18 February 2009

A Transfer of Revelation

Just got Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel, a reprint of the 60-page God Crucified along with a number of other essays on NT christology, arguing in various ways that the NT writers understood Jesus to be part of the divine identity of the Hebrew God, Yahweh. Only read one essay so far; found it typically fascinating. Here's a quote (p. 267) from it ("God's Self-Identification with the Godforsaken in the Gospel of Mark").

The rending of the veil of the temple, if we read it in parallel with the rending of the heavens in Mark's account of Jesus' baptism (1:10), signifies revelation. It signifies that this godforsaken death is the climactic event of revelation in the Gospel narrative. More than that, it transfers the place of God's presence from its hiddenness in the holy of holies to the openly godforsaken cross of the dead Jesus.

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