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Let's Read the New Testament: The Gospel of Mark
RiemannLives
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The Gospel of Mark
This thread may end up being the first of a series based upon an obvious theme. I very much want to keep the topic as focused as possible on the Gospel of Mark in particular. This will hopefully make for more interesting discussion but I think it is also a valuable scholarly approach. It is very common today to think of the entire New Testament as a single unified document and to allow passages from one section to reinforce or justify passages from another. However, this is not at all how the written works that make up the New Testament were composed or used by early Christians. Each gospel was written to be a standalone work and in the first century of Christianity were copied and distributed as such.
I would highly recommend everyone take the time to read the subject of the thread: The Gospel of Mark. It is in fact a very short "book"! There is also a very handy website everyone should check out called Bible Gateway:
http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/
If you only want to look at one version, I suggest the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). This is the "general use" version most commonly used in scholarship and for very good reason. But it can also be handy to compare it to other popular versions such as the King James (KJV) to highlight their particular biases. The Bible Gateway site even lets you set multiple versions side by side in your window to read them together!
Some possible areas of discussion
0) Just random things you find interesting or want to talk about while reading through the text.
1) What seems to be the most important teachings and events to the author of this Gospel?
2) If you only had access to the Gospel of Mark, what would be your impression of the life and teachings of Jesus?
3) If you want to read ahead, how do specific events told of in both Mark and other Gospels differ or agree (try to keep these examples focused though)?
This is not an exhaustive list! Feel free to add your own!
A short background:
Sometime around 4 BCE, the exact date and year are unknown, a Jewish man named Jesus (or more probably "Yeshua") was born in the Roman province of Judea. A few decades later, around 30 CE, he was executed by the Roman state by means of crucifixion. Almost nothing is definitively known about his life in the interim, though some details seem likely to be true.
The details about Jesus most likely to date back to the historical man are that he was a devoutly Jewish, poor, illiterate Aramaic speaking man. He found work as a manual laborer ("tekton", later mistranslated as "carpenter"). As an adult he was baptized by a fairly well known Jewish preacher of his day known to us as John the Baptist. Afterwards, he began his own Jewish ministry and attracted some followers. He sometimes made use of parables as a means of teaching. Eventually, he ran afoul of the authorities in Jerusalem and was executed by the state as a criminal.
In the decades that followed his death some of the followers of Jesus spread out of Judea to other parts of the Roman Empire bringing with them their religion. Some of these, the most well known is a man named Paul but he mentions several others, made it their lifes work to attempt to teach non-Jewish persons (or "gentiles") their message about Jesus.
Perhaps as early as 65 CE (but more likely just after 70 CE) - so at least 35-40 years after the death of Jesus - a literate, Greek speaking person (or group of persons) set about to write down what they felt was important to their religion in the stories they had heard about the life, teachings and death of Jesus. As was usual at the time, this document was not given an explicit title and may have been referred to as simply The Gospel (i.e. "Good News").
Decades later, other gospels would be written by other Greek speaking persons or groups and over time as individual congregations would acquire more copies of these works eventually the need arose to give the different documents titles to tell them apart easily. The title given to The Gospel written around 70 CE was The Gospel of Mark, named after the secretary of the Apostle Peter though certainly not written by him.
For further reading (and listening) I can highly recomend the works of prof. Bart Ehrman. He is a well respected scholar but perhaps more importantly is quite good at teaching to a general audience. His freshmen level courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have won several awards. In addition to written books he has several series of lectures on the subject of the New Testament available via the Teaching Company. I wanted to recomend Ehrman in particular because he will present the mainline scholarly consensus on the subject without straying into any poorly supported or fringe theories.
I don't want to burden the OP with too many different topics about the Gospel of Mark (though feel free to bring them up in thread if they interest you) but I think there are two that need to be called out:
1) The older and better copies on which we base modern translations of Mark all lack the final few versus. These are almost certainly a later addition (a practice we will see again in later threads about the New Testament). In any good version of the gospel (such as the NRSV linked above) your copy should call out where these breakpoints occur in the text.
2) Obviously our knowledge of this gospel depends on how its text was handed down to us. The Earliest Christian Artifacts is an interesting delve into the subject of the physical manuscripts involved. But please keep in mind that of all the many thousands of artifacts on which are written in Greek books or even just fragments (some as small as a credit card) of the New Testament no two copies are ever completely identical. Be very careful of making arguments that depend on the exact wording of a single verse because these things can and definitely did change over the centuries during copying (to say nothing of how much they change during translation).
