Historical Knowledge and Man's Subjectivity

Why did God decide to reveal himself in history? This is a question that I have been asking over the last few months. There are numerous ways that God could have revealed himself to us: through a subjective experience of the spirit, through propositonal theorems, or he could have even given us an ordained statement of faith. But the reality is that God did not do these things, he gave us a book that is almost completley historical through, and through.
My thoughts on this are as follows, and probably somewhat incoherent, but here goes anyway. I believe that God chose history, because history resonates with each individuals subjectivity, or the part of a man that no one else can know. When we know other people we must work to know their thoughts, feelings, and ideas but as we know ourselves our thoughts, feelings etc. are present to us continously, or they are always before us.
I think that scripture is so powerful because it resontates in the deep structures of our inner lives. When we read the story of David and Bethsheba, we know the feeling because the moment that David is confronted by Nathan we feel that in our own lives, or we have felt it. In that same moment that Nathan tells David, "You're the man!" we are reminded of some sin that we have ignored, and acted like we have not participated in. In this scripture reminds us of our inner anguish, and opens the old wounds of our souls that we choose to ignore. Biblical history is never history for histories sake, but history for man's sake. God uses history, because in every moment of our lives we can experience the whole of history in our subjective lives. What I mean, is that in our subjective lives we are connected with all humans throughout history, because they to have felt the same disappointments, pain, and joys.

Historical Knowledge and Man's Subjectivity

Why did God decide to reveal himself in history? This is a question that I have been asking over the last few months. There are numerous ways that God could have revealed himself to us: through a subjective experience of the spirit, through propositonal theorems, or he could have even given us an ordained statement of faith. But the reality is that God did not do these things, he gave us a book that is almost completley historical through, and through.
My thoughts on this are as follows, and probably somewhat incoherent, but here goes anyway. I believe that God chose history, because history resonates with each individuals subjectivity, or the part of a man that no one else can know. When we know other people we must work to know their thoughts, feelings, and ideas but as we know ourselves our thoughts, feelings etc. are present to us continously, or they are always before us.
I think that scripture is so powerful because it resontates in the deep structures of our inner lives. When we read the story of David and Bethsheba, we know the feeling because the moment that David is confronted by Nathan we feel that in our own lives, or we have felt it. In that same moment that Nathan tells David, "You're the man!" we are reminded of some sin that we have ignored, and acted like we have not participated in. In this scripture reminds us of our inner anguish, and opens the old wounds of our souls that we choose to ignore. Biblical history is never history for histories sake, but history for man's sake. God uses history, because in every moment of our lives we can experience the whole of history in our subjective lives. What I mean, is that in our subjective lives we are connected with all humans throughout history, because they to have felt the same disappointments, pain, and joys.

Being in Love and the Existence of God

Every so often an uninformed atheist (or someone who claims they are an atheist) will make the argument that they do not believe in God based upon scientific fact. They will say that science cannot prove that there is a God. Our society has made science the one discipline that reigns over all, even though, this is not true it is passed around as common knowledge. There are two things wrong with this sort of argument.
First, science is based upon methodological Naturalism. MN as we will call it, is a tool that we use to examine the natural world. It is based on the assumption that things happen today as they did yesterday, and they day before that. This foundational belief is also called induction. It can be illustrated by an example, suppose you ask the question, as Hume did, "How do we know the sun will rise tommorow?" This seems like common sense, you say, "Of course the sun will rise tommorow!" The problem is though that we cannot be 100% certain that it will rise, it could experience an unknown stage of a stars life where it blows up, or some other strange occurence. The point is that we base our belief that the sun will rise tommorow on the assumption that it happened in the past. Science examines the natural world of rocks, trees, animals, planets, etc. It does not have the ability to rule on things that are outside of the "natural" world. Since God is an incorporeal, or non physical being he cannot be examined by science.
Second, we will use a thought experiment, suppose a scientists wanted to examine love. He takes you and your spouse (or some other person that you love), and hooks you up to a machine to examine your brain and the different brain states that you have when you talk to your spouse. The scientists notices brian waves, and different brain activity, but does he actually see the subjective notion of "Love"? Is love reducible to a certain brain state that you have? We all know that this is counter intuitive. We know that there is a difference between the physical attraction we may feel for a spouse, than the actualy feeling of love. Science cannot examine the essence of that subjective feeling. Does that mean that love does not exist?
Or for another example form the image of a car in your mind. You can see a car in your head, we will say it is a Corvette. The same scientists hooks the machine to your brain, and again notices brain activity, but he cannot see the care that you have imagined and can see in your conciousness. Does that, therefore, mean that there is no car?
To some up Science deals with things that are in the physical world like animals, and trees, but it cannot examine non-physical objects.

