Max Botner has made clear that the study of Jesus as a messiah like David in the Gospel of Mark should not be approached by focusing on occurrences of the name “David” and the phrase “son of David” alone. Further, he has shown that a socio-linguistic approach to the study of allusions to Scripture reveals a wealth of David-like features in the presentation of Jesus as the Messiah in Mark’s Gospel. Recognition that the characterization of Jesus as David-like occurs throughout the Gospel provides a solution to the problem raised by the Markan Jesus when he asks, “How can the scribes say that the messiah is the Son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls him ‘Lord’; so how can he be his son?”1 The first and most important step toward a solution of the problem is the conclusion that this short speech does not reject the affirmation of Jesus as the son of David. The second step for Botner is to say that, according to Mark, the Messiah “is more than the son of David: he is God’s son” (194). He is surely right when he argues that the affirmation of Jesus as God’s son does not eliminate or even diminish his status as a Davidic Messiah (194).

If we leave aside the calling of the first four disciples in Mark 1:16–20, the public ministry of Jesus begins with an exorcism in the synagogue of Capernaum (1:24–28). The evangelist notes that a man with an unclean spirit (ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ) was present in the synagogue. The man suddenly calls out asking if Jesus has come to destroy “us,” the unclean spirits, and recognizes Jesus as “the holy one of God.” Botner assumes that “the holy one of God” is a christological title (emphasis mine). That seems unlikely. Besides this passage in Mark, it occurs only in Luke 4:34 and John 6:69. The Lukan passage is clearly dependent on Mark, and the Johannine passage may also be. It is noteworthy that the epithet is put on the lips of Peter in John, rather than a demon. No exorcisms are included in John, yet in response to Peter the Johannine Jesus states that one of the Twelve is a devil. It seems likely that the phrase “holy (ἅγιος) one of God” is used by Mark to contrast the holiness of Jesus, deriving from the Spirit he received at his baptism, with the uncleanness of the spirit possessing the man.

Botner cites Psalm 88 LXX as evidence for a connection between royal anointing and “the appellation ‘the holy one’ within the body of linguistic resources from which ancient authors derived their messiah language” (109). Psalm 88:19 LXX is the only place in Scripture in which the oil used to anoint David is said to be “holy.” He claims that, in the same verse, the referent of the phrase “holy one of Israel” differs in the MT and the LXX. The MT reads, “for our shield belongs to the Lord, our king to the holy one of Israel” (Ps 89:19 [89:18 ET]; trans. from NRSV). The Hebrew text clearly uses synonymous parallelism. Botner points out that the LXX reads, “for help comes from the Lord, and from the holy one of Israel, our king” (109). The verse could also be translated, “for help belongs to the Lord, and to the holy one of Israel, our king.” He also argues that the “holy one of Israel” here is identified with the king, since the last two words are in apposition to the phrase. It could also be that “the holy one of Israel” and “the king” refer to God in synonymous parallelism in which the second line is a synonymous restatement of the first.

Even if the phrase “holy one of Israel” refers to David, it is noteworthy that holiness throughout this psalm is more often connected with God than the king. God dwells with “holy ones” (angels) according to Ps 88 LXX in vv. 6, 8; he swears by “his holiness” in v. 36 (or in his holy place). The king is anointed with God’s holy oil (v. 21), but God allows the king’s sanctuary (τὸ ἁγίασμα αὐτοῦ) to be destroyed (v. 40). In any case, this psalm is a weak thread on which to hang the claim that the epithet “holy one of God” in Mark 1:24 is a creative use of Scripture.

Botner mentions the possibility that the use of the phrase sanctus Christus Domini (“the holy anointed one of the Lord”) by Pseudo-Philo in his Biblical Antiquities derives from Psalm 88 LXX. He himself, however, admits that this hypothesis is speculative (112). In the apocryphal Syriac Psalm 152, David, addressing God, refers to himself as “your holy one.”2 In Psalm 153 David, speaking to the nations about God, refers to himself as “his holy one.”3 The argument that these two apocryphal Syriac psalms provide evidence for the existence of the “title” “the holy one” of God is also tenuous, especially for the time of the author of Mark (113).

Let us turn now to the first passion prediction. I agree with Botner’s conclusion that “rejection and crucifixion make up the very center of Mark’s peculiar brand of Davidic messianism” (138). I agree also that, according to Mark, the Messiah must (δεῖ) be rejected, killed, die, and after three days rise. I disagree with Botner’s argument that the Scriptures, especially the rejection spoken of in Psalm 117 LXX and cited in Mark 12:10, “bear witness to the necessity (δεῖ) of this event” (138). Creative use of Scripture in general, and Ps 117:22 in particular, do not clearly involve “necessity.” The notion of necessity, however, is clear in the book of Daniel, which Mark used to create his description of Jesus as the Son of Man with authority on earth and as the glorious Son of Man who will come after his death and resurrection. It is likely that the events spoken of in Mark 8:31 “must” happen in the sense that the same Greek verb is used, for example, in Dan 2:28: “There is a God in heaven revealing mysteries, who has made known to the king, Nebuchadnezzar, what must take place in the time of the last days.”4