(also mad props to @Speaker for the series he did on the Tanakh a couple years back)
This thread may end up being the first of a series based upon an obvious theme. I very much want to keep the topic as focused as possible on the Gospel of Mark in particular. This will hopefully make for more interesting discussion but I think it is also a valuable scholarly approach. It is very common today to think of the entire New Testament as a single unified document and to allow passages from one section to reinforce or justify passages from another. However, this is not at all how the written works that make up the New Testament were composed or used by early Christians. Each gospel was written to be a standalone work and in the first century of Christianity were copied and distributed as such.
I would highly recommend everyone take the time to read the subject of the thread: The Gospel of Mark. It is in fact a very short "book"! There is also a very handy website everyone should check out called Bible Gateway:
http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/
If you only want to look at one version, I suggest the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). This is the "general use" version most commonly used in scholarship and for very good reason. But it can also be handy to compare it to other popular versions such as the King James (KJV) to highlight their particular biases. The Bible Gateway site even lets you set multiple versions side by side in your window to read them together!
Some possible areas of discussion
0) Just random things you find interesting or want to talk about while reading through the text.
1) What seems to be the most important teachings and events to the author of this Gospel?
2) If you only had access to the Gospel of Mark, what would be your impression of the life and teachings of Jesus?
3) If you want to read ahead, how do specific events told of in both Mark and other Gospels differ or agree (try to keep these examples focused though)?
This is not an exhaustive list! Feel free to add your own!
A short background:
Sometime around 4 BCE, the exact date and year are unknown, a Jewish man named Jesus (or more probably "Yeshua") was born in the Roman province of Judea. A few decades later, around 30 CE, he was executed by the Roman state by means of crucifixion. Almost nothing is definitively known about his life in the interim, though some details seem likely to be true.
The details about Jesus most likely to date back to the historical man are that he was a devoutly Jewish, poor, illiterate Aramaic speaking man. He found work as a manual laborer ("tekton", later mistranslated as "carpenter"). As an adult he was baptized by a fairly well known Jewish preacher of his day known to us as John the Baptist. Afterwards, he began his own Jewish ministry and attracted some followers. He sometimes made use of parables as a means of teaching. Eventually, he ran afoul of the authorities in Jerusalem and was executed by the state as a criminal.
In the decades that followed his death some of the followers of Jesus spread out of Judea to other parts of the Roman Empire bringing with them their religion. Some of these, the most well known is a man named Paul but he mentions several others, made it their lifes work to attempt to teach non-Jewish persons (or "gentiles") their message about Jesus.
Perhaps as early as 65 CE (but more likely just after 70 CE) - so at least 35-40 years after the death of Jesus - a literate, Greek speaking person (or group of persons) set about to write down what they felt was important to their religion in the stories they had heard about the life, teachings and death of Jesus. As was usual at the time, this document was not given an explicit title and may have been referred to as simply The Gospel (i.e. "Good News").
Decades later, other gospels would be written by other Greek speaking persons or groups and over time as individual congregations would acquire more copies of these works eventually the need arose to give the different documents titles to tell them apart easily. The title given to The Gospel written around 70 CE was The Gospel of Mark, named after the secretary of the Apostle Peter though certainly not written by him.
For further reading (and listening) I can highly recomend the works of prof. Bart Ehrman. He is a well respected scholar but perhaps more importantly is quite good at teaching to a general audience. His freshmen level courses at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have won several awards. In addition to written books he has several series of lectures on the subject of the New Testament available via the Teaching Company. I wanted to recomend Ehrman in particular because he will present the mainline scholarly consensus on the subject without straying into any poorly supported or fringe theories.
I don't want to burden the OP with too many different topics about the Gospel of Mark (though feel free to bring them up in thread if they interest you) but I think there are two that need to be called out:
1) The older and better copies on which we base modern translations of Mark all lack the final few versus. These are almost certainly a later addition (a practice we will see again in later threads about the New Testament). In any good version of the gospel (such as the NRSV linked above) your copy should call out where these breakpoints occur in the text.
