A Refocusing: Background on the Community of Mark

Before I address the next passage in the Gospel of Mark, I want to refocus and remind myself of the main perspective I had set for myself for this study of the Gospel; that is, to explore the mindset of the community that produced it. To refresh this, I am going to take this opportunity to review what I have learned (what little there is) that might give some background on this community as well as study some fresh information.  There are no historical records beyond the Gospel itself for this particular community, but much can be inferred and surmised by what we know about early Christian communities of this kind and what we know of the events, political, cultural, and religious forces of this period and general location.

More than the story of Jesus, this is the story of this communities' traditions and vision of who Jesus had become to them. The teachings and stories chosen and the way they were interpreted reflect what was important to this group, how they saw the world, who they saw themselves as, and their hopes for the future.  Our vision and descriptions of others often reveal as much about ourselves as the ones we are trying to explain.  We project ourselves, our experience and what we empathise with on our interpretation of others.  In this study, I'm aware of that for myself as well in my visioning of this community.

 ...the evangelists often wrote on two levels, one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other dealing with the concerns of the author's own day
Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43

THEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES 

There were numerous disperse and diverse Christian communities at the time this Gospel was written, each unique, and as such, each with a unique vision of what the figure and teachings of Jesus had become for them.  

Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School, writes the following on early Christian diversity:

Paul's conversion as an apostle to the gentiles may date as early as three years after Jesus' death. No later than the year 35, but probably already 32 or 33.... He was in Damascus when he was called, according to his own witness. So we have, already, within two years or three or five years, of Jesus' death probably Greek speaking communities outside of Palestine, very early in Antioch, but we have also the founding of communities in Samaria.... We have apparently more isolated Christian communities founded very early in Galilee. Paul's mission carried Christianity all the way over Asia Minor, present Turkey into Macedonia, into Greece, within 20 years. And at the end of that period, Paul already knows that there's a Christian community in Rome which he has not founded.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html

L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, writes:

This is where we start to see a kind of proliferation of gospels ... all over the empire, and by the third and early fourth century [more] than you can actually count, and certainly more than you can easily read within a bible.

A number of years ago I read Elaine Pagels', Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.  In this book she explores the richness and diversity of early Christian philosophy that has recently become available since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts and how these diverse views and writings from the many early Christian communities were later suppressed and actively eradicated by the later Roman Church in order to impose a standardized orthodoxy.  It would most likely profit my study to read her book again with eyes to how her studies relate to this community.

PLACE OF ORIGIN

So, what does the scholarly research suggest is the background of this particular Christian community, the community that assembled what we have come to know as the Gospel of Mark.  First off, the Gospel was originally anonymous and it wasn't until the second century that we have writers attributing the authorship to Mark, a figure offhandedly mentioned in Acts and First Peter as a companion of Peter in his travels and nephew of Barnabas. The mythology claims that Mark recorded these stories from Peter on his missions to spread Jesus' teachings.

Secondly, most scholars believe the community lived as part of the diaspora, one of the Jewish enclaves outside of the traditional borders of Palestine, most likely Rome, Antioch, or southern Syria.

Delbert Burkett in his, An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, writes:

Mark was written in Greek, for a gentile audience (that they were gentiles is shown by the author's need to explain Jewish traditions and translate Aramaic terms) of Greek-speaking Christians: Rome (Mark uses a number of Latin terms), Galilee, Antioch (third-largest city in the Roman Empire, located in northern Syria), and southern Syria have all been offered as alternative places of authorship.

DATE OF COMPOSITION 

The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the earliest of the four canonized Gospels, written sometime between 50 and 70 either just before or during the Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple.  The NIV Study Bible gives the following on the date of composition:

Some, who hold that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a major source, have suggested that Mark may have been composed in the 50s or early 60s. Others have felt that the content of the Gospel and statements made about Mark by the early church fathers indicate that the book was written shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem.  http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/scholar-notes/niv-study-bible/intro-to-mark/

Marilyn Mellowes, who produced and wrote the popular four-hour series, "From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians", for PBS, writes:

While there is disagreement about where Mark wrote, there is a consensus about when he wrote: he probably composed his work in or about the year 70 CE, after the failure of the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple at the hands of the Romans. That destruction shapes how Mark tells his story.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/mmmark.html

JEWISH ESCHATOLOGICAL THOUGHT

The placement of the Gospel after the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple is an important factor in the world view of the Gospel community.  They would have needed to interpret for themselves what had gone wrong and why Jerusalem had been destroyed.  These events would have also increased the popularity of Jewish  eschatological thought, teaching, and literature. 

Delbert Burkett in his, An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, writes:

From the outset, Christians depended heavily on Jewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures.[19] Those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts: the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, the kingdom of God. Uniting these ideas was the common thread of apocalyptic expectation: Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was at hand, that God would very soon come to punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the centre of his plans.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark

The Wikipedia entry for Jewish Eschatology includes the following:

In Judaism, end times are usually called the "end of days" (aḥarit ha-yamim, אחרית הימים), a phrase that appears several times in theTanakh. The idea of a messianic age has a prominent place in Jewish thought, and is incorporated as part of the end of days.
The main tenets of Jewish eschatology are the following, in no particular order, elaborated in the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiahand Ezekiel:[1]

• End of world (before everything as follows).

• God redeems Israel (i.e. the Jewish people) from the captivity that began during theBabylonian Exile, in a new Exodus

• God returns the Jewish people to the Land of Israel

• God restores the House of David and theTemple in Jerusalem

• God creates a regent from the House of David (i.e. the Jewish Messiah) to lead the Jewish people and the world and usher in anage of justice and peace

• All nations recognize that the God of Israel is the only true God

• God resurrects the dead

• God creates a new heaven and a new earth  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_eschatology

PAGAN AND HELLENISTIC INFLUENCES

The placement of the community of Mark outside of Palestine and the inclusion of Gentiles suggests that there would have been a strong influence from pagan religions and Hellenistic thought.  Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School, relates:

But the other aspect is the diversity of religious movements. And that in fact early Christianity, by moving into different realms of the different universes of thought and of religion in the Greco-Roman world, adopted a lot of concepts from other religions, lots of them pagan religions, which enriched the early Christian movement tremendously.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html

Even if the community of Mark did live in Palestine, I would imagine that one thing this group would know in common would have been Greek or Hellenistic culhture. Alexander the Great had conquered all of the Mediterranean and the Middle East as far as present day Pakistan leaving Hellenistic culture in his wake. After his death, Palestine was part of the Selucid kingdom. The Herrads were all about a renaissance of Hellenistic culture and the Romans, taking their turn as world conquers, were also steeped in Greek culture. Everyone in the possible location of Mark's community would have been versed in Greek thought, philosophy, myth and aware of the various mystery religions.

