Don't Tell Anyone!

I love Mark because the author is such a great storyteller. Everything happens "immediately", Jesus is very active and always surrounded by crowds, and Mark adds details that add color to the accounts. I want to share some thoughts on Mark 7.31-37 just because it is a bit zany and informative at the same time.

Again, Jesus left the district of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee up to the middle of the district of the Decapolis.

They brought a man who was deaf and mute to him and begged him to lay his hands on him. Jesus took the man away from the crowd by himself. He placed his fingers in the man's ears and having spat, touched his tongue. Then, looking up into the heavens and sighing, he said to the man, "Ephphatha!" that is, "Be opened!" Immediately, the man's ears opened and the bond on his tongue was loosed, and the man spoke clearly.

Jesus gave them explicit orders that they should speak to no one. But as much as he kept giving them orders, they more abundantly kept proclaiming it. They were exceedingly astounded, saying, "He does everything well! He makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak!"

These events after Jesus returned from the districts around the cities of Tyre and Sidon to the district east of the Sea of Galilee in the area called the Decapolis, or Ten Cities.

As usual in Mark, Jesus has drawn a crowd, and some people bring a man who is deaf and mute to Jesus so that he can lay his hands on him. Normally, Jesus would do just that, and the man would be healed. In this case, however, Jesus takes them aside in private. Next, he goes through a small ritual. He puts his fingers in the man's ears; fortunately, he doesn't lick them first. Then Jesus spat, presumably on his hand, and touched the man's tongue! (I'd be thinking about finding a new doctor.) Finally, Jesus theatrically looked up to the sky, let out a deep sigh, and then ordered the deaf man's ears to be opened. Sure enough, the man was healed, and the people who brought him to Jesus were ecstatic.

Jesus, however, did not share their enthusiasm. He ordered them, at length, to tell no one about what happened. That was their cue to tell everyone who would listen. Apparently, Jesus kept running into them and telling them to keep quiet, which prompted them to talk about him all the more.

For me, all this raises several questions.

Why did Jesus spend so much time outside Jewish territory?

In Mark 7.1, Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem. The Pharisees were a grassroots religious movement among the Jews, and they were the self-appointed maintainers of orthodoxy among the people. The scribes were professional experts in the Jewish Law, and many of them were also Pharisees. Almost all the Pharisees and scribes lived in or around Jerusalem. The Pharisees were divided into two groups, essentially poor and rich. The poor group tended to be more open-minded and lenient, while the rich group tended to be more strict and harsh. Of course, only the rich Pharisees could afford to travel to Galilee to investigate a miracle-working teacher who was suddenly drawing crowds.

Mark describes in some detail how the Pharisees and scribes were not impressed with Jesus' disciples and that Jesus publicly rebuked them in response to their criticisms. In verse 24, Mark says that Jesus got up and went away from there to the district of Tyre, a city-state located along the coast north of Galilee, well outside the Jewish borders. Reading between the lines (and the other gospels, see Matthew 12.14, Luke 11.53-54,) Jesus and his disciples were no longer safe. All the Pharisees really needed to do was to create a disturbance and blame Jesus, and King Herod or the Romans would arrest him and disperse his disciples. The Pharisees had tremendous influence among the Jewish people, even those living in Galilee, so Jesus took his disciples and spent a considerable amount of time outside their reach. Jesus knew there would be a confrontation, but he wanted it to be at the time and the place of his choosing.

What's up with all the theatrics?

In the previous passage, while Jesus was still around Tyre, he cast out a demon long distance. Was all the poking, spitting, and sighing necessary? After all, the people who brought the man had asked for Jesus to lay his hands on him. Jesus was still outside Jewish territory, and the deaf and mute man, as well as those who brought him, most likely had no experience with God. Jesus was sensitive to their lack of understanding, so he went through the motions of things that would seem familiar to them. At the time, saliva was thought to have healing properties, so Jesus' spitting made sense from their perspective.

Why did Jesus command them to keep quiet?

Jesus did many public miracles, and he often used this public service as an opportunity for preaching. However, there were times when Jesus took people aside to heal them and then commanded them not to tell anyone. Apparently, Jesus didn't agree with the adage, "Any publicity is good publicity." In this case, the man who was healed and the people who brought him likely had no idea of who Jesus really was; they may well have viewed him as a Jewish sorcerer. Whatever they were saying about him, it was getting back to Jesus, and he didn't like it.

