In the month of October, 2021, the Revised Common Lectionary has four readings from the book of Job.  Not only is the scroll of Job many sided, it has been approached, praised, and analyzed in a multitude of ways.  As early as 1884, a prominent Old Testament scholar wrote,

The question, What is the purpose of the Book? has been answered in so many ways, that a judgment regarding it must be put forth with the greatest diffidence.  Almost every theory that has been adopted has found itself in collision with one or more of the parts of which the book now consists, and has been able to maintain itself only by sacrificing these parts upon its altar.  (A.B. Davidson, Job, The Cambridge Bible, Cambridge University Press, 1884, p. xxiii.) 

I have a 5-foot shelf of books on Job, and that only scratches the surface.  Nevertheless, here is my take on the scroll of Job.  

NOTE:  This essay is about how the Job scroll was composed (or compiled).  It does not attend to the thought contained in it.  A discussion of the arguments presented in the debates would be a long and complex process.  

The Job Project:

How an Intellectual Symposium Enhanced a Pious Legend.

A few years ago I spent much of one summer reading and pondering the scroll of Job, and books about it.  The outcome was this view of a group of ancient Israelite intellectuals (“sages”) who joined together in “the Job Project”! 

The Basic Facts about the Job Scroll. 

First, there are a few things that are givens.  They must be dealt with in one way or another by anyone trying to explain and interpret this complex work. 

1.  Job was an old legendary figure of the non-Israelite past.  Ezekiel could assume that his educated audiences were familiar with the legendary figures of Noah, Daniel, and Job, renowned as righteous men of the past (Ezekiel 14:14 and 20.  “Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job, these three, were [here], they would save only their own lives by their righteousness…” Ezekiel 14:14.) 

2.  The Job scroll has a prose framework around a very large and complex body of poetry.  (There is also a prose introduction to the extra figure Elihu.) 

Prose:  1:1-2:13; 32:1-5; and 42:7-17. 

Verse:  3:1-31:40; 32:6-42:6. 

3.  The early poetic portions are organized into “speeches” by Job and his friends who have come to console him: 

·        3:1-21:34 – Two complete cycles in which Job speaks, each of his three friends speaks, and Job replies to each friend separately – a total of 13 speeches.  (Each speech is marked by an opening rubric, such as “Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said…”) 

·        22:1-27:23 – A third cycle begins but is not complete.

4.  The last part of the scroll, still in poetry, is somewhat miscellaneous, with Yahweh’s speech(s) from the whirlwind as the climax.

·        Chapter 28 is an independent speech about the elusiveness of Wisdom.

·        Chapters 29-31 is a long self-defense by Job, quite different from his speeches in the debates with his friends.

·        Chapters 32-37 are speeches by Elihu, an extra sage not otherwise mentioned in the scroll.  (He knows, and sometimes corrects, the other speeches.) 

·        Chapters 38:1-41:34 give two long speeches by Yahweh from the whirlwind, with a couple of groveling responses from Job. 

5.  The poetry of Job is very literary and difficult.  This is not popular, street-wise verse.  These speeches assume very learned and acute audiences. 

“Job is written in an extremely sophisticated, ‘learned’ Hebrew, with a higher proportion of words unique to itself than any other book of the Hebrew Bible.”  Edwin M. Good, “Job,” Harper’s Bible Commentary, Harper & Row, 1988, p. 407. 

6.  There are two Jobs – the “patient Job” and the “angry Job.”  

·        The Job of the prose passages is the patient Job.  At the end of his ordeal of testing by the Satan, when his wife invites him to “curse God and die,” Job says, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”  And the narrator says, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”  (Job 2:10.) 

·        The angry Job appears with the first poetry in the scroll:  “Let the day perish in which I was born…” (Job 3:3.)  The Job who speaks in the long poetic debates with his “friends” is mostly the angry Job. 

        

Job and His Friends.  

Relief Sculpture, at Wohl Rose Park, Jerusalem, Israel.    Benno Elkan, 1877-1960. 

