Messianic Secret

In Biblical criticism, the Messianic Secret refers to a motif primarily in the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus is portrayed as commanding his followers to silence about his Messianic mission. Attention was first drawn to this motif in 1901 by William Wrede.

Part of Wrede's theory involved statements in the New Testament by Jesus to demons who recognise his divine nature as well as to his followers not to reveal to others that he is the Messiah. Wrede suggested that this theme was not historical but was an addition by the author of Mark. Wrede's broad concept of the Messianic Secret also involved the use of parables by Jesus.

Wrede's theory had an inherent inter-relationship with the hypothesis of Markan priority, which Wrede eventually abandoned, but some of his followers accepted. The theory was strongly criticized in the first years of the 20th century, then gained acceptance in the 1920s; but eventually began to lose support and by the 1970s it no longer existed as Wrede had proposed it.

In the New Testament, Jesus commands silence in many instances. An example is :

Jesus also issues commands of silence after miracles and healings, e.g. in in the cleansing of a leper:

The concept, as Wrede used it, also included parables and secrets of the Kingdom of God as in :

Wrede proposed that the author of Mark invented the notion of secrecy to reduce the tension between early Christian beliefs about Jesus being the Messiah, and the non-Messianic nature of his ministry. However, Wrede's notion of secrecy did not simply rely on the commands of Jesus but also involved the "Markan parable theory" of why Jesus spoke in parables.

Wrede recognized the inherent inter-relationship of his approach with the hypothesis of Markan priority – namely that Mark was written first and influenced the other Gospels. However, after re-examining his initial theory, Wrede suggested that his theory would work best if the Markan priority hypothesis turned out to be false and wrote: "it would be 'most highly desirable' if such a gospel as Mark were not the oldest gospel". Yet, the followers of the Messianic Secret hypothesis were later forced to assume Markan priority – an issue that has resulted in various forms of criticism by other scholars.

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