taste death

by peacefulpete 11 Replies latest watchtower bible

peacefulpete

We are familiar with the expression in Mark 9:1 that some standing there "would not taste death at all" and it seems clear that the original hand of Mark intended it to be a message of imminent return of Christ. Later the line was reinterpreted as a vision of Jesus in the so called trasfiguration.
My interest now is in the phrase "taste death" and how it was used by the Gospel Thomas. It appears 3 times, in sayings 1,18,19. A similar expression "see death" is in saying 111. saying 85 has been reconstructed by some to include the phrase but we will not consider it at this time.
1 And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."
18 The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?"
Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.
Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."
19 Jesus said, "Congratulations to the one who came into being before coming into being.
If you become my disciples and pay attention to my sayings, these stones will serve you.
For there are five trees in Paradise for you; they do not change, summer or winter, and their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death."
111 Jesus said, "The heavens and the earth will roll up in your presence, and whoever is living from the living one will not see death."
Does not Jesus say, "Those who have found themselves, of them the world is not worthy"?
Sayings 18 and 19 are especially cryptic in the use of the phrase. Various specialists in Gnostic and Thomasean thought have remarked about the spiritual rather than physical meaning of "death". This is interesting. Which came first the literal promise of imminent immortality or spiritual fruitage of enlightment? Which reflects the earliest layers of Christian thought?
It seems to me that the printed opinions of this matter are a reflection of the biases of the commentators.Those who perceive a Jewish reformer as the core of the legends tend to interpret the sayings literaly, while those who see the roots of Christainity intimately tied to prechristian mysticism and Gnosticism would prefer a more 'spiritual' interpretation.
As an interesting aside John 8:51,52 uses these words: 51 I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.?
52 At this the Jews exclaimed, ?Now we know that you are demonpossessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death.
Here the author has taken the words even further from Thomas by connecting obedience with not tasting death rather than through perceiving deep meaning in the sayings of Jesus. Mark doesn't have the obedience angle either.
Anyway any thoughts? Was the saying "not taste death" originally a mystical idiom for avoiding spiritual deterioration, or was it originally literal and only when the Christians were later disappointed was the expression reinterpreted as a prophecy of a vision or by the Thomaseans (and maybe Johannine school) as mystical?
Ticker

My opinion off the top of my head would possibly be that it may mean not tasting a spritual death but not literally meaning avoiding the fact that we die. This too me seems to be emphasized in John 8 v 52 where they scoffed at the statement of not tasting death, oftentimes Jesus' teaching would go over his opposers heads, they would be too vain to see the simpleness of his word, often going away puzzled by the meanings of illustrations intending councel toword them. They were viewing it as literal and taking effect immediatly, they could not see past thier rigid system of laws and dogma. So maybe what was meant was never tasting a spiritual death because its a known fact people die. Its even stated that thoese who would follow Christ must drink from his cup, Christ died and apparently so would his followers through their eventual empending outcome, we all die. Not sure but just my opinion as I read it, as I expect to die even though I may follow Christ, but pherhaps I may not die spiritually.
Its fun to think what it may mean, interesting topic thanks.
Ticker
Narkissos

Linguistically "to taste death" (also Hebrews 2:9) seems to be mostly a Semitic metaphor: it occurs quite often in rabbinical literature; one example roughly contemporary to the NT would be 4 Ezra 6:26, "the translated men who have not tasted death".
It is most probably related to other positive uses of "to taste" (Hebrews 6:4f, which closely parallels the rabbinical "taste of the world to come"; possibly 1 Peter 2:3).
Re: your question, I'm coming to think more and more that most of our working antitheses are wrong or exaggerated; we have constructed ideal types, such as "unspiritual futuristic eschatology" or "intemporal mysticism", whereas reality is not so clear-cut, especially in the early stages of Christianity / Judaism / Gnosticism, when those were interacting trends in a pretty undistinct nebula, not separated groups with definite borders, understanding themselves against one another. This being said, I agree that the evolutionist scenario of eschatological Christianity becoming mystical as a result of failure of futuristic expectations is desperately reductionist. A different thing would be to say that the failure of eschatology gave more weight to existing mystical interpretations.
peacefulpete

