A very little consideration suffices to show that there is something quite incomprehensible in the public ministry of Jesus taken as a whole. According to Mark it lasted less than a year, for since he speaks of only one Passover-journey we may conclude that no other Passover fell within the period of Jesus' activity as a teacher. If it is proposed to assume that He allowed a Passover to go by without going up to Jerusalem, His adversaries, who took Him to task about hand-washings and about rubbing the ears of corn on the Sabbath, would certainly have made a most serious matter of this, and we should have to suppose that the Evangelist for some reason or other thought fit to suppress the fact. That is to say, the burden of proof lies upon those who assert a longer duration for the ministry of Jesus.
Until they have succeeded in proving it, we may assume something like the following course of events. Jesus, in going up to a Passover came in contact with the movement initiated by John the Baptist in Judaea, and, after the lapse of a little time-if we bring into the reckoning the forty days' sojourn in the wilderness mentioned in Mark i. 13, a few weeks later-appeared in Galilee proclaiming the near approach of the Kingdom of God. According to Mark He had known Himself since His baptism to be the Messiah, but from the historical point of view that does not matter, since history is concerned with the first announcement of the Messiahship, not with inward psychological processes. [1]
This work of preaching the Kingdom was continued until the sending forth of the Twelve; that is to say, at the most for a few weeks. Perhaps in the saying "the harvest is great but the labourers are few," with which Jesus closes His work prior to sending forth the disciples, there lies an allusion to the actual state of the natural fields. The flocking of the people to Him after the Mission of the Twelve, when a great multitude thronged about Him for several days during His journey along the northern shore of the lake, can be more naturally explained if the harvest had just been brought in.
However that may be, it is certain that Jesus, in the midst of His initial success, left Galilee, journeyed northwards, and only resumed His work as a teacher in Judaea on the way to Jerusalem! Of His "public ministry," therefore, a large section falls out, being cancelled by a period of inexplicable concealment; it dwindles to
- ↑ Wrede certainly goes too far in asserting that even in Mark's version the experience at the baptism is conceived as an open miracle, perceptible to others. The way in which the revelations to the prophets are recounted in the Old Testament does not make in favour of this. Otherwise we should have to suppose that the Evangelist described the incident as a miracle which took place in the presence of a multitude without perceiving that in this case the Messianic secret was a secret no longer. If so, the story of the baptism stands on the same footing as the story of the Messianic entry: it is a revelation of the Messiahship which has absolutely no results.
