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The Titles of Jesus in Mark

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Picture filled with name tag stickers containing different names
Travis Wise (2014), Creative Commons License

All authors employ names and titles to convey meaning in their work. The biblical writers are no exception.

I’m in the middle of a project examining the use of titles and names for Jesus in the Gospels. My first article laid out my methodology and looked at the top 10 titles of Jesus in the Gospels. I recently wrote about the titles of Jesus in Matthew, and today we turn to the Gospel of Mark.

Top 5 Titles

There are 61 titles used for Jesus in Mark, accounting for 13.8% of the titles used for Jesus in all four Gospels combined. As Mark contains 17.9% of the verses in the Gospels, we see that there are fewer titles in Mark than we might expect.

Here are the top five titles in Mark.

  1. Son of Man (14 times)
  2. teacher (12 times)
  3. king of the Jews (5 times)
  4. Christ (4 times)
  5. Rabbi (4 times)

The title “Lord” is missing from this list, as it is only used twice in Mark compared to 23 times in Matthew. (“Lord” is the second most-used title in Matthew.) We see “the king of the Jews” only show up toward the end of Mark; it is used three times by Pilate, once by the Roman soldiers, and once on the inscription above the cross.

Titles Used by Mark

The author of this Gospel himself used a title for Jesus five times. He called Jesus the “Son of Man” twice and referred to him as “Christ,” “Son of God,” and “Lord” one time each.

We should not skip past these references simply because they are small in number, as two of these titles occupy a key position in the book. Here is the beginning of Mark’s Gospel.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (Mark 1:1)

As Peter Krol has shown in his interpretive overview of Mark, the two titles in this opening verse (“Christ” and “Son of God”) give a road map for the book. Mark aims to show his readers that Jesus is both the Christ (the Messiah) and the Son of God (the rightful king).

Titles and Mark’s Purpose

When writing about the titles of Jesus, I have emphasized that we cannot learn everything about a Gospel by looking at this small bit of linguistic accounting. And Mark’s writing provides an excellent example.

When Peter wrote about Mark for our feeding the 5000 and resurrection of Jesus series, he noted that Mark is more of a show you book than a tell you book. In other words, Mark uses narrative more than discourse to get his points across.

If this is true, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that Mark contains relatively few titles of Jesus. Many of the times when a character refers to Jesus by a title, it is in the context of a dialogue (often “Lord” in Matthew) or it precedes some extended instruction from Jesus (often “teacher” in Matthew). If Mark uses these narrative tools less frequently, then the use of titles will decrease as well.

But what about Mark’s main point? If he wanted to stress that Jesus is the king, wouldn’t we see more royal titles?

Again, Mark just doesn’t use titles very much. We have “king of the Jews” in the top five, but this is used questioningly or ironically each time.

I will write a separate post on this in the near future, but “Son of Man”—the most frequently used title in Mark—is a royal title. We often assume that “son of God” emphasizes Jesus’s divinity while “son of Man” emphasizes his humanity, but the difference is not quite this easy. Some scholars might even say that “son of Man” is the more exalted, divine title of the two.

While there are some interesting details to notice in Mark regarding the titles of Jesus, this book is a good reminder that titles were never meant to tell us everything. Names and titles are crucial observations to make when studying a passage, but we had better not stop there if we want to understand an author’s meaning!

The Titles of Jesus in Matthew

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Photo of name tags attached to a chain link fence
Daniel Thomas (2019), public domain

The names we call others provide a snapshot of our relationship. It is drastically different, for example, to hear a child refer to an adult as “Mr. Smith,” “Officer Thomas,” or “Daddy.”

Names and titles matter throughout the Scriptures, and I’ve recently started a project examining the use of titles and names for Jesus in the Gospels. My first article laid out my methodology and looked at the top 10 titles of Jesus in the Gospels.

In this article we’ll consider the titles used for Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.

