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?