David Cowles
Oct 15, 2024
“The same facts can take on different ‘meaning’ depending on how they’re presented.
Election Day (2024) is just around the corner so there’s no better time for an article on the art of the ‘spin’. However, we’ll be exploring spin as it occurred in the 1st century CE, not the 21st.
When we talk about Scripture, the inspired word of God, we don’t expect to find ourselves talking about ‘spin’. After all, we think that spin is unique to our modern era and applies mainly in the realm of politics. And we certainly don’t believe that the inspired word of God can or should be ‘spun’. Do we?
But early Christians had a problem. 25 years after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Christianity had only one written account of his life and death. And it was a doozie! The Gospel of Mark presents what we now call ‘the historical Jesus’, warts and all. It is hardly the sort of puff piece you’d expect in Vanity Fair to help kick off a global political campaign.
Yet, by 70 CE it was clear that Christianity was here to stay…and grow. But to do so it needed a foundational text, and Mark was not the right ‘fit’ for the job. Fortunately, the authors of Matthew and Luke stepped up…and provided us with a dramatic example of ‘spin’, 1st century style.
Mark does a great job of situating Jesus in the local political and religious milieu of 30 CE and in the geographic area known as Galilee and the Levant. But by 70 CE, the Jesus story needed a much broader context. So, Matthew spun Mark for the Jewish audience (and Luke did the same for the Greeks). It is hard to imagine where we’d be today without all three synoptic Gospels.
What precisely was ‘wrong’ with Mark? First, the story begins when Jesus was already a full grown man, just setting off on his ministry. People were understandably hungry for a prequel, and by then a considerable body of legend, some helpful, some not, had grown up regarding Jesus’ birth, childhood and adolescence. Somebody needed to set the record straight.
Second, by 70 CE, a robust oral tradition of ‘Jesus Sayings’, which scholars now call ‘Q’, had taken root in the culture. The authors of Matthew and Luke wanted to preserve this source and incorporate it into ‘complete portraits’ of Jesus.
Finally, there’s the Gospel of Mark itself. Short, dark, written on the fly for a proto-Christian audience, it presented Jesus as ‘the boy next door’. The author of Mark had no need to ‘beautify’ Christ – the Marcan audience already believed.
Matthew and Luke, on the other hand, were written for a less familiar and more skeptical audience. These folks were looking for marks of authenticity recognized in their cultures. Matthew and Luke delivered those marks.
Most importantly, however, Mark is not ‘politically correct’…which mattered not at all to its proto-Christian audience but mattered mightily to Pharisaic and Academic catechumens.
The author of Matthew beautifully adapts Mark to the pastoral needs of a more sophisticated audience. It includes 95% of the Marcan content and it rarely contradicts any of that content. Instead, it positions Mark’s accounts in broader contexts to make them more acceptable to traditional 1st century Jews.
Let’s take a look at three specific examples (there are many more): According to Mark, “...He (Jesus) entered a house and once more such a crowd gathered around them that they had no chance to eat. When his family heard of this, they set out to take charge of him; for people were saying he was out of his mind.” (3: 20-21)
After this, Jesus was understandably belittled by his former neighbors whenever he returned home: “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother (or cousin) of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (6: 3) It is no wonder then that “he could work no miracles there.” (6: 5)
Matthew (13: 54-58) documents Jesus’ cool reception in Nazareth but wisely omits the embarrassing background story relayed by Mark (above).
Mark presents Jesus as a ‘man on the run’…often in hiding, eventually leaving Galilee altogether: “…He left that place (Galilee) and went into the territory of Tyre (Lebanon). He found a house to stay in, and he would have liked to remain unrecognized, but that was impossible…On his return journey from Tyrian territory he went by way of Sidon (further north, a roundabout route), through the territory of the Decapolis (10 ‘Greek’ cities to the west), to the Sea of Galilee.” (7: 24-31)
Matthew references Jesus’ sojourn in the Levant but reduces it to a single sentence: “Then Jesus went from that place and withdrew to the region to Tyre and Sidon” (15: 21), and he uses this as a way to introduce the story of another miraculous healing. Without directly contradicting Mark, Matthew gives the story a completely different emphasis. In Mark’s hands it is Jesus’ temporary retreat from ministry; per Matthew, it is an elaboration, an extension, of that ministry.
Final example: In the Garden of Gethsemane, immediately following the Last Supper, Jesus is at prayer when he is set upon by Judas, the temple guard, and Roman soldiers. One of Jesus’ followers, apparently Peter, reaches for a sword and cuts off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. (Mark 14: 43 – 50)
Mark is happy to leave the story there; but Matthew takes pains to situate the event in a context more acceptable to the casual reader. In Matthew Jesus tells the disciple to ‘sheath his sword’; Luke (a physician) goes even further and shows Jesus healing the servant’s wound.
So which account of Jesus’ ministry is ‘better’, more ‘accurate’, more ‘true’? The question is wrong headed! There is no significant contradiction between these texts but there is a clear shift of emphasis…and that’s not inappropriate. Mark is written for folks well familiar with the circumstances of Jesus’ life; some of them may even have known Jesus. It makes sense that these people would hunger for more anecdotal detail and be less concerned with political correctness.
Matthew’s audience, on the other hand, couldn’t care less whether Jesus had his eggs scrambled or over-easy. That sort of detail might even have turned them off. And re the servant’s ear, Matthew’s readers would want to understand Peter’s actions in the broader context of Jesus’ message of peace; Mark’s readers would have taken that for granted.
As we sift through the rhetoric of this (and every) election season, we would do well to keep the example of these Gospels front of mind: the same ‘facts’ can take on different ‘meaning’ depending on how they’re presented.
David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com
ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023.
