The Messianic Secret By Wilhelm Wrede A ground-breaking academic study of whether or not Jesus actively identified himself as the Messiah, which when first published revolutionised attitudes to the New Testament. ISBN-13: 9780227677179 Specifications: 216x138mm, 300pp, Hardback Price: £25.00 • US$52.50 Publication: November 1987 Order this Title Now

About this Book

The Messianic Secret, which one century on is still the point of departure for all studies of the Gospel of Mark and of an understanding of the literary methods of the Gospel writers, is now available in English in this translation by J.C.G. Greig.

Wrede's primary concern in his discussion of Mark is the doctrine of the messianic secret, the notion of a Jesus who, assuming messiahship at baptism, keeps it secret for much of his ministry until, after the confessions of Peter, he introduces the disciples to the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah. The idea of such a secret can be shown, from a study of the other Gospels, to have developed variously, and above all to go back to a period prior to Mark's work as the earliest evangelist.

Wrede finds the theological source of the idea of a secret about the messiahship in a contrast between what the Church came to think of Jesus and how his life had been understood during his ministry. He suggests that because the Church came to think of Jesus as Messiah after the Resurrection, they came to explain the lack of explicit declaration of his messiahship by Jesus during his ministry by suggesting that (nevertheless) Jesus had after all secretly revealed himself as the Messiah.

The doctrine of the messianic secret is, says Wrede, the after-effect of the idea of the Resurrection as the beginning of Jesus' messianic office". Furthermore, if this doctrine could have arisen only at a time when nothing was known of any open claim on Jesus' part to be Messiah, this seems to be positive evidence that Jesus actually did not represent himself as Messiah.

Wrede was among the first to recognise the creative contribution of the writers of the Gospels, and to emphasise the necessity of a historical approach to the Church's traditions if we are to avoid a naive misunderstanding of the perspective from which the Gospels are written. His work is thus the foundation stone not only in the study of Mark, about whom he still has much to teach us, but also in the vexed area of the contribution of the evangelists to the Gospel. In this field Wrede's work is still essential reading, unsurpassed by the advances of the Form Critics, the Redaction Critics, whose work draws directly on his, and even of the more advanced literary critics of the present day.

About the Author

William Wrede was born in 1859 at Bücken in Hanover. He became an associate professor at Breslau in 1893, and full professor in 1896. He died in office in 1906.

Dr J.C.G. Greig was sometime Professor of New Testament at Westminster College, Cambridge, and lecturer on Religious Education at Jordanhill College of Education, Glasgow.

Related Titles

Other titles in the Library of Theological Translations Series include:

The Biblical Doctrine of Infant Baptism: Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace by Pierre-Charles Marcel
Critique of Earth by Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen
Critique of Heaven by Arend Theodoor van Leeuwen
Dogmatics (Volume I: The Christian Doctrine of God) by Emil Brunner
Dogmatics (Volume II: The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption) by Emil Brunner
Dogmatics (Volume III: The Christian Doctrine of the the Church, Faith and the Consummation) by Emil Brunner
The Epistle to the Romans by Franz J. Leenhardt
The Eucharistic Memorial (Part I: The Old Testament) by Max Thurian
The Eucharistic Memorial (Part II: The New Testament) by Max Thurian
From Tradition to Gospel by Martin Dibelius
Introduction to Reformed Dogmatics, An by Auguste Lecerf
King and Messiah by Aage Bentsen
New Testament Pattern by Jean-Louis Leuba
Old Testament Theology by Ludwig Koehler
Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History by Hans Joachim Schoeps
The Religion of Ancient Israel by Theodore C. Vriezen
The Titles of Jesus in Christology: Their History in Early Christianity by Ferdinand Hahn
Vocabulary of the Bible by Jean-Jaques von Allmen