Thursday: looking good

 

Last evening, we clicked on to the HNEC Facebook page and enjoyed live the service of installing our new rector. Under forty with a young family, children in our school, "may there be mutual blessings in the years ahead" is my prayer.

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Healthwise, Linda and I both seem much improved this morning. The POD includes going out for something we both agreed on, I don't remember what it is, and stopping at the downtown postoffice because we've not checked our mail in over a week now and the box will be jam-stuffed with, especially, catalogs. 

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Yep, +Time has degenerated from whatever it originally was, which was my daily health updates fifteen years ago, to an assortment of thoughts off the top of my head. Seems like I've started opening a day's post with nonsense then trying to phase into something thoughty, like my preps for a discussion/reading of the Gospel according to Mark, starting Sept 7 with the adult Sunday school class at HNEC. I have my first two class sessions pretty well settled, and when we resume Sunday Sept 21 after Shell Island Sunday. Mark is sixteen chapters long, and It may or may not work, but I'm working toward reading/discussing four chapters a session to completion so it doesn't get to feeling dragged out, and so maybe in Time I'll be welcomed back for something else.

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Here's my printed introduction that Dr Dan will be handing out to members of the class ahead of Time so that at our first session we can jump right into experiencing whoever Mark was and reading his story about Jesus, which is quite gripping actually.

κατὰ Μᾶρκον (kata Markon)

Our first, oldest canonical gospel, the Gospel according to Mark, is a remarkable literary work written by a human author about 70 AD, the year of the Fall of Jerusalem to the Romans, by an anonymous but inspired man who wanted urgently to convey a message, he calls it εὐαγγελίον, good news, about Jesus, Messiah, Son of God. The book is written in koine, the common Greek language of the New Testament Age. Scholars say Mark's writing is rough, unrefined (we’ll see some of that in our first session September 7); but he (whoever “Mark” was) was an imaginative person who used a clever agenda designed to so frustrate you his audience that the people around Jesus (his friends, disciples, followers) were too dull-witted or too close to Jesus to realize who and what he was/is - - so frustrated that upon finishing reading or hearing Mark’s story, the reader will be inspired to jump up, rush out, and proclaim Jesus as Lord. “Mark” is a superb evangelist!

Mark has his audience in mind throughout his telling his story. Often, what he writes is not only to inform us, but subtly to influence, manipulate our thinking. Mark's rather unpolished Markan Secret agenda is the best example of this. As we read into it, I will try to help you be "onto Mark"! 

 

The gospel of Mark was written as a unit to be read aloud to an audience in one sitting, beginning-to-end (the custom of the day), not in the little bits and snippets we read in church on Sunday mornings; and not as a collection of Bible memory verses or prooftext verses. Mark presents an assembly of pericopes, scholars call them oral traditions, little short stories, arranged in order to best suit his agenda. It is easy to wander off into the stories and lose sight of Mark’s agenda, but I will try to keep the class mindful of Mark’s agenda throughout our discussion/reading. 

As we read, remember that we are reading Mark, not Matthew, Luke, or John, and that what Mark says, and says Jesus says, may be different from what you remember Jesus saying in the other gospels. We’ll try not to mix the stories except perhaps to compare.

Again, the Gospel according to Mark is anonymous, the name “Mark” was attached later, maybe by the end of the second century AD, based on a popular notion that the author was John Mark who traveled with Paul, but that is not known; nor do we know where the gospel was written, or who its intended audience was. Scholars speculate, and so can we, but we do not know.

Of some 25 or so gospels (check out Early Christian Writings https://www.earlychristianwritings.com online) that we have all, parts, or scraps of, Mark is one of only four gospels that by about the third century AD the church had settled on to be canonized as Christian holy scripture.

To understand a writing and its writer, one should explore its characteristics. Mark uses interesting literary devices that I’ll try to help you notice as we read.

Unlike the other synoptic gospels Matthew and Luke, Mark has no Nativity story. Mark opens with a story of Jesus’ baptism that is intended to discredit then-current claims by some that John the Baptist was Messiah, by having John the Baptist himself deny messiahship and acclaim Jesus, an interesting literary technique.

Unlike Matthew, Luke, and John, Mark has no post-resurrection appearance stories.

Mark ends at Chapter 16, verse 8. The rest (verse 9f) is later non-Markan composition, we'll ignore it.

