The Gospel of Mark (1) - Who Was Mark?

Who is Mark?

The earliest and most important source of an answer comes from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis until 130 A.D., who said Mark had been a secretary and translator for Peter, one of the first twelve of Jesus's disciples, and "wrote accurately all that [Peter] remembered."*

This testimony is of particular significance, since there is evidence that Papias (who lived from 60 - 135 A.D.) knew John, another of Jesus's first and closest disciples, personally.

Bauckham's volume** demonstrates that, indeed, Mark mentions Peter proportionately more than any of the other Gospels. If you go through the book of Mark, you'll see that nothing happens in which Peter is not present. The entire Gospel of Mark, then, is almost certainly the eyewitness testimony of Peter.

Mark does not read like a dry history. It is written in the present tense, often using words like "immediately" to pack the account full of action.

You can't help but notice the abruptness and breathless speed of the narrative.

This Gospel conveys, then, something important about Jesus. He is not merely a historical figure, but a living reality, a person who addresses us today.

In his very first sentence Mark tells us that God has broken in to history.

His style communicates a sense of crisis, that the status quo has been ruptured.

We can't think of history as a closed system of natural causes any more.***

Jesus has come.

Anything can happen now.

Mark wants us to see that the coming of Jesus calls for decisive action.

Jesus is seen as a man of action, moving quickly and decisively from event to event.

There is relatively little of Jesus's teaching in the Gospel of Mark --  mainly we see Jesus doing.

Therefore we can't remain neutral; we need to respond actively.

   -- From King's Cross, by Timothy Keller,
                    in Before




*I am enjoying so much this book by Keller on the Gospel of Mark. And I love this verse in John 14:26 when Jesus promises His disciples that..."the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you."

So Peter had a lot of (supernatural) help when he reported his memories to Mark.


**Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, by Richard Bauckham




***See blog entry for January 3, 2014, World View - Open or Closed?

Fairy Music and Peter Pan

Reminders from Peter Pan.....




The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is a fairy language. You ordinary children can  never hear it, but if you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before.





..he had already forgotten that he owed his bliss to Wendy. He thought he had attached the shadow himself. "How clever I am,' He crowed rapturously. "Oh, the cleverness of me!"




Captain Hook asks Peter Pan how to fly. He desperately yearns to sail among the trees, over the island and into the great blue sky. "You just think happy thoughts," says Peter.  "I have no happy thoughts," Captain Hook answers sadly.

Building the Temple

It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD and shall bear royal honor.
Zechariah 6:13

Christ Himself is the builder of His spiritual temple, and He has built it on the mountains of His unchangeable affection, His omnipotent grace, and His infallible truthfulness.

But as it was in Solomon's temple, so in this: The materials need to be prepared. There are the cedars of Lebanon, but they are not already framed for the building; they must be cut down and shaped and made into those planks whose fragrant beauty will make glad the courts of the Lord's house in paradise.

There are also rough stones still in the quarry which must be hewn out and squared.

All this is Christ's work. Each individual believer is being prepared and polished and made ready for his place in the temple; but Christ's own hand performs the preparation work.

Affections cannot sanctify, except when they are used by Him to fulfill His purpose. Our prayer and efforts cannot make us ready for heaven, apart from the hand of Jesus, who fashions are hearts correctly.

As in the building of Solomon's temple, where neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard (1 Kings 6:7) because it all arrived perfectly ready for the exact spot it was to occupy, so it is with the temple that Jesus builds; the preparation work is all done on earth. When we reach heaven, there will be no sanctifying us there, no squaring us with affliction, no maturing us with suffering.

No, we must be made ready here--and all that Christ will do He will do now; and when He has done it, we will be ferried by a loving hand across the stream of death and brought to the heavenly Jerusalem, to live as eternal pillars in the temple of our Lord.

--Charles Haddon Spurgeon


Glorya's Note: Is this really true? Does he mean that what we are here when we leave this earth is what we will be there? I thought God would finish working on us --
I can't imagine myself leaving here, even if I live to be 200 years old, spiritually "completed." What do you think?

How God Reveals Himself to Us - Generally

How God Reveals Himself to Us - 

The heavens declare the glory of God;

The skies proclaim the work of His hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

Night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

Their words to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19:1-4

The wrath of God is being revealed

from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness

of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,

since what may be known about God is plain to them,

because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world

God's invisible qualities --

His eternal power and divine nature --

have been clearly seen,

being understood from what has been made,

so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither

glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him,

but their thinking became futile and their

foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claimed to be wise,

they became fools and exchanged the glory

of the immortal God for images made to look like

mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Romans 1:18-23

The Bible talks about two kinds of revelation: (1) what is revealed about God in nature, which is called General Revelation, and (2) what is revealed about God in Scripture, which is usually called Special 
Revelation.

