Mark is generally believed to be the first book written that testifies about the person of Jesus. It was possibly the only account of Jesus people had for decades. In Mark 1:22, the author emphatically states Jesus astonished people at the synagogue with his teaching. If Jesus is God or even the Son of God, one would expect Mark to share with his reader volumes of this amazing teaching. As I study Mark, the book is full of fantastical stories of healings, miracles, and amazing feats but short on actual teaching. There are general rules like: love God with all your heart, love you neighbor, be humble, be a servant, forgive others, keep the commandments. There is a list of evils to avoid: evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. However, the teaching is pretty basic and not much of it. Mark is more like a collection of supernatural stories which may or may not be true. After studying the simplicity and the shortage of Jesus’ teachings in Mark, I began to wonder if most of the teachings I received in church growing up actually comes from Paul and not Jesus. Just wondering if anyone else has questioned this?
When I was in the faith I did not notice the differences in each Gospel like I have recently learned from Bart’s books. To me, Mark was what I assumed was an eye witness account of Jesus and his deeds and sayings. I was taught when I was new to the faith that even the words of the Apostle Paul should be taken as the word of God because he was speaking through Paul as well as any other apostle. So, no matter who said what, it was all to be considered as the word of God.
What may seem like ordinary moral teachings after 2 thousand years of Christian Culture may not have been so ordinary then. But I also wonder what Mark meant when he said he taught “as one with authority.” Paul had said he spoke with the authority/power of the Holy spirit or something like that which may suggest he performed miracles. Perhaps Jesus also did that.
It means he spoke like a rabbi who had studied the Torah, and could quote from it to illustrate a point he was making. Basically, it means he was smart, articulate and charismatic. (And, I increasingly think, literate–which was very rare.)
But it was known he was not from the kind of background that such men typically come from, nor was he any kind of accredited authority figure within the Jewish community (neither was John the Bapist, and people certainly thought he spoke as one with authority), and people were surprised he could be so persuasive. That’s what it means. Mark has Jesus doing miracles throughout his gospel. If that’s what he meant by “with authority” that’s what he’d have said. Truthfully, there were lots of people believed to work wonders in Jesus’ time. Nothing all that remarkable about it. But Jesus’ teachings, with their innovative interpretation of Jewish thought and belief–those were something special.
I’ve been revisiting some of these old dead threads in my legally sanctioned Bot Hunt. They scatter at my approach and no doubt the sight of my virtual cannon is a factor. Aside from the hunt I’ve been enjoying the old threads.
Oh godspell, where are you now? We used to butt heads pretty good.
But to the subject. In my reading in the Book of Enoch I was interested when Nickelsburg pointed out the possibility of a Palestinian/Galilean provenance for the Book of Enoch. It seems that the area was a hotbed of apocalyptic fervor in the Hellenistic period. Now Jesus’ ministry would have been later but still, if there was a tradition of apocalypticism still active, even if attenuated, in Jesus’ day, this might explain where such an itinerant apocalyptic prophet got his stuff. The area was relatively autonomous politically and after the revolts and the destruction of Jerusalem became a culture center. Maybe it always was.
Our earliest sources for Jesus are thoroughly apocalyptic, and I think Markan priority and the apocalyptical interpretation of Jesus are pretty much a done deal. The mystery has always been how a day laborer from a hick town like Nazareth came to believe he had a divine mission. Perhaps we get glimpse here. There is so much we don’t know. Oh, for a time machine!
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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