Courtesy of Vanderbilt University Divinity Library.  

Argument for “The Job Project.”

1.  The traditional story of Job (chapters 1-2, in prose) told only of the testing of Job’s faithfulness to God and ended with his second reply to disaster (2:10).  At that point the test is over.  (A restoration sequel may have been popularly supplied sooner or later, 42:10-17, in prose, like chapters 1-2.)  

2.  A group of intellectuals -- the Symposium -- decided to make the traditional story the basis of a Project:  What did Job REALLY say?  

3.  These were well-educated persons, accomplished speakers.  They took turns presenting speeches to each other representing first, what Job said (a brilliant composition, chapter 3), then what the tradition-oriented friends said in reply.  

4.  Each speech was (is) self-contained, exhibiting the speaker’s skill (see their sophisticated poetic effects, which only their peers would appreciate).  

5.  Many speeches were developed but the “debate” (definitely not a “dialogue”) that gradually unfolded was never completed.  Chapters 24-27 contain valuable pieces, not integrated into organized speech cycles but simply dictated in a miscellany to end the debate.  27:1-6 is definitely Job’s final avowal, whenever that would have come in the debate.  

6.  Chapter 28 is a self-contained unit (with no speaker identified, i.e., no rubric), not related to the debate.  Chapters 29-31 make up the most organized speech attributed to Job, but it is not in debate form!  It is, rather, a full-fledged apologia (argument for the defense, a very elaborate “lament” speech).  

7.  After the Symposium had been going on a while, the challenge of whether to attempt a divine reply to Job was considered, and finally ventured on at least twice (38-39 and 40:6-41:34 [41:26 in the Hebrew text], with each of these perhaps made up of several attempts).  

8.  When the Symposium had ceased as an active group, someone undertook to collect and record the speeches in a substantial scroll.  They were organized by rubrics into the “speeches” in the current Masoretic Text.  The various accommodations to popular piety at the end (see below) were probably composed at this written stage of the Project.  After all, it was now addressed to a public, not just the wise persons who had tested themselves by the original challenge of Job’s disastrous fate.  

9.  The Elihu speeches (chapters 32-37) were compositions of a later member of the Symposium, after it was dissolved (or dissolving).  The speaker (whose work is imitative) demonstrated his skills and made explicit references to the earlier speeches, though there are no verbatim quotations, making it unlikely that any written texts were yet available for “Elihu” to read.  

10.  The “replies” of Job, 40:1-5 and 42:1-6, still in the poetic materials, were added when the Scroll of Job was composed for public consumption.  They turn Job into a baffled and groveling repentant (which is, of course, supposed to magnify the grandeur of Yahweh’s “answer(s)” in chapters 38-41).

11.  The prose ending in 42:7-9 was also added when the scroll was prepared for the public.  That brief, makeshift ending sells out the entire project that had made the Symposium interesting to start with.  

     The LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite:  "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.... Job shall pray for you [and] I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly;..." (Job 42:7-8).  

     This little ruthless twist tries to vindicate Job’s complaints against God without understanding them at all!  It is designed to save the popular belief in divine rewards and punishments -- and, incidentally, to let Job’s virtue redeem his misguided critics from God’s wrath! 

The "Greatness" of Job.

Extravagant things have been said about the greatness of Job.  

"The book of Job is the greatest work of Hebrew literature that has come down to us, and one of the great poetical works of the world's literature."  George Foot Moore (quoted in Job, Victor E. Reichert, Soncino, 1946, p. xiii.)  

"There is nothing written...in the Bible or out of it of equal merit." (Thomas Carlyle, quoted in Ibid.)  

In what does this greatness consist?  

Here is one answer, in a volume that presents several modern appraisals of Job (paragraphing added).  

The manifold influence of Job on theology, philosophy, art, and literature derives not only from its literary excellence but also from its distinctive Jewish perspective on perennial features of the human predicament:  the relation of good to evil, the nature of God, the character of justice, and the enigma of suffering. 

