Did Jesus Hide His Identity?

Unpacking the Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel

Mark is a gospel of literary puzzles. In previous posts, I have looked at a few of the most intriguing: who is the enigmatic ‘young man’ who flees naked at Jesus’ arrest? And what can explain Mark’s tendency to ‘sandwich’ episodes within each other?

Yet there is an even more complex literary puzzle in Mark – something scholars have dubbed the ‘messianic secret’. This refers to the way in which the Markan Jesus – in contrast to the way Jesus is presented in John¹ – frequently conceals his identity.

When the demons identify Jesus as the ‘holy one’ of God, he silences them. When he heals people, he commands them not to tell anyone about it. And when the disciples begin to clock on to Jesus’ messianic identity, he instructs them to be silent.

The question I want to address in this piece is: why? Why does the Markan Jesus not want those around him to reveal his identity? Is this something that goes back to the historical Jesus, or should we credit it to the literary artistry of Mark?

Did Jesus claim to be the Messiah?

The phrase ‘Messianic secret’ (Das Messiasgeheimnis) can be credited to William Wrede, who also offered an explanation for it.² In Wrede’s view, Jesus never actually claimed to be the Messiah. Rather, this belief arose after his resurrection, when the Church assigned him a role he never arrogated. The ‘messianic secret’ is thus a way to explain why people didn’t think that Jesus was the Christ during his lifetime. It says that Jesus acted in a way that was messianic, but he told people to keep it a secret.

Today, I know of no scholars who fully endorse Wrede’s explanation. For one thing, it is notable that Jesus is often deeply unsuccessful in telling people to keep his identity a secret. In Mark 1 and 7, the people Jesus heals refuse to keep his command to secrecy. If Mark invented the Messianic Secret to explain why no one thought that Jesus was the Messiah during his lifetime, he totally failed to give this impression.

Yet there is another crucial problem with this idea: namely, that there are good grounds to think that Jesus did claim a messianic identity. It would be impossible to catalogue all of Jesus’ ostensibly ‘messianic’ deeds here – you may inspect this footnote for a few³ – but they are found in multiple strata and different forms within the gospels. Thus, even if Jesus did not explicitly go around telling people, ‘I am the Messiah,’ he did do things that look implicitly messianic.

We might also take issue with Wrede’s claim that Jesus’ messiahship was a post-Resurrection belief. As James Dunn has pointed out, “messiahship was not an obvious, far less necessary, corollary of resurrection.”⁴ Other figures such as Moses, Elijah and Isaiah were thought to have been exalted to heaven after their deaths, but none of these men attracted messianic associations. The simplest explanation of the fact that Jesus was proclaimed ‘Son of God’ at his resurrection is the fact that he was already viewed as messianic, and the resurrection experiences vindicated this claim.

The Historical Jesus

If Wrede was wrong that Jesus was not perceived as a messianic figure in his lifetime, could the messianic secret go back to Jesus himself?

On the one hand, scholars have reasons to be sceptical. Did the demons really know who Jesus was when they spoke to him? Did Jesus hush their recognition of who he was? Even if one believes that these episodes did happen – and certainly, strange exorcistic experiences occur in the modern world – it would be difficult to establish historically that these scenes unfolded exactly as they were narrated.

At the same time, it seems plausible that something in the ‘messianic secret’ might go back to Jesus himself. To see how, we must bear in mind that messianic notions in the first-century were varied and diverse. Assuming that Jesus had a messianic self-understanding, but did not buy into the more martial, political strains of messianism which were prevalent in the first century, one might understand why he may not have gone around claiming to be ‘the messiah’.

When I say that Jesus may have wanted to avoid certain messianic overtones, I do not simply mean that he wanted to clarify, philosophically-speaking, what he was about. Avoiding claims to messiah-ship may have also served as a survival strategy. John the Baptist was put to death by the state. Several other kingly claimants of the first-century shared his fate. If Jesus wanted his mission to be successful, he would not have wanted to have run similarly afoul with claims to kingship.

It is possible, then, that the Messianic secret had its roots in Jesus’ own avoidance of kingly claims. Yet this theory is not without problems. On the one hand, it does not explain why Jesus does on occasion tell those he heals to spread the news (e.g. 5:19-20). If Jesus was trying to hide his identity, he does not seem to have done a very good job.

