Mark and His Readers: The Son of God among Greeks and Romans

Abstract

In his influential work,Kyrios Christos, Wilhelm Bousset confessed that he had vacillated and was still vacillating on the question of whether the creation of the title υἱòς θɛo⋯ (“Son of God”) as an epithet for Jesus ought to be attributed to the earliest community of his followers in Palestine. He tentatively took the position that the oldest community of followers of Jesus described him as the παῖς θɛo⋯ (“Servant of God”) in a messianic interpretation of the servant-poems of Second Isaiah. This epithet, he thought, was in considerable tension with the notion of Jesus as the Son of God, making it unlikely that both epithets originated in the same context. He argued that the statement of the divine voice in the scenes of baptism and transfiguration, “You are my Son,” is a tradition that circulated in the earliest community but that this address is a far cry from the title “Son of God.” He was thus inclined to conclude that this title originated “on Greek ground, in the Greek language.” He argued that the confession of Jesus as the Son of God by the Gentile centurion in Mark 15:39 cannot be understood as a recognition of Jesus as the Jewish messiah. Rather, “Son of God” was the formula chosen by the evangelist to express the identity of Jesus Christ for the faith of the Gentile Christian community.