I get three practicals from this.

• Be patient. Personally, when I know something needs to happen, I want to do it right now. Jesus spent months outside Jewish territory until the time was right to return to Jerusalem and bring the simmering conflict with the religious leaders to a head.
• Be relatable to those who weren't brought up in a church. I know what it is like to go to church knowing nothing about the Bible. I can imagine the disciples staring when Jesus looked up in the sky and sighed (they knew better than to laugh.)
• Serve without an agenda. Public service can be a great opportunity for witness, but that's not the main reason to do it. Jesus knew that healing that man would cause problems, but he did it anyway.

Should We Harmonize the Gospels?

One of the most interesting, and potentially problematic, aspects of the New Testament is that it provides four separate accounts of Jesus' ministry. By the mid-second century, the churches agreed that there exactly four accepted gospels, and opponents of Christianity were studying them intently to find inconsistencies. Justin Martyr, an early defender of Christianity, responded by harmonizing the gospels, especially the first three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Essentially, this meant smoothing over and explaining away the inconsistencies to produce one, consistent account. His disciple, Tatian, took this one step further by creating the Diatessaron, which means "Through Four", which blends the texts of the four gospels into one account. This churches in Syria used this "harmony" for around 200 years, until a broad crackdown aimed at unifying all the churches banned it. While Tatian's solution is a bit extreme, Christian defenders have continued to rely on unifying the gospel accounts or otherwise explaining away inconsistencies in the face of criticism. I see two problems with this approach. First, some of the explanations create more problems than the inconsistencies that they address. Here are three examples.

• Jesus cleared the temple. However John places this event at the beginning of Jesus ministry, creating an inconsistency. Solution, Jesus cleared the temple twice.
• While Jesus was eating at the house of a man named Simon, a woman came and poured out expensive perfume on Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. However, Luke places this event in the middle of Jesus' ministry, rather than at the end. Solution, two different women poured out perfume on Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.
• Matthew and Luke each record Jesus preaching a sermon, both sermons start with stylized statements, "Blessed are the poor..." and cover similar topics. However, the wording in each sermon is different, resulting in different messages. Solution, Jesus preached two separate sermons.

While each explanation is possible by itself, taken together, the "two of everything" approach sounds phony while doing nothing to address the inconsistencies. Second, what if the original authors were aware of the inconsistencies and didn't care about them, or even created them intentionally? By smoothing everything over, we would then miss the intentions of the original authors while misrepresenting their works. In other words, we in danger of missing the message while making false statements about the Bible. However, is this possible? Would Luke intentionally take Matthew's Sermon On The Mount and rewrite it, changing the focus from righteousness to social justice? Personally, I think that is quite possible. There were thirteen apostles (the original twelve, minus Judas Iscariot, plus Matthias, plus Paul) preaching their own versions of the gospel, based on their own personal experiences of Jesus. Assuming Matthew wrote first and that Luke used Matthew as a source, there is no reason that Luke would feel compelled to treat it as set in stone, as we would today. Luke was not recording Matthew's view of the gospel, he was recording Paul's. The fact he chose to use Matthew as a source at all shows that he, and everyone else, already held it in high regard. IMHO, we should stop viewing the inconsistencies in the four gospels as flaws that need to be explained away. The combined leadership of the early Church had to be aware of them, and yet they insisted that there were indeed four different gospel accounts of equal authority, in spite of the attacks their position caused. If these inconsistencies were really a problem, they could easily have declared Matthew, which was the most widely used gospel of the early Church, as THE gospel and relegated the others to secondary status. According to Luke, this happened to many other written gospels. As far as the inconsistencies, here are a few suggestions.

• Ignore them. Most of the inconsistencies are either contrived or trivial. Most attempts to explain them make them sound worse than they are.
• Look at each gospel individually. The authors were providing a unique perspectives, and we should honor them rather than trying to eliminate them.
• For really advanced study, look at how each author was influenced by his peers. Unfortunately, this requires agreeing on when and why each author wrote, and that subject is disputed. On the other hand, this level of study isn't essential.