Words on the Word
Gospel of Mark
Restoration in the Wilderness
I heard a good joke today. Good by my standards, anyway, which not all who know my humor will wholly trust. Question: “What do John the Baptist and Kermit the Frog have in common?” Answer: “Well, besides their affinity for water, they both share a middle name of the.” That made me think again about my … Continue reading
Faith and healing in the Gospel of Mark: a brief reflection
Faith is closely connected with healing in Mark. Jesus heals the paralytic on the basis of the faith of his friends (and of the paralytic himself, too?) in 2:5. Mark 5:34, 7:29, 10:52 feature similar healings where the faith of the healed seems to be at least a partial basis for Jesus’ healing. At the … Continue reading
Amazed by Jesus
Amazement is a common crowd reaction to Jesus’ teaching and to his miraculous powers of healing and exorcism in the Gospel of Mark. Mark uses the Greek words ἐκπλήσσω, θαμβέω, ἐξίστημι, θαυμάζω to depict others’ amazement at Jesus. In Mark 1:22 the people are “amazed by his teaching.” In 1:27, they reiterate their amazement at his … Continue reading
Why did Jesus tell the disciples not to tell anyone about him?
Why did Jesus sometimes tell people not to tell others about who he was, or about how he healed them? This passage from Mark 8:27-30 (NIV) looks almost anti-evangelistic: Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some … Continue reading
Would Mark’s Jesus have us handle snakes and drink poison? (part 2 of 2) (BibleWorks 9 review, concluded)
The Gospel of Mark has a couple of possible (disputed) endings. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the options for how to understand Mark’s closing chapter. It is the so-called longer ending of Mark that has Jesus appearing to some of his followers and talking about their picking up snakes and drinking poison. … Continue reading
Would Mark’s Jesus have us handle snakes and drink poison? (part 1 of 2) (BibleWorks 9 review, continued)
Many believe that Mark’s Gospel ends rather abruptly at 16:8 (“for they were afraid”), but others have found it difficult to think of a Gospel ending with Jesus’ followers’ being afraid to say anything to anyone about the resurrection. So there is the so-called shorter (add-on) ending of Mark, which adds to the above, “…the … Continue reading
William L. Lane free downloads on the Gospel of Mark
Here’s a link to a Mark teaching series that Dr. William L. Lane led at Christ Community Church in Franklin, TN in 1998. He’s the author of the commentary pictured at right, one of the best for the Gospel of Mark. (Click on the image to look inside the book at Amazon.) From the By/For … Continue reading
The hyphen in my last name, and, What happens when kids with hyphenated last names marry?
This post is not about sex or colonization. NPR’s All Things Considered played a story yesterday called, “When Hyphen Boy Meets Hyphen Girl, Names Pile Up.” It’s Family Friday at Words on the Word, and in my family we all roll with the hyphenated last name (K-J). My wife was K, I was J, she wanted … Continue reading
Restoration in the Wilderness
From the wilderness comes restoration. The wilderness for Israel was all too often a place of dissension and lack of trust in God’s promises. Exodus 17:7 says, “Moses called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, on account of the quarreling of the children of Israel, and on account of their testing Yahweh, which … Continue reading
Mark the Action Movie
And immediately! Mark’s Gospel has earned a reputation as the fast-moving, action-oriented Gospel out of the four. It is shorter than the other two Synoptic Gospels and John (cool chart on NT book length here). At times Mark’s urgency in his narrative accounts feels like an action movie. He frequently uses the Greek εὐθὺς (“at … Continue reading
