Note 16 — Chapter VIII · EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUDING THE MIRACLES.

These particulars imparted by Mark are very welcome to commentators, as a means of explaining and justifying the apparent harshness of the answer which Jesus returns to the announcement of his nearest relatives, on the ground of the perverted object of their visit. But, apart from the difficulty that, on the usual interpretation of the accounts of the childhood of Jesus, it is not to be explained how his mother could, after the events therein described, be thus mistaken in her son, it is very questionable whether we ought to accept this information of Mark’s. In the first place, it is associated with the obvious exaggeration, that Jesus and his disciples were prevented even from taking food by the throng of people; and in the second place, it has in itself a strange appearance, from its want of relation to the context. If these points are considered, it will scarcely be possible to avoid agreeing with the opinion of Schleiermacher, that no explanation of the then existing relations of Jesus with his family is to be sought in this addition; that it rather belongs to those exaggerations to which Mark is so prone, as well in his introductions to isolated incidents, as in his general statements.16 He wished to make it understood why Jesus returned an ungracious answer to the announcement of his relatives; for this purpose he thought it necessary to give their visit an object of which Jesus did not approve, and as he knew that the Pharisees had pronounced him to be under the influence of Beelzebub, he attributed a similar opinion to his relatives.