Mike Bird on the historicity of Mark’s secrecy motif

I am currently reviewing Michael Bird’s book, Are You the One Who Is to Come? and, for the most part, I have found it to be engaging and informative. Mike certainly has an awareness of issues across the spectrum of historical Jesus scholarship and he does a good job of situating his own position in the spectrum of opinion. One thing in particular though, stood out to me as I read the book and that is his argument that Mark’s secrecy motif likely goes back to the ministry of the historical Jesus (see his discussion on pp. 66-70).

Wrede argued that the “messianic secret” in Mark’s Gospel was a retrojection, reflecting later theological developments and essentially proving that during his lifetime, Jesus never regarded himself as the messiah. Using Wrede as his primary conversation partner in this section of his third chapter, Bird seems to (perhaps unwittingly?) set up a false choice between Wrede’s position and his own (that the ”messianic secret” goes back to the ministry of the historical Jesus).  There are other choices, aren’t there? Much more has been written on Mark’s secrecy motif and Bird appears to recognize this in his footnotes. Nevertheless, his argument strikes me as somewhat of an oversimplification.

I also think his conclusion is unlikely for several reasons. First, it is clear from the outset of Mark’s Gospel that the reader is supposed to understand the Jesus is “Christ [=Messiah] and Son of God.” This is confirmed a number of times in the text, most notably in the gospel’s two climaxes: 8:27-31, when Peter confesses that Jesus is the “messiah,” and in 15:39 when the centurion confesses, “truly this man was the Son of God.” All of this appears to be a deliberate literary attempt aimed at having a rhetorical effect on the audience. The irony is that while Jesus’ identity is consistenly revealed to the twelve (those appointed to be met’ autou in 3:14), they fail to understand while outsiders like the Syrophoenician woman appear to grasp at least a portion of the truth about Jesus’ identity. The “secret” is not very well kept if it is explicitly given to insiders and subtly grasped by outsiders. Again, this seems to be a deliberate literary ploy. Second, this secrecy motif is unattested elsewhere in the canonical gospel tradition. This is not to say that only things that are multiply attested can be historical but one would think that such an important element of Jesus’ ministry would have found exposition elsewhere.

In the end, while I disagree with Mike’s conclusion about the historicity of the secrecy motif, I do find compelling the statement with which he concludes the section in question. He writes:

It is surely correct to see the early church attributing theological significance to the title “Christ.” After all, for the early church, Jesus was, is, and will be the Messiah and Savior of all the people. Yet it is singularly inappropriate to conclude from this that all the messianic passages in the Gospels are indebted to the faith of the early church. Wrede’s messianic secret tried to lend some credence to this perspective, but the theory is no longer acceptable (p. 70).