Top 5 Titles

By my accounting, there are 131 titles used for Jesus in Matthew. There are 443 in all four Gospels, so the titles in Matthew account for about 29.6% of the all titles. (Matthew contains about 28% of the verses in the Gospels.)

Here are the top 5 titles in Matthew.

  1. Son of Man (30 times)
  2. Lord (23 times)
  3. Christ (13 times)
  4. teacher (10 times)
  5. the child (9 times)

The next few entries on the list are also interesting: Son of David (8 times), Son of God (8 times), and Son (6 times). The top four titles used in Matthew are the same as the top four titles used in all the Gospels, just in a slightly different order.

Perhaps also of interest: the title “Lord” comes from Peter five times, and five of the 13 uses of “Christ” are by Matthew himself.

Titles Used by Matthew

Most of the titles used in the Gospels are put in the mouth of someone else by the Gospel author. But there are times when the author himself refers to a name or title of Jesus.

There are ten such occasions in Matthew. He refers to Jesus as “Christ” five times, as “the child” four times, and as the “Son of David” once. Nine of these occasions are found within the first two chapters of the Gospel; the other one (“the Christ”) is found in Matthew 11:2.

Old Testament References and “the child”

Matthew is the only Gospel writer who uses titles for Jesus within Old Testament quotations. He does this five times.

  • Immanuel (Matt 1:23)
  • ruler (Matt 2:6)
  • son (Matt 2:15)
  • servant (Matt 12:18)
  • beloved (Matt 12:18)

Another unique aspect of Matthew is that he is the only Gospel writer who uses the title/role “the child” to refer to Jesus—and he does this nine times. These all occur in the second chapter of Matthew, as we learn of the prophecy about the coming Messiah. This title is used by Matthew four times, by an angel of the Lord four times, and once by Herod.

Relation to Matthew’s Purpose

In my co-blogger Peter Krol’s series on the feeding of the 5000, he provided a nice overview of Matthew. In my article about the resurrection of Jesus in Matthew, I summarized Peter’s work this way.

Matthew wrote to convince his audience that Jesus was the king of the Jews. He spends much of his book explaining the kingdom of heaven and its subjects.

Given this purpose, it might be surprising not to find a title like “king” among the most-used in Matthew. (The title “king of the Jews” is only used four times in Matthew.)

We must remember, when looking at these titles of Jesus that I’ve compiled, that everything must be examined in context. We cannot draw any concrete conclusions by just counting occurrences or omissions. Further, different authors write differently—some might use titles more frequently, others might display Jesus as the king by showing him in kingly settings or performing kingly acts.

In what we have discussed so far, Matthew’s purpose is not hard to see. He is writing to a people who understood the Old Testament prophets, so references to “the child” (from Is 7:14) and other OT titles would situate Jesus within a rich, expectant tradition.

Matthew himself calls Jesus the “Son of David” once, and this title is used a total of eight times in this Gospel. (It is only used 12 times total in all Gospels.) We will explore these titles in a later article, but “Son of David,” “Son of God” (8 times), and even “Son” (6 times) are all royal titles. Even though the word “king” is not present, the first hearers of Matthew would have known Jesus was being described as the king.

Reading to Know Jesus

Looking at the titles used for Jesus can be interesting and illuminating, but let’s not leave it as a mere intellectual exercise. Matthew was not just writing to convey information; he wanted his readers to know that Jesus is the king of Israel.

By the titles he used, we know that Matthew did not just think of Jesus as a historical figure. He was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the one sent to save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21).

Top 10 Titles of Jesus in the Gospels

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Jon Tyson (2018), public domain

Names and titles are important in the Bible. They are one of the key features to observe about a passage, because an author uses names and titles of characters to convey meaning. Titles can even provide clues about the author’s main point of an epistle!

Like many of our readers, I have found my co-blogger Peter Krol’s research on the NT use of the OT valuable, and I thought a similar project involving the titles used for Jesus in the Gospels could be useful.