Blake

Great Post Out of Bevard Childs'and Umberto Cassuto's Commentaries on Exodus

"The name of God, which like his glory and his face are vehicles of his essential nature, is defined in terms of his compassionate acts of mercy. The circular idem per idem formula of the name--I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious--is closely akin to the name in Exod 3:14--I am who I am--and testifies by its tautology to the freedom of God in making known his self-contained being," B. Childs The Book of Exodus (Westminster Press 1974), 596

"The proclamation will not be just generally speaking before you but literally so; it will announce the name of the Lord [YHWH] and the significance implicit therein, to wit, the attributes to which it alludes--'and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and show compassion to whim I will show compassion'--the meaning being; but the exercise of these qualities depends entirely on My will; you may know that I am compassionate and gracious, and that I love to go beyond the strict letter of the law, but the decision to act according to these virtues is at all times in My discretion, and it is impossible for you to know when, or if, I shall act thus. If I were constantly to let the quality of mercy prevail over that of justice, and were to forgive every sinner, I should not be a righteous judge, and every man would permit himself all kinds of wickedness in the assurance that he would be forgiven. I shall be gracious and compassionate if it pleases Me, when it pleases Me, and for the reasons that please Me," U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (Magnes Press 1997), 436).

Quote to Meditate On

"Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be."
- Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