The book's profundity does not arise, however, from "solving" these problems of existence.  On the contrary, it does not hesitate to leave the reader with painful questions about suffering or calamity; it challenges simplistic appeals to moral order in history; it enmeshes human responsibility in fate or destiny, but without absolving the human  of responsibility. 

From antiquity to the present, therefore, the book of Job has been a fascination, often a problem, occasionally a scandal and a danger. 

(The Voice from the Whirlwind:  Interpreting the Book of Job, eds. Leo G. Perdue and W. Clark Gilpin, Abingdon Press, 1992, p. 11.)  

It is also true that one of the great affirmations of faith (and a profound aria) is quoted from Job, 

"I know that my Redeemer lives..." (19:25, NRSV), 

though the context in Job is not as hopeful as later believers take it.  

On Reading About Job

·    For over 2200 years literate people read Job in manuscripts as “scripture,” as written words with divine messages to later generations.  After about 1500 CE, European people read Job as something printed.  The mental and esthetic associations of the printed page wholly dominated the way people thought of Job in the Jewish and Christian scriptures during the last five centuries.  

·    The heritage of this written/printed reception of Job was the concept of “the Job Poet” (a very “natural” concept to European interpreters).  Ironically, both traditionalists, who want the book to be unitary and inspired, as well as highly critical scholars, who see several different sources combined in the final “book” of Job -- all of these have spoken of “the Poet” or “the original Poet.”  There was a single, unitary mind / plan behind the whole "original" work.  This “original” work of the poet, of course, is some selection of materials from the five major parts of the Scroll; other parts to be explained as additions of various kinds.    

·    Recent commentators on Job, since about the 1970s, have produced a curious coalescence of traditional and postmodern interests that reads the Job Scroll as a single united work; traditionalists because they want a unified and consistent (inspired) perspective presented by a single author.  Postmodernists because ...  well, the finished “book” is what we have before us and we might as well make the best of it.  Besides, any “historical analysis” would privilege some parts of the Scroll against other parts, introducing modern biases.  Never mind that the “poet” ceases to be a credible composer in the process. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Along the way, I found a few quotes that encouraged my reading:

“Within the general form of a debate by means of long addresses, the poem contains poetic pieces that may be regarded as independent compositions.”  Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, Harper Bros., 1948, p. 685.  

"[The debate] itself is far from homogeneous, in either language or thought.  It is a collection of diverse materials, with a variety of styles and a wealth of ideas in which there is often a clash of opinion." (Francis L. Anderson, Job, "Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries," Inter-Varsity Press, 1976, p. 45.)

"The debate between Job and his three friends has a highly literary form, not resembling an informal debate in which there would be interruptions and shorter speeches.  It is formal, allowing each of the speakers to finish before another responds....  Snaith well observed... 'Job is scarcely a dialogue... The content of each speech is usually strangely independent of what has gone before and what follows.' " (Tremper Longman III, Job, Baker Academic, 2012, p. 55, italics added.)  

[This last sentence, in italics, is one of the most important statements about the literary character of the poetic Job in all of Job criticism.]  

A Detour in John's Gospel

A Detour in John’s Gospel:

John 5:1-47.

A few years ago, simply for my own interest, I put together all the selections from the Gospel according to John included in the Revised Common Lectionary.  Though John, unlike the other Gospels, is not featured in any one year of the Lectionary, it gets generous selections along the way. 

Included are the “Logos” prologue, the wedding in Cana, the cleansing of the temple, the night meeting with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, five weeks on the Bread of Life story and discourse (chapter 6), the healing of the man born blind (chapter 9), and the raising of Lazarus.

Not included in the Lectionary is anything from chapter 5 of John.  This is a healing story with sequels, probably omitted in favor of the similar healing story in chapter 9 (reading for Year A, 4^th Sunday in Lent.) 

I have found the chapter 5 story and discourses interesting in their own right and have done the following studies of them, as if they were in the Lectionary.  These were written in 2018.

John 5:1-18. 

