludicrous interruption from above, a parody of the sacred pneuma that had descended on him, and moved by their trust, he spoke directly to the flat-out, helpless man.
Feeling his way, he chose his words with care. 'Your sins have been forgiven.' These words inflamed the intellectuals, crammed in among the crowd, looking on. He sets the first stake in the ground of his new metaphysical territory. The intellectuals hear the words through the ears of their religion, understanding him to be talking about transgression, immoral acts, and forgiveness. According to their Jewish beliefs, only God has the power to forgive sins, so this miracle worker was blaspheming, his words outrageously impious.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Existential Jesus by John Carroll. Copyright © 2007 John Carroll. Excerpted by permission of Scribe Publications Pty Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
