- Davis, C. J. (1996). The Name and Way of the Lord: Old Testament Themes, New Testament Christology, identification of “the Lord” with Jesus is actually not explicit in the text but instead assumed by the interpreters. Another possible interpretation is that “the Lord” in the passage is not meant to be Jesus but, well, the Lord. I.e., Mark doesn’t say that John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus, it says he prepares the way for Yahweh.
- In Mark’s gospel John does proclaim the coming of one more powerful than him. He is also, in Mark’s gospel, portrayed as Elijah. With that in mind, the allusion is abundantly clear. The one more powerful who comes after Elijah is Elisha, not YHWH incarnate. Joel Marcus goes over this extraordinarily well in his book John the Baptist in History and Theology. In Mark’s schema, Jesus is not God incarnate, he would simply be “Elisha”, and together with him and “Elijah” (John the Baptist) they would be ushering in God’s imminent kingdom on earth, (see also: Ehrman’s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, or Maurice Casey’s Jesus of Nazareth for how Mark’s gospel portrays Jesus as an anointed apocalyptic prophet, not God incarnate). John would be first and would prepare the way, while Jesus would then likely usher in the Kingdom as God’s messiah.
- This is also much more consistent with the rest of how Mark portrays Jesus. You see, in Raymond E. Brown’s An Introduction to New Testament Christology, his analysis concludes that Mark presents clear differentiations between Jesus and God all throughout the gospel. And those are still there, even if one somehow reads the allusions to the more powerful successor of Elijah being God incarnate rather than Elisha. So one would need to reconcile Jesus saying things such as “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Mark 10:18) and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) if Mark is trying to portray Jesus as God. It’s rather easy if one understands Mark to be implying Jesus is an Elisha-like prophet the way John the Baptist was “Elijah” according to Mark. But ultimately, to see Mark as portraying Jesus as God is reading an absurd amount into the opening of Mark’s Gospel, almost rather anachronistically, as you don’t see Jesus portrayed as God until nearly half a century after Mark’s gospel was written.
The Literary Context of Isaiah 40.3
The Literary Contexts of Exodus 23:20 and Malachi 3:1
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