Incomparable Christ Book Review

Stott, John R. The Incomparable Christ. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2001.264pp. $14.00
John Stott was educated at Trinity College Cambridge, where he received a first class degree in French and Theology. He has been awarded a Lambeth DD, and has honorary doctorates from British, Canadian and American colleges. He has been Rector of All Souls Church Langham Place since 1975. Billy Graham and other church leaders have called Stott the most influential Evangelical. The book was originally four lectures that Stott delivered to the London Lectures Committee in A.D. 2000.
Stott states that the purpose of the book is to ask four basic questions and give them answers. How does the New Testament bear witness to Jesus? How has the church portrayed Jesus Christ down through the centuries? What should Jesus Christ mean to us today? Stott breaks the book up into four parts in order to answer these questions. Part one looks at the gospels, Paul’s letters, and the General Epistles in order to get a picture of the “original Jesus.” Part two looks at how the church, both, faithfully and unfaithfully has portrayed Jesus down through the centuries. Part three examines how Christ has challenged the church. Part four answers the question of what Jesus means to us today by expositing the book of Revelation, which reveals the eternal Jesus to us. As Stott says, “Jesus Christ is not only historical but eternal and therefore also our contemporary.” By placing the history of Jesus with the people of God between parts one and four he makes a frame around the church’s imperfect history, the New Testament being the border around the Church’s imperfections. This brings into relief the flaws of the church when compared with the Jesus of the New Testament.
In the Introduction Stott briefly examines the history of the Quest for the Historical Jesus, and then looks at the methods of form and redaction criticism. Stott believes, rightly so, that these methods are helpful for helping us get at the portrait the New Testament is painting. Stott confronts the American organization known as the Jesus Seminar, and its subjective method of determining what Jesus actually said.
In Part one Stott starts with the gospels and later the Pauline Corpus. Stott examines the four gospel’s theological teachings about Jesus. In Matthew Jesus is portrayed as the fulfillment of Scripture, in Mark Jesus is portrayed as the suffering servant, in Luke Jesus is portrayed as the Savior of the world, in John Jesus is the Word made flesh. Stott gives a helpful summary of the portrait the evangelists paint, “I find it helpful to detect in the four Evangelists four dimensions of the saving purpose of God: its length, depth, breadth and height. After examining the Pauline and general epistles Stott comes the conclusion that there is a unity that transcends the divers portrait of Jesus that arises out of the New Testament.
In the Second Section of the book Stott looks at how the Church has portrayed Jesus historically. Stott notes that, “many times the church has imprisoned Jesus in its own prejudices and traditions”.
In the third section Christ’s influence on the church is examined. Stott asks the question what difference has it made to the world that Jesus lived? He answers this question by examining different individuals in history who have been influenced by one stage of Christ’s life and spurred them to action.
The fourth and final section of the book is the Eternal Jesus. Stott examines the book of Revelation and looks at how Christ is our contemporary today. Stott ends the section by saying, “…the eternal Christ who never changes but who challenges us to follow him today. We have seen now supervising his churches on earth, now sharing God’s throne in heaven, now controlling the course of history, now calling the world to repentance, now riding on a white horse to judgment, and now promising to come soon and marry his bride.” In all of these ways Christ challenges us and is our contemporary, and no one could have said it better than John Stott.
Stott’s Anglican perspective and his extensive mission work helped Stott focus on other parts of the church. Stott does not just focus upon the European church heroes, but also the Latin Church and Japanese church.
When dealing with the gospels Stott brings up the Jesus Seminar’s criticisms of orthodox Christianity’s picture of Jesus, but then he only says that there methods are to subjective (20). If Stott was not going to deal with their arguments, then he should not have mentioned them. The Seminar’s work should not be shrugged off so lightly, because they say many things that the church must answer. While in agreement with Stott’s assessment, he should have given reasons for his accusation that their scholarship was subjective. Undefended assertions get shot down by evangelicals all of the time, I do not see why evangelicals need to take a strategy out of the Seminar’s play book by not backing assertions up with reasons.
Stott’s survey of the church’s portrayal of Jesus is a decent cross section of major players in church history. Stott dealt deficiently with his examination of the enlightenment there are much more prestigious scholars to be critiqued than Renan and Jefferson. Also, Stott never critiques the work of Albert Schweitzer or Rudolph Bultmann these two men have had a much bigger impact on societies views on Jesus than Renan or Jefferson.
Stott’s exposition of Revelation is superb until he deals with the question of eternal punishment that is bound to come up in any discussion of Revelation, but where Stott brings it up it seems to be out of no where. There was no reason on page 219 to mention the debate on eternal punishment. His only support for his position comes when he says that the book of Revelation is metaphorical, but Stott seems to empty the point of the metaphor by saying hell is simply annhihilation, because how can you be punished when you no longer exist? The Metaphor seems to lose meaning if there is not some eternal conscious state of torment. A Metaphor by nature is an analogy, x is like y in some since and that is why the metaphor helps us to understand difficult subjects. Stott seems to lose view of this.
The book was very helpful in its theological examination of the New Testament. Stott utilizes redaction criticism well, by finding the main theological themes of the separate gospels, and then expounding upon them. It is good to see an evangelical take the gospels at face value and not concern himself with harmonization. It is best if we allow the tensions to remain in the gospels and let them tell their stories on their own, Stott does a very good job of this. The examination of the New Testament epistles is refreshing also. Stott not only gives exposition about the main themes of the Pauline letters, but also gives the reader a helpful chart that can be utilized.
Stott holds to an amillennial interpretation of Revelation, and he helpfully notes why the binding of Satan and the millennial reign of Christ must be the church age because of how the whole book recapitulates its images. Stott also helpfully deals with the language of imminence that occurs throughout the book of Revelation. Stott makes the good point that while the language of “soon” may not be chronologically exact it is theologically appropriate.
Stott’s careful examination of the New Testament documents along with his analysis of how the church has portrayed Jesus and how Jesus has challenged the church are most helpful in interpreting scripture. Looking at Christ form this angle should help the reader see where maybe we do not believe in the original Jesus, but in a Jesus of our own fancy. This book has helped this reviewer become solidified in the eschatological position known as amillienialism. The arguments for recapitulation in the book of Revelation were helpful in this regard. Stott’s exposition of Revelation will also help the pastor with sermon preparation because his comments are so clear. The strengths of Stott’s work, thankfully, far out way his theological flaw of annihilationism. This book should be on every Christian’s book shelf because of its examination of the New Testament, and its compilation of heroes of the faith. Stott has done a great service to the church by putting these lectures into book form. Hopefully this book will be used for years to come in Seminaries, and Bible colleges.