In chapter 5 in his detailed discussion of Jesus’s question about how the messiah can be David’s son, Botner discusses the structure of the second controversy cycle in Mark (11:27–12:44). He describes the last passage in this cycle, the one about the widow’s contribution to the treasury in the temple, as an account in which Jesus hints “that the temple has been defiled by the economic malpractice of his challengers,” the temple hierarchy. This remark is made in passing, but I discuss it here for two reasons. First, the passage does not seem to criticize the practices of the administration of the treasury by the temple hierarchy in any way. It is assumed that contributing to the upkeep of the temple and its rituals is a good thing. The Markan Jesus, instead of criticizing anyone, praises the widow. Although her gift is small, it is worth more than the large gifts of the wealthy because she is so generous that she gives all she has. This praise is analogous to the advice Jesus gives to the rich young man, who asks what he can do beyond obeying the commandments. Jesus tells him to sell what he has, presumably all of it, and give the proceeds to the poor; in so doing he will have treasure in heaven.5

The second reason for discussing this point is that the idea of the malpractice of the temple hierarchy is often given as the reason why Jesus performed the actions in the temple described 11:15–17. He drove out those who were selling and buying in the temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold doves because they were all exploiting the ordinary people, especially the poor, who came to worship there. These business practices supposedly were carried on with the permission of the temple leadership and for their benefit.6 It is more likely that the Markan Jesus, and perhaps the historical Jesus as well, was concerned that the outer court of the temple had become profane space, especially since Herod the Great’s remodeling of the Temple Mount. The business activities were profane practices that did not need to be conducted within the temple precincts. Performing them in the outer courtyard undermined the holiness of the temple. From this point of view, Jesus’s activity was a cleansing, designed to restore and preserve holiness and thus respect for the presence of God.

Chapter 5 also remarks on the Christology of Mark (167–71). I am troubled by certain aspects of this discussion. I agree with the remark that the Markan Jesus “wanted to assert that the Christ whom the temple leaders rejected does indeed wield God’s authority, even his authority over the temple” (168). I am inclined to disagree, however, with the claim that “Mark opens by encouraging the audience to view the advent of Jesus Christ as the eschatological arrival of Israel’s God” (168–69). This claim is based on Mark 1:2–3, a scriptural quotation that is a conflation of Exod 23:20 LXX, Mal 3:1 LXX, and the Old Greek of Isa 40:3.7 The passage from the book of Isaiah makes clear that the “Lord” whose way is to be prepared is the God of Israel. In Mark, the “Lord” is interpreted as Jesus Christ. It does not follow, it seems to me, that Jesus’s advent is also the advent of God, or that “when the characters of the narrative encounter Jesus, they are in fact encountering the divine presence of Israel’s God” (168–69). It seems more appropriate to conclude that the activity of God and of Jesus are intimately related.8 This intimate relationship does not imply a metaphysical identity. It is more likely to signify that Jesus is the agent of God to whom God delegates authority and power.

Regarding chapter 6, which is on the crucifixion and the resurrection, I agree that “the audience is supposed to approach the crucifixion account with the assumption that Jesus is a king” (181). I disagree, however, with the interpretation of the acclamation of the centurion, that “He sees” what the priestly aristocracy could not, namely, that “the cross is the means of messianic enthronement” (187). It seems to me that this reading moves away too quickly from the shame and horror of the cross. It takes a step toward the Johannine ironic glorification of the crucifixion. In Mark it is rather the climax of a reinterpretation of the term “son of God.”9 Mark maintains its royal features while associating it with suffering and death. What the centurion “sees” is that Jesus, as a suffering king, is truly the son of God.

As I indicated at the beginning of this review, Botner has made a strong case for the view that Jesus is presented as a Davidic Messiah, that is, that the evangelist uses Davidic scriptural traditions in a creative way to portray Jesus as Messiah. In his analysis of Mark’s use of Davidic traditions, he emphasizes “the period in David’s life in which God’s anointed faced rejection from his family” and “persecution from the current regime” (191). He does not agree with those who argue that when Peter acknowledges Jesus as ὁ χριστός, he refers to the idea of the Davidic messiah as “a warrior king who would destroy the enemies of Israel and institute an era of unending peace.”10 This notion of the Davidic messiah is attested in many texts from the late Second Temple period. Botner, however, prefers to “stick to the Markan narrative.” Of course, Mark does not present Jesus as a warrior-messiah. It may, however, be important for the interpretation of Mark to determine whether he was presenting his portrait in opposition to the typical portrait of the Davidic messiah in his time.

