Mark 10:35: Who Asked for the Seats of Honor?

In Mark it clearly states that James and John themselves came to Jesus to ask him for the places of honor in his kingdom. Yet when we turn to Matthew 20:20 we find: "Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him."

What actually happened? Did the mother come or did the sons come?

The first thing that is clear is that if the mother did come, James and John were very much part of the request. In Matthew 20:22 Jesus responds "to them," indicating that the sons are there. In fact, from that point on he ignores the mother and speaks only to the two men. In 1 Kings 2:13-24 we have a roughly analogous incident in which Adonijah gets Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, to make a request for him. David is impressed neither by the request nor by the means Adonijah used; he quickly sees that the request came from Adonijah himself. Thus the account in Matthew agrees with Mark that the real issue was with the two men rather than with their mother.

The second thing that is clear is that Mark is harder on the Twelve than Matthew. Where, for example, Mark will have Jesus asking, "Do you still have no faith?" (Mk 4:40), implying that there is none, Matthew will have "You of little faith" (Mt 14:31), which seems a bit more generous. Matthew is more generous toward the Twelve throughout the Gospel. If Peter is the source of Mark, does this fact indicate that he is harder on himself and his companions than other writers tended to be?

Thus we are left with two possibilities. Either Matthew, trying to be gentler on the two apostles, added the mother to make the question less direct, or else Mark left her out to cut to the heart of the matter. It seems more likely that the latter is the truth, for Mark's is a far briefer, stripped-down account, and he would have had more than one reason to leave out the mother, who is actually extraneous to the story. It is not that she was trying to push her two sons forward to get herself a better position, but that she was the spokeswoman for her sons, a way of making the request less direct and stark.

Ancient historians did not feel compelled to tell us exactly what actually happened, but rather to give us the right impression from history. They were more interested with the meaning of history than the bare bones of the facts. Thus Mark would have had no problem feeling that he was perfectly accurate in putting the question on the lips of James and John, for they were in fact behind the question, even if they did not actually speak the words. Matthew, wanting to be a bit gentler on the men or perhaps wanting them to appear more polite, notes the role of the mother, but also reveals that Jesus quickly saw through it and turns to the men to give his answer. In either case we get the accurate impression.

The irony of these two version is that in our society we might prefer the way the question is put in Mark to the way it is done in Matthew, since we, unlike the ancient Palestinians, tend to value directness and speaking for oneself. Many ancient cultures, however, valued the use of a respected sponsor or intermediary to make a personal request, feeling that speaking for oneself was too crass and thus impolite. Going through an intermediary allowed the person receiving the request to say no without having to say it directly to you, thus preserving everyone's honor. This observation reminds us again that we need to read ancient documents like the New Testament through the eyes of the original authors and their culture and not impose our cultural values and norms upon them.

Finally, the story itself reminds us of the cost of discipleship: honor in the kingdom of God will be bought through costly discipleship, not through influence; we cannot even evaluate our own place, for it is the Father who grants us our role, but often with accompanying suffering that will feel like anything but honor.