Just finished "The Trial of God"

I just finished reading the play "The Trial of God" by Elie Wiesel. The play is set during the pogroms in the 17th century against the Jews. The characters are mulifaceted and interesting. There is the Innkeeper (Berish), Maria his servant, three rabbis: Mendel, Yankel, Avramel. Added to these characters are the cowardly, and immoral priest, and Sam the stranger of the play. Maria tells of how bad the pogram was when she tells the story of what happened to Hannah, Berish's daughter, who was to be married, but the pogrom mobs came and killed her husband, and they assaulted Hannah for hours while they made her father watch, Maria says,

"He twisted, and twisted; he looked and looked, and I shouted, and yelled, and the beasts sneered, and little Hanna was covered with blood. Did she know who assaulted her first? And how many followed? It lasted an hour or two, and more, it lasted a hole lifetime, and they left."

The play is based off of an event in the life of Wiesel himself. Wiesel was in the holocaust as a young child, and one night he witnessed three rabbis put God on Trial for the deahs of the many Jews where slaughtered.
The three rabbis have come the the town a year after the pogrom in Shamgorod, during purim to perform for the festival of masks. All the Jewish families where slaughtered in the town, the only two jews left where Berish and his daughter Hannah. Most of the play is concerned with the Rabbis, and Berish setting up a mock trial of God. They have all of the positions they need, except one, that of the defendant of God. At the last moment when the reader is lead to believe that the characters are going to have to end the idea, Sam steps forward, the mysterious man that no one knows, but everyone believes that they have seen somehwhere. Maria knows him because he seduced her one night, and then left. The reader is lead to think that the Jews believe that Sam is a holy man, but the reader know better, because Sam does a very heinous thing, which was the rape (?) of Maria. At the end of the play as they are finishing the trial, the priest comes in and warns them that the mob is outside and hungry for blood. At this point the Rabbis plea for Sam, who had talked them out of fleeing, to protect them because he was a "holy man". When they realize that they have nowhere to go, Yankel and Avramel announce that they want to put on their Purim masks. When Sam does the mask is a mask of Satan, and then the candles go out. The whole thing turned out to be a trick by Satan himself.

Berish is beside himself with anger toward God, because of what happened to his daughter. The argument implied through out the book is that of Hume, "If God is unable to end evil then he is not omnipotent, if he can stop evil and chooses not to then he is evil." Wiesel uses a literary art form not theological treatise because literature makes us feel injustice in our gut, and forces us to consider the problem of evil not as an abstract concept, but as a concrete reality that we as human beings, and those of us who are Christians must face in everyday life. I am not going to "answer" Wiesel's objection to God, but leave that for the reader to ponder.

