Why does Mark identify the blind man?

October 29, 2006 -- 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Fr. Michael Stubbs

	Fr. Mike Stubbs

Most of us go by a first name, a middle name, and a last, or family, name. On the other hand, in recent years, certain celebrities have chosen to identify themselves by a single name. For example, think of Sting, Madonna.

In doing that, they are reverting to the practice common at the time of Jesus. Since people moved in fairly small circles, they only needed one name. If further identification was desired, a phrase indicating the place of origin was added, as in "Jesus of Nazareth."

There was another possibility. One could add a phrase indicating the name of the person's father, as in "Jesus, son of Joseph." This phrase, based on the name of the person's father, is called the patronymic. In some languages, such as Russian, the patronymic continues in use. For example, in Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, Pavlovich is the patronymic. In the English language, some patronymics eventually turned into family names, such as Johnson and Peterson.

At the time of Jesus, the patronymic was commonly used. We see a good example of that in Sunday's gospel reading. "Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging."

We might assume "Bartimaeus" to be the man's name, in actuality, it is a patronymic. In Aramaic, "bar" means "son." So the text indicates that he is the son of Timaeus.

Why all this discussion about the man's name? Mark's gospel recounts a number of healing stories, similar to this one about the blind man. But those stories identify the person by the ailment. Accordingly, we have the leper, (1:40), the paralytic (2:3). But we never learn the name of the person. We come the closest to learning the person's name in this story about the blind man, and even then it is his patronymic, not his actual name. The only other comparable situation involves the daughter of Jairus, (Mark 5:22,23). Once again, the story supplies the name of the father, not the person healed.

We can only speculate why Mark does not bother about the person's name in these healing stories. Did the evangelist view that as insignificant? Did the evangelist simply lack that information?

Then why does the evangelist identify the blind man, if not by his full name, at least by his patronymic, Bartimaeus? What moved the evangelist to make an exception to his general rule?

Some suggest that since having received his sight, he began to follow Jesus as a disciple, and continued to be active in the Christian community. His fellow Christians then preserved his memory as "Bartimaeus," and not as an anonymous figure who happened to be cured by Jesus, but was otherwise forgotten.

There is another possibility. When the blind man calls out to Jesus, he hails him as "Son of David." The blind man uses a patronymic which does not refer to Jesus' immediate family, but to a more remote ancestor. It is also a title which underlines Jesus' identity as the Messiah.

The story then sets up a parallel between the blind man and Jesus. It shifts attention away from their names to their patronymics. And in the case of Jesus, his patronymic reveals his true identity as the Messiah.

(Fr. Stubbs, a priest of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, has a master's degree in theology from Harvard.)