A related issue is the degree to which Mark includes the wider literary context of the passages to which he alludes. For example, Botner discusses Ps 109:3 LXX, “From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.” He argues that this statement implies that God begot David’s lord, or at least could have been understood in that way by Mark’s audience (169). This discussion fits with Botner’s view that Jesus is a divine figure in the Gospel of Mark (168–69).

As I have already noted, Botner discusses Psalm 88 LXX in relation to his interpretation of the term “holy one of God,” which appears in the first exorcism of Mark. Botner does not cite the passages of this psalm that could be taken as a source for the portrait of David as a warrior-king. God speaks in this way in the psalm:

I added help to one who is powerful; I exalted one chosen from my people (v. 20).

For my hand shall sustain him; my arm also shall strengthen him.

An enemy shall not profit by him, and a son of lawlessness shall not add to harm him.

And I will crush his enemies from before him, and those who hate him I will rout (vv. 22–24).

And I will make him a firstborn, high among the kings of the earth (v. 28).11

Granted, vv. 39–53 express a lament over a defeated and rejected David. This situation, however, is presented to God as a renunciation of his covenant with David (vv. 39–46).

While some of the details are contestable, Max Botner has made a significant contribution to scholarship by showing the intertextual relationship between Mark and the rejected and suffering David of the Deuteronomistic historian’s life of Jesus and certain psalms, especially 27, 69, and 118 and the way Mark uses these texts to present Jesus as a Davidic Messiah. Botner’s work will make it much harder for scholars to argue that Mark opposed the attribution of the term “son of David” to Jesus or that he was ambivalent about it.

Max Botner has produced a very stimulating monograph on Davidic messianism in the Gospel of Mark. He develops the insight of Donald Juel and Matthew Novenson that the scriptures, and indeed a relatively small set of them, provided the basic ore for Second Temple Jewish and early Christian messianism, but that every author mined this ore in his/her own way. Attention to these scriptures and their putative Markan echoes leads Botner to the conclusion that the Davidic image is far more pervasive than previously thought, since we can see Mark mining passages that were already linked with David or Davidic messianism in the writings of his day, or could plausibly be so linked (for example, the “to/for David” psalms and other royal psalms).

Botner’s emphasis on each individual author’s “grammar” of messianism, to borrow Novenson’s term, is salutary, since it prevents us from stereotyping ancient Jewish messianic thought as homogenous and invariant. His use of the concept also demonstrates the evenhandedness of his argument, since the diversity of ancient messianism could potentially work against him—a fact that he cheerfully admits. The central conclusion of his book is that William Wrede et al. were wrong to read the son of David pericope in Mark 12:35–37 as a denial of the Davidic descent of the Messiah. But he is fair-minded enough to acknowledge, and even to illustrate at length, that some ancient writers who painted their messiahs in Davidic colors were at the same time either indifferent to Davidic ancestry (for example, 2 Baruch and John) or got rid of it altogether (for example, the Parables of Enoch and Aramaic Levi; see pp. 142 and 190). In Botner’s phrase, borrowed from Umberto Eco, these writers “narcotized” the feature of Davidic descent at the same time that they retained or even “blew up” other Davidic features. Botner admits that Mark could have done the same—but he doesn’t think he did. Now, I think it takes a brave man to hand his opponents the ammunition to use against him—as I will proceed to do in a moment. Apart from his fair-mindedness, I also appreciated the clarity of his writing style and his frequent flashes of wit. I did not bog down in my readerly trek through his monograph, even when the terrain became rocky.

I also think Botner’s book makes a substantial contribution to the study of Markan Christology and its possible Old Testament building blocks. It is really illuminating, for example, for Botner to call our attention (pp. 109–11) to the many overlaps between the royal Psalm 89 and the Markan narrative: God anoints the Davidic king with holy oil, making him by implication a “holy one,” as in Mark 1:24; God’s Spirit comes upon the king, as in Mark 1:11; God delegates to him his cosmic power over the sea, as in Mark 4:39; 6:51; God’s enemies mock him, as in Mark 14:65; 15:16–19, 29–32; and he cries out for deliverance to God, whom he addresses as father, as in Mark 14:36; 15:33–34. Similarly fascinating is his demonstration that Pseudo-Philo reads a “Psalm of David,” Psalm 69, with its references to hostility from the speaker’s mother and brothers, as Davidic autobiography, and his suggestion that Mark, in 3:21–35, may be shaping his narrative according to this Davidic model (pp. 127–30). I am not totally convinced that these royal psalms were as influential in shaping the Markan narrative as Botner thinks they were, but he has at least opened up intriguing possibilities. Nor am I convinced by his argument from silence (p. 154) that the allusion to Psalm 118:26 in Mark 11:9 is deliberately ironic: Mark has included the first half of the psalm verse (“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”), according to Botner, because in the original the festal crowd speaks it, but he has omitted the second half (“We bless you from the house of the Lord”), because in the original the temple leaders speak it, and they of course are the enemies of Jesus in the Gospel. I am unpersuaded that Mark’s hearers would have had the photographic memory of scripture necessary to recognize this “irony”—but it is nevertheless a brilliant suggestion.