2) Obviously our knowledge of this gospel depends on how its text was handed down to us. The Earliest Christian Artifacts is an interesting delve into the subject of the physical manuscripts involved. But please keep in mind that of all the many thousands of artifacts on which are written in Greek books or even just fragments (some as small as a credit card) of the New Testament no two copies are ever completely identical. Be very careful of making arguments that depend on the exact wording of a single verse because these things can and definitely did change over the centuries during copying (to say nothing of how much they change during translation).
(also mad props to @Speaker for the series he did on the Tanakh a couple years back)
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
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Indeed. And another very interesting historical fact about the timing of the Gospel of Mark is that the Judean War began around 66 CE and the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and (very importantly) The Temple in 70 CE.
So it was only when Jerusalem itself was destroyed, and whatever direct followers of Jesus were still living there, that some Greek speaking person felt the need to set down in writing his Gospel account.
The timing of the Judean War is one of the primary means of dating the Gospels of the New Testament.
the consensus is generally 65 CE - 75 CE. It is very influenced by the Judean War and the author had to be aware of the outcome. So probably after (possibly just after) the destruction of The Temple but at least once it was clear that the Romans were winning.
edit: also none of the gospels mention the Bar Kokhba revolt at all (and it is exactly the kind of thing they would) and so that date is set as the high-and-outside date for their writing.
Most scholars date them as having been composed around 65-75 for Mark, 80-90 for Matthew and Luke, 85 on up to sometime prior to Bar Kokhba for John.
I dunno. The attitude usually taken is to call out, at length, ones opponents in order to show why your Son of Man is the correct one.
EG: notice how often Mark mentions the Scribes and Pharisees as opponents of Jesus (in order to call them out as being wrong).
By the time the Jews revolt again and again, Jesus of Nazareth has been dead for decades, and all the Apostles with him. There's nothing you can write into their mouths that could plausibly work, even if you were a little aggrieved at all Judea rising up for their own messiah rather than your own. At best you can jab them about pacifist your own dude was, after thousands of them had died in the revolts.
The things that stood out to me were the amount of secrecy Jesus practiced and the fact that Jesus only chose to explain his parables to his apostles. I'm stuck wondering the reason for both. My bias suggests that the first was simply a matter of survival. According to the Gospel, there were definitely many enemies; I imagine that's always the case when you start claiming to be the Messiah. But for all his secrecy, he was constantly surrounded by thousands of people. Doesn't seem very covert.
As for why he chose only to explain his parables to the apostles, I'm stuck. I'm under the impression he chose them for their wisdom and comprehension... it seems to me that the masses would would be the ones he'd deem most in need of hand-holding, in between sneezing out unclean spirits and having their handicaps removed.
But also, I imagine it was at least in some sense coded language because running around preaching against the establishment is usually not exactly greeted warmly by the establishment.
This chapter deals with the beginning of the revolt and Nero's response (although Nero gets offed before the revolt is put down)
Presumably the more Hellenistic Judeans benefited more from the Roman presence, and the Gospel of Mark was first written in Greek...
That's a good point. It's helpful for me to remember that the apostles were effectively co-conspirators.
Also remember I am absolutely not an expert ;P
(christianity specifically starts around 13 minutes in)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/historyofrome/087-_Thinking_and_Feeling.mp3
By the time Mark was written, Peter should have already been in Rome (and/or possibly already crucified by Nero)? In which case it's natural that Mark would've been written in Greek, because that was what pretty much all philosophy-type stuff was written in.
Christianity like we'd think of it today inherits a lot of those philosophical traditions and ritualism of the eastern cults, but it's really a very different beast in most ways.
I don't think there's any simple breakdown in factions there. Pretty much the whole thing was a big mess. Even the Hellenized Jews that were profiting from the Roman presence didn't necessarily want them to be there, they just wanted the Romans gone AND to still be on top. The first person killed in the First Revolt was the head Jewish priest of the temple of Herod, and then not long afterwards it was the dude who had ordered his death. It was very messy. AFAIK the Jewish Christians didn't have any particular faction during the revolt, and they had already been persecuted a fair bit by the mainstream Jews.
Anyway Mark wasn't written in Judea iirc? It was written for a gentile audience in Rome, which was some part Jewish Christians who had fled Judea, and then increasingly Roman women and slaves.
I'm not sure if I answered the right question there.
One thing I have always wondered is how familiar the general populous was with allegory at that point in history because they seem to be really confused about what seems now to be simple parables.