The seams at the joining of the narratives can be recognised in Mark vii. 31, where Jesus is suddenly transferred from the north to Decapolis, and in the saying in Mark viii. 14 ff., which makes explicit reference to the two miracles of feeding the multitude. Whether the Evangelist himself worked these two sets of narratives together, or whether he found them already united, cannot be determined, and is not of any direct historical interest. The disorder is in any case so complete that we cannot fully reconstruct each of the separate sets of narratives.
The external reasons why the narratives of Mark viii. 34-ix. 30, of which the scene is on the northern shore of the lake, are placed in this way after the incident of Caesarea Philippi are not difficult to grasp. The section contains an impressive discourse to the people on following Jesus in His sufferings, crucifixion, and death (Mark viii. 34-ix. 1). For this reason the whole series of scenes is attached to the revelation, of the secret of the suffering of the Son of Man; and the redactor did not stop to think how the people could suddenly appear, and as suddenly disappear again. The statement, too, "He called the people with the disciples" (Mark viii. 34), helped to mislead him into inserting the section at this point, although this very remark points to the circumstances of the time just after the return of the disciples, when Jesus was sometimes alone with the disciples, and sometimes calls the eager multitude about Him.
The whole scene belongs, therefore, to the days which He spent at Bethsaida, and originally followed immediately upon the crossing of the lake, after the feeding of the multitude. It was after Jesus had been six days surrounded by the people, not six days after the revelation at Caesarea Philippi, that the "transfiguration" took place (Mark ix. 2). On this assumption, all the difficulties of the incident at Caesarea Philippi are cleared up in a moment; there is no longer anything strange in the fact that Peter declares to Jesus who He really is, while Jesus appears neither surprised nor especially rejoiced at the insight of His disciple. The transfiguration had, in fact, been the revelation of the secret of the Messiahship to the three who constituted the inner circle of the disciples. [1] And Jesus had not Himself revealed it to them; what had happened was, that
- ↑ It is typical of the constant agreement of the critical conclusions in thoroughgoing scepticism and thoroughgoing eschatology that Wrede also observes: "The transfiguration and Peter's confession are closely connected in content" (p. 123). He also clearly perceives the inconsistency in the fact that Peter at Caesarea Philippi gives evidence of possessing a knowledge which he and his fellow-disciples do not show elsewhere (p. 119), but the fact that it is Peter, not Jesus, who reveals the Messianic secret, constitutes a very serious difficulty for Wrede's readirg of the facts, since this assumes Jesus to have been the revealer of it.
