Two distinct miracle passages in Mark seem to act as literary “bookends” and offer an insight into Mark’s view of Jesus’ “true identity”: a Jesus that is different from the Jesus that was understood (or misunderstood) by the disciples themselves. Beginning with Jesus’ healing of a blind man and ending with his healing of a different… Continue reading →
The death of Jesus is certainly one of the pinnacles of the Gospel stories, yet exactly how Jesus came to be killed is a topic up for debate. The earliest “nodes” of Jewish oral tradition can be found illustrated in Paul’s letters to Corinth, specifically in 1 Corinthians 11:23, where Paul writes that Jesus was… Continue reading →
The Messiah of Jewish literature, specifically the messiah described in 2 Samuel 7 and Psalms 2 contrasts the messiah spoken of in 1 Enoch, and in turn the messiah Mark presents in the form of Jesus. We can begin to compare the “messiah” of the gospels with early jewish ideas of the coming messiah by… Continue reading →