But enough nit-picking—we have bigger fish to fry. There are two major issues I wish to engage.

The first has to do with the term “linguistic community,” a phrase that Botner picks up from Matthew Novenson but that, so far as I can see, he never defines. He does, however, sometimes use this term in what seems to me to be an over-confident way, for example when he says (p. 77) that “the evangelist’s linguistic community had an established practice of using scripturally derived divine sonship language to talk about its royal messiahs.” But what exactly is this “linguistic community”? Is Botner saying that Mark and his readers knew sources such as the Qumran fragment 4Q246, the main text that he mobilizes in the discussion of this point (pp. 62–70)? To speak of a linguistic community would seem to imply that there is some sort of shared ambience or sociological relationship between the members of the group. What is that relationship? How did 4Q246 get to Mark and his audience? Or does Botner think that, because the language is so similar, there must be some sort of sociological relationship—and how is that not a circular argument? Or is he implying something else? In other words, I really don’t know what Botner means by “linguistic community,” and I wish he’d spell it out clearly.

I suspect that he’s employing this somewhat slippery phrase to meet the challenge confronted by anyone who discerns unmarked allusions to Old Testament texts in New Testament writings: would the author’s first readers have been able to detect these allusions? If author, readers, and the texts being alluded to all belonged to the same “linguistic community,” perhaps they would. At various points in my own studies, I have attempted to meet this same challenge by arguing, after Martin Hengel, that certain eschatological scriptures were influential in the Jewish War that in my view formed the background to Mark, and that others (for example certain psalms) may have been known from the liturgy used by his community. I feel a little less sure about some of these speculations than I did a few decades ago, but at least I tried. I think Botner should try too—by telling us exactly what he means by “linguistic community.”

The other major bone I have to pick is about the “Son of David” pericope itself, Mark 12:35–37. Botner quotes me to the effect that, because of the frequent linkage between the Messiah concept and Davidic lineage in Second Temple Jewish literature and the rest of the New Testament, the real question is, “How can the Markan Jesus say that the Messiah is not the son of David?” (p. 24). But that, I go on to say, is what the Markan Jesus does seem to be saying, at least in this instance—a denial that has to be counterposed against, and placed in some sort of dialectical relationship to, the affirmations of Davidic descent that, I agree with Botner, are present in the preceding stories of blind Bartimaeus (10:47–48) and the triumphal entry (11:1–9). I deal with this contradiction by arguing that Mark wanted to affirm that Jesus was the long-awaited king of Israel at the same time that he wanted to ward off some of the militaristic associations the Davidic image had gathered to itself both in the OT and in some (not all) Second Temple Jewish traditions, up to and including the messianically motivated Jewish Revolt. That may or may not be right, but what I am relatively sure about is that there is a problem to be confronted here, because on the face of it 12:35–37 does seem to deny Davidic sonship.

For Botner, that cannot be what 12:35–37 implies, because the attestation to the Davidic sonship of the Messiah is so overwhelming elsewhere, including in Mark itself; instead, he tells us, the riddle Jesus poses “aims to elicit a not-only-but-also resolution” (p. 140). It is striking to me, however, that he does not go into a detailed exposition of the flow of thought in the passage itself to show that that is what Mark is driving at. In fact, he offers a much more detailed analysis of the line of thought in the story of blind Bartimaeus, which he labels the key text for the son-of-David question in Mark, than he does for the son-of-David pericope itself.

I wonder if that could possibly be because the flow of thought in the son-of-David pericope seems to be moving in the opposite direction from the conclusion Botner desires. The Markan Jesus begins by asking rhetorically, “How do the scribes say that the Christ is a son of David?” Already the fact that this is something the scribes say is a warning sign that there is something wrong with it; the scribes, as a group, are invariably wrong in Mark.1 The impression that in 12:35–37 Jesus is challenging the scribal assertion that the Messiah is the son of David is borne out by the rest of the passage. Against the assertion of the Messiah’s Davidic sonship, the Markan Jesus invokes the testimony of David himself, who in Psalm 110, a “psalm of David,” recounts a vision of “the Lord,” that is God, commanding “my lord,” that is, the Messiah, to sit at his own right hand. David, then, calls the messiah his “lord”—how then can the Messiah be David’s son? The only way I can see to make sense of this sequence of questions and assertions, especially given the hierarchical nature of ancient Mediterranean society, is that suggested by Wrede: no father calls his own son “lord”; therefore the messiah cannot be David’s son. The reiteration of the “how” question at the end would seem to seal the deal, refuting any notion that the passage is meant to reconcile Davidic sonship with messianic lordship, as in Rom 1:3–4. If this is not the flow of thought in the passage, then Botner needs to lay out a flow of thought that is more compelling. It would be helpful if he could offer a relatively straightforward and un-self-contradictory paraphrase of the pericope according to his interpretation of it, which is often the test of a good exegesis.