A number of years ago I read Bruce M.  Metzger's, The New Testament: It's Background, Growth, and Content.  Bruce Metzger is the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary and a past president of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.  He devotes a large section of this book to the mystery religions and on the dying and resurrected god-man figures of Dionysis, Bacchus, and Osiris.

SOCIAL MAKE UP AND PRACTICE

What segments of society made up early Christian communities like that of the book of Mark and what did the practice of these communities look like?  L. Michael White,
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, states:

What kinds of people belong to these early congregations? Who signs up? Paul's congregations are typically based in individual homes. We call those "house churches" these days. They didn't have church buildings. There probably weren't that many synagogue buildings that one could recognize. Even Jewish communities typically began in homes as well, and in these home congregations or house churches we should imagine a mix of people from across the social spectrum of any Greek city. There's the owner of the house, a kind of wealthy patron. It might be someone like Stephanus or Phoebe. Also the members of their household, family members as well as household slaves and even their clients if they were in a artisan guild. Say tent makers or merchants of some sort. We might typically expect that the household would include not only the immediate family and others around them but even the clients and business partners.... Paul seems to have recognized the opportunity that these house church congregations afforded for getting into the networks of individual relationships that afford to him access to many different people within the Greek city.    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/congregations.html

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, contends:

So you begin to get the impression that you have quite a variety of different social levels represented in these early Christian communities. Not people at the absolutely top level; you have, with the exception possibly of Erastus, no one from the aristocratic orders - no one who would be a member of the city council. You have no agricultural slaves, are at the bottom of the hierarchy. But, in the rest of the social pyramid, everything in between, you seem to have representatives in these early Christian groups. The people who are named, whom we can identify, have the further characteristic that they seem to cross various boundaries, they're betwixt and between. In some ways, they are marked by high social status.    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/congregations.html

A SECT IN THE DIASPORA 

Christianity began as a relatively small sect within Judaism.  As a sect they had to justify themselves to other Jews who were part of the more mainstream institutional Judaism.  This was even more the case in a period of foreign occupation where religious leaders were trying to unify and purify the faith in response to oppression in hopes that God would save them.  The Christian's lax interpretation towards the practice of the purity laws would have been seen as a threat.

If as we suspect, the community of Mark was part of the diaspora and living as a minority sect as part of a larger Jewish enclave in a foreign land, they would have had further pressures towards conformity.  Minority cultural groups living outside of the traditional homeland of their heritage often seek to preserve their culture against the influence of the dominant culture around them.  There is a strong emphasis on maintaining the most conservative and traditional elements of that identity without change and sometimes become almost cultural time capsules resistant to incorporating the changes going on in their homeland.  As such, the divergent Jewish fringe cult of Christianity with their inclusion of Gentiles would have been seen as a threat.

L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, discusses part of the social dynamic of early Christianity as a Jewish sect:

The Jesus movement is a sect. How do sects behave? One of the things they have to do is, they have to distance themselves from their dominant cultural environment. A sect always arises within a community with whom it shares a basic set of beliefs and yet, it needs to find some mechanism for differentiating itself. So, sectarian groups are always in tension with their environment. That tension is manifested in a variety of ways - controversies over belief and practice; different ideas of purity and piety. But, another manifestation of that tension is the tendency to want to spread the message out, to hit the road and convince others that the truth is real.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/themovement.html

Shaye J.D. Cohen in his book From the Maccabees to the Mishnah locates early Christianity firmly within the world of Jewish sectarianism. However, he does not think it remained so beyond the first century.

Cohen defines a sect this way:

A sect is a small, organized group that separates itself from the larger religious body and asserts that it alone embodies the ideals of the larger group because it alone understands God’s will . . . In the final analysis, what makes a sect a sect is its separation and exclusivity. Guilds, clubs, synagogues, and schools resemble sects in that they are small voluntary associations, but as long as they neither separate themselves from the community nor claim exclusive possession of truth, they are not sects . . . Whether as a cause or an effect of its alienation, a sect rejects or, at least, harshly criticizes the institutions and practices venerated by the rest of the society. In ancient Judaism, the targets of sectarian polemics were primarily three: law, temple, and scripture (120, 122, 123).     http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2012/01/christianity-from-jewish-sect-to-separate-religion/

CONFLICT WITH EMPIRE 

The Gospel was written at a time when there is historic mention of some persecution of Christians.  Nero is said to blame them for the great fire in Rome.  Adhering to a religion other than the Roman state religion was tolerated as long as one also practiced the civic religion and took part in the socially expected religious ceremonies and practices.  This was something that even the mainstream sects of Judaism did.  However, the early Jesus communities were known for refusing to participate.  A few Jews doing this could be ignored by Gentiles as a quirk of their race.  But when communities with a large contingent of non-jews did this I would imagine that it would cause the greater community to be less sympathetic.  This negative attention levelled against a Jewish sect could only have increased conflict between Jewish Christians and their more mainstream Jewish neighbours.

