* Christ,' although on our Lord's lips ' the Son of Man ' is constant. The general effect of the narrative on the reader, who passes rapidly through it, noting particularly the designations employed of our Lord, is a strong Impression that He is thought of by the writers, and Is represented by them as thought of by His contemporary followers and by Himself, as a person of high dignity and unquestionable authority; and that this dignity and authority were rooted, both in their and In His estimation, in His Messianic character. If we are to take the designations employed in the Gos- pel narratives as our guide, therefore, we should say that the fundamental general fact which they suggest Is that Jesus was esteemed by His first followers as the promised Messiah, and was looked upon with reverence and accorded supreme authority as such. Whether this impression Is fully justified by the evi- dence when It Is narrowly scrutinized; and If so what the complete significance of the fact so established is; and whether more than appears upon the surface of it Is really contained In the fact — these are matters which must be left to a closer examination of the de- tails to determine.
In undertaking such a closer examination of the details. It will conduce not only to clearness of treat- Starting rnent, but also to surety of result, to Point of the take up the several Gospels separately. Survey p^^^ perhaps it may be as well to begin with the Gospel of Mark. It is the briefest and in some respects the simplest and most direct narrative we have of the career of our Lord. It may be sup- posed, therefore, to present to us the elements of our problem In their least complicated shape.
THE DESIGN^ATIONS OF OUR LORD IN
MARK
In Mark what we may call the narrative designation
of our Lord Is uniformly the simple ' Jesus.'^ Mark
employs no other designation In his
Designation ^^^i^e narrative.^ On the other hand, he places this designation, In Its sim- plicity, in the mouth of no one else.^ In the heading of his Gospel he sets, it Is true, that " solemn designa- tion of the Messianic personality,''. ' Jesus Christ.' This Is a designation not only which occurs nowhere else in this Gospel,^ but which occurs elsewhere In the four Gospels only rarely and only in similar formal connections. It seems already, here at least, to be
1 It occurs seventy-three times in Mark. In all these instances it has the article, except the first (i^), where the article is absent in accordance with the general rule that names of persons occur first without the article, and after that take it.
2 In i^ " Jesus Christ " occurs, but this is not in the narrative but ia the heading of the book. " Jesus the Nazarene," lo*^, is not the lan- guage of Mark but of the people, repeated by him. " Lord Jesus," 16^^, "Lord," i620j are in the spurious closing paragraph.
3 Unless the order in which the words stand in lo*^, " Thou Son of David, Jesus," and in 14^^^, " That Nazarene, Jesus," be thought to constitute an exception. The designation, ' Jesus,' occurs on the lips of others in such combinations as: i^*, "Jesus, thou Nazarene"; 5'^, " Jesus, Son of the Most High God " ; 10*'^, " Jesus, the Son of David " ; and also again, " Jesus, the Nazarene " ; 14®^, " Jesus, the Nazarene " ; 16^, "Jesus, the Nazarene."
* Cf. Holtzmann, Hand-Commentar , p. 37.
5
4.
6 • The Designations of Our Lord
employed as a proper narne.^ But in the narrative itself, as we have intimated, Mark uses only the simple * Jesus,' which nevertheless he never represents as used by others either in speaking of or in speaking to Jesus.
The name by which Jesus was popularly known to His contemporaries, according to Mark, was appar- ently the fuller descriptive one of ' Jesus Da^signtion °f Nazareth' (lo" i6= 14").' On one occasion He is represented as ad- dressed by this full name (i""*), and on two others by the name ' Jesus,' enlarged by a Messianic title ('Jesus, Son of the Most High God' 5'^, 'Jesus, Son of David' 10'*''^). The inference would seem to be that ' Jesus ' was too common a name''^ to be sufficiently designatory until our Lord's person had loomed so large, at least in the circles to which the Gospels were addressed, as to put all other Jesuses out of mind when this name was mentioned. The employment of the simple ' Jesus ' as the narrative name in this Gospel is, therefore, an outgrowth of, and a testimony to, the supreme position He occupied in the minds of Christians.
The formula by which Jesus is represented by Mark as ordinarily addressed is apparently the simple hon- orific title, ' Rabbi,' by which in that ^Ad^riss°^ age (Mt 23') every professed teacher was courteously greeted.' The actual
^ So, e.g., Meyer, Holtzmann, Wellhausen.
^ On the form Na^apr^vois see Swete, on Mark i-*.
'See Delitzsch, Der Jesusname in " Zeitschr. f. d. luth. Theol.," 1876, 2o^seq., or Talmud. Stud., xv. ; and cf. Keim, Geschichte Jesu, 1, 384 seq.
8Cf. Westcott, on John 32.