I sense that Botner may be uneasy with his own solution, because at some points he seems to be trying to give himself some wiggle room. On p. 166, for example, he acknowledges that “one might posit that militant forms of messianism initially motivated the historical Jesus to posit the Davidssohnfrage” (p. 166), a speculation that would seem to presuppose a negative answer to the question. He does not think this interpretation works for Mark’s use of the passage, however, and he immediately goes on to assert that there are better solutions even for the historical Jesus (though he does not tell us what they are, beyond referring in a footnote to Tom Wright—always a bad sign). Near the end of the book, on p. 190, similarly, he asserts that it is “heuristically apposite…to distinguish messiahs who are like David and those who are sons of David” (emphasis original). This statement also seems to presuppose that the question posed in 12:35 should perhaps be answered in the negative.2 But this seems to clash with what Botner says on the last page of his text (p. 194): “The evangelist never set out to prove that his Christ was a descendant of David; he simply took the point for granted…While it is true that the Davidssohnfrage constructs a competitive relationship between Davidic and divine sonship [a significant concession, by the way, which Botner saves for the last paragraph of his study!], its function in the Synoptic Gospels, in Mark no less than in Matthew and Luke, is to assert that the messiah is more than the son of David: he is God’s son.” Again, I am left unsure what precisely Botner is saying—how to square his assertion that Mark assumes that Jesus is a descendant of David with his admission that the passage in question posits a competition between Davidic and divine sonship, and his apparent flirtation with the idea that the Markan Jesus is in some sense Davidic without being David’s descendant.

In conclusion, I can’t agree with Botner’s assertion that the Son of David question aims to elicit a “not-only-but-also” response. Instead, I would like to thank him for the important observation that some other ancient Jewish and Christian texts “narcotize”—I would prefer to say “defuse”—the notion of the Messiah’s Davidic descent at the same time that they strongly affirm other Davidic features. I think that is what Mark is doing too: the non-binary grammar of his messianism allows for both affirmation and negation of the Davidic image. None of this takes away from—in fact it enhances—the richness of Botner’s contribution to the study of Markan Christology. We may not know what we have said until we’ve heard from others how they hear it. Botner may be surprised to learn that his monograph has actually strengthened the case that for Mark the son-of-David question is to be answered negatively. I’m confident that a little further discussion will bring him around.

Max Botner has written a detailed yet elegantly readable monograph on one of the most vexing passages in Mark’s Gospel, the Question about David’s Son (or Davidssohnfrage). This is an excellent book with sparkling prose and a manageable scope. Since, unlike the apostle Paul, monographs cannot be all things to all people, my response aims to expand its scope. I do so by looking at some other Davidic figures not discussed in the book, and also by dialoguing with one of the villains in Botner’s book. In each case I bring these areas to bear on Max’s argument and ask how it might expand his work.

Before examining these areas of expansion, I want to register what I found singularly impressive in Max’s book. As one who’s studied David in another Gospel, I’ve witnessed the same missteps and tropes repeated in scholarship. Max avoids these. For example, Max’s book understands that messiah language is flexible and pliable, and that references to the messiah are often allusive rather than simply titular. He also recognizes that son of David and son of God need not be antithetical—most often they were both synonymous for “king” or “messiah.” Finally, it is always a thrill when another scholar sees what you see, and Max spotted the allusions to the Absalom Revolt and the Davidic Psalms of Lament in Mark’s passion narrative. Nearly all scholarship misses these and denies the possibility of Davidic allusions after the Question about David’s Son.

I could laud Max’s book for the rest of this forum, but I’m afraid that would not make for good discussion, so I now move to some points of expansion.

Other Messiahs

After laying out his methodology, which draws upon Umberto Eco’s idea of “framing,” Max brings forward examples of some “Davids” from antiquity. These tend to be literary messiahs, especially those found in 4 Ezra, Psalm of Solomon 17, and the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q174 etc). These Davidic messiahs give us a window into the imaginaries and idealizations of this hero figure near the turn of the era, all of which is helpful—indeed, necessary—for understanding Mark’s presentation of his messiah. If David was held in ill repute in the first century (as he is among my students in the twenty-first century), then it would be less likely that Mark would have a positive valuation of David. Conversely, if David was lionized in late antiquity, it would have been rhetorically advantageous for Mark to connect his messiah Jesus to the son of Jesse. It would seem, nearly without fail, that the latter was the case: David was a very popular hero at this time.

However, in addition to literary figures, I posit that it is also useful to expand our comparanda to include flesh-and-blood Davidic messiahs. Literary messiahs are, again, necessary for the task of describing attitudes or “frames” for David around the turn of the era, but historical messiahs are perhaps even more useful, since this is precisely what Mark claims Jesus to be—a real, three-dimensional messiah and not a flat literary figure. These flesh-and-blood messianic figures were actors on the ground in Galilee and Judea, just as Jesus was for Mark.

