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new perspective resolves the long-debated problem of the 'messianic secret' in Mark.
Readers have long puzzled over peculiar aspects of the Gospel of Mark: Jesus' attempts to conceal his deeds and his identity. William Wrede called these and similar motifs the 'messianic secret' in Mark, and proposed that Mark had invented the 'secret' to explain why the announcement of the arrival of the Son of God had not taken the world by storm. Other scholars have disagreed: perhaps Mark meant to highlight Jesus' divinity (after all, Jesus usually doesn't succeed in keeping himself hidden!) . . . or perhaps Mark wanted to tie Jesus' identity to his destiny on the cross as a warning to disciples that they may face persecution. Or, some have proposed, there simply is no single explanation for all of Jesus' bewildering behaviors in the Gospel.
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