And even if we suppose that the historical Jesus did strategically conceal his identity, we are still left with a cluster of literary questions: For what purpose does Mark include the motif in his story? And how does the motif function within his narrative world? Before we understand the secret, we need to consider how Mark employs it within his wider narrative.

A Literary Secret

To see how the Messianic Secret works literarily, it is important to recognise that we –the readers – know from the outset of the narrative that Jesus is ‘the Christ.’ This places us on the same spiritual plane as the demons, who also recognise Jesus’ identity as the ‘holy one of God’. Yet beyond this, the characters in the story consistently misunderstand or have Jesus’ messianic identity concealed from them. Why is this?

The most common suggestion is that Mark is trying to re-configure his readers’ understanding of what it means to be the Messiah. Like the disciples, Mark takes us on a journey towards the cross. We are not to understand messiahship simply in terms of glory, power or military subjection – the most common ways in which first-century Jews would have viewed it. We are to see it in terms of Jesus’ death.

Consider the first moment Jesus is explicitly ‘revealed’ as the Son of God to his inner ring: the mount of transfiguration. When Jesus is coming down from the mountain, he tells his disciples not to share what they have heard until after his resurrection. It is not before Jesus has died and risen that they will understand his sonship. And on the Mount, they are told to ‘listen’ to Jesus. What follows is a block of teaching in which Jesus informs his disciples of the necessity of his coming suffering and death.

The same dynamics are at work in Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus does not want Peter to share this truth – and immediately, we are told why: Peter thinks that Jesus’ messiahship should not involve Jesus going to the cross. In this regard, Peter is like the first blind man Jesus heals in the same portion of material: he is healed partially and can therefore ‘see’ Jesus – but only to some extent, not fully.

Within this unfolding journey, when is it that a human character can finally clocks and realise who Jesus is? It is only once Jesus has breathed his last, and the centurion proclaims: truly, this man was the Son of God. Here we finally have a figure who understands what has been hidden from the disciples. Jesus is the Messiah, but he is the Messiah in a way that no one expected: he is the Messiah who suffers and dies.

Considered as a narrative, the cross and resurrection appear integral to Mark’s framing of Jesus’ messianic identity. Yet there are two reasons why I don’t think that this fact alone provides a comprehensive explanation of the ‘messianic secret’.

The first is that most of Mark’s readers would have already been familiar with the notion of Jesus’ death as the messiah. And many of Mark’s readers, who were gentile, would have first come across the term ‘messiah’ when they came into contact with the Jesus movement. This poses a problem for the idea that Mark was setting out to correct an errant Christology in which the messiah does not suffer. For as Helen Bond explains, Mark’s readers “would have no need for the title to be reconfigured.”⁵

The second is that this narrative unfolding of Jesus’ identity – which reaches its zenith on the cross – does not explain earlier instances of the ‘secret’ in which Jesus (inconsistently) tells people he heals not to spread the news. For that aspect of the secret, I think we need another explanation, to which we shall turn next.

Is the Secret… A Secret?

So far, we have couched Mark’s material as a messianic secret. Yet we might pause for a moment to consider whether this is the best framing of the motif. As David Watson has pointed out in his ground-breaking study, Honor Among Christians, the ancient language for ‘secrecy’ is remarkably absent from the gospel.⁶ For instance, Mark virtually never uses terms like kruptō, apokruptō, lanthanō, arrétos or mysterion.

Rather than seeing Mark’s material in terms of secrecy, then, Watson proposes an altogether different framework for making sense of the motif – that of shame and honour. He observes that many of the episodes in which Jesus grants healing or accrues titles (‘holy one of God’ or the ‘Christ’) can be seen within the context of a patron-client relationship. In the Roman world, a patron would provide services to a client for which he was, in turn, granted ‘honour’, titles and devotion.

Seen through this lens, Watson argues that the Markan Jesus deliberately subverts the dynamics of shame and honour in the ancient world. Rather than receiving the honour that is due him on account of his wondrous deeds, Jesus tells people not to spread the word. Rather than ‘lording’ over others, he establishes new markers of what is considered honourable: sacrifice, service and suffering – even to the point of death.