I will not provide an exhaustive account of these figures, but one figure worth noting is Athronges. As Josephus tells it, this messianic figure attempted to fill the power vacuum left after Herod the Great’s death. He was formerly a shepherd, but pulled together a band of his brothers to attack their foreign oppressors. He even “dared” to seize the throne after the death of the official monarch. Significantly, all of these characteristics fit the script of David’s life: a shepherd and would-be king, harrying foreign armies under the shadow of a legitimate monarchy. As Paula Fredriksen queries, “Who was this Athronges, a mere shepherd, to claim kingship? To this question a follower might have responded: A new David” (2018, 173). By styling himself a new David, Athronges was likely able to persuade more to join his cause against the Romans. Athronges also suggests how messianic David language is adaptable. While Athronges presumably had no Davidic genealogical bona fides, he was nevertheless able to draw on David’s actions—military prowess and shepherding the people of Israel. To use the language of Matt Novenson, he was a Davidic “upstart” rather than a “blueblood,” but he was Davidic nonetheless.

Athronges’ example thus supports Botner’s contention that Mark’s messiah can be Davidic even if the Davidssohnfrage were a simple rejection of Jesus’ Davidic dimensions. That is, even if–and Botner works against this “if”—Jesus rejected Davidic lineage, this would not necessarily spell the end of his association with David. As Botner shows, Davidic filiation is in fact a small and underrepresented concern of Second Temple messianic texts (see “Quantifying Davidic Ancestry” on p. 43). The issue is more often with connecting to key David texts rather than simple descent from the dynast. Or, in antiquity there were many descendants of David, but few Davidic messiahs, and the former was not always a condition of the latter. As Novenson puts it, “not all messiahs are royal, not all royal messiahs are Davidic, and not all Davidic messiahs are sons of David” (2017, 111). Athronges bolsters Botner’s contention that Davidic messianism extends beyond genealogical concerns, and demonstrates that this was so of real historical actors, akin to Jesus of Nazareth. It also helps undermine those who read the Davidssohnfrage pejoratively and seek to distance Jesus from David, such as Oscar Cullmann who argues that Jesus “rejects also in this case the political messianic ideal which the claim to be the descendant of David the king especially emphasizes” (132). But this is a non sequitur: Even if Jesus does deny the necessity of Davidic descent for the messiah, he does not reject Davidic messianism per se. Athronges shows that self-made Davidic messiahs need not have the requisite pedigree—a pro-Davidic reading of the Davidssohnfrage is possible even if one takes it as denying Davidic lineage as a prerequisite for messianic status.

The Davidssohnfrage and Wrede

Comparing Mark’s narrative to other messianic actors in the first century then brings us to the Davidssohnfrage itself. Mark uses “son of David” three times in his narrative: twice in the Bartimaeus episode, and once in the Davidssohnfrage. Previous generations of scholars have fixated on this and other Christological titles as a way to distill the Christology of Mark and the other Gospels. The method, as carried out most popularly in the studies of Ferdinand Hahn and R. H. Fuller, was to attend to titles such as Son of God, Son of Man, Lord, Messiah, and Son of David, not only in early Christian literature, but also in Second Temple Jewish, and at times Greco-Roman, sources. If one could arrive at a stable meaning for, say, Son of Man, then one could plug that meaning into Mark’s narrative and uncover Jesus’ meaning. However, the primary sources didn’t play along—they refused to be cut-and-pasted in this way. Words are mercurial—they change and crack and flip—and so stable meanings were never an attainable goal.

More recent scholarship, especially since the trenchant SBL presidential address of Leander Keck in 1986, has all but given up on titular Christology. Meaning is not found in titles, but in their usage, and so the wider narrative must be given due consideration. As Max argues, “there is no pristine construct of the Davidic messiah against which we can measure Mark’s Christ” (31). Thus, in the case of the Davidssohnfrage, it “does not represent an abstract piece of Christology but sits at the climax of progression in which the identification of Jesus as the rightful heir of the ancient promises Israel’s God made to David, on the one hand, and Jesus’s insistence that the divine will is for the Christ to be rejected, suffer, and die, on the other, shape the audiences’ perspective of David messiahship” (173).

Botner gives us a positive interpretation of the Davidssohnfrage based on his reading of other David references, allusions, and echoes in Mark. He comes to this conclusion in part by taking into account the positive associations with David in Second Temple Judaism and the positive Davidic allusions he unearths in Mark’s text up to this point.

