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The Meaning of ‘Authority’ in Mark 1, 22
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
Extract
He entered into the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes (Mk. 1, 21–22).
The accepted interpretation of Mark 1, 21 f. is well known. In the words of Herford, the passage means that Jesus taught “with the spiritual force of a tremendous personality,” and this was bound to shock his contemporaries who adhered to the idea of Torah. Such a view has the advantage of making the material self-explanatory, while it receives corroboration both from other data in the gospels regarding Jesus' personal traits and from facts derived from the Judaistic sources concerning the Pharisaic method of teaching.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1930
References
1 Herford, R. T., Pharisaism, Its Aim and Its Methods, 1912, p. 168.Google Scholar
2 Bacon, B. W., Is Mark a Roman Gospel? Cambridge, Mass., 1919.Google Scholar
3 Cremer, citing the parallel, Matt. 9, 6, groups the passage together with Matt. 21, 23 (= Mk. 11, 28).
4 See Bacon, p. 3.
5 The occurrence of ἐζουσία, in a sense similar to that in which Mark uses it in nine of its ten cases, in Corpus Hermeticum i. 32 and xiii. 17 is mentioned by Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3d ed. (1927), p. 363; cf. 2d ed., p. 101, where Mark 1, 22 is cited in the same connection. The problem of the probable affinity of the cult of Jesus in Rome to that of contemporary religious societies is discussed below, in so far as it concerns our passage.
6 Case, Experience with the Supernatural in Early Christian Times, pp. 236 ff.
7 Case, pp. 244 f.