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, states:

Christianity, in its earliest beginnings, is part of Judaism... it is a sect, among a number of varieties of Judaism in the Roman Empire. But it is also clear that at a certain point, they develop a consciousness which takes them outside of the social orb of Judaism. They're no longer part of the local Jewish community, they're a separate community, meeting in little household groups, all over the city. And, it's apparent, at least from the time of the Emperor Nero, that outsiders also view them as distinct. So that when Nero is looking for scapegoats upon whom to put blame for the fire in Rome in 64, he zeroes in on the Christians.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/wrestling.html

LITERARY INFLUENCES AND PURPOSE

The author may have been influenced by Greco-Roman biographies and rhetorical forms, popular novels and romances, and the Homeric epics; nevertheless, he mentions almost no public figures, makes no allusions to Greek or Roman literature, and takes all his references from the Jewish scriptures, mostly in their Greek versions.[11] His book is not history in the modern sense, or even in the sense of classical Greek and Roman historians, but "history in an eschatological or apocalypticsense," depicting Jesus caught up in events at the end of time.[12]

Christianity began within Judaism, with a Christian "church" (from a Greek word meaning "assembly") that arose either within Jesus' own lifetime or shortly after his death, when some of his followers claimed to have witnessed him risen from the dead.[18] From the outset, Christians depended heavily onJewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures.[19] Those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts: the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, thekingdom of God. Uniting these ideas was the common thread of apocalyptic expectation: Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was at hand, that God would very soon come to punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the centre of his plans. Christians read the Jewish scripture as a figure or type of Jesus Christ, so that the goal of Christian literature became an experience of the living Christ.[20]The new movement spread around the eastern Mediterranean and to Rome and further west, and assumed a distinct identity, although the groups within it remained extremely diverse.[18]Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark

They were written for an audience already Christian – their purpose was to strengthen the faith of those who already believed, not to convert unbelievers.[21] Christian "churches" were small communities of believers, often based on households (an autocratic patriarch plus extended family, slaves, freedmen, and other clients), and the evangelists often wrote on two levels, one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other dealing with the concerns of the author's own day.[22] 

Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43

EPILOGUE

Like Socrates, Jesus left us no written record of his own.  Socrates' teachings come to us only through the record and interpretation of his student Plato.  Likewise, Jesus' teaching and actions are only available to us through the writings put together by the early Jesus communities some generations after his death. 

The Gospel of Mark is the story of one of those communities' traditions and vision of who Jesus had become to them. The teachings and stories chosen and the way they were interpreted reflect who they were, their conflicts and concerns, who they saw themselves as, and their hopes for the future.

The fact that the Gospel is a creation of its community, colored and inspired by their unique situation and not a literal history of the words and events of Jesus does not make it less meaningful or "true".  The way the stories this group told transformed them and defined them from the dominant culture, and the vision it gave them for viewing their world and living in a different way has great meaning.  The truths they relate are both transcendent and eternal, extending beyond their unique situation.  There is meaning here that speaks to us today and that tackles themes and perceptions that we continue to wrestle with.  However, to fully appreciate that meaning and how it can speak more universally we need to better understand what these teachings and stories meant to them.

The Parable of the Sower - Mark 4:1-20

4 1 Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. 2 He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”

9 Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

10 When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11 He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables 12 so that,  

“‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’[a]”

13 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? 14 The farmer sows the word. 15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. 16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 18 Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. 20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

Footnotes:
a. Mark 4:12 Isaiah 6:9,10 


"Again Jesus began to teach by the lake", and yet again we have another story about the huge crowds that gathered around Jesus. This is the second time in which we are told that Jesus had to speak from a boat off the shore to keep from being mobbed by the massive press of people attracted by his fame. I can't help but wonder if the writer, "doth protest too much".

The community of Mark represented a minor sect at a time when there was an increased pressure in the Jewish community to conform to the mainstream institutional interpretation of the religion.  Religious authority stressed increased diligence in the practice of orthodoxy as a way of appealing to God to fulfil His part of the Covenant and deliver the nation from the Romans.  If, as we suspect, this community was living in the Jewish diaspora as part of a larger Jewish enclave in southern Syria or Antioch, then there would be an even greater pressure to conform to "traditional" religious norms and an increased need to defend and explain both to others and themselves why they were different and why they were legitimate.

I can imagine that the larger Jewish community challenged them with the fact that their teacher, Jesus, was so little known and left so little a mark on the Jewish people during his lifetime.  Jesus was just one of many self proclaimed prophets that arose during the Roman occupation many of whom created enough of a stir that they were recorded in the historic records of the time.  Jesus, besides the testament of the Gospels written generations after his death, was not one of them.

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, explains:

Christianity begins really as a sect among Judaism. One of several sects that we know of from about the same time. Josephus tells us about a number of prophets who appeared and gathered followers and were wiped out by the Roman Governors and their followers were disbursed, and if you read the series of revolts that Josephus talks about, and about the prophets that come and promise to part the waters of the Jordan or whatever, make the walls of Jerusalem fall down, and they gather followers and then their leader is captured and he dies and that's the end of it, of the story that we have about Jesus and the gospel fits rather nicely in that succession.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/themovement.html

One of the most popular and best known prophets of the time, as recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus, was John the Baptist.  His popularity was seen as enough of a threat to the legitimacy of this fledgling Jesus sect that the very first scene of their Gospel is a story that has John testify that Jesus is greater than himself and the true Messiah for which he himself was only preparing the way.

The Gospel community tries to enhance Jesus' legitimacy  (and their own) by telling a story that includes Jesus having a large populist impact.  However, given the facts of his relative popularity during his ministry, they have a contradiction to explain.  People would be wondering why if he drew such crowds they had never heard of him, or why he left so little mark.  The Gospel writers addressed this through their "hardened heart" and "secret identity" narratives.  

The "hardened heart" narrative was looked at in the post on the previous passage.  This narrative in the Gospel contends that the Jewish people, the Religious/Political elite in particular, had hearts hardened to God and this is why they did not recognize Jesus as speaking God’s words and respond accordingly.  I would think that it was also implied that the popularity of Jesus and the crowds that he attracted had been downplayed and erased by these same elites.

The narrative was also a way to legitimize Jesus' teaching in spiritual terms.  It stated that those with a pure heart and are in tune with the spiritual plane will recognize that his teaching has the authority of God and is true.  This was important in order to establish some form of legitimacy for a teacher who was not "certified" by semicha, rabbinic ordination, and did not have, s'mikhahto, "authority" to interpret the Law or have his own teaching under the traditional Jewish religious institution.