Blake

Answering Pat's Big Question

On a recent episode of The O’Reilly Factor Pat Buchanan brought up an interesting question, “Is the left winning the culture war?” Buchanan answered this question in the affirmative.
Buchanan is essentially right in what he affirms, but the most interesting portion of the segment dealt with the moral and ethical questions that concern the cultural divide. Buchanan, in the midst of his explanation of why Western society has fallen to its knees, could not give a reason why morality has fallen apart. The aim of this article is to answer Mr. Buchanan’s question.
The break down in morals and ethics, not only in America, but also in all of western society can be traced back to the destruction of two out of three fundamental foundations upon which this society stands. David F. Wells singles out these three foundations: tradition, authority, and power. Tradition is defined as, “the process whereby one generation passes on its wisdom, lore, and values. Authority on the other hand, in this context, should be defined as philosophical or theological authority, and power is simply the power to enforce the two former foundations. These foundations have been attacked in two crucial areas of people’s lives, the church and the family.
The origins of the destruction for the church took place with the rise of the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe; this period subjected all things, even God, to the sovereign throne of human reason. Before this period the western world had a moral compass, which was found in the nature of an unchanging God, who was the standard of goodness and order in the universe He created. This God had revealed himself in Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures, and for seventeen hundred years no one could raise a good objection. The Enlightenment proceeded to question the validity of Christian theism, which is the belief in a personal God who has revealed himself to mankind. Instead of the God of Christian theology they had a replacement, the god of enlightenment deism. Deism sees god as a watch maker who winds up the world and then lets it run on its own, not intervening in this world, or even caring. Of course after a while the logical outworking of this would be to do away with the idea of God all together, thus atheism was the logical conclusion. With God disposed of the next thing to be attacked was the bible, since the God of the scriptures no longer was thought to be a viable option among the intellectuals, who had a very big influence on eighteenth century society. These ideas would slowly creep into the “popular culture” and the churches. (Ever wonder where we get the phrase, “the man up stairs?”). The church had lost much of its credibility by the middle of the nineteenth century, and the authority and traditions of the church, including its moral teachings, had come under sustained assault. The scriptures came under heightened scrutiny and many churchmen found it difficult to believe in the traditions. As far as the church was concerned tradition and authority had taken very large blows. The next tradition and authority to break down was the family, and the movement known, as modernism would undermine it more so than the Enlightenment undermined the Church.
With the revolt against the all sovereign God of Christian theology in our rear view mirror we can now move on to the rise of modernization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its affects on the family. Modernization is the process that requires a society to be organized around cities for manufacturing and commerce. Cities cause a unique problem of diversity, the more peoples that you have leads to the conflict of convictions. In order to coexist with different people the deeply held beliefs that where once public in the small towns, such as religion or morals, must know be privatized for the sake of peace. When this happens it causes a split mind, the man in the office is totally different from the man that he is at home. This causes religious beliefs to become irrelevant to every day life, because to work off religious principles may cause someone to be offended, because of their different religious truth claims that they hold. This diverse climate, combined with the Enlightenment intellectual ideas about God, created a cultural acid that ate through the fabric of a society that was once dominated by committed families. In this system the people develop two sets of morals, what their “public life” requires and what their “private life” requires. This is why politicians can say they are personally against abortion, but will vote to uphold it.
New inventions such as the TV and radio started to take time away from the family. The parents used to instill into their children moral values and wisdom for everyday life, but when TV and radio arrived the parent’s role was significantly reduced and TV became the main medium for distilling values into young people. This break down in the family was only added to with the easy access to pornography that the TV and the computer, because it was made more accessible. This development has had done untold damage to families, and our ideas of who men and women are as human beings. Like the church’s battled with the enlightenment, this led to the undermining of the family tradition and authority structures.
The Enlightenment siege caused people to doubt religious authority, and add to the mix the modern way of life, where a person can have their “private religious sphere” of life and their “public sphere” of life, due to pressure not to offend anyone, and a slow working poison had been injected into western society. The answer to Buchanan’s question lies in the fact that God and religion no longer play a role in the every day lives of even many average churchgoers, not to mention unbelievers, because not only has the person in the pew been infected with the modern illness, but so has the pastor, whose preaching no longer involves much talk about sin, but instead how to make more money, or feel good about oneself. Gone are the days when the preacher was a respected, intelligent member of the community.
We now live in a world that is experiencing the consequences of its ideas. The rate of divorce in our country is horrible, with about half of marriages ending in divorce, and the structure of the nuclear family, that the early Americans relied on to pass down their virtues to their children, has all but disintegrated in our generation, the obliteration of tradition and authority, in society and the home, has all but been completed. The reason our society cannot decide whether abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide, or stem cell research is morally deficient, is because we have abandoned the idea of a God who is a moral lawgiver, with no absolutes people run blind. Instead we have unknowingly opted for the god of the enlightenment, who really does not care, and leaves it up to man to dictate mankind’s destiny. Modern man finds himself facing a cold uncaring universe where “might makes right”, because he has rejected the ancient wisdom of men like Saint Augustine who said to God, “ Our hearts are restless, until they find rest in you.” The only way out of the moral problems is to return to the theistic basis of our heritage. If we do not the third foundation of western civilization will stand, and without a moral conscience power breeds dictatorships.