Mark rushes headlong, breathlessly, through his story, connecting every thought to the next thought with the word “and” (Greek “kai”). It’s called syndeton, use of connectives. Modern translations edit this out so it reads smooth, not awkward. Knowing about this helps understand Mark.

Related, Mark often uses the word “immediately,” as a writing characteristic. Knowing this is also part of understanding Mark. Modern translators smooth over this as well.

Mark often uses the “historic present,” perhaps to make what is going on more vivid, as if it’s happening right now. Modern translations smooth this out to past tense, which makes for a nicer read but takes away some of our knowledge of Mark and his writing. I'll show you in the Disciples Literal New Testament (DLNT) or YLT (Young's Literal Translation).

Mark uses intercalation, sandwiching a new story inside an ongoing story. It may be to cause the reader frustration that Time is being wasted while someone is dying (Talitha), with Mark’s subtle objective being to show the reader that Time is no obstacle to Jesus’ powers over creation and life. Or it may just show passage of Time before an event is completed (cursed fig tree).

Mark has Jesus use “the son of man” term. In each case, the reader should look at the context to decide whether Mark intends Jesus to mean (a) the cosmic figure at Daniel 7:13, (b) Jesus as that cosmic figure, (c) Jesus speaking of mankind in general, (d) Jesus speaking obliquely of himself.

Mark’s most famous feature is what scholars call the “Markan Secret” or “Messianic Secret,” in which almost nobody around Jesus recognizes who and what Jesus is (Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man). God knows, Mark the author knows, Mark tells the audience so we know; Mark makes sure we know that Jesus knows by having God tell Jesus during his baptism; and the devils, demons and unclean spirits know. Except for “Peter’s confession” (You are the Messiah) nobody else seems to get it until near the end of the story when an outsider, the Roman centurion in charge of the crucifixion, realizes (“Truly, this man was the Son of God”). 

Further, the grand finale of Mark’s story is that not even the beloved women who go to Jesus tomb realize who he was: they see the empty tomb, the linen cloths where Jesus lay, and a young man in white sitting there: they are so frightened that they flee in terror and don’t say anything to anyone. Mark means this abrupt ending to leave you the audience so frustrated that people in the story don't see who Jesus is, that you jump up, run out, and proclaim Christ. Mark even has Jesus help hide the “secret” by saying “don’t tell” again and again. 

In Mark’s clever literary device, you the audience outside the story, read Jesus inside the story confirming the secret so that you the audience know it’s true because Jesus says so in the story.

Throughout the book, Mark tells us what Jesus is thinking, how Jesus feels. Writing forty years after Jesus’ Time, how does Mark know what Jesus thought, how Jesus felt? On a pious, spiritual level you may say that God inspired and informed Mark. On our literary exploration level. Mark knows because it’s Mark’s story, Mark is the author; in Mark’s story, Jesus thinks and knows and says what Mark writes that Jesus thought and knew and said. It’s not unlike Mark Twain writing what Tom Sawyer thinks and knows and says in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. It’s author’s license, common literary practice.

We’re reading chapter one from the NIV so I can show you an example of “textual criticism” at Mark 1:41. We’ll read chapter two from the Disciple’s Literal New Testament (DLNT) or Young's Literal Translation (YLT) so you can observe Mark’s unpolished writing style (which other English translations smooth out and hide). Other than that we’ll mostly use popular English translations the NIV (New International Version) and NRSV (New Revised Standard Version). I’ll provide them (usually in advance so you know what to expect). I'll be interested to hear what your favorite Bible versions are.

In my classes there are no dumb questions, nothing “taboo,” no questions that can’t be asked, no subjects we can’t discuss. So, ask questions, voice observations and comments whenever you want to.

If you miss a class and want handouts you missed, they’ll be available in my stack of stuff, you are welcome to go through the stack and pick them out.

First class is Sunday, September 7. The next Sunday, September 14, is Shell Island Sunday: I’m to fill in for Fr Forbes at 8:00 and 10:30 worship, so I’ll not be leading this class that day. Our study of Mark will resume Sunday, September 21.

So as not to use a lot of Time on course introduction our first class session, the reading material handouts are enclosed, Mark chapter One in the popular NIV, Mark chapter Two in YLT, both sans footnotes and cross-references for brevity. Read if you wish, and jot down anything you want to discuss. If you forget to bring them to class, no worries as I’ll have more copies.

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image: I pinched the image of Mark from an icon site online.