The notion that the Markan Jesus inverts the dynamics of shame and honour is especially appealing. Yet like other explanations we have surveyed, it is not seamless. Its greatest problem is that it does not account for several moments in the gospel in which Jesus does refuse honour but embraces it. Watson himself notes eighteen such instances. Thus, if he is correct that the motif is designed to invert shame and honour, Mark has not followed through with these dynamics in a completely coherent way.

A Counter-Imperial Resonance?

Watson’s thesis may not completely account for the way that Jesus embraces honour. Yet more recently, Adam Winn has adapted Watson’s argument in a way that attempts to account for Jesus’ simultaneous embrace and rejection of honours.⁷ The key to Winn’s view is that Jesus is presented in Mark like a Roman emperor; and several of the emperors positioned themselves in a similar way to the Markan Jesus – they embraced honour on occasion, but were known for deflecting it in others.

Consider Vespasian, who was likely Emperor during the time that Mark was composed. Vespasian receives all kinds of honour. Yet following the deflective style of earlier emperors, Vespasian was hesitant to accept the title ‘Father of the Country’ or his powers as tribune. Winn also observes that Vespasian ended the practice of worshipping the ‘genius’ of the living emperor, instituted by Caligula.

Winn’s thesis may not explain why Jesus rejects or embraces honour in any specific instance.⁸ It also does not – to the best of my knowledge – draw upon the particular language that might be used of imperial deflection. Nonetheless, I find it plausible that Jesus’ relationship to honour may be seen within a wider set of imperial parallels.

As I have set out in earlier posts, there are several ways in which the evangelists present Jesus as ‘Emperor-like.’ Broadly speaking, Jesus is the Son of God (divi filius), is associated with ‘good news’ (euangelia), performs miracles – including the use of spittle – and ascends to heaven. Even more specifically, Jesus is ultimately responsible for the demise of the Temple in Jerusalem. With these parallels in mind, Winn thinks that Jesus’ deflection of honour may be another way that Jesus “out-Caesars Caesar.”

Disclosing the Messianic Secret

The Messianic Secret is no easy puzzle to solve. And I think this is in part due to the panoply of materials that scholars have placed under its umbrella. In the first instance, we have Jesus instructing those he has healed not to spread the news. Yet we also have a sub-plot in which Jesus instructs others not to out him as ‘the Christ’ or ‘Son of God’ when he is explicitly proclaimed as such.

I wonder whether untangling these separate threads might allow us to see the ‘messianic secret’ more clearly. In the first case, the Markan Jesus did not always want to embrace the honour that was due to him in his healing miracles. This aspect of the ‘secret’ fits into Jesus’ wider characterisation as an emperor or ‘counter’ Son of God.

Yet in the second case, Mark is laying out what it means to be the Messiah. He is showing us that any notion of messiah-ship which leaves out Jesus’ death and resurrection is incomplete. This may not be to ‘reconfigure’ his readers’ notions of messiahship, but to emphasise one aspect of Jesus’ identity that would have resonated with early Christian experience: not present glory, but suffering, service and death.

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Thank you for reading this post on Mark! If you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy:

• Who is Mark’s Mystery Man?

• Did Someone Order a Markan Sandwich?

• Eyewitness Testimony in Mark?

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1. See Jesus’ repeated ‘I am’ claims throughout the gospel, his acceptance of Martha’s claim that Jesus is ‘the Christ, the son of God’ (11:27) and his claim to Pilate that he has ‘said nothing in secret...’ (18:20).

2. For a recent translation, see William Wrede, The Messianic Secret, trans. James C.G. Greig (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2021).

3. See, for example, Jesus’ deeds of healing (Mt. 8:11-26; Lk. 7:18-23; cf. Isa. 35:5-6; 61:1) his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Mt. 21:1-11; cf. Zech. 9:9); and his teaching that the twelve disciples he has called will rule in the coming Kingdom of God (Mt 19:28; Lk. 22:28-30).

4. James G.D. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003), 627.

5. Helen K. Bond, The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2020), np.

6. See David F. Watson, Honor Among Christians: The Cultural Key to the Messianic Secret (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010).

7. See Adam Winn, Reading Mark’s Christology under Caesar: Jesus the Messiah and Roman Imperial Ideology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018).

8. Michaël Girardin, review of Adam Winn, Reading Mark’s Christology under Caesar, RBL 06/2019.