What is General Revelation?

The heavens proclaim the glory of God, the skies proclaim the works of His hands, we read in Psalm 19.


General Revelation, witnessed in nature, testifies to the existence of a Creator. Even more than that, they witness to His "glory." The stars and the sun are so glorious that the One who made them must be more glorious still!

Nature is "limited revelation," because it does not proclaim God's moral qualities -- attributes like mercy, justice, love, goodness, wrath, and compassion.

But creation does indeed testify to God's existence and power.

Paul is likely thinking about this psalm when he writes in Romans, chapter 1: For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- His eternal power and divine nature  --  have been clearly seen, so that men are without excuse (verse 20).

This is the meaning of glory in Psalm 19 -- the revelation of God's existence and power is so great that it should lead every human being on the face of the earth to seek God out, to thank Him for bringing him or her into existence, and to worship Him.

But this is not what we do.

Paul says in his letter to the Romans that we actually suppress the truth of God witnessed in His general revelation, and if He did not actively intervene in our lives to save us, we would never seek Him out nor find Him.


Besides the fact of General Revelation in Psalm 19, David also gives us some profound truths about it:


1). General Revelation is continuous. 

David tells us,

"Day after day....night after night..." So God's General Revelation is not occasional, or intermittent.

Every single day and every single night God's message regarding His glory is visible, without fail.

There has never been a moment since Creation when the revelation in nature was not apparent.

2). General Revelation is abundant. 

It "pours forth speech...." In Hebrew the word image here is literally of a surging spring that gushes forth continually the refreshing waters of God's revelation.

It is known everywhere. In all languages throughout the earth.

But all men, as Paul remind us in Romans, choose to suppress and even deny the truth so visible to them.

If God did not intervene in our lives in His sovereign way, we would never acknowledge His truth and receive His message of salvation through His Son.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption

that came by Christ Jesus.

God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement

through faith in His blood.

He did this to demonstrate His justice....

Romans 2:23-26

What about that Red Heifer?

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron: 'This is a requirement of the law that the LORD has commanded: Tell the Israelites to bring you a red heifer without defect or blemish and that has never been under a yoke. Give it to Eleazer the priest; it is to be taken outside the camp and slaughtered in his presence....' 

The priest is to take some cedar wood, hyssop and scarlet wool and throw onto the burning heifer....a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and put them in a ceremonial clean place outside the camp. They shall be kept by the Israelite community for use in the water of cleansing; it is for purification from sin... Numbers 19

This requirement about the 'red cow' has puzzled me for a long time. It is not mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament.


One Bible scholar writes that there is evidence that this ceremony has been performed 7 times in the history of the Jews - maybe 9 - but no other evidence that is was performed regularly. He is talking about the period of time between the building of the Temple under King Solomon through 70 AD when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans - a span of almost 1000 years.

I looked for information from the ancient rabbis in the Chumash:

     The law of the Red Cow as described by the Sages is the quintessential decree of the Torah. It was to be performed outside the camp during the wilderness days, and later...In the Land, it was to be performed outside the walls of Jerusalem, on the Mount of Olives....

...The Midrash to this chapter focuses primarily on one paradox in the law of the Red Cow: Its ashes purify people who had become contaminated, yet those who engage in its preparation become contaminated themselves...

         One should not try to explain this precept (the Red Cow
         Commandment)  because God gave us His best and most
         sacred commands in the form of a "divine kiss," as it were,
         like the intimacy of a lover to his beloved....



The notes continue:

The quintessence....

The underlying message of all of the above, as well as the many other mysteries of the Torah, is that the Supreme Intelligence has granted man a huge treasury  of spiritual and intellectual gifts, but none is more precious that the knowledge that God is infinite, both in existence and in wisdom, while man is as limited in his ability to comprehend as he is in his physical existence.....

Our most precious gift is the awareness that God is infinite!

Red cows were rare. And they had to be perfect, without blemish, and very few, or no, black or white hairs. Just red. They would have been very expensive. They would have had to be bred specifically for the purpose of this 'Red Cow' law.

As Christians - "completed Jews" -- it brings us back to Hebrews 9:

The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean.

How much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so they we may serve the living God.

So many insights in this ceremony...outside the camp...Mount of Olives...
preparing the sacrifice contaminates the one performing it....I'm going to revisit this again and glean some more...



Note: I looked up quintessence.  It means: (1) In ancient and medieval philosophy, the fifth essence, or ultimate substance, of which the heavenly bodies were thought to be composed: distinguished from the four elements--
air, fire, water, earth, (2) the pure, consecrated essence of anything, (3) the most perfect manifestation of a quality or thing.....


So it looks like the ancient rabbis are saying that the most pure and most perfect manifestation of God is the knowledge He has given us that He is infinite.....