My thoughts on the Minnesota Public Radio Board Concerning the Failing Influence of Christianity in America

I agree in a sense that the state is responsible for down turn in religous knowledge, but that is to narrow of an argument. i think that something like 96% of americans believe in God, but what has changed is the highly philosophically cogent views of God that where present in early america. Early America had ministers like Johnathan Edwards, and John and Charles Wesely who where not intellectual slouches. Now days the church produces Benny Hinn, Rod Parsely, and other notorius TV evangelist. Gone are the days when the church encouraged parents to train up their children in the ways of Scripture, today Christianity has reduced itself to a cultural shell of what is worst about America.


It does not take much historical genius to see that it is American democracy plus the growing seeds of the Sacred/Secular distinction erected by enlightenment philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon and others that pushed religion to the private sphere, and then science took over the public sphere, which progressively pushed religion into a subjective Schleirmacherisque position. Christianity has been in a fight intellectually ever since to regain some sense of respectability, and defend its claims to objective truth.

Johnathan Edwards was the last monumental Christian thinker, up until the likes of Nicholas Wolsterstorff, and Alvin Plantinga and many others started to make theistic arguments in the Analytical philosophical discipline. Which has lead to some cultural grumblings of a more intellectually disciplined Christianity, as the growth at Christian private schools I think aptly shows, schools like Notre Dame, Baylor, Wheaton College, Calvin College, are growing at rates of 60% over the last ten years.

Will this turn around in the academy, and culture last? I do not think so. I think that the enlightenment ideaology will win out, and Christianity will lose its influence in the west, and as has been the case through out history, it will spread to other parts of the world, namely, Africa and China where the church is growing at an exponential rate ("Next Christendom" is a great book along with the last chapter of Alister Mcgrath's book "The Twilight of Atheism" though the rest of the book leaves some

Little more on Mark, and some personal issues. In Reverse Order

I normally do not do this, the whole on line journal crap, but tonight I will make an exception since I am in Hendrsonville NC sitting at a Days Inn, and bored out of mind. Added to that is the fact that Amy is in Ecuador, and I cannot talk to her like normal, and it makes for a pretty boring night. Like I said I am bored, so I am going to talk about the infamous Messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark, and where the book was written etc.

The gospel of Mark most likely was written by John Mark who is mentioned in the Pauline letters. If we believe the ancient Church Father Paipas he was a disciple of Peter. Peter probably formed his stories as Chreiae as I mentioned in the previous post. What Mark did was to organize the matieral not in a chronological fashion, but thematically to make a theological point answering the question: Who is Jesus? The audience that he was writing to was probably in Rome, because of various latinisms like having to explain that the greek word for pratorium meant praetorium (witherington). Witherington places the gospel between 66-70 overlapping the time of the Jewish War and the reign of Nero. This was a highly turbulent time, and is probably why Mark takes on an apocolyptic style. I am being very brief here, because I am going to write a full paper at some point, but I am just give people some info on the book, who may be interested.

