Plato’s Timaeus as a Symbol of Greek Culture in Mark 10:46–52: A Contextual Interpretation

“Greek culture claims for itself the clearest vision that a human being can attain; Mark responds that such vision is partial at best, and that the best it can manage is to respond to an inspiration of the Jewish God, so as to beg his Jewish son for the gift of sight.”

Although all three synoptic gospels narrate the healing of a blind beggar or beggars outside Jericho, only Mark names the person healed: the blind beggar is “the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus” (10:46). More than one commentator has suggested that in naming the blind man of Jericho, Mark has built into the story a reference to Plato’s Timaeus, a philosophical dialogue that was then the preeminent literary symbol of the Greek aspiration to wisdom. In 1995, Bas van Iersel and Jan Nuchelmans provided what I take to be a compelling argument for this interpretation. In 2003, Gordon Lathrop offered an intertextual reading that presents Mark as responding to an influential passage from the Timaeus concerning sight and blindness. Neither discussion, however, adequately explores what I take to be the essential context—both thematic and stylistic—of Mark’s story. In the following pages I will situate within this essential context the most important points made in these earlier discussions.

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