Series Introduction MARKAN BOOKENDS The very first scene wherein Jesus appears is one in which he is baptized by John in the Jordan River (cf. Mark 1:4-8): And it happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And then as he came out of... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvEKlQ2o0pQ Recommended Reading •Mary Ann Beavis, Mark, Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 22-23.•John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 29-34.•Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, In the Company of Jesus: Characters in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 41-69.
As is so often the case with atheistic readings of biblical texts, the annotations of Steve Wells in his Skeptic’s Annotated Bible are bewildering. At times, SAB gets things precisely correct, like when it decries what amounts to divinely sanctioned marital rape in Deuteronomy 21:10-14. Wells summarizes the passage by writing, “If you see a pretty woman among the... Continue Reading →
Jesus’ first public miracle in the Gospel of Mark is an exorcism (Mark 1:23-26) This is no coincidence; neither is the fact that it is contained within a pericope portraying Jesus as a teacher (vv. 21-28). On a narrative level, the Markan author desires to show how Jesus is the one with unique authority: he... Continue Reading →
INTRODUCTION The central question of the Markan Gospel is found near its narrative center in Mark 8:27-30. “Who do people say that I am?” he queries the disciples on their way to Caesarea Philippi (v. 27). A flurry of answers proceeds: people have speculated he is John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the... Continue Reading →
In the Spring/Summer 2018 edition of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin there is an interesting piece by Jade Sylvan, an MDiv student at Harvard Divinity School, discussing what the Gospels share in common with the modern literary genre of fan fiction. They write, As a divinity school student new to biblical scholarship, I’ve found it interesting... Continue Reading →
INTRODUCTION Earlier this year I wrote a short piece on the Matthean and Lukan versions of the death of Judas (Matthew 27:3-10, Acts 1:18-19).[1] In it I argued that the two accounts are fundamentally incompatible and that the standard attempts to reconcile them fall flat for a number of reasons. Recently, blogger Triggerman wrote a piece on what... Continue Reading →
The first season of Amateur Exegesis is in the books and available on iTunes, Google Play, and other podcast platforms. But I realized that it had no presence on YouTube and so I uploaded all ten episodes onto my channel for your listening pleasure. The entire first season is right at three hours and therefore... Continue Reading →
So I decided to host my first livestream discussion and did so with Chris H., a brilliant guy who has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Hebrew Bible and its relationship to Ancient Near Eastern cultures. We talked about the Gospel of Mark, the Pentateuch, the Canaanite pantheon, textual criticism, the Sea Myth, and so... Continue Reading →
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