This narrative is stated somewhat more explicitly in the Gospel of John.

16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own." (John 7:16-17)

This story line is also part of the purpose behind the inclusion in the Gospel at several points of exorcised spirits testifying to Jesus' identity as the Son of God.  The implication is that those who are in tune with the spiritual plane will also recognize this truth.  

This device takes the legitimacy of Jesus outside of the realm of traditional systems of authority, logic, and reason, and allows the author to suggest that those who do not accept it have a personal deficit and are not in right heart or relationship with God.  I have experienced this sort of justification for dogma in "Evangelical" groups.  There is often an, "Emperor's new clothes", aspect.  If everyone in the group ascribes to a certain view of reality and those who don't are labelled as less spiritual or out of tune with the Spirit of God, then people come to believe that questioning and doubt are signs of something wrong with them and stop seeking after truth.

I may seem to be critical of this narrative in the Gospel.  This is partly because I find it out of step with the narrative we have explored earlier in the Gospel that God is primarily inclusive and that the kingdom of God is extended to all, period.  I also struggle with the honesty and legitimacy of this mode of thought since I use it myself.  I affirm many of the teachings and themes we have explored in the Gospel because they resonate with the Spirit of love, generosity, and fairness they touch within myself (not that this is all that fills my heart).  However, the fact that these themes are recognized by the best of my heart does not mean that I give blanket endorsement to all the teachings of Jesus as presented by this Gospel community.  I don't then assume that all of the writings are then God's inerrant and dictated word, beyond question, criticism, or debate.

So, let's move to the aspect of this narrative introduced in this passage that I find even more problematic. The explanation the writer has Jesus give for teaching using parables appears to be that God deliberately hides him/herself and the secrets of the kingdom of God and that these are only available to a select minority.  

The passage cited as part of the explanation is from Isaiah 6:9-10:

“Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
    be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’
Make the heart of this people calloused;
    make their ears dull
    and close their eyes.[a]
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
    hear with their ears,
    understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

This passage is part of Isaiah's vision of God in the Temple and begins with the phrase, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord,...".  Uzziah had mainly been a "righteous" king, but towards the end of his reign had become proud and usurped the role of priest in the Temple which was seen by the Prophet to be a desecration and the cause of his being, "struck down by God".  The son who succeeded him was also considered to be wicked.  This gave the writers of the Tanakh, looking back, the opportunity to explain the wars that followed and the destruction of the Temple in 587 BCE in terms of Covenant.  The logic of the histories of the Tanakh is that when bad things happen to Israel it is because they had previously been wicked and not upheld their side of the Covenant with God.  

As is the case with the Prophets, God is shown to be merciful and sends a Prophet to inform the nation of its infraction and give it opportunity to repent and forestall punishment, and to squarely convince the reader that the punishment meted out after the inevitable refusal to listen is just.  However, in this passage, God is portrayed as being at war with His own nature.  His own principles of mercy require that He warn the people and give the opportunity to repent, but the sin is apparently grievous enough that He would prefer not to and so makes the hearts of the people calloused so that they will not receive the Prophet's message, repent and evoke the merciful side of His nature.  So God, who is portrayed as primarily merciful and compassionate, is also portrayed as having a shadow side prone to vengefulness and spite.

In the Gospel passage, Jesus is being likened to the figure of Isaiah and the people of Israel are cast in a similar scenario as this story from Isaiah.  Looking back on their own recent history as the writers of Isaiah's story did, they interpret the Roman destruction of the Temple as God's punishment for the people straying from God with Jesus cast as the Prophet sent with the message of warning and repentance beforehand. Moreover, like in Isaiah's case, God has calloused the people's hearts, so, like Isaiah, Jesus is rejected and ignored.

This narrative fits well with the popular Jewish doctrines of the times on the Messiah.  The Messiah was expected to punish the unrighteous of the people so that past breaches of the Covenant could be made right and then drive out the foreign oppressors and re-Institute the nation of Israel.  The destruction of the Temple  (which later in the Gospel Jesus is given as foretelling) could be viewed as part of that earthly purge.  Jesus is more explicitly placed in that role in the Gospel of Luke where John the Baptist's testimony on the coming Messiah  includes,

17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Luke 3:17 NIV

This explains why the Gospel writers used the motif of a God that deliberately hardens people’s hearts, but it doesn't make me any more comfortable with their use of it.  However, if I step back, maybe it is only a problem if one literalizes the anthropomorphic images of God.  What does this say if God is seen as the characterization of what we hold up to be legitimate and true?  In that case we can ask if truth in the manner of condemnation of wrong action and a call to change does in fact in some cases harden people’s hearts.  I think that this is indeed the case and that many times when people are directly confronted with behaviour and attitudes they have displayed that are unjust or cruel they react defensively and reject this characterization of themselves.

This is where the wonder of parable and fiction lies in "hiding" the truth in a manner in which it can be gradually accepted and integrated as the heart becomes ready through exposure to a different perspective.  In a story about a remote situation removed from your personal bias and need for self defence, you can have your perception shifted and problems or injustices presented in the story are more easily accepted allowing one to then gradually see the parallels with the the ones you may be in the middle of.  This has aways been the glory of good story and literature from Aesop's fables using talking animals to Fantasy and Science Fiction.  

I've read that Martin Luther King Jr. once gave a speech on racism in the United States to a less than receptive audience.  He began by not talking about he situation in America at all, but the caste system in India and the injustice and indignity done to those born into the lower castes.  It was only after the crowd had empathised with a similar injustice removed from their context and not threatening to themselves could they begin to see the parallels with their own situation and admit to themselves that things were not right.

Parable, fiction, and good literature can be like the seed in Jesus' parable, the word of God.  They can sprout change in people, but often only over time as the soil of the heart is made ready.

