[ p. 99 ]
HOW long it took Jesus to reach this point of excommunication by the religion of his people there is no telling. In Mark’s story the movement towards a breach with the Pharisees and the synagogue appears swift and sudden ; it may well have been so. The astounding claim of Jesus to act by the immediate authority of God was one that must have brought the piety of the Law quickly about his ears; and an outraged Church has never been slow to appeal to the secular arm.
Nevertheless, it is possible that the swiftness of Mark’s story is illusory. He has no dates. To convey the sense of lapsing time without them is the high achievement of the skilled writer. Mark was not that. He is the naive recorder of vivid and crucial incidents as the aged mind of Simon Peter remembered them. Months may have separated events that in his narrative appear to follow [ p. 100 ] day by day. No one can tell how long elapsed between the beginning of Jesus’ preaching and his final sacrifice; it may be that the tradition of a three years’ ministry contained and elaborated in the fourth Gospel rests on a real reminiscence. It does not conflict with Mark’s story, which is simply the record of what Jesus’ chief disciple remembered in his old age of the happenings while Jesus and he were together. The record is, as we should expect it to be in such a case, vivid and detailed at the opening of the ministry and vivid and detailed at the end. For the rest it is scattered incidents remembered through a haze of apotheosis. But even as it stands it tells of one gap of unknown length when Jesus sent his disciples out to proclaim his message while he himself remained in hiding, and of another while he journeyed alone through the far north.
Whether, as the author of the fourth Gospel relates, Jesus made other passover journeys to Jerusalem before that which ended in the Passion, it is impossible to decide. But if he did they were unimportant, or Mark’s story would be different. The fact that Jesus had friends in Bethany implies nothing in this regard, for many came from Judaea [ p. 101 ] and Jerusalem to seek out the prophet of Galilee, and he surely found friends and followers among them. But that the ministry of Jesus lasted longer than the immediate impression of Mark’s Gospel would suggest is probable. Apart from the flight to the north, and the unknown interval while Jesus sent out his disciples, which Mark himself is fain to fill by his story of the death of the Baptist, there was a ministry at Bethsaida of which we have but the faintest record, and one at Chorazin of which we have no record at all. Three years would not be too long, and one year seems too short, for the events that are presupposed in the authentic sayings of Jesus.
In spite of this, we may believe that Mark gives a substantially true impression of the swiftness of the movement to the breach of Jesus with the Pharisees and the religion of the synagogue. It did not take long for Jesus to become a virtual exile from Galilee. After he had uttered his final defiance of the Law by healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, the background of Mark’s picture changes. It is not the deliberate change of a conscious historian; it is madq unconsciously, [ p. 102 ] and the Gospel narratives are so familiar that we too are unconscious of it. But it is there. Immediately after his statement that the Pharisees and Herodians plotted together how they might destroy Jesus, Mark says that he and his disciples retired to the shore of the lake. There is no reason to suppose that the synagogue where the withered hand was healed was in Capernaum. It is simply a synagogue. Before that his disciples had been plucking corn from the fields. Behind these vague indications lies an inland journey. Jesus had been “preaching in synagogues throughout the whole of Galilee,” and with him had been Simon and Andrew, James and John, no longer fishermen of the lake, for they had thrown up their calling at his summons and become fishers of men on the dry land.
Now at one moment a new background appears. Jesus is excluded from the synagogues : in Mark’s story he preaches or teaches but once in a synagogue again. He and his four disciples retreat to the lakeside. There appear suddenly a boat, and a mountain which is called the mountain. To that mountain Jesus calls the men he wants, and out of these he chooses eight more close followers, bringing [ p. 103 ] the number to twelve. The mountain, the lakeside, hurried and weary voyages from one side to the other, a chosen twelve, public parables and private explanations—all these things enter Mark’s story together, not in a precise chronological order, but at the same time. One can imagine Simon Peter in his old age telling the incidents at scattered moments to John Mark. “When did that happen, sir?” says John Mark. “Just after the Pharisees had joined with Herod’s men,” says Peter. And John Mark makes a note of it; but when he comes to put his tablets in order, he finds that many things happened “just after” the Pharisees joined with Herod’s men. But which happened after which, and why, he does not know.
Such to the eye of the literary critic is Mark’s Gospel—the main historical divisions are there, and strongly marked ; and the main psychological sequence has authenticity stamped upon it Ce n’est pas ainsi qu’on invente. But the details of the sequence are sometimes confused. The situation shapes roughly thus. Jesus and his four disciples have been driven from Galilee. He gives to those who wish to follow him the word to meet him at a mountain on the [ p. 104 ] other side of the lake, in the wild country that may have formed part of the territory of Gergasa, a Greek city of the Decapolis. There he is in a sort of no man’s land, immune from the machinations of the Pharisees and free from fears of Herod Antipas. But if he is to proclaim his message at all, he must proclaim it in Galilee. The boat that takes him to the mountain will bring him back to the shore of Galilee. So from time to time he makes descents upon the Galilean shore, preaching and teaching from the boat that escape may be easy the moment the alarm is given. He does not know how far the civil power is supporting the Pharisees ; but he has, with the precedent of John before him, good reason to fear the worst The main desire of the Pharisees is that he should be kept from contaminating Galilee. Scribes from Jerusalem are on the watch to meet him, to confute him when he appears and work against his influence in his absence. His descents upon the shore of Galilee are continually thwarted, though on one occasion he manages to make his way inland on a futile journey to his native place. Finally, on another attempt to preach in Galilee his retreat to the lakeside and the boat is cut off and he is forced to flee [ p. 105 ] northward by land to the territories of Tyre and Sidon, and to regain “the other side” by a long and devious journey.
Such is, roughly, the new background of the story. Jesus’ home is no longer Simon’s house at Capernaum, but the mountain on the other side. There he gathers his chosen, and instructs his disciples, so that they may carry his message abroad, in places where his own presence is forbidden.