Directory of Messianic Secret Resources

Home > Society > Religion and Spirituality > Christianity > Bible > References and Tools > New Testament > Gospels > Mark > Messianic Secret

The theory, popularized by William Wrede, to account for the observation that Jesus in the Gospel of Mark appears to be hesitant to let others know of his identity, telling people not to speak of their healings, or to be quiet about their knowledge of him. Wrede believed that the Church came to view Jesus as the Messiah only after the resurrection, then to account for the lack of explicit declarations by Jesus, invented the theory of a secret messiahship and forced this back into the gospel story.

Wrede's book Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien was published in 1902. It was translated into English in 1971 as The Messianic Secret.

Resources in This Category

• Holman Bible Dictionary: Messianic Secret

  http://www.studylight.org/dic/hbd/view.cgi?number=T4265
  Gives several reasons why Jesus would want to keep his messiahship secret.

• Tekton: Wrede and the Messianic Secret

  http://www.tektonics.org/qt/secretmess.php
  Reviews likely alternative explanations.

• The Messiahship: Formal or Essential to the Mind of Jesus?

  http://www.biblicaltheology.org/mfemj.pdf
  Article from The Biblical Review by Geerhardus Vos rejects the concept of a secret messiahship altogether.

• The Messianic Secret

  http://books.google.com/books?id=ccQkLURwCLQC
  Book preview. 1971 translation by J. C. Greig of the original 1901 German edition by William Wrede.

 

Home > Society > Religion and Spirituality > Christianity > Bible > References and Tools > New Testament > Gospels > Mark > Messianic Secret

 

---

 

Thanks to DMOZ, which built a great web directory for nearly two decades and freely shared it with the web. About us