If Anyone Has Ears - Mark 4:21-25

21 He said to them, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand?22 For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.23 If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”

24 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more.25 Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

The first part of the Fourth Chapter of the Gospel of Mark is the teaching of four parables; the Parable of the Sower, the Parable (or more rightly the metaphor) of a Lamp on a Stand, the Parable of the Growing Seed, and the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

The passage being looked at is the metaphor of the lamp. Along with the Parable of the Sower before it, there are themes of listening and hearing and of accepting, taking to heart, and broadcasting, "the word".

It is probably wise at this point, to review,"the word", the message of Jesus, that the Gospel has introduced so far. We are told that there is more truth that Jesus has to share, "the secret of the kingdom of God", as stated in the eleventh verse in the preceding passage, but let's review the message of his teaching as given to this point.

As we have observed in our study of the Gospel to this point, Jesus is given as starting his ministry preaching a continuation of the message of John the Baptist, telling the people to "repent", change their thinking and direction in terms of social justice; fairness, sharing with others, and caring for the disadvantaged. As the Gospel progresses the message includes radical inclusion based on a vision of a primarily loving and compassionate God where all are welcome and equal participants in the people of God and no one is excluded or sanctioned. 

In both this passage, and the one before, there is a continued stress on "listening" for the meaning of the message.  The Parable of the Sower begins with the exhortation, "Listen!", and ends with the phrase, "Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear".  The same phrase is used at the end of the metaphor of the lamp in this passage.

This phrase seemed familiar to me from my reading of the Gospel of Thomas.  The Gospel According to Thomas is an early Christian non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945 among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library. It is comprised of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, about half of which resemble ones found in the canonical Gospels.  It is believed to predate the Gospel of Mark and to give insight into the oral Jesus sayings that the canonical Gospels were written around.  The quotes I have included in this post from the Gospel of Thomas are taken from The Complete Gospels (3rd edition), edited by Robert J. Miller and published by Polebridge Press.

 The twenty-first saying in the collection includes the almost identical phrase,

21 "...Anyone here with two good ears had better listen!"

The Thomas Gospel includes many other exhortations to listen as well as a version of the Parable of the Sower and a section of text quite similar to the end of the passage from Mark that we are looking at.  It may be that the Markian community sourced this writing from the book of Thomas, or they both drew material from an earlier writing, or they both drew on authentic early Christian oral traditions of the sayings of Jesus.  Whichever it was, what it suggests to us is that these teachings are part of the earliest of the tradition of the sayings of Jesus.  The Gospel According to Thomas also includes a number of sayings not included in the canonical Gospels that follow the same themes as the passage we are looking at and the one before, and may help us shed light on them.

 However, back to the Mark passages and the themes introduced there.  The Parable of the Sower talks about the spreading of the seed, the word, or message of God.  We reviewed the message as given by Jesus as presented in the Gospel to this point.  I will clumsily condense it as being about the unrestricted love and goodness of God and the imitation of the same.  The Parable talks about how different people receive the message or what they do with that message, or truth, when it comes to them.  Or perhaps, more accurately, how that message will or will not thrive and grow in them.  For some, the message is snatched away.  Others do not have the security or strength of presence in life to allow it to grow and troubles make it fade.  Others allow distractions to overtake the priority of the message, while others are able to allow it to grow within to the point that it produces fruit.  I would imagine that part of the fruit produced is that the unrestricted love and goodness of God is acted upon in their interactions with others.  The passage about the lamp following the Parable of the Sower is a continuation of the subject.  It gives direction on allowing that seed to grow and produce.

At this point it is helpful to better define the seed, "the word".  It would seem to be more than a message in terms of a doctrine, or a set of beliefs, and may be viewed as more of a perspective as well as the quality and type of nature that this perspective produces.  If the perspective (at least in part) is that God is primarily loving and compassionate in an extravagant and unrestricted manner, then it both calls for and produces imitation of the same quality in ourselves and for that quality and nature to spill over in what we say and do to others.  I'll explore how I come to that interpretation from the passage as well as amplify with sayings on the same theme from the Thomas Gospel.  I know that this is moving away from the purpose of this blog which is to explore what these stories meant to the community of Mark, but, hey, it's my blog.

The passage we are looking at on the lamp talks about how a lamp is put somewhere that it can spread the most light such as a stand rather than someplace where the light will be hidden or obscured.  The light metaphor as a continuation and amplification of the Parable about receiving and nurturing the word gives us more insight into the nature of the word.  This is why I interpret it as being a quality, a characteristic, that can, "shine forth", from within through word and action rather than a dogma to be repeated to others.  In the context of the preceding parable's discussion on how the word is nurtured or denied, it would seem that this saying is suggesting that letting the light of the word that has grown within to shine is part of the process to nurture its growth.

This theme is further explored in sayings in the Gospel of Thomas:

24 His disciples said, "Show us the place where you are, for we must seek it."
He said to them, "Anyone here with two ears had better listen! There is light within a person of light, and it shines on the whole world. If it does not shine, it is dark."

45 Jesus said, "Grapes are not harvested from thorn trees, nor are figs gathered from thistles, for they yield no fruit. Good persons produce good from what they've stored up; bad persons produce evil from the wickedness they've stored up in their hearts, and say evil things. For from the overflow of the heart they produce evil."

The next statement in our passage from the Gospel of Mark after the lamp metaphor is:

For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open

Again this is a statement found often among the sayings of Jesus given in the Thomas Gospel.

5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that won't be revealed."

6 His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"
Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

The last two verses in the Mark passages are as follows:

24 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more.25 Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Again, there is a similar saying in the Thomas Gospel:

41 Jesus said, "Whoever has something in hand will be given more, and those who have nothing will be deprived of even the little they have."

In the passage from Mark, in context with the preceding sayings about the word/light, it would appear that what is being said is that it requires that a person already have a portion of the "truth" and the quality that it distills within before more of that truth and further insight can be gained.  It suggests that the more of this word/light/truth quality one possesses, the more capacity one has to gain more.

Since I'm delving into my personal interpretation of the text, I have to say that I find the twenty-fourth verse of the passage from Mark very meaningful.