The Messianic secret motif in the gospel, where Jesus tells people to tell no one who he is has often times been taken to prove the point that Jesus' ministry was never actually messianic, but that the gospel writer smoothed over this problem, because he believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Since Mark believed Jesus to be the Messiah, he had to cover over the problem of a non messianic Jesus, so he did so by saying that Jesus never let the people who knew his identity who he was. Besides the fact that it is a priori unlikely that Mark would remain a believer if he knew that Jesus was really not the Christ, there is a better explanation for the "Messianic Secret."

In Jesus' time Judea was a boiling cauldron of controversy with people claiming to be the Messiah just about everyday. The popular idea of a Davidic Messiah was diverse in the time of Jesus, but there was a very strong stream that claimed that the Messiah would come and kill the pagans, and lead the Jews out of exile from the yoke of Pagan bondage. Jesus stepped into this world, but he had a different idea of what a Messiah was. Jesus was an original thinker when it came to the Jewish Messiah. Jesus combined the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament found in Isaiah and Psalms, and combined it with the vision of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, and Daniel 7. Jesus' was the King who was to suffer for the plight of his people, and lead those who would listen in a new way of being Israel. This was a religous belief, but in Palestine of Jesus' day it was a political position also. This is why Jesus told his disciples, and other people who knew who he was not to tell anyone, because if you walked around Palestine claiming you where the Jewish King (or Messiah) the Jews would think you where a military leader there to kick the pagans out of Jerusalem, or the Romans would catch wind of your claim and come and stamp out your movement. Jesus was secretive about his vocation, or kingship because it was a powder keg issue, and he did not want to over throw the Romans, but gather Israel around the true God.

If you are interested read Daniel 7 and Mark 13, and then see what you can put together concerning the person of Christ. Well that is all for this evening, I have to get up and drive 600miles.

Mark and Rhetoric

As I was reading the Introduction by Witherington to his commentary on Mark he noted an very interesting point about a Greek and Roman rhetorical form of writing known as the chreiae. The chreiae where short stories strung together, the interesting thing about these short stories is that they where always shortened forms of memoirs or “recollections.” Witherington says,

“Aphotinius the Sophists reminds his listeners that a chreiae is a concise statement of apomnemoneumata, which may be translated memoirs, recollections or memoranda.”

Witherington goes on to quote R.O.P Taylor,

“Chreiae where not merely a literary form, but essentially a historical statement- So and so who was a known historical figure, actually said or did this… Actual fact was demanded. If then the Gospels had not some gurantee of this kind, if they could not be shown to be ascertained history, they would have failed in their appeal.”

In other words historical statements about a historical person, added to this fact is the reality that bios where always about real historical persons and what they said. This is significant in the debate about the Historical Jesus because the very form of the gospel of Mark makes it a posteriori likely that Jesus is represented in the gospels historically, not to mention the fact that the Jesus of the gospels fits into first century Judaism like a glove.

Blake

Gospel of Mark study

Over the next year, or so, i will post some thoughts, and the thoughts of Ben Witherington on the Gospel of Mark on my blog. I hope this will be a good excercise for me in knowing scripture and helpful to others. The first thing I will post is about the Genre of Mark. No one frames is better than Witherington so we will start here, and I will post more on Mark's Genre later.

Ben Witherington defines genre as,
“ a literary kind or type. It refers to a sort of compact between an author and his reader whereby the author, using various literary signals, will indicate to the reader what sort of document is being read and how it should be used. The genre signals in the text provide the reader with a guide to the interpretation of the text. To make a genre mistake is to make a category mistake, which skews the reading of the document.”

In Christ,
Blake