Was Jesus a Prophet?
“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus, according to Mark 8:27, posed this question to his disciples one day: “Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked them, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets’” (Mark 8:27-28). The disciples’ answer is as unclear as are the identifications of Jesus circulating among the people: apparently many suppose Jesus is John the Baptizer. Do they merely think Jesus has appeared in the power and spirit of the Baptizer, or do they believe he has returned in Jesus as Johannes redivivus (cf. Mark 6:14)?
The disciples list a second popular opinion, that Jesus is the prophet Elijah. Here things are clearer. It is said of Elijah in 2 Kings 2:1-18 that he did not die but was raptured to heaven by God. This led to the opinion that in the end time Elijah would come again and appear once more in Israel (Mal 3:23; Sir 48:10). So part of the people of God regarded Jesus as the prophet Elijah, sent by God to introduce the end-time events.
The third position is again unclear. Many said that Jesus was one of the prophets. That, similarly to the second position, could mean that Jesus is another prophet, such as Jeremiah (cf. Matt 16:14), who had been taken up to heaven and has now returned. But probably it simply means that many people thought Jesus was a prophet like those who had appeared in Israel in times past (cf. Mark 6:15).
We may suppose that Mark 8:28 is a fairly accurate reflection of the speculations about Jesus that were circulating in Israel, with all their vagueness and attempts to grope toward the reality of Jesus’ person. Many people must have thought and spoken in more or less these terms. There was also an opinion, appearing in the gospels and elsewhere,2 that Jesus was a great prophet. For example, the inhabitants of Nain say, “’A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’” (Luke 7:16), or John 7:40-41 reads, “Some in the crowd said, ‘This is really the prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Messiah.’ But some asked, ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?’” We can see from these texts how divided opinions were. In the mind of the Fourth Evangelist, certainly, one may indeed say of Jesus that he is “the” prophet, because that phrase refers to the end-time prophet per se, the one who, on the basis of Deuteronomy 18:18, was awaited by some groups of Jews.3
Jesus does not seem to have shared the evaluation of his person as that of a prophet, or a raptured and returned prophet, or “the” end-time prophet. We can see this clearly from the fact that after the disciples have listed the people’s opinions (Mark 8:28) he asks them, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29). Jesus—at least in the narrative—expects a different answer, one not identical with what has been said before, and he receives that answer in Peter’s confession of him as Messiah.
A still clearer answer to our question is the way Jesus estimates John the Baptizer, since for Jesus not even the Baptizer is simply a prophet. Jesus tells the crowd, regarding John:
What did you go out into the wilderness [to the Baptizer] to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and [you have seen] more than a prophet. (Matt 11:7-9)
If even the Baptizer cannot be comprehended in the title “prophet” we may conclude that the same is certainly true of Jesus. And Jesus must have seen it the same way. The Baptizer spoke in his preaching of a Stronger One who would come after him: “I baptize you only with water, but the one who comes after me is stronger than I; I am not worthy to untie his sandals. He will baptize you with fire” (cf. Matt 3:11). That would have been more or less the original wording of the Baptizer’s saying about the “Stronger One.” Many interpreters ponder which of the exalted end-time figures in Judaism the Baptizer may have had in mind, but exegetically speaking that is impermissible. If the Baptizer does not use one of the existing titles of majesty (cf. also Luke 7:19) but only alludes to the one who is to come as the Stronger One—that is, he is unable to describe his mystery in a single concept—that must be respected and we should not attempt to correct it in hindsight.
We may suspect that since Jesus had probably spent a rather long time as a follower of the Baptizer he had at some point applied to himself the prediction of the Stronger One who was to come. And we may further suppose that he tended to avoid existing titles of majesty. As far as the mystery of his person was concerned, Jesus preferred to speak in veiled and indirect terms, just as the Baptizer had done in this regard.
At any rate, Jesus did not see himself as a prophet.4 This is abundantly clear from the beatitude he spoke over his disciples: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it” (Luke 10:23-24). According to this saying, the turning of the age has already happened. Prophets and kings are contrasted to the disciples, the time of prophets and kings to the time of the reign of God. What previously was only longed for can now be seen. In light of these words it is out of the question that Jesus could have located himself within the time of the prophets or the phenotype of the prophet! This matches to the letter “something greater than Jonah is here… something greater than Solomon is here!” in Matthew 12:41-42.
In addition, the beatitude for the disciples just quoted makes it clear what reticence and veiled reference Jesus employed when speaking of the mystery of his own person. We will encounter this reticence again and again, also with regard to the question of whether Jesus saw himself as the Messiah. But first we need to mention another ground for concluding that Jesus could not have seen himself as a prophet. He had Scripture before his eyes. Like every pious Jew he recited a part of it every day. Every Sabbath he heard not only sections of the Torah but also readings from the prophets. Someone who constantly encounters Scripture in this way very quickly internalizes how the prophets speak. All the writing prophets in Israel point out persistently that “the word of the LORD” has come to them and is being communicated to Israel through them.5 It is not their own words they are handing on but the word spoken to them.
Jesus makes no such statements. We do not find a single passage in which he says anything like “The LORD has spoken,” or “the mouth of the LORD has spoken it,” or “hear the word of the LORD,” or “thus says the LORD.” In place of these “messenger formulae,” which repeatedly emphasize that the prophet is only a transmitter, Jesus created for himself his own opening formula, one so far not attested in the Judaism of the time: “Amen, I say to you.”6 In contrast to the “amen” that responds to someone else’s speech and affirms it, this “amen” begins sayings of Jesus and introduces them as words spoken on his own authority. The result is a dialectic that is hard to describe: on the one hand, Jesus speaks in his own name like a sovereign and on his own authority. On the other hand, he speaks out of the most extreme intimacy with God.
Jesus the Messiah?
In preaching to the crowds, did Jesus make a kind of self-presentation of himself as the Messiah? The answer is clearly no. Jesus proclaimed the beginning of the reign of God but not himself as Messiah. There are not even very many reactions from the people showing that Jesus was regarded as the Messiah. In Mark’s gospel, differently from that of Matthew,7 there is but a single text in which someone from the crowd addresses Jesus as Messiah. This is the healing of the blind Bartimaeus outside Jericho. When Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is passing by, he cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47). That was a messianic confession, because the messiah could be called “Son of David.”8 The appeal shows that there were those in Israel, besides the ones who thought Jesus was a prophet or even a prophet redivivus, who conjectured that he was the expected messiah. According to the narrative, Jesus accepted the appellation and healed the blind man.