24 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued. “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more

I interpret this as saying that part of nurturing the growth of the word/light inside oneself is in being careful in what messages you surround yourself with and focus on.  Is your television on Fox News 24/7? What does your Facebook feed consist of?  Do you seek out conversations of gossip and complaint?  Are the voices we centre on distractions and weeds that choke out the new plant?

Even more than the external messages we concentrate on, I think that our internal dialogue is important.  Where does our mind dwell?  What narratives and experiences are we constantly re-living, or rehearsing.  I'm reminded of the Native American parable about each of us having two wolves fighting within, one good and one bad, with the wolf that wins being the one we feed.

To the same end, I'm also reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (another example of the glory of fiction).  "Emissary", the first two episodes of the science fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, comprise the pilot for the show.  In this pilot, the series is introduced with the character of Commander Benjamin Sisko who has been assigned as station commander of a space station situated at one end of a wormhole that allows passage to a distant quadrant of the Galaxy.  A race of aliens live in the midst of the wormhole and Sisko's first task is to negotiate with them continued travel through this portal.  The aliens, since they live in a wormhole, have a non-linear experience of time and a non-corporal form.  These wormhole aliens had been communicating with the humanoid race on Bajor, the planet closest to the space station, for millennia through "orbs".  Special Prophets among the Bajorans experience a type of communication with the wormhole aliens in the form of visions of both past and future when touching one of the orbs.  Sisko experiences a vision when accidentally touching one of the sacred orbs and is announced by the Prophets of Bajor to be the foretold, "Emissary", a messiah figure that will help Bajor.

Sisko attempts to contact the wormhole aliens using one of the sacred orbs.  Each time he does so he finds himself within a vision where he is re-living the death of his wife a tragedy which had occurred a few years previous during an attack by an alien race named the Borg in which same attack his former star ship was destroyed.  Each time he attempts contact he finds himself back in the events of this period of time.  Finally, he is able to make some communication with the wormhole aliens and asks why during every attempt at contact he is placed back in a vision of this experience.   The aliens point out that the events around his wife's death are, "where he resides", the place where he lives in his mind, and so they had come to that place to make contact. Sisko comes to realize that in his continued grieving for the loss of his wife he had been literally, "living in the past". 

Where do our thoughts and heart dwell?  Which wolf are we feeding?  And, are we stoking the right flame, a light that will shine beyond us?
 

Whoever Does God's Will - Mark 3:20-35

20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family[b] heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

22 And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”
23 So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 27 In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. 28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”
30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”
31 Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Footnotes:
b.  Mark 3:21 Or his associates

There is so much going on in this passage and it raises so many questions that it is tempting to divide commentary into more than one post.  However, since it does seem to be one complete vignette, I am reluctant to separate the different parts from the whole and will try to address the entire passage in one go.

Let's start with the primary tension in the story.  Jesus is being accused by both his family and the Teachers of the Law of highly unusual and disruptive behavior that has reached a crisis point.  The behavior itself is not explicitly identified in this passage, just the result; crowds gathering around him to the point that it is interrupting the normal business of life such as the ability of he and his disciples to eat.  Jesus' popularity and the stir it created was reported earlier in the chapter in verses seven and eight.

7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. 8 When they heard about all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon

So, large crowds, not only those following him from Galilee, but people who had heard about what he was doing from all over the region and adjoining areas came to him.  The crowds had gotten so large and pushy he had the disciples ready a small boat for him to keep the people from crowding him.   

The action which drew these large crowds of unruly and pushy people was Jesus' healing and driving demons from so many people.

10 For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. 11 Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.”

 It would be assumed that the disruptive behavior drawing the crowds in this passage is the same, Jesus healing and removing demons from so many people that the news was causing people from all over to flock to him seeking similar help. In this case he enters a house and the crowd which gathers is so great that he and his disciples were unable to eat.

One would think that large scale healing and exorcism for multitudes of people would be something that would be praised and that the individual at the centre of this would be held in esteem with the miracles taken as evidence of God's approval and blessing.  This is true in most of the literature of the time and throughout most of the Gospel.  Almost all figures being honoured in the writings of the period and region were attributed with performing miracles and similar great acts as a literary device to suggest that the person was favoured by God or the gods and therefore legitimate.  So, why in this passage does the author have Jesus' family and the Teachers of the Law view this great outpouring of God's mercy through Jesus as evidence of Jesus having some kind of problem?

Perhaps the Gospel community was highlighting the disruptive nature of the Way of Jesus which they followed and the general resistance in people towards anything that disturbs our usual routines and normal business of life.  This seems to be human nature even where the disruption is for something that brings wholeness and freedom like the Gospel.  "Sure, people are getting relief from horrible diseases and freedom from mental torment, but it's messing with my normal lunch hour."

Taken a little further, it often seems to be human nature to pathologize anyone who doesn't conform to expectations for uniformity and order.  It is a way to legitimize stripping the non-conformist of their rights to better control their actions so that they do not threaten the privilege of those in power. In this case, Jesus' family attribute his behavior to mental illness while the Teachers of the Law point to demonic possession. This kind of labeling is a way to minimize a person's legitimacy and their right to freedom and independent action.  Note that in verse twenty-one the labeling of his action as being the outcome of a mental illness gives Jesus' family excuse or license to take authority over him, to try to take away his self determination and right to decide his own course of action.  They, "went to take charge of him, for they said, 'He is out of his mind.'"

I can imagine why these words in this story might resonate with members of the community who produced the Gospel of Mark.  If they were like the early Christian communities described in the book of Acts, they were living as a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles, men and women with no regard to family lineage, social caste, or former wealth.  Many had abandoned family connections and duties to live with those who were not family.  Many had sold land and possessions which would be considered family resources and surrendered them to this new community.  I can picture a number of incidents where family members would have gone to, "take charge", of them, declare them incompetent and make the claim that the giving away of the family's assets would not be legally binding due to mental illness or spirit possession.

44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.  

(Acts 2:44-47 NIV)

32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.   

