university of oregon (winter 2015)
There are many times throughout the gospel of Mark when Jesus’ disciples show signs of misunderstanding Jesus. As White mentions, in the gospel of Mark, none of Jesus’ disciples ever refer to Him as “Son of God”, they only seem to refer to Him as the “Messiah”. An example of this is when Peter makes… Continue reading Mark’s Jesus
In the gospel of Mark, we see the author use a literary technique called an “inclusio” to show the reader the importance of a specific passage. This is the authors way of putting an emphasis on a certain passage that we as readers should pay attention to. Here, we are to pay special attention to… Continue reading Mark’s Jesus
Jesus is well known to be a divine figure. People understand that the Christian belief is that Jesus was God making him the most divine. This idea, however, was progressed through time. Mark’s Gospel never fully ever alludes to this well known Christian belief. Even though the idea of Jesus being God was never fully… Continue reading “Was Blind but Now I See”
There are many speculations on why Mark depicts the Gospels as misunderstanding Jesus’ Identity and significance. One that is important to note was that the Gospel writers wanted to reach out to so many different groups of people. With this goal in mind, it is easy to conclude that some groups would understand more than… Continue reading Mark’s Jesus
Mark uses a literary technique called an “inclusio” to show the reader the importance of a specific passage. In chapters 8 and 10, we read two healing miracles that form two literary “bookends”, and sandwiched between these two stories is a monumental lesson about Jesus. Specifically, we learn who Jesus is as a “divine man”… Continue reading Jesus According to Mark
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 Mark’s Jesus
The book of Mark is, according to White, a book written by a thematic writer. Mark incorporates repetitive themes within the book to fill gaps on the life of Jesus that could possibly not portray Jesus as the true Messiah. We see this type of writing throughout Mark 4-8 as Mark fills the text with… Continue reading Mark
I think that Mark decided to include the ten miracles into a travelogue because they connect Jesus to some of the very important Jewish Prophets. They are incorporated throughout the time of Jesus’ travels because they show his life building up to the point where he is arrested and crucified. This build up, as in… Continue reading Jesus and the ten miracles
The story of Jesus is similar in many ways to ancient stories of virtuous men and biographies of the divine, however, the story of Jesus contains important distinctions from all other recordings. Although virtuous men were viewed as having a connection to divinity, shown through actions and words, the humility of Jesus amongst other now… Continue reading Mark
The author of the gospel of Mark depicts Jesus as a misunderstood messiah. Although he performs amazing and great miracles, the people of Jesus’ time, including his own 12 disciples, do not understand him. The author of Mark also notes that Jesus tells people not to speak of the miracles he performs, as to be… Continue reading Mark’s Miracles
When posing the question of how Mark’s story or interpretation of Jesus in his gospel confirms or denies whether or not Jesus was truly a divine man, there is much to consider. You first must look at the characteristics Mark depicts Jesus with. You also must understand what it meant to be a wise man in… Continue reading mark
I think that Mark incorporated these ten miracles into a travelogue between Jewish and non-Jewish territory because it shows that there are similar miracles for both parties. Stories tended to be clustered and grouped together. These stories in Mark, as explained by L. Michael White in Scripting Jesus, are near duplicates of one another. Therefore,… Continue reading Mark