Caesarea Philippi and Mark 8:27–35 as a Turning Point in the Discovery and Revelation of the Identity of Jesus Christ

Historical Linguistics Analysis

Resumo

The focus of the Gospel of Mark is the unveiling of the identity of Jesus Christ through reported events, space, people, and discourses which allow readers to discover his comprehensive identity. Mark 8:27–35 exemplifies this unveiling, as Mark guides his readers to the discovery of the identity of Christ. The question that guides this study is the following: why is the revelation of Jesus as Christ in the Gospel of Mark situated in his journey towards the landscape of Caesarea Philippi rather than in the landscape of his hometown of Nazareth, or along the Jordan River where he was baptised, or by the Sea of Galilee where he called his first disciples, or on the mountainside where he appointed the twelve? The hypothesis of this study is that Mark sets the revelation of the comprehensive identity of Jesus within an elastic narrative of Jesus’ journey through the Caesarea Philippi landscape where shifts in features of language, geographical landscape, and socio-spatial scope shape the narrative about the revelation of the identity of Jesus as Christ. Campbell’s historical linguistic model serves as the main method to explore the narrative about the revelation of the identity of Jesus in Mark 8:27–35 because his methodology provides three significant nuances, the manner, place, and flow (or journey) of linguistic identity, which this study draws on to discuss the unfolding identity that Mark ascribes to Jesus in the landscape of Caesarea Philippi. These three nuances of method are significant through the lens of Caesarea Philippi’s threefold identity shift: linguistic, geographical landscape, and socio-spatial. Campbell’s (2013) historical linguistic method, enhanced by theoretical perspectives in van den Heever’s (2010) social space, in Moxnes’ (2010) landscape, and in Rose’s (1996) genealogy of subjectification, underpins the analysis of Mark 8:27–35 to examine the process of discovering the comprehensive identity of Jesus Christ in Mark 8:27–35. This study argues that Caesarea Philippi serves as the turning point of an elastic narrative of three shifts – in linguistic, geographical landscape, and socio-spatial dimensions – in the revelation of the identity of Jesus as Christ. This study has two objectives. First, it hopes to contribute the theory and the methodology of historical linguistics to hermeneutics in biblical studies of Mark 8:27-35. Second, it strives to present nuance, to provide additional scope for understanding the identity that Mark ascribes to Jesus Christ in his gospel.