I am not as convinced, however, about these specifics for interpreting the Davidssohnfrage, always a slippery text. Max’s suggestion is that Jesus’ “aim is to elicit the response that before the Christ became the son of David, he was already the son of God” (170). Here Max reads divine sonship into the pericope—Jesus is not only David’s son, but also God’s. However, I believe this better fits Matthew’s version, which includes Jesus asking “What do you think of the messiah? Whose son is he?” Mark lacks this second query, and instead speaks of David’s κύριος—there is no mention of divine sonship, and I cannot detect an allusion to it either.1

Further, I am also uncertain about the pre-existent status of Jesus’s divine sonship in Mark. John, yes—but I do not see it in Mark. Indeed, early Jesus followers were more apt to speak of Jesus becoming the son of God, often in his baptism (which Max rightly sees as a royal anointing, following Jerome, 96), or even in the ascension. Paul transmits something roughly similar: Jesus is “from the seed of David according to the flesh” but “appointed son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead” (Rom 1:3–4). Jesus is appointed son of God in this early, likely pre-Pauline tradition. Likewise, I am uncertain Mark sees Jesus as being eternally God’s son—or if he did, he does not clearly express it.2

So what does Mark’s Davidssohnfrage mean? The text presents it as an open rhetorical question (Chilton 1982; Baudoz 2012). It is never answered, neither by Jesus nor the temple audience. Given the long history of interpretation and the fact that Mark is, as Don Juel taught us, a “master of surprise,” there should be some trepidation in attempting to answer Jesus’ riddle. Nevertheless, I would like to “try on” one interpretation, and an unpopular one at that: I would like to explore, alongside Max’s book, Wrede’s interpretation.

Wrede’s attention to history of religion allows him to essentially treat the Davidssohnfrage in isolation—he needn’t deal with the issues presented by the Bartimaeus story, because for him the Davidssohnfrage can be atomized as a free-standing tradition about Jesus. And since Wrede held to Markan priority—unlike his sparring partner Schweitzer who thought Matthew was first—he saw Mark’s version of the Davidssohnfrage as earliest. For him, the reason that Jesus asks how the messiah can be David’s son if he appears as his “lord” in Psalm 110 is that Jesus himself was not a Davidide.3 Thus, Jesus could still be considered messiah despite not having the requisite lineage. For Wrede, of course, this is early Christian embarrassment over Jesus’ bloodline, rather than Jesus’ own view—Wrede’s messianic secret puts him in the awkward position of not being able to trace this logion back to Jesus, because his Jesus was never acclaimed “messiah” in his own lifetime.

Wrede’s argument that Jesus was not a Davidide does fit with three other aspects of the Markan narrative.

1. Mark has no Bethlehem birth to align Jesus with the prophetic texts around the Davidic ruler’s birth in Bethlehem, the city of David.
2. Mark lacks Joseph as a Davidide to supply Davidic ancestry for Jesus (albeit adoptively in Matthew).
3. And Mark has no genealogy linking Jesus to David.

These three are all found in Matthew and Luke, of course—the birth in Bethlehem, Davidic genealogies, and Joseph’s Davidic ancestry. Indeed, Mark even lacks “Joseph,” speaking only of “the carpenter” (v.l.).

While it may seem a stretch to propose that Mark is admitting that Jesus wasn’t a blue-blooded Davidide, as Wrede does, this is precisely what we find in the Fourth Gospel. In John, the crowd debates Jesus’ identity and connection to David:

“Others [in the crowd] said, ‘This is the Messiah.’ But some asked, ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?’ So there was a division in the crowd because of him” (John 7:40-43).

Later, the Pharisees also deny Jesus’ role as a charismatic leader because of his origins: “Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee” (John 7:52).

If John had wanted to counter these claims in his narrative, the narrator could have affirmed Jesus’ Bethlehemite descent from David. But he does not—not here, nor anywhere else. Thus, at least one of our early writers shows some ambivalence about Jesus’ descent from David.4 Naturally, John develops this in a different way than Mark, with his “man from heaven” Christology and the theme of heavenly descent superseding earthly origins. But for their differences, Mark and John both lack the same three ingredients: genealogies, Joseph as a Davidide (cf. John 1:45; 6:42), and a formal birth narrative, including Jesus’ Bethlehem birth.5

Returning to the Davidssohnfrage, Wrede’s interpretation allows Jesus to be the messiah (though surreptitiously at this point in the drama) even without the Davidic bona fides: “How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? … David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?” (Mark 12:35, 37). Here we may recall Athronges—one can be a Davidic messiah even without the proper lineage. Wrede’s reading thus puts Mark’s Jesus in the company of other “upstart” Davidic messiahs who likewise lacked a Davidic pedigree but still claimed the office (so Novenson 2017, 110).

This in no way should imply that Mark is against Davidic messianism, or believes his messiah is not Davidic—the rest of Botner’s argument shows this to be unlikely based on a host of allusions and echoes to Davidic texts. As Max notes, “we may defer judgment about whether Mark’s Christ is an actual descendant of David. But there is no doubt that this pericope [and, perhaps, Mark’s narrative more widely] actualizes a Davidic frame latent in the encyclopedia of the users of messiah language” (136). Mark is attuned to presenting Jesus Davidically, even if he or an earlier tradent were embarrassed by Jesus’ lack of blue-blooded credentials.

However, Wrede’s argument runs headlong into the Bartimaeus episode, with its twofold repetition of “son of David.” For Wrede’s interpretation to still hold merit, one of the following four scenarios would need to be the case.