The Criteria

In order to make the project tractable, I needed to define my terms. What do I mean by a title of Jesus? To start with, I considered roles, job names, or honorifics. I also required that the reference in the text be explicit, not merely implied.

Finally, I decided to view the titles of Jesus through each Gospel author’s perspective. In other words, if the author saw something as a role, job, or honorific of Jesus, then I would include this in my count. (Many thanks to Peter for his help in nailing this down.)

What are the implications? I included all references made by Jesus to himself as the “Son of Man,” because the Gospel authors seem to want their readers to attach this title to Jesus. (Not everyone who heard Jesus refer to himself in this way knew what was going on!) Additionally, I did not include the metaphorical references by Jesus to himself as “the vine,” “the light of the world,” etc., in John, because while understanding these self-references is important, these are not roles, jobs, or honorifics.

Additionally, I have collapsed some of the titles for the sake of counting commonality. Though you may think of “good teacher” as a separate title from “teacher,” I have just listed the title as “teacher” for Mark 10:17 and Luke 18:18 to match the many other uses of that title.

Other people may conceive of the Titles of Jesus differently than me, and that’s okay! I had to draw the lines somewhere, and this is where I landed. You can see an exhaustive list of the titles of Jesus in this spreadsheet.

If you catch any mistakes I’ve made (and I’m sure there are plenty), please point them out. I’d love for this work to be as accurate as possible.

Top 10 Titles

With all this as preamble, here are the top ten titles of Jesus as they appear in the Gospels. Do any of these surprise you?

  1. Lord (97 times)
  2. Son of Man (80 times)
  3. teacher (39 times)
  4. Christ (35 times) — includes “Christ of God” and “Christ the Lord”
  5. Son (30 times)
  6. Son of God (30 times) — includes “Son of the Blessed,” “Son of the living God,” “Son of the Most High,” and “Son of the Most High God”
  7. king of the Jews/Israel (22 times)
  8. Rabbi (13 times)
  9. Son of David (12 times)
  10. Jesus of Nazareth (10 times)

In future articles, I will look at each Gospel writer’s use of titles for Jesus as well as some of the most common titles themselves.

Titles themselves are just words; they never tell a whole story without a proper look at the context. However, the way an author consistently refers to a character can reveal a lot about how the author wants the reader to view that character.

Were the Gospels Intended to be Read as Literal History?

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What genre are the four Gospels of the Bible? Did the authors intend readers to take them as historical fact? Scholars of religion often answer in the negative, but Timothy Paul Jones explains one reason why the answer is yes.

One reason why I’m convinced that the Gospel authors didn’t intend to write fiction is because the most crucial claims that the authors of the Gospels made about Jesus also appear in another literary genre, the genre of epistle. Much of the New Testament is made up of epistles—letters sent to particular communities to be read publicly and then circulated widely. Many of these epistles were penned prior to the New Testament Gospels. Most important for our purposes, virtually every essential claim about Jesus that appears in the Gospels also shows up in these letters, despite the fact that these epistles were composed for people who already knew about Jesus.

Jones then elaborates on five specific claims from the Gospels that are backed up in New Testament epistles. It is well worth your time.

Check it out!

The Final Days of Jesus

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Despite the disruption and upheaval in the world, Easter is coming. Whether or not we can gather in person to worship, we will soon celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

With that celebration in mind, I recently turned my attention to a book which has been on my shelf for a while: The Final Days of Jesus, by Andreas Köstenberger and Justin Taylor. The subtitle of the book says it all: “The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived.” (Be sure to read to the end of this article to see how to get a copy of this book for free, no strings attached.)

What’s Inside

In this book, the authors follow the chronology of Jesus’s final week on earth through the Biblical accounts. The book also includes several helpful aids, including maps, charts, and tables.

Each chapter of the book is devoted to a day of Jesus’s final week, and for each discrete scene or event, the authors first include the relevant Gospel texts. Consequently, a large portion of this book is simply Scripture. After the words of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and/or John we find related commentary. Sometimes this includes historical or cultural information to aid our understanding, and other times this includes an attempt to write a single narrative which is faithful to all of the available Gospel accounts. This is what is known as a harmonization. More on this in just a bit.

