TGBC Tuesday, 19 Jan 2021. Mark 7:31-37. Saint Mark's S.O.
Mark 7:31-37
Authorized (King James) Version
31 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. 32 And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.
33 And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; 34 and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. 35 And immediately his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. 36 And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; 37 and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
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Where are we in Mark's gospel, which means "good spell", a spell being a story, as in "spell me a yarn" or "spell me a sea story, Matey"? Where? Well, remember Mark's parallel power pattern for Jesus that we noticed last week:
Jesus calms a storm at sea.
Jesus casts out a demoniac's demons.
Jesus raises Jairus' daughter.
Jesus cures a bleeding woman.
Jesus feeds 5,000 in a desolate place.
Now we're in this second series, where Jesus cures a deaf mute and we'll expect Mark soon to assemble a crowd where Jesus will need to feed four thousand people:
Jesus walks on the sea.
Jesus cures a blind man.
Jesus cures the Greek woman's daughter.
Jesus cures a deaf mute.
Jesus feeds 4,000 in a desolate place.
In noticing Mark's subtle literary techniques are we suggesting that Mark made this up? Not necessarily (although some scholars do that), though it is Mark's story, with writer's privilege, and if we don't point them out - -
+ this "parallel power pattern", and
+ Mark's maddeningly repetitive use of the connective "kai" which makes the KJV flow so rhythmically, and the verses so easy, like poetry, to memorize and hold in mind for a lifetime, and
+ Mark's almost frantic rush through his story with "immediately", and
+ Mark's "messianic secret" that shows up again in the passage above,
- - our study would be incompetent, and you literally "wouldn't notice the forest for the trees". But it's obviously not coincidental, so are we reasonably to believe with all our hearts and minds that Fate or God or Nature or Time or Jesus himself or the Holy Spirit arranged all this just so? Here's my explanation, that anyone who's been in bible study seminars with me will remember me telling way too often - -
Mark is relying on oral tradition, he's writing about 70 AD. In fact, my imagination, which of course is nonsense, has Mark writing his gospel as he sits on one of the stones of the destroyed Temple, in the ruins of Jerusalem, that Roman forces have just ravished so brutally and murderously. There's smoke in the air and fires still flickering here and there. Maybe even bodies lying around, because it's not completely over, from the distance you can still hear shouting and sounds of battle as Roman soldiers clean up the suburbs.
Mark does not just cobble his stories together haphazardly as they come to mind. Mark has with him the yellow sticky notes on which over the last few years he has jotted down all the stories, pericopes, oral traditions about Jesus that he has collected because he realized that "if nobody don't set all this down in writing before all the witnesses are dead, Jesus' story will be lost forever and won't nobody remember nothing".
So there on the huge Temple stone, Mark arranges his yellow sticky notes in order that seems most right and compelling to him, and he sits down with paper and pen and starts writing.
Or maybe, like his old traveling companion Paul's amanuensis, Mark's significant other is there with him, and can take dictation.
So in Mark's good spell, we get a great story, a fascinating, breathless report of the life and ministry of Jesus, with events laid out just as Mark imagines they happened.
And we get this, our very best gospel, from our very best war correspondent.
IDK, but I like it.
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