Mark 2 Footnotes

2:10,28 These are the first references in Mark where Jesus used the self-designation Son of Man. There is evidence that the corresponding Aramaic phrase could be used to make oblique reference to oneself as an individual or as a member of a class (“a certain person [or “certain people”], namely, me”), and many scholars understand Jesus’s usage of “Son of Man” this way. But there is also evidence of speculation among some Jews of Jesus’s day about a judicial messianic figure based in part on the “one like a son of man” in Dn 7:13-14. This concept is certainly represented in the Gospels (Mk 13:26; 14:62) and helps clarify Jesus’s claim of unique authority. Verse 28 may show a link between the two concepts, where the concluding Son of Man saying requires a meaning something like “the representative Man” or “the Second Adam.”

2:26 According to 1Sm 21:1-6, Ahimelech was high priest when David ate the bread of the presence. Abiathar, Ahimelech’s son, became David’s high priest shortly after as a result of the episode (2Sm 8:17; 1Ch 24:6). There is no error in Mk 2:26, however, because the Greek idiom used can merely mean “in the passage about Abiathar.” If that’s the case, Mark’s reference would be to the multi-chapter segment of 1 Samuel that would have been a unit within a Jewish lectionary.