The book is simple in the best way. I did not get bogged down in technical textual study or overwhelmed by sophistated terms and phrases. Köstenberger and Taylor have executed well a straightforward mission: bring the reader along with Jesus in the final seven days of his life. The commentary is insightful and helpful, written for a lay audience.

Some of the more speculative or advanced scholarship is relegated to footnotes, and there is a generous reading list for those with deeper interests provided near the end of the book. The glossary and reference guide which close the book will also be helpful to a number of readers.

What About Harmonization?

My co-blogger Peter has written before about the dangers of harmonization. So, it’s worth asking: Do I recommend this book? Does it undermine the sort of Bible study we recommend and urge here at Knowable Word?

The authors of The Final Days of Jesus clearly value a unified account of Jesus’s journey to death and resurrection. But they also acknowledge the importance of each Gospel on its own. When addressing the question of why we have four accounts of Jesus’s life instead of just one, they write that the early church regarded these four accounts as four witnesses to one Gospel.

Like witnesses in the courtroom each recounting what they saw, using their own words and recalling events and statements from their unique perspective, the Gospel writers each tell us how they witnessed the unfolding story of Jesus (or in Mark’s and Luke’s case, how their firsthand sources did). This should in fact enhance our appreciation for the four biblical Gospels, not diminish it! Demonstrably, the four evangelists did not sanitize their accounts or somehow streamline them so as to make them artificially cohere; they were unafraid to tell the story of Jesus each in his own way, without fear of contradiction—because they were all witnessing to the one story of Jesus, the one gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. (The Final Days of Jesus, page 17)

Köstenberger and Taylor also urge us to read the Gospels “vertically” as well as “horizontally.” A vertical reading treats each account as a self-contained story.

The other way to read the Gospels is horizontally, that is, how each relates to the others, as complementary accounts and witnesses to the same historical reality and set of statements and events. Refusing to supplement our vertical reading of the individual Gospels with a horizontal reading is tantamount to the ostrich policy of refusing to acknowledge that while the Gospels tell the same story, they don’t do so in exactly the same way. (The Final Days of Jesus, page 19)

Köstenberger and Taylor land with more emphasis on a horizontal reading than I would, but that does not diminish the value of their work. Their book shows that there are solid, reasonable answers to every question of contradiction that arises from comparing one Gospel to another.

This book will only undermine personal Bible study if you use it in a way it is not intended. The authors are not out to create a master text which will be studied instead of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. This book contains a lot of Scripture, but we should always take our study and our questions back to the Bible itself. Each Gospel author had a specific perspective, message, and audience in mind, and they included and excluded certain details and events accordingly. It is best to study the final week of Jesus’s life in the context of one of the four Gospels.

Get Yourself a Copy

At the time of this writing, Crossway has made the ebook of The Final Days of Jesus free to download. If you prefer a paperback version, you can visit Amazon or Westminster Bookstore. Crossway also has a free study guide and a free devotional guide available to accompany this book.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to take a sustained look at Jesus’s final week. This work will show you that the four Gospels complement rather than contradict each other. The Bible gives a trustworthy, historical account of the central events of the Christian faith.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means that the blog may receive a small amount of money/credit if you make a purchase after following that link.

The Gospels are Reliable Documents

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Scholar Craig Keener has a great piece at Influence Magazine on the reliability of the Gospels. With clarity and relative brevity, he covers:

  • Four reasons we can trust the Gospels:
    1. Across the theological spectrum, most scholars today recognize the Gospels are ancient biographies.
    2. The Gospels are from within living memory.
    3. The overlap shows their dependence on and respect for sources.
    4. The Gospels retain elements from Jesus’ time and location.
  • Responses to four common objections:
    1. There are differences among the Synoptics.
    2. The Gospels include miracles.
    3. The Gospels include demons.
    4. Jesus made predictions.