1. Mark’s Jesus accepts the acclamation “son of David” from Bartimaeus positively, but it is more symbolic than genealogical. On this reading, Jesus would be a son of David in the same way Johnny Cash claims to be a “nephew of my Uncle Sam” (my least favorite song of his!). Indeed, even in Mark’s own narrative, kinship language is used in this way: Jesus responds to the woman with the flow of blood, “Daughter, your faith has made you well” (Mark 5:34). Daughter of whom? Likewise, in Luke we have the “daughter of Abraham” (13:16) or the “daughters of Jerusalem” (23:28). And of course Jesus isn’t a literal “son” of David, that role belonged to Solomon among others. In these examples, kinship language is used symbolically, and the same could occur in Bartimaeus’ “son of David.”
2. As Wrede himself argues, one could posit that this “son of David” instance is simply a later addition to the early material in the Gospel tradition—“son of David” was added by Mark.6 This introduces a contraction in the narrative, but for Wrede this isn’t definitive: the Gospels all have “seams” in them. John refers to Jesus baptizing (3:22), then shortly afterwards remarks that Jesus himself doesn’t baptize (4:2). Matthew has Jesus condemn those who call others “fool” to hell (5:22), then calls the Pharisees “fools” (23:17). And so on. Very well, the Gospels, for Wrede, contradict themselves—they are large, they contain multitudes.
3. Relatedly, if one follows Matthew Larsen’s argument in Gospels before the Book, Mark could be taken as an “unfinished” document in which consistency is not necessary.
4. Finally, as a character, Bartimaeus is a stranger to Jesus in a strange land. One wonders if he can be taken in the narrative as the sole reliable witness to the minutiae of Jesus’ ancestry. In the narrative, Jesus’ own words would ostensibly supersede those of Bartimaeus when it comes to information about Jesus himself.

These are possible conditions for allowing Wrede’s interpretation of the Davidssohnfrage alongside the Bartimaeus episode, though none are by any means a grand slam.

The exception to the idea that allusions could contain genealogical concerns in Max’s book, as far as I can ascertain, is Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Max connects this to the oracle of Gen 49:11 in which a “colt” is “tied” (on in Mark, untied). He argues that “the evangelist’s linguistic community assumed that the figure in question would be a descendant of Judah” (149). Genesis 49 did indeed play in important part in formulations of the Davidic messiah in late antiquity—4Q252 already appears to assume this, the targums all use “king messiah” as a gloss for Shiloh, and Gen 49 is a recurring prooftext in rabbinic reflections on the Davidic messiah. Thus, I wholly agree with Max that Gen 49 is in view in Mark’s entry narrative—why else would the narrator mention the colt being “untied”? However, I am less certain that this is a case-closed example of Mark pointing to the genealogical dimensions of Jesus’ connection to David—instead, it may serve as simply another allusion to David tradition that helps Mark present Jesus as Davidic, if not necessarily a Davidide. The genealogical aspect of the passage is that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” (Gen 49:10), but this aspect of the passage may be, to borrow Botner’s methodological language, narcotized rather than actualized here.

In the end, I think Botner is right to focus on non-titular material in Mark’s narrative to mount the case that Jesus is Davidic therein. Titular Christology is problematic. But that is not what Wrede was concerned with—he was interested in genealogical material, and no amount of Davidic allusions in the narrative can make Jesus a blue-blooded Davidide. Only a genealogy can. Since Wrede is not interested in narratological concerns, but rather religion-historical ones, his titular method, frustrating though it may be for narrative critics such as myself, suites his aims. One could question his concerns as being misguided or unrealistic, but his methodology appears sufficient for what he was seeking.

At this point, I myself am surprised to be defending the thoroughgoing-skeptic Wrede. If his methods ill-suite Mark’s narrative, for a scholar of the historical Jesus, they fit. And his questions still haunt us after all these years—was Jesus a “born” Davidide, or was he not? While we naturally assume Jesus to be a descendant of David, this was contested within early Christianity. It is curious that none of our hostile sources question Jesus’ Davidic lineage—though of course they (in)famously scrutinize Jesus’ parentage and Mary’s partner. Rather, discussion of Davidic sonship is an intramural debate, with some like the Epistle of Barnabas and Adamantius and the Clementine Homilies denying that Jesus was a son of David.7 John may appear in this company. By contrast, our earliest sources do unambiguously hold to Jesus as a Davidide: Paul in Rom 1:3-4, the author of 2 Tim 2:8, Revelation, and Matthew and Luke. Where then does Mark fall within this spectrum of views on Jesus as genealogical descendant of David? That is the question before us, and it is worth reminding ourselves that this was not a settled matter for first- and second-century Jesus followers. Indeed, Max’s lucid monograph invites us to continue this discussion that started two thousand years ago. And we can do so with a simple question: “Is the messiah David’s son?”8