This passage is remarkable for three things:  (1) the healing at the Sheep Gate pool, Bethesda, (2) the accusation of Sabbath violation, and (3) Jesus’ declaration about his and God’s working. 

(1) The healing story has several interesting details – interesting, though not essential to the larger narrative.  

The details of the place have busied scholars over the ages.  The “Sheep Gate” is apparently at the northeastern corner of the old city, just north of the Temple site (near the present “Lions” or “St. Stephen’s Gate”).  The pool has different names in different manuscripts of the Gospel:  “Bethesda” in the great majority of late manuscripts (after which many modern hospitals are named); “Beth-zatha,” preferred by current scholars as probably the earliest reading; and other spellings include “Bethsaida,” otherwise known as a town in northern Galilee. 

“Healing at the Pool of Bethesda,” painting in Vienna, by Pedro de Orrente, about 1620.

Courtesy of Vanderbilt University Divinity Library.

This pool was the center of a healing area.  The original story assumed hearers were familiar with the healing powers of the pool, but centuries later scribes added verses 3b-4 (missing in most early manuscripts) to explain the old custom to hearers in later times. 

Periodically a heavenly messenger (“angel”) came and stirred up the waters of the pool, and the first person to get into the water after the stirring was healed of their malady.  The disabled man in this story could never get there soon enough, and so he had been waiting for 38 years for a chance to get healed.  Jesus sees this man, and “knowing” [the Greek means he comprehended the whole situation], offered to heal him. 

The healing happens at Jesus’ command:  “Get up!  Pick up your mat and walk” (verse 8, CEB).  These are the exact words with which Jesus commands the paralytic to rise and walk in Mark 2:1-12, and the two stories probably have a common ancestry in early tradition.  The unusual word for “mat,” krabatton, is used several times in these two stories.  The paralytic in the Mark story has his sins forgiven, which is the equivalent to being healed – the primary point in that story.  There is an echo of that point in the John story when Jesus later says to the healed man, “See!  You have been made well.  Don’t sin anymore...” (verse 14).  

(2) But it all happened on a Sabbath!  This is only mentioned as an after-thought (verse 9), but as John’s story develops it becomes the main point. 

“The Judeans” [“Jews” in later European translations] accost the healed man for carrying his “mat” on a Sabbath.  “The man who healed me made me do it,” explained the now able-bodied man.  They ask who that was, but the man doesn’t know.  Later, Jesus warns the man about sinning, and the healed one runs back to tell the authorities it was Jesus that gave him the orders.  (Commentators are divided about whether this was an innocent mistake or a very ungrateful act.) 

Finally we arrive at the crux of this healing story:  Jesus was responsible for making people violate the Sabbath laws!  The Judeans begin to “harass” (CEB) Jesus, even plan to kill him (verse 18), because of his crimes against the Sabbath.  This leads us to the real point of the chapter – Jesus’ reply. 

(3) Jesus’ declaration to the Judeans is bold and challenging.  “My Father is still working and I am working too” (verse 17, CEB). 

The first thing to notice about this reply is that Jesus chooses to talk about “working”! 

Working has to do with the Sabbath!  Everybody knows from Genesis 2:1-3 that God “works” for six days, but ceases work on the seventh day, and humans honor that model by observing the Sabbath.  Jesus says, God is still working, and (therefore) so am I.  One thing this means is that in God’s view right now is NOT a Sabbath.  Divine work is going on because THE Sabbath has not yet come.  In God’s economy, this is not yet the seventh day, when God will cease working.  The real work of God is still going on – and as long as it is, Jesus will be working!  

(See the same viewpoint in 9:4, "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work," NRSV.)  

But the really challenging thing about Jesus’ reply is the implication that God’s work and Jesus’ work are coordinated – that they are on the same plane, equally divine! 

The Judeans recognize correctly what Jesus means, and indict him accordingly:  “...he was doing away with the Sabbath ... [and was] making himself equal with God” (verse 18). 