(Acts 4:32-35 NIV)

Let's return to the question of why the author has Jesus' family and the Teachers of the Law react to Jesus' miracles and the crowds they draw as something negative and evidence of Jesus having some kind of problem. As I mentioned earlier, the testament of miracles is a common literary device in the period to establish the legitimacy of and authority of a figure. Why is it treated as a negative here? I think it is to further establish another narrative in the Gospel that sought to legitimize Jesus and his teachings by explaining why he was not more popular, recognized and celebrated during his life. Remember that aside from the Gospels which were written generations after his death, Jesus' actions and popularity during life were not enough of a concern to merit any actual public record. The Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus writing in that period makes mention of John the Baptist, but Jesus was not noticed or included in his, "Antiquities of the Jews" (despite a later fraudulent addition to the work by Catholic Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century). Josephus and Jesus: The Testimonium Flavianum Question

The narrative being furthered is the, "hardened heart", the idea that the nation as a whole did not recognize Jesus as Messiah, or appreciate his message and actions because their hearts were hardened to God and the message Jesus brought. In this passage this theme is almost brought to the level of farce. You can imagine a listener of the time slamming their palm against their forehead and saying, "How could they call him crazy or demon possessed and not see that he was the Messiah when he was healing all those people and performing all those miracles? What, were they blind?".

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? (Mark 8:17)

He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, “‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.’ (Luke 8:10)

Next, let's look at Jesus' interaction with the Teachers of the Law.  He has already in the story had major run-ins with the local Teachers of the Law who viewed him as undermining their authority and the professional standing of their trade (You can't go around interpreting the Law without the proper certification through religious institution, no matter how popular you may be with the people, it undercuts the exclusivity and monopoly of my trade guild).  In the story at the beginning of the chapter where Jesus confronts and negates their interpretation of the Law by healing on the Sabbath, the text says they, "went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus"(Mark 3:6).  As part of this plan, they have now brought in bigger guns in the form of, "teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem".

The story has these upper level Teachers of the Law from the capitol city try to discredit him by accusing him of having an "impure" spirit, in fact the spirit of Beelzebub, which is from  2 Kings 1:2-3, 6, 16, "Baal of flies", the name of a specific Philistine god which in the narrative the Teachers of the Law identify as the, "prince of demons", giving him the authority to drive out lesser demons.  In an earlier post, Impure Spirits? - Mark 1:21-28, I discussed how in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures, there were no, "demons" in the sense of supernatural beings in opposition to God.  What are often referred to are Canaanite or Philistine idols and deities, but in a way to emphasize that they are nothing to fear because they are not really gods and do not "exist".  It doesn't seem likely that the author/s of Mark meant for the community listening to this story to take this figure literally.  All the more so when the text starts Jesus discussion with his accusers on this by saying that he, "began to speak to them in parables".

So, what is going on here?  I believe it is again a story meant to contrast the, "way of spirit" as shown by the community's teaching of Jesus as opposed to the, "way of legalism', as expressed by the mainstream sects of institutional Judaism which they felt opposed their community.

The Teachers of the Law base their teaching on duty as prescribed by the authoritative interpretation and the supplemental guidance of years of Rabbinical tradition and institution.  The followers of the way of Jesus base their teaching on the spirit of the Law and of the spirit of God as revealed through the life and teaching of Jesus who characterized God as primarily loving, generous, merciful, and inclusive.  Jesus' direction and authority rests on his intimacy with the Spirit of God.

Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove...

At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness (Mark 1:10&12)

So, the tact that the story has the Teachers of the Law take is that the spirit that motivates and empowers Jesus is not the Spirit of God, but the Chief Spirit in opposition to God.  This is how he has the power to drive out lesser demons.

Jesus refutes this claim with pure logic and gives a parable about how a house divided can not stand.  He then makes one of the most inegmatic and often misquoted statement in the Gospels, the one about the unpardonable sin.

28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

However, if we read this statement in the context that we just explored, it makes a lot of sense. It is not the breaking of the Law, religious or social duty that is unforgivable, it is denying the Spirit of God and misusing or desecrating that prompting.

Now we come to the final portion of this vignette.  At first it seems like a nonsequitor, but it loops back to the statement at the beginning of the story and the idea just explored.

The beginning of the story had Jesus' family in opposition to him and his ministry, wanting to, "take charge", of him.  Here, he is extending the duty and ties of family members to anyone who, "does God's will", denying family special loyalty.  We explored earlier why this might resonate with members of the community of Mark.  I also explored this theme in the Gospels in the post, Jesus Was Not "Pro-Family" Or "Pro-Nation".  

Jesus proclaimed social equality, inclusion, and the indiscriminate nature of God's love which he called us to imitate. As such, Jesus warned us against any cultural, national, or religious division that encourages people to prefer, favour, or give allegiance to some individuals while discriminating against, discounting, or marginalizing others.  This included the most powerful social allegiance of his time, family.

Dirty Dozen - Mark 3:13-19

13 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. 14 He appointed twelve[a] that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons. 16 These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), 17 James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means “sons of thunder”), 18 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. (Mark 3:13-19 NIV)
a. Some manuscripts twelve—designating them apostles— 

This passage gives the story of Jesus making a special inner group of twelve.  The Arabic version adds him giving the twelve the title Apostles which scholars believe was a later addition taken from Luke 6:13.  The title "Apostle" comes from the Greek word, ἀποστόλους (apostolous), which refers to a delegate taking the place of the person sending them.  As an adjective it describes someone as having been dispatched or set forth.  Although the giving of this title was probably not part of the original writing of the community of Mark it does encapsulate the purpose of the group as set out in the text, delegates who would spread Jesus' message with his authority

http://biblehub.com/commentaries/mark/3-14.htm

So, what was the message that these twelve had been selected to learn more closely and be sent out to preach with Jesus' authority?  This is a good point at which to review what the writers of the Gospel of Mark have portrayed as the message of Jesus' so far.  As we have observed in our study of the Gospel to this point, Jesus is given as starting his ministry preaching a continuation of the message of John the Baptist, telling the people to "repent", change their thinking and direction in terms of social justice; fairness, sharing with others, and caring for the disadvantaged.  As the Gospel progresses the message includes radical inclusion based on a vision of a primarily loving and compassionate God where all are welcome and equal participants in the people of God and no one is excluded or sanctioned.  We saw this in the stories of Jesus' acceptance and elevation of the marginalized and the "impure", the leper, the cripple, the tax collector.