Thanks for the comments. I lean toward the mystical to literal direction. I do think that such an idiom may have been in common Jewish usage (as Narkissos said) but utilized uniquely by the sources that Mark and Thomas used. It seems quite reasonable to see a secondary trend for the uninitiated to misinterpret the words as literal. This in fact seems to be quite normal as the mystical sects desired to be cryptic and disguised the "meaning" of their words. The need to dilute the literal (as is seen in present Mark) is awkward for this reason. I persoanlly suspect that the sayings in the first draft of Mark moved from 8:35 to 9:1(a ) with the explanitory material between and in 1(b)missing the meaning. John may preserve a more original than present Mark in this case and in fact may be mocking the conclusions of such literalizers.
Leolaia

Narkissos....I like very much the realistic way you put things; positing shared trends in primitive Christianity and diffuse borders rather than monolithic categories of thought. As for the separation of Christianity into definite groups, this seems to have been more a phenomenon of second-century Christianity. One of the most salient early distinctions, I think, would be between law-observant and law-less Christianity, and ideologically Christians across the board thought in strict dichotomic terms (cf. the "two ways" of Matthew, Didache, Barnabas, the children of "light" and "darkness" in the Johannine and some of the Pauline material) which would've greatly facilitated the separation of Christianity into groups according to certain critical issues, and yet Matthew at least shows that the "weeds" planted by Satan co-existed with the faithful in the same community and that the separation would occur during the eschatological judgment according to who does the "will of God" or not. Jude also refers to those destined for judgment as part of the same community (cf. the reference to "love feasts") and the Didache does not identify "false prophets" and "false teachers" by their doctrine or teaching but rather by their actions vis-a-vis the rest of the community. I think local Christian communities would have varied areally in terms of theology and praxis (such as more law-observant, more eschatologically-based, involving a higher christology, etc.) but not in absolute terms. There was still the ideology of unity and of the greater ekklesia, which finds expression in the Didache, in Paul, and elsewhere. As for "evolutionist scenarios" of change over time in a community's theology, the directionality isn't even necessarily that of quasi-futurist eschatology -> realized eschatology; the redaction of the Gospel of John indicates the reverse directionality, and 1 John similarly has a less realized eschatology than most of the gospel. Nor is chiliasm or the expection of a future world-deceiver out of place in gnosticism, as Cerinthus and Marcion indicate (cf. my post on this). And Papias' allegorical interpretation of Revelation ch. 12 as referring to salvation history and Jesus' crucifixion may help explain how such different works as the Gospel of John and Revelation were used in the same post-Johannine Asian community.
As for the expression of "taste death" in Mark and the Gospel of Thomas, it should be noted that in Mark 9:1 it is used with eschatological "Son of Man" language and clearly presupposes the judgment of "this adulterous and sinful generation", facts that are devastating to the conservative interpretation of Mark 9:1 (applying it to the Transfiguration) and which link this statement with the similar expectation in the synoptic apocalypse (cf. Mark 13:30). The problem of "which comes first," the realized mystical or the forward-looking eschatological interpretation, also extends to the most important concept in the gospels, the "kingdom of God". Is it something already present but "hidden" (e.g. "hidden" from those who cannot see, who lack the knowledge) or something that still lies in the future?
euripides

