Saturday before Sunday
At 9:15 tomorrow morning, September 21, we resume our reading/discussion in Dr Dan's adult Sunday school class at HNEC. To help speed things up, here in advance is about what I intend to say as a brief intro to our second session, and to clue in anyone who was not with us at the first session on September 7.
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Our purpose is to understand Mark the anonymous writer and his book, in NT Greek “kata Markon,” in English “according to Mark.” This is not a devotional reading, but an effort to understand Mark as a literary document written by a human author with an agenda.
My plan for this hour is to read quickly and comment on Mark chapters 3, 4, 5, & 6, with you breaking in with comments and questions whenever you want to.
Remember that the things we talked about last Time hold all the way through Mark’s gospel from beginning to end (basically I have in mind 9 things):
1.This is Mark’s story about Jesus, which he (whoever Mark was) put together by assembling oral stories that he heard told about Jesus, stories told in the period 30 AD after Jesus died, to 70 AD when Mark wrote. Mark assembled the stories in the chronological order that seemed right to him, and that suited his agenda.
2. We do not know who Mark was, or whether he was Jew or Gentile, or where he wrote, or who his intended audience was. Scholars argue about those things.
3. Remember that “just because you’ve always believed something about Mark, that does not make it so.” Please do not be offended if your certain “knowledge” is challenged here ->
4. for example, there are verses that many scholars say were not what Jesus said but what Mark and/or the Early Church added to clarify, to have Jesus explain his puzzling words. That does not change the fact that the entire "Gospel of Mark" that we read is scripture canonized by the Early Church, that Christians revere as the inspired word of God.
5. Mark’s agenda is to convince you his audience that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of Man, and to inspire you to get up, go out and proclaim Jesus to others, as Mark himself proclaims Jesus to you by his writing.
6. Mark’s main literary device to accomplish his agenda is what’s called the Markan Secret or Messianic Secret, in which nobody inside the story except the evil demons realizes who Jesus is. Mark intends to get you so frustrated with the seeming stupidity of those inside the story that, again, you go out and proclaim Christ. Mark is very clever, but we’re “onto him”!! As we read along, I’ll try to keep pointing out what Mark is doing.
7. In Mark, Jesus says he came to proclaim the kingdom of God 1:14,15; 1:38, which is not about after you die, but that God is in charge here and now, and we are called to enter God’s kingdom by living in accordance with God’s will; What is God’s will? Jesus shows and tells us by his own earthly life as a human.
8. Remember that it’s Mark’s story, and that in Mark’s story (as in any writer’s story) what Jesus feels and thinks and says and does is whatever Mark writes that Jesus felt, thought, said, and did, based on Mark's agenda and on the oral stories Mark has heard.
9. Mark’s peculiarities in writing, that we talked about last Time, continue throughout his gospel. I showed them to you last Time, but they will not show up now, because instead of reading one of the literal word for word English translations from the Greek, we’re using two most popular modern English translations, the New Revised Standard Version and the New International Version, which smooth over Mark’s writing eccentricities for easy flow.
FIRST THE ASSIGNED HOMEWORK, MARK 1:41 - - DID MARK SAY JESUS WAS COMPASSIONATE OR INDIGNANT?
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RSF&PTL
T90