The Oldest Gospel and What Jesus Actually Said About Himself

"Read the source texts for yourself."

That is the advice I share with everyone. Why? Because through many hours of personal study I have found that quotations always wrest a passage from its source text. Even a quote that seems unmistakably incriminating (like the ones President Brigham Young is so prone to--BTW: I love President Young, his brusqueness notwithstanding) when read in their whole source discourse convey a totally different understanding. 

In scholarly circles The Gospel of Mark is very popular. "Why Mark?"--you wonder. The Gospel of Mark lacks key witness accounts like the genealogy of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, Jesus' priesthood lineage, His post-Resurrection appearance to the Eleven Apostles, and many deep doctrines on His relationship to His Father. 

Well, those points coupled with the belief that The Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel written are the very reasons many brilliant Biblical scholars love The Gospel of Mark. Many of these scholars argue that Jesus was a normal man, a teacher, who ran afoul of the Romans and was killed by them.  Decades later a narrative was spun, concocted, fabricated, that Jesus was The Son of God, even a God Himself. A leading scholar today has become a veritable celebrity arguing that over a span of 300 years Christians embellished the story of the humble Jewish teacher making Him their God. And such innovative scholars claim that The Gospel of Mark is their proof. Jesus, they argue, never claimed He was God, a God, The Son of The God, God The Father.

There is much I can and would love to say about what Mark witnesses of, but I will focus on the key tenet: Does The Gospel of Mark witness that Jesus declared Himself to be a God or not? Many modern scholars say Mark does not. These erudite men and women are adamant. But what does Mark record?

Always read for yourselves.  The Lord said that the Comforter would bring His words to our remembrance.  The words must be in us to already in order for them to be able to "return" to our recollection. 

In Mark 12:26 Jesus quotes Jehovah addressing Moses from the burning brush. The oldest New Testament, The Codex Sinaiticus, (circa 325-360 AD, remember that The New Testament was assembled and bound in the fourth century AD) actually uses the verb "am":

12:26 "...Have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I AM the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?"

That passage is a citation of Exodus 3:6 where Moses sees Elohim and His Angel Son Jehovah, a veritable Joseph Smith-esque First Vision. 

Moses' vision starts out with Moses going to Horeb, the mountain of "The Elohim", meaning the mountain of The God, God The Father (the Hebrews called The Father "The Elohim"). English translators, unaware of the critical importance of the article "the" when used with God routinely omit the article "the" in translation. 

In Exodus 3:2 our King James reads "the angel of Jehovah appeared unto [Moses] in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush". The Hebrew reads:

3:2 "And Angel Jehovah appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush..."

The Father was there as well:

3:4 And when Jehovah saw that [Moses] turned aside to see, Elohim called unto him out of the bush...

The exchange is the most astonishing witness of The Old Testament. Eventually God says, verse 14, "I AM that I AM" is His Name.

Back to Mark: In Mark 12:26 we have, chronologically speaking, the first or oldest New Testament usage of the Holy Deific title "I AM" in a quote of Exodus 3:6.

But if we say "first" we as much as say that at a minimum there was a "second". Indeed. I turn our attention to the Savior's sham trial before an illegal and illegitimate late night session of the Sanhedrin. Here the highest ranking Jewish ecclesiastical authority, the high priest, asks Jesus point blank if He is The Christ, The Son of The Blessed:

Now, before I cite the Savior's response, let us be clear on what the Jews understood "THE Christ" to mean.

Psalms 2-3 teach this:

Psalm 2, from the Hebrew:

2:2 "...against Jehovah and against His Christ"

2:7 "...Jehovah hath said unto Me: Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten thee."

2:8 "Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance..."

2:12 "Kiss The Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way...Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him."

3:4 "I cried unto Jehovah with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy hill. Selah."

3:5 "I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for Jehovah sustained Me."

3:7 "Arise, Jehovah; save me, O My God..."

These passages show that The Christ was to be The Son of God, Begotten of God, He was to inherit the Gentiles, Salvation would be dependent on the reliance upon Him, He was to die on a Hill, awake and arise in order to save us.

With that in mind, let us see Mark's witness of the trial's climactic moment:

14:61 "But [Jesus] held His peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto Him, Art thou The Christ. The Son of The Blessed?"

14:62 "And Jesus said, I AM; and ye shall see The Son of The Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."

14:63 "Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we further witness?"

Not since Jehovah had spoken to Moses and the other Hebrew prophets had those words "I AM" been uttered by Jehovah, by God, The Son of God, to mankind. To be clear, Jesus declared Himself to be Jehovah, A God, The Son of The God. And Mark recorded this witness shortly after the Resurrection. 

As a side note: Before Mark recorded his witness, Nephi recorded his (Third Nephi, The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ):

9:15 "Behold, I AM Jesus Christ, The Son of God.."

9:18 "I AM the light and the life of the world. I AM Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end."

11:10 "Behold, I AM Jesus Christ..."

11:11 "...I AM the light and the life of the world..."

15:9 "I AM the law, and the life. .."

When we read the records for ourselves we learn how the Hebrew prophets spoke, what those words meant to them, and the actual witness that the prophets bore. 

Jesus is the Christ. Some learned men approach even The Bible as a sealed book that they either cannot read or cannot comprehend. But through faith our eyes may be quickened by The Spirit to see and believe what is hidden from the world, that Jesus is The Christ, that He is The Son of God, and that God The Father lives and is real.