The other aspect of Jesus' message as presented by the community of Mark that we have been exploring in a number of the latest posts is an elevation of principle and compassion over legalism.  Strict conformity to the law as duty is made less important than imitation of the character of God in terms of compassion and mercy, and in the consequence of one's actions in terms of the good or harm that it does to others.

These teachings are an important message to the writer/s of Mark.  It is the primary message of the Gospel and one they felt important enough that they have Jesus pick twelve special followers who would, "be with him", so that they could learn and live this message to the point that they could preach it as his proxy. Note that this teaching has no mention of an afterlife, Jesus death, or a reward system that excludes those not ascribing to the correct dogma in the next life.

Many denominations and Christian movements have dismissed the centrality and primacy of this teaching in favour of a theology centred on Jesus death and an afterlife.  It constantly amazes me that a subject that the Gospel writers have him discuss so briefly (and to this point not at all) is given primacy over teachings that are continually repeated.  This is particularly puzzling among those who literalize Jesus as God in human form.  How can what is supposed to be the best record of what God had to say while among us in the flesh less important than a theology built after his death based on a minor part of his teaching?  

Making substitutionary atonement the primary purpose of Jesus dismisses the importance of the message and teaching of Jesus given by the Gospel communities and implies that Jesus time on earth was just a filler until his death and what he had to say and what he did are not of central importance.  Jesus' death is not the lesson of the Gospel stories.  Jesus' death and resurrection is the ultimate metaphorical validation of Jesus teaching and actions.  It was also a literary device in order to frame the teachings of Jesus as an extension and the culmination of the Hebrew Scriptural tradition.  It was a way to validate a different approach at odds with the Temple sacrifice and purity law system of the time.  The purpose of framing the story of Jesus death and resurrection in sacrificial terms was to legitimize and justify a teaching that sought to do away with the old wine skin and garment of the Law and the sacrificial atonement system not to further entrench it in a different format.   It was the teaching that was the point, not the metaphorized history that sought to legitimize it.

With that rant finished, I would like to leave you with a funny meme I found while looking for pictures relevant to this passage.

Jesus - Rock Star: Mark 3:7-12

7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. 8 When they heard about all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. 9 Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. 10 For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. 11 Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 But he gave them strict orders not to tell others about him. (Mark 3:7-12 NIV)

 This passage reminds me of an experience I had at my first rock concert when I was in University.  My girlfriend at the time had got us tickets and made arrangements for us to go to see a major teen heart throb of the time in concert.  I believe it was Corey Hart, or someone similar in that genre (I obviously wasn't that into the artist himself).  But, what I do recall clearly was watching the young women crowd and press as close to the stage as they could to get close to their idol.  There was quite a crowd and the centre section before the stage was all standing area without seating.  In front of the stage was temporary crowd fencing to keep the audience from getting too close to the stage.  As I mentioned earlier, the crowd was pressing to get as close to the performer as possible, to the point that people were getting crushed against the fencing barrier.  Concert security was on the other side of the fence watching over the people being pressed against it from the other side.  If they saw that someone was in distress from being pushed against the fence by the crowd, they would lift the person over the fence beyond the press.  The person had usually swooned or fainted and a security person would sling the person over their shoulder to carry them off to a recovery area.  This was such a common part of this artist's performances that the security personnel charged with this task had a message about remaining calm printed upside down on the back of their 'T' shirts for the person slung over their back to read as they were carried to safety.


Now as I mentioned earlier, I was not a fan of this particular artist, and I doubt that any musicologist would characterize his music as anything special or significant.  However, his popularity and the fervor of his followers certainly lends legitimacy to his status as a musician.  This is where I see the parallel with this story of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.  As we have explored in earlier posts, the community of Mark would have had a legitimacy issue with more mainstream Jewish sects around the source of their authority in deciding not to practice many of the purity laws or making their practice dependent on their vision of justice and mercy.  The mainstream sects claimed the authority of traditional religious institution with a rigorous system of Rabbinical certification that ensured that each new Rabbi with "Semicha", authority to interpret the Law, was following "orthodoxy", teaching what had been handed down and only adding what was in line with those previously vetted and accepted teachings.

One of the ways the community of Mark establishes Jesus' legitimacy, beyond the favour God shows him in enabling him to perform healings, is the overwhelming popularity they portray him as having with the people.

At its root, populism is a belief in the power of regular people, and in their right to have control over their government rather than a small group of political insiders or a wealthy elite. The word populism comes from the Latin word for "people," populus. 

Definitions of populism.

We have heard the term populism used a lot recently by political commentators in regard to American campaign movements.  Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have been said to tie into a public sentiment against what is perceived as an economic and political elite who have furthered their own interests at the expense of the majority.

This is not a new political philosophy and has its roots both in the Athenian city state and later in the Roman Empire.  As such, it would have been well known to the community of the Gospel of Mark.

http://studymoose.com/ancient-greek-and-ancient-roman-democracy-essay

Given the circumstances of the time, it is understandable why this philosophy would be credible and appealing to the first century Jews of the Gospels.  Their religious/political elites had let them down.  Their homeland was conquered and occupied by a foreign power.  The policy of the Priesthood had been to collaborate with the Roman occupiers in order to get them to spare the Temple and its practice.  This led them to endorse the heavy taxation of the people by the Roman Empire on top of the expected tithes and Temple taxes.  In parallel to this, the Jewish elite's strategy for the Roman occupation was to win back God's favour through stricter holiness practices so that God would fulfill the Covenant and return their sovereignty.  This further marginalized the poor and others unable to comply.  By the time of the Gospel, these policies had failed spectacularly with the Roman destruction of the Temple.

As a result, the people were disenchanted with the elites and the traditional institutions of Judaism.  They were open to a more egalitarian interpretation of their faith that drew from the anti-establishment traditions of the Prophets that called upon justice and mercy for the marginalized.