The charges are now fully developed, and the stage is set for Jesus’ monologue in defense, which comes next. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

John 5:19-30.  This monologue has three speeches that begin “Amen, amen” (“Very truly” in NRSV; “I assure you” in CEB), verses 19, 24, and 25.  Each speech is relatively independent.  

(1)  ¹⁹Jesus said to them, “very truly [amen, amen] I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.  ²⁰The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.  ²¹Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes.  ²²The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, ²³so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.  Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.  (John 5:19-23, NRSV.)  

(2) ²⁴Very truly [amen, amen], I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but  has passed from death to life.  (John 5:24, NRSV.)  

(3)  ²⁵Very truly [amen, amen], I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.  ²⁶For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; ²⁷and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.  ²⁸Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and will come out – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.  (John 5:25-29, NRSV.) 

 ³⁰”I can do nothing on my own.  As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.  (John 5:30, NRSV.) 

The first speech has Jesus speak of the “Son” in the third person – “the Father loves the Son...” (verse 20).  Then in the second speech, verse 24, Jesus speaks in the first person, “anyone who hears my word...”  Verse 25 then goes back to “Son” language, “...the dead will hear the voice of the Son...”  The final verse of the passage (30) repeats the opening verse (19), but now in first person speech instead of third:  “I can do nothing on my own...” 

The third person speech in verses 19-23 and 25-29 may be a clue to the background of such Son-and-Father language.  The message of these verses is that the Son does exactly what the Father does, including raising the dead. 

God and Son of Man in Daniel.  This kind of God-and-Son situation is presented in Daniel 7:9-10 + 13-14.  There the “Ancient One” (God Most High) sits in judgment on the evil empires that have been ruining the earth.  That Ancient One then receives in the heavenly court “one like a human being” (literally “like a son of man” – a human to replace the inhuman beasts of Daniel 7:1-8).  That Human One is given “dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:14, NRSV). 

The assumption in the Daniel vision is that God empowers the “Son of Man” to carry out God’s rule over the earthly powers.  The Son of Man is the implement to establish God’s rule.  He thus does exactly what God is in fact doing (through him). 

The Daniel passage does not have any speech between the Ancient One and the Human One, but the Most High is definitely giving authority and power to the newly arrived Human One.  If the Human One were to speak to others about his authority and mission, he could say the very things Jesus says about the “Son” in John 5:19-30. 

(Modern commentators on John do not seem to have observed this Daniel background to this Son-Father speech, but it seems to me it exactly fits the language used in John 5:19-30.) 

The central verse in this passage, where Jesus speaks in the first person (verse 24), is very awesome:  “Very truly [amen, amen] I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life” (NRSV).  This verse alone states the central message of the entire Gospel. 

Resurrection.  The Son’s power to raise the dead is elaborated in the second third-person speech (verses 25-29).    “For the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his [the Son’s] voice and will come out – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation” (verses 28-29, NRSV).  (The resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked is also promised in Daniel:  “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt,” Daniel 12:2.  This promise of the two-fold resurrection is given nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.) 

In Jesus’ own voice, this promise of a resurrected life is a truly spectacular claim for those who bet their lives on the truth of Jesus’ gospel! 

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John 5:31-47. 

First, this passage is about “testimonies” – who vouches for the truth of Jesus’ identity and authority.  (The Greek word-group involved here is marturéō; to witness, testify; marturía, a witnessing, a testimony; and mártus, one who witnesses, testifies [in later times, “a martyr.”]  These words occur eleven times in verses 31 to 39.) 

Secondly, this passage is not about “Son” and “Father”; it is about “me” and “you (plural).”  There is no third-person speech here; everything is direct address by Jesus to the unbelieving Judeans.  This is accusation and condemnation of the opponents, those who do not believe, who do not accept the “testimony” to “me.” 

The issue in this passage is, what does it take to get the Judeans to believe in Jesus as the one sent by God?  What testimony can be offered?  The passage will consider five possibilities. 

First, Jesus’ own testimony can’t be used (verse 31).  From other people’s viewpoint, he is the question, not the answer.  (A slightly different rhetorical tack is taken on this topic at 8:13-18.) 

