Confession at Caesarea Philippi

The Marcan pericope called the Confession at Caesarea Philippi (Mk 8:27-33) is memorable for Jesus’ harsh “Get behind me, Satan” rebuke to Peter. The so-called Messianic Secret of the Gospel of Mark is neatly exemplified in this pericope. Jesus asks who the disciples say he is, Peter replies as spokesman for the disciples that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus orders them not to tell anyone this.

Exegetes such as W. Wrede and R. Bultmann have argued that Peter’s confession and Jesus reaction establishes the whole pericope as a post-Easter creation of the evangelist because the suffering dying-and-rising messiah is not attested in Judaism.

But this could not have been what Peter meant by 'Messiah’ prior to the resurrection, as demonstrated by his horror at Jesus' teaching that dying-and-rising was on the agenda.

Let’s accept, as a premise, that some such interaction occurred. First of all, it does not seem to serve any apologetic interest for Jesus to call Peter ‘Satan’! One might posit an anti-Petrine source for this saying, but that hardly stands up to the otherwise basically positive portrait of Peter provided up to this point in Mark.

In the Matthean version, Peter’s confession is followed by the obviously much later “on this rock I build my church” praise of Peter, just before the Satan remark. In Luke, who tolerates no negative portraits of the disciples, especially Peter (who is his counter-weight to Paul), the Satan quip is eliminated altogether.

For these reasons is seems not improbable that the tradition is preserving a genuinely early tradition of a saying of Jesus, which might well actually go back to Jesus himself. Would anyone make up a saying wherein Jesus calls his chief disciple Satan? I think not. But if this memorable saying was known, then a softening context might be contrived to explain it.

But the explanation of Jesus about how he must suffer and die is plainly a post-Easter addition, tailored to fit the Christian understanding of a suffering servant sort of Messiah. Mark wants to say that this was what Jesus understood, that this was his Messianic consciousness, and that Peter not understanding this was the occasion for the rebuke.

This however is impossible. Everyone, all the disciples, and Jesus, along with all the Jews of the first century, understood the messianic hope as promising a political Messiah. The political this-worldly Messiah is what Peter thought Jesus was, and saying so was the real occasion for the rebuke. After the Christianization of the political Messiah into a suffering and dying Messiah, the story was reworked into what we see in the canonical Mark. I have indicated in red the added narrative frame and post-Easter Christianization elements, with the original saying in black.

MARK 8:27-33
Jesus went on with his disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi: and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”

And they answered him , “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”

He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”

And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

And he said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside, and began to rebuke him.

But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

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Jesus, the apocalyptic prophet of the Kingdom of God, rejects the this-worldly ruler type of Messiah, and likens this to the temptation by Satan in the wilderness (from Q, in Mt 4:8-10 // Lk 4:5-7).

The first part of the dialogue is filled with problems. Does not Jesus know what people say about him? Why would people think he was John the Baptist or Elijah? Do dead prophets reappear in other bodies? The Baptist after all was a contemporary of Jesus, so how Jesus could in any sense become possessed by John the Baptist is especially obscure.

All this however is just a setting for the nugget of authentic tradition that Mark had in his source: Peter said Jesus was the Messiah, and Jesus rebuked him saying “Get behind me, Satan.” In the post-Easter church this required reworking, with the addition of a passion prediction and a new reason for the rebuke.

It may be that the command to silence is historical in the sense that Jesus instructed followers not to say he was the Messiah, because he was not the Messiah, and did not think he was.

Interestingly, in an analogous scene in the Fourth Gospel (Jn 6:66-70) Jesus transfers the Satan saying to Judas, saying “one of you is a devil.”

It seems as if it was known that one of the Twelve was referred to in this unflattering way, even if exactly when, where and why was no longer precisely remembered.