If you have questions about whether we can trust these ancient documents, or if you have a friend with such questions, this article is a great place to start.

Check it out!

New and Old Garments

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There are parts of the Bible I’ve read so many times that I’m prone to mistake familiarity with them for understanding of them. But once in a while, when I set my familiarity aside, I can take a look at what’s actually there. This happened to me recently in a study of Luke 5.

Image by Mabel Amber, still incognito… from Pixabay

At the end of the chapter, the Pharisees get upset with Jesus and his disciples for not fasting like either John or the Pharisees themselves. Part of Jesus’ response is a straightforward parable:

He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. (Luke 5:36)

The issue (the problem with my familiarity) is that I’ve spent years of my life studying Mark’s version of this story. This is the first time I’ve taken a close enough look at Luke’s account to realize that Luke is saying something quite different from Mark. Check out Mark’s version:

No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. (Mark 2:21)

And just for the sake of completeness, here is Matthew’s version:

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. (Matt 9:16)

Observe the Difference

Matthew and Mark are very similar. They talk about cutting an “unshrunk” garment to make a patch for an old garment. The problem is that the new patch will subsequently shrink and tear away from the torn garment, making the original tear far worse.

But Luke is using the same cast of characters to tell a completely different story. He speaks of ripping up a new garment to fix an old one. The problem here is twofold: 1) You’ve ruined a perfectly good (and new) garment, and 2) the fix won’t even match the original.

Why does this matter? What really is the difference between them?

Matthew and Mark are concerned with the damage to the old garment, while Luke is more concerned with the damage to the new garment.

Why Does This Matter?

The epiphany for me was simply to realize I was assuming Luke was telling the same parable as Mark. I needed a jolt to actually look at the text and observe the bare facts of Luke’s presentation. It is so easy to assume I know what a story says. And the unfortunate result of that assumption is that I stop looking!

As for how this affects interpretation: I’m not exactly sure yet, but perhaps you have some ideas. It’s surely related to the extra line Luke adds, which is not found in any other gospel: “And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’ (Luke 5:39).” The problem here is that the new thing is damaged to the point of being perceived as undesirable in comparison to the old thing. And this is a little different from the way Matthew and Mark present the situation.

Perhaps you’re already more familiar with Luke’s version, and it’s difficult for you to see what Mark/Matthew has to say. Either way, it’s another example of the danger of hasty harmonization. Let’s make sure to grasp the particular point each author seeks to make, and not lump them together, presuming they’re communicating the same thing!

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What We Lose When We Collapse the Four Gospels Into One

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Petar Nenadov has a very thoughtful post at the Gospel Coalition, entitled “What We Lose When We Collapse the Four Gospels Into One.”

Consider this:

As a father, I see how most resources for young children don’t teach them to read entire books of the Bible, especially when it comes to the Gospels. Children’s books about Jesus tell stories without saying which Gospel account they come from. Books that helpfully summarize the whole Bible, such as The Jesus Storybook Bible or The Biggest Story, collapse the four Gospel accounts into one as well. They don’t explain how Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John differ from and complement one another.

So what do we lose when we collapse the four Gospels into one? I believe we lose at least three things: the author’s unique perspective, the artistry of the story, and the apologetic of the life of Jesus.

If you’re looking for a children’s resource that does not do this, you may find Mark’s Marvellous Book by Alan Mann a great place to start.

Nenadov’s post has much useful insight. Check it out!

ESV Gospels, Reader’s Set

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If you haven’t yet caught on to the reader’s Bible fad, the ESV Gospels, Reader’s Set set might be the perfect gateway. And if you already own and love a reader’s Bible, there might still be a place on your shelf for this new edition of the gospels from Crossway.

What It Is

A reader’s Bible is an edition published to encourage and assist lengthy reading. Many of the latest reader’s editions remove all footnotes, cross-references, section headings, verse numbers, and (more often than not) chapter numbers. You’re left with the plain text of Scripture, elegantly typeset, so you can sit and read for hours on end.

