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John Carroll's The Existential Jesus, first issued in Australia in 2007 but not available from an American publisher until this year, feeds mainly on the Gospel of Mark, chews especially hard on Jesus' statement, "I am," when he's walking on the water, and treats John's Gospel as a side dish. The menu features some surprises:
Did you know, for example, that Mark opens his Gospel with the words, "In the beginning was the Story"? (Never mind that it is John's Gospel which opens with those words if you allow "Story" to be a legitimate translation of logos.)
Did you know that since Mark's Story, which was in the beginning, has to do with the purely human Jesus rather than with God, the Hebrew Bible's account of creation by God has to be scrapped in that "Jesus replaces God"? (Never mind that Jesus—yes, Mark's Jesus—says, "But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female," and attributes knowledge of the day and hour of his return exclusively to God the Father, so that not even Jesus himself knows.)
Did you know that Mark's Jesus wasn't interested in morals? (Never mind that he said fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, deceit, and sensuality [among other things] defile a human being.)
Did you know that up on a mountain after feeding the five thousand Jesus met himself, not God? (Never mind that he went up the mountain "to pray.")
Did you know that the Markan Jesus' mission ended with a focus on himself alone? (Never mind his saying on the eve of crucifixion, "This is my blood of the covenant which is being shed on behalf of many.")
Did you know that in Gethsemane Mark's Jesus did not pray to God above—for no longer did he trust his god —but groaningly uttered a curse in anticipation of his nonexistence? (Never mind "Abba! Father! … not what I will; rather, what you [will].")
Did you know that according to Mark's Gospel Jesus never claimed to be the Christ? (Never mind his answer, "I am," when asked, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?")
Did you know that in this Gospel Jesus' using "the son of man" as a self-designation meant he was no more than an ordinary human being? (Never mind that he told his judges they would see him as the son of man "sitting at the right hand of the Power [God] and coming with the clouds of heaven [the Deity's mode of transport]" and told his disciples he will come as the son of man "with great power and glory," "send out angels," and "gather together his chosen ones" from everywhere.)
Did you know that in Mark's Gospel Jesus' cry of dereliction was not a direct and personal call "to some power up above"—for Jesus had finally come to disbelieve there is a god—but was "a cry against existence"? (Never mind "My God, my God …")
Did you know that the Gospel of Mark closes with "no resurrection from the dead" on Jesus' part? (Never mind that the women at the empty tomb were told, "He has risen.")
Well, now you know, thanks to John Carroll. According to him this Jesus, existentially baked and basted by the evangelist Mark, is supposed to appeal to the palates of contemporary nonchurchgoers and thereby recapture Jesus' importance for Western culture, an importance frittered away by the increasingly irrelevant church in her maintenance of tired old Christian doctrines, the denial of which "Mark's existential Jesus would approve." One might think to the contrary that churches have lost their relevance, where they have lost it, because of jettisoning those doctrines. But Mark's purportedly existential Jesus is the Jesus Carroll owns for himself, a Jesus who is "solitary," "individual-centered," and "antitribal," a noncommunitarian example of "free[dom] … from the yoke of human collectivity." Ironically, Carroll is a sociologist at La Trobe University in Australia. His very profession deals with the human collectivity he decries.
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