Mark's Gospel

[secondeve]

Hey guys,

I'm doing a university subject called 'the New Testament and its Times' this semester, and thought I'd share a paper I wrote for it last night on the Gospel of Mark. There were two questions asking us to look at how Mark portrays Jesus' human side, and what details in the narrative were suggestive of eyewitness testimony. Anyway, here 'tis:

In examining the narrative structure of the Gospel of Mark, it is interesting to consider those elements which contribute to our image of Jesus as a man (as opposed to a divinity), and, further, to try and determine which details of the account are suggestive of eye-witness testimony. In both cases, we are essentially seeking to identify information which, on balance, seems more likely to be true, not because the author has gone out of his way to emphasise it, but for precisely the opposite reason. This involves the combination of several criterion used in establishing the authenticity of the Gospels, namely: dissimilarity, lack of a higher theological imperative for a given anecdote or occurrence, embarrassment, relationship to an actual rural context, and multiple independent attestation. By these methods, a Biblical scholar may construct a plausible interpretation of the depiction of Jesus

[Matthitjah]

Grace to you,

There's a couple of glaringly huge errors in your reading and then defining of Marks Gospel.

The first one that is very evident is the statement that Jesus could not cast the demon out of the little child that was convulsing him;

Mr

[nebula]

You are a very good writer, secondeve!

Analyzing the paper, though, I agree with what Matthitjah had to say.

In addition, I was puzzled that you had described his act of "moving with compassion" as being a human trait and not a God trait. I always read that as an expression of His perfect love.

There is something else that I do not know if you had heard of. One element about all four Gospels is the evidence that each was written for a different audience, and thus were written with the audience in mind. Thus, each portrays a different aspect of who Jesus is. Mark, it seems, was written to the Roman audience. I'm trying to remember how it was explained way back when in Bible class, but the Romans related more to the tangible rather than the philosophical theoretical (like the Greeks). Thus Mark constantly writes of tangible things (such as mentioning the people sat in the green grass, Mark 6:39). I'm not sure if I'm expressing this right, but that is the general gist. The idea is that knowing Jesus as God being one of us was important to their understanding and faith.

So, it was important for the Romans to grasp the concept that Jesus was both God and Man. For them to appreciate this, they needed the tangible explanations of Jesus' humanity. He slept, He hungered, etc. The theme is not to compete with HIs humanity vs. HIs deity, but to show they went hand-in-hand.

[mead]

Grace to you,

There's a couple of glaringly huge errors in your reading and then defining of Marks Gospel.

The first one that is very evident is the statement that Jesus could not cast the demon out of the little child that was convulsing him;

Mr