This new edition from Crossway presents only the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—each with its own undersized hardbound volume, in a sturdy slip case. This is something you’ll enjoy having on your shelf. And you’ll enjoy even more having it in your hands while you get lost in the narrative glory.

What It Does

The page layout of these reader’s gospels is very similar to the layout of the ESV Reader’s Bible, 6 Volume Set, which I loved enough to write reviews both before and after reading it. The fonts, margin proportions, and clean text block are the same. It uses the same number of unobtrusive headings for each book’s major divisions.

The biggest difference is that the Gospels set is about half the size. Each volume is just larger than a compact disc and fits in your hand, or in your pocket. This small size makes the pages fly past as you read.

And this is marvelous, because this edition does what reader’s Bibles do best, and it does it even better than previous editions: It gives you permission to keep reading and reading and reading. The smaller size makes me feel like I should just keep reading, and I’ll finish the book before I know it.

In addition, these four volumes do not come with ribbon bookmarks. At first, I was not pleased with this aberration. But now that I’ve spent more time with these four volumes, I have found the lack of bookmark to provide further permission and encouragement to keep reading. It really is not hard to read a complete gospel in one sitting with this edition! And that is something to be commended.

What Could Be Better

My biggest complaint is that the covers of the four volumes are all the same rust color, with no distinguishing visuals or artwork, besides the name on the spine (which is not terribly easy to read). But since these volumes are meant for extended reading, and not for frequent reference, this visual plainness is easy to forgive.

In addition, I would prefer for the ESV Reader’s Bibles to be more like the NIV Sola Scriptura Bible Project and break up the text according to its natural structural divisions. As it is, the text presents in one lengthy block, with no breaks, for pages on end. But this complaint goes for both this set and the Six-Volume Set.

Conclusion

I am thrilled to have received a complimentary copy of this set from Crossway in exchange for an honest review. I expect to use it often. Right now, it’s perfect for a repeated re-reading of Luke’s gospel as I prepare to teach that book.

If you haven’t yet tried a multi-volume reader’s edition of the Bible, the ESV Gospels, Reader’s Set would be an excellent and inexpensive start. And if you’re already a fan of reader’s Bibles, this will add another useful tool to your workbench.

Find it at Amazon or Westminster.

Disclaimer: Amazon and Westminster links are affiliate links. Clicking them and buying stuff will enable us to continue reviewing Bibles for you, at no extra cost to yourself.

Remember the Risen Christ

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In 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul issues a brief command, remarkable for its profound simplicity. “Remember Jesus Christ” is both the most important and most difficult thing a person could do. And what are we to remember about him?

James Emery (2007), Creative Commons License

“Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound!” (2 Ti 2:8–9).

There are five things on Paul’s list:

  1. Risen from the dead—he really died, and he really rose. Not just in the hearts and memories of his followers, but bodily.
  2. Offspring of David—heir to the promised eternal throne of God’s kingdom.
  3. Preached in the gospel—something and someone we simply can’t shut up about. The best news you’ll ever hear.
  4. Occasion for suffering—when you preach the risen Christ, you will suffer and be bound as a criminal, like he was. But fear not: After dying with him comes resurrection with him (2 Tim 2:11).
  5. Impossible to stop—the word of God is not bound. Many have tried to squash this message, but that has only catalyzed the explosion.

Of course, we ought to remember the risen Christ at all times and not only on Easter. But Easter gives us a timely opportunity to remember the risen Christ once again.

Jesus’ resurrection confirmed the passing of the present age, and it signaled the invasion of the age to come. This historic event, which changed everything, is dynamic enough that one explanation of it could never capture its effects. That’s why the four gospel writers have at least four different points to make when they recount the resurrection.

Perhaps this weekend would be a good time for you to remember Jesus Christ. Dig into each gospel and discover anew what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each had to say about the center of human history, the risen Christ.