Secondly, Jesus knows that John the Witness (“the Baptist,” though never called that in this Gospel) gave true testimony to him.  The Judeans even sent people to question John about that, and for a while he was “a burning and shining lamp” in whose light the Judeans were willing to rejoice (verses 32-35). 

Third, there is a testimony “greater than John’s,” namely, “the works that the Father has given me to complete” (verse 36).  These, of course, are such things as healing the disabled man at the pool of the Sheep’s Gate.  (See also Nicodemus’ testimony in John 3:2.) 

And, apparently as a testimony separate from the mighty works, “the Father who sent me has himself testified on my behalf” (verse 37).  This seems to refer to one of the divine speeches in which God addresses Jesus as “son,” since Jesus goes on to say, “You [Judeans] have never heard his voice or seen his form [as I have], and you do not have his word abiding in you...” (verses 37-38).  Unlike Jesus and those who believe in him, the Judeans do not have the rapport with God the Father that would enable them to “hear” the divine testimony to Jesus. 

The fifth and final possible testimony to Jesus is the scriptures.  Here the Judeans have a great advantage.  These are THEIR holy writings.  “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life” (verse 39).  These should be convincing because “it is they that testify on my behalf”!  Yet, “you refuse to come to me to have life” (verse 40).  There clearly were very different ways of reading the scriptures! 

In a kind of peroration (verses 41-47), Jesus ticks off more reasons why the Judeans are not able to believe in him.  “How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?” (verse 44).  And as a final shot at their pride in the scriptures, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (verse 46). 

(Note:  It should be obvious that there is nothing “fair” – much less “true” – about these slams at the “Judeans.”  Like Matthew 23, these statements are fierce propagandistic slurs fired at  powerful enemies in the religious wars of Jesus believers against synagogue teachers – possibly at an early time in Judea, more likely well after 70 CE in Asia Minor [Ephesus].)

Jesus has recited many testimonies why the Judeans should believe in him – rather than plan to kill him! 

 

Jesus and the Sabbath

 Jesus and the Sabbath

Because Easter moves around – sometimes early, sometimes late – in our civil calendar, the Lectionary readings “after Pentecost” have to be adjusted.  (If Easter is late, there are fewer Sundays “after Pentecost.”)  What was the Gospel reading for the 2^nd Sunday after Pentecost in 2018 was omitted entirely in 2021, when Easter was a little late. 

The Gospel reading omitted in 2021 was Mark 2:23-3:6, two controversy stories about Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath.  I think this reading is interesting enough to make a separate posting in this Bible Studies blog.  

Mark 2:23-3:6.  

This reading is two “conflict” episodes in which Jesus answers charges that he is violating the Sabbath commandment.  I believe that the usual treatments of these episodes have seriously trivialized what are in fact profound affirmations of the Jesus movement.  Thus, the following comments are not very standard commentary material. 

The Context.  Scholars have long recognized that Mark 2:1-3:6 is a collection of five “conflict stories,” which presents the opposition of the Judean leaders to Jesus’ message and mission.  The scribes and the Pharisees indict Jesus for not observing the Law as they teach it, which means they deny who he really is, “the Son of Man.” 

Read as they stand (without theories about editorial changes) these passages present four ways the Jesus people differ from the Pharisees. 

• Jesus, the Son of Man, can forgive sins, 2:1-12. 
• Jesus calls and has table fellowship with people excluded by Pharisees as “tax collectors and sinners,” 2:13-17. 
• Jesus replaced old Pharisee practices (like weekly fasting) with New Wine (new forms of religious practice) based on Messianic joy, 2:18-22. 
• Jesus is Lord of the sabbath, over-riding the old trivial sabbath rules of the Pharisees, 2:23-27 and 3:1-6. 

I will attend more closely to the Sabbath controversy episodes.  

First Conflict:  Eating grain on the Sabbath, 2:23-27.  

While walking through the grain fields, Jesus’ disciples pull off a few heads of grain and eat them.  The Pharisees say, “That’s unlawful on the sabbath!” 

