[JSNT 26.4 (2004) 379-401] ISSN 0142-064X The Charge of Blasphemy in Mark 14.64 Adela Yarbro Collins Yale University Divinity School 409 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
[email protected] Abstract The teaching of m. Sanh. 7.5, that the ‘blasphemer’ is not culpable unless he pronounces the Name itself, is attested by Josephus and the Community Rule from Qumran. The Markan Jesus, however, does not pronounce the divine name. Philo provides evidence for a broader understanding of blas- phemy, namely, claims to be divine or to possess divine power. The relevant passages are analogous to the Markan Jesus’ claims that he would be en- throned at the right hand of God and that he would ‘come with the clouds of heaven’. Both claims imply divine status, authority and power. The chief priests, as Sadducees, probably subscribed to a definition of blasphemy like that of Philo. Like other Jews of the time, they advocated the death penalty for blasphemy, but were more likely to carry it out. Mark did not wish to deny that Jesus blasphemed from the point of view of the chief priests. The narrative is ironic in the sense that what is blasphemy from the point of view of the council is true from the perspective of the implied audience. A great deal of the scholarship on the trial of Jesus before the high priest and the council of Judea in Mark has focused on the question of the his- torical reliability of the account.1 One of the issues involved in such studies is the question of responsibility for the death of Jesus, a sensitive issue for Jewish–Christian relations, especially since the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate the Jews and the subsequent examination by Christians of their tradition, in which the Christian roots of anti-Semitism have been 1.