What is behind all this mystification ? Mark does
not expressly take us into his confidence, but the
following explanation has been suggested. The
Messiahship was a Jewish conception, for it was
the future Messiah's role to liberate the Jews from the
moral servitude of sin and from physical subjection
to Gentiles. It was, therefore, a terrible impediment
to the diffusion of the Christian religion among
Gentiles, that the Jews, almost en masse, would not
hear of the claims advanced in favour of Jesus. The
earliest literature of the Church was mainly written
to prove that Jesus had fulfilled the Scriptures, and
therefore was the Messiah. Now Mark— as his fre-
quent explanations of Jewish names and customs
prove — wrote for Gentiles; and Gentiles might well
ask : " How can we be expected to believe that Jesus
is Messiah, when the very Jews as whose Messiah
he came deny it?" Mark's answer is, in effect, as
follows: The voice in Jordan proclaimed him Messiah,
but only to himself. The demons, through their
supernatural insight, detected him, but "he suffered
them not to speak, because they knew him." Similarly,
his miracles and cures were not to be divulged. He
taught Li parables, lest the Jews should understand
him and turn again. Least of all might his disciples
speak of what they saw on the mount of transfigura-



MARK 37

tion or reveal his Messiahship, patent at last to them-
selves. This is all by way of explaining why the
Jews, as a race, did not accept Jesus as their Messiah.