Putting aside the eschatological (or not) connotations, I did some further research on the idiom itself:
Linguistically "to taste death" (also Hebrews 2:9) seems to be mostly a Semitic metaphor: it occurs quite often in rabbinical literature; one example roughly contemporary to the NT would be 4 Ezra 6:26, "the translated men who have not tasted death".
It is most probably related to other positive uses of "to taste" (Hebrews 6:4f, which closely parallels the rabbinical "taste of the world to come"; possibly 1 Peter 2:3).
It obviously works as a Semitic metaphor--I was unaware of its pervasive use in rabbinical literature. The expression geuomai thanatou in Greek has a precedent, however, in Leonidas, a third century BCE epigrammatician/poet, as well as in Greek inscriptions. This is clearly analogous to the Hebrew expression ta'am mi'tah (or however you want to transliterate it), and the verb ta'am (taste) does appear in other metaphors, such as Psalm 34:9 and Proverbs 31:18.
The idea behind the use of this word taste obviously connotes experience in some way, such as taste of knowledge or taste of YHWH.
Earlier scholars and commentators such as Chrysostom, Alcuin, Aquinas, and Luther in Lectures 131 believed that the expression might mean that Jesus "tasted death" in a sampling way, as a physician might taste bitter medicine in order to convince those who are sick to taste it. The expression "bitterness of death," i.e. something susceptible to taste, appears in 1 Samuel 15:32 and Sirach 41:1. I think you've already remarked on "seeing death in Heb. 11:5.
I think most theologians read the expression to mean "experience fully," as in participate in. It's interesting that the expression occurs once in each gospel, suggesting that there may have been a tradition, as Leolaia points out, in a Son of Man expression concerning the same, thereby suggesting its connection to the oral tradition of Thomas.
I would thus conclude that since the expression works in both Hebrew and Greek that it was diffuse enough of an expression in a poetic sense as to be no longer traceable to a particular hermeneutic. That may be unhelpful, but its the best I can do
Euripides
peacefulpete

Thanks again for the research. Leolaia you did point something out, the connction with the Son of Man layer of mark. Now I understand that the Son of man label in the opening of Mark is an interpolation. It is also well argued that chapter 13 is a later insertion. Which reconstruction of Mark is consistant with 1rst Mark's obsession with secret and hidden "meaning" in the feeding stories?
Neo

euripedes,
It obviously works as a Semitic metaphor--I was unaware of its pervasive use in rabbinical literature. The expression geuomai thanatou in Greek has a precedent, however, in Leonidas, a third century BCE epigrammatician/poet, as well as in Greek inscriptions. This is clearly analogous to the Hebrew expression ta'am mi'tah (or however you want to transliterate it), and the verb ta'am (taste) does appear in other metaphors, such as Psalm 34:9 and Proverbs 31:18.
The idea behind the use of this word taste obviously connotes experience in some way, such as taste of knowledge or taste of YHWH.
Earlier scholars and commentators such as Chrysostom, Alcuin, Aquinas, and Luther in Lectures 131 believed that the expression might mean that Jesus "tasted death" in a sampling way, as a physician might taste bitter medicine in order to convince those who are sick to taste it. The expression "bitterness of death," i.e. something susceptible to taste, appears in 1 Samuel 15:32 and Sirach 41:1. I think you've already remarked on "seeing death in Heb. 11:5.
Oh, boy, I was looking exactly for this, i.e., a Hebrew parallel to the Greek "tasting death." I was not sure if Ta'am would be a valid word to use in this expression, but it makes all the sense. Thank you very much!
peacefulpete

Well thats what I get for shooting from the hip again. Please ignore the son of man comment in the earlier post. I was thinking of the Son of God in verse 1. Oh well everyone's got to be getting used to my ramblings by now.
So where are we? Does the expression as a part of the early layer become part of the "mystical" Mark? As Leolaia pointed out, the issue is part of a larger question about markan evolution. Does the "taste death" phrase's association with the Son of Man eschatology suggest it has been simply been reworked or is this association original? If there is more to read on this question online I'd appreciate a link. I've spent to much on unread books lately.
euripides

peacefulpete--
Re: reading on Son of Man expressions in Mark, the seminal work in this field is by Morna Hooker: here is a link to where you can purchase her book on this subject, (its also available through interlibrary loan in almost any university library)--I still think this is the best work on the topic, although its almost 40 years old.
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/exchange-glance/Y03Y6649566Y4680922/qid%3D1109533023/102-8211018-3425706
I know you were looking to online resources, so here's a link to Robert Price's essay on "incredible shrinking Son of Man"
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvSonofMan.htm#SonOfMan
That's a start anyway.
Euripides

taste death

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