Commentators take us into details about when that is and is not a violation of sabbath rules as interpreted in Biblical and Rabbinic texts.  Very few cry out, “What a ridiculously trivial little issue is this!!”  To be an actual violation you have to pull off enough grain to qualify as “reaping”!  Does our text even vaguely entertain that kind of question?  No. 

The main point, of course, is Jesus’ reply.  

Without any obvious connection with the sabbath, he refers them to an episode in the story of David.  David once entered the sanctuary of the Lord and took the most holy bread because he and his men were hungry.  The episode is in I Samuel 21:1-6. Commentators will tell you various corrections in Jesus’ reading of that passage, but it's pretty trivial stuff. 

Jesus’ real point is the big picture of David the Anointed Fugitive.  You must read the whole narrative of the Young David, I Samuel 16 to 26. 

Throughout these chapters David has been secretly anointed by the Lord as the future king (I Samuel 16:1-13).  He and others throughout the stories refer very reverently to the “Lord’s anointed” – who must be protected and revered.  

For example, in I Samuel 25:28-31 Abigail argues David out of shedding the blood of the "fool" Nabal:  "When the Lord [Yahweh] has done to my lord [David] according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you prince over Israel, my lord shall have no cause of grief, or pangs of conscience, for having shed blood without cause..."

And David himself is careful to protect "the Lord's anointed":  He says to King Saul, who is trying to kill him, "I will not raise my hand against my lord [Saul]; for he is the Lord's [Yahweh's] anointed," (I Samuel 24:10).  And later, having spared Saul again, David says, "Do not destroy him; for who can raise his hand against the Lord's [Yahweh's] anointed and be guiltless?" (26:9).  

The David of I Samuel is the Lord of the future, secretly anointed, persecuted by the established authorities of his time (King Saul and his army), but who is marvelously protected both from his enemies and from engaging in behavior inappropriate for “the Lord’s anointed.” 

That is who David was when he took holy bread from the sanctuary to feed his men – and that is who Jesus really is when his disciples eat grain on the sabbath. 

Indeed, Jesus was Lord of the sabbath – and the Pharisees did not know that he was the New David, come again as the secret and persecuted “anointed of the Lord.” 

Second Conflict:  Healing the man with the withered hand, 3:1-6.  

                   

                 "Man with the Withered Hand," James Tissot, 1836-1902.

                    Courtesy of the Divinity Library, Vanderbilt University.

Here we have a very different approach to the violation of the sabbath. 

This is a set-piece stand-off between Jesus and the Pharisee opponents.  Almost no details:  In the synagogue on a sabbath, a man with a withered hand, the opponents (“they”) watching expectantly for Jesus to violate the sabbath.  No discovery here:  this is a challenge and response.  Jesus knows their wicked thoughts, brings the disabled man to center stage, and makes a challenging speech.  Listen carefully to the extreme dimensions posed in the speech: 

“Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” 

“To save life or to kill”? 

We have a withered hand before us, not a threat of death or terror.  The withered hand obviously could wait another day until it was not a sabbath.  Some issue much greater than simply the hand is on the table.  Jesus says the sabbath issue can be a matter of life and death.  We are not talking trivial oral-torah rulings about what is “work” on the sabbath (the Pharisees’ specialty). 

What else?  After a sullen silence from the opponents, Jesus gets mad and – still knowing, without speech, where the opponents stand – “he was grieved at their hardness of heart.”  What does that remind you of?  Where have you heard of hardening of the heart? 

How about Pharaoh and Moses in the Exodus story?  Here we are in another stand-off between the savior God sends and the powerful enemies who oppose and threaten him. 

Jesus heals the withered hand – showing who he really is.  But the enemies know that the real issue is indeed one of life and death – and they act accordingly: 

“The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him” (verse 6).  This was indeed not simply an issue of a trivial sabbath rule! 

