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.