MARK: Story of the Messiah in Action

 

MARK:   Story of the Messiah in Action 

As users of the Revised Common Lectionary know, Year B (2018, 2021, etc.) is the year of Mark’s Gospel.  From Advent 2020 to Advent 2021 there will be 30 Sundays with Gospel readings from Mark, and in other years, with different dates for Easter, there can be as many as 37 readings from Mark.  Thus, a little introduction to this Gospel as we enter Year B may be in place.

As indicated below, compared to the other Gospels, Mark emphasizes Jesus’ actions more than Jesus’ teachings.  However, many of the actions that tend to reveal who Jesus is he tries to keep secret.  Thus, the reputation of Mark’s Gospel is that it presents Jesus as the Secret Messiah in Action.  

[A note on terminology.  The words “Jew,” “Jews,” and “Jewish” are avoided here when the subject is the people referred to in the New Testament.  These words are later translations into European languages of the Greek word ’Ioudaíos, which, more literally translated, is “Judean” and “Judeans.”  This is a respectful reminder that there are no “Jews” in the New Testament; only “Judeans” and peoples of the nations (“gentiles”).] 

Contents of this Essay:  

About Mark

Hearing Mark (Contents)

The Meaning of Mark 

About Mark

Basic Data about the Gospel According to Mark

1.  Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels. 

Matthew                          1,070 verses.

Mark                                  678 verses.

Luke                                1,151 verses.

John                                  878 verses. 

(These counts are from the “Received Text” and include later additions to original texts, such as the 2^nd century ending added to Mark [Mark 16:9-20].) 

2.  Mark is more about the Action of Jesus than the Teaching of Jesus.

Jesus speech in Matthew                            647 verses.           60%     

Jesus speech in Mark                                  288 verses.           42%

Jesus speech in Luke                                  591 verses.           51% 

Jesus speech in John                                   436 verses.           50% 

(The quantities of Jesus speech are based on the red-letter printing in The King James Study Bible, Thomas Nelson, copyright Liberty University, 1988.  The verses are the same in both English and Greek.) 

3.  Mark is a “synoptic” Gospel. 

·        The first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) share a basic story line, though with major variations in the two larger Gospels.  (Older tradition, from the second century on, viewed Matthew as the earliest Gospel, the others supplementing or abbreviating it.) 

·        West European scholars, beginning in the eighteenth century, became interested in the “history” of these works, how and why they have common materials but are still quite different (eventually called “the Synoptic Problem”). 

·        To advance this study, they created the Synopsis (meaning “view together”), which printed the three Gospels in parallel columns, with the similar (sometimes identical) passages side-by-side. 

·        The Synopsis showed that some passages (with small variations) appear in all three Gospels; some passages appear in only two Gospels (mostly Matthew and Luke), and some passages appear in only one Gospel (many in Matthew or Luke; very few in Mark only). 

·        Close study of the Synopsis gradually convinced scholars that Mark was the earliest Gospel, not Matthew.  The details of the parallel passages make most sense if Matthew and Luke took over material from Mark, rather than the reverse. 

4.  Mark has no Author.

All of the Gospels in the New Testament are anonymous.  (The title "According to Mark" was added in the second century when the four Gospel scrolls began to be copied into a single codex, "book.")  None of the Gospels says who the speaker or writer is.  The speaker in Luke does come out on stage to tell what he is about, speaking to his sponsor, but he does not tell us who HE is (Luke 1:1-4). 

It is clear that in the first Christian century, people did not care about “authorship” of Gospels.  Gospels began to be written only after the first generation of disciples had died off.  They are second generation works.  Each Gospel speaks to and for a considerable body of believers in its metropolitan region, presenting the accumulated tradition about the Messiah who brought them deliverance from the coming judgment of God. 

5.  Later Christians thought the Gospel was written by (John) Mark in Rome.

In the second century, Christians decided they had four and only four real Gospels.   Only “apostolic” writings were authoritative, and each Gospel was assigned an origin that was apostolic, in their view.  Matthew was from the apostle Levi; John was from the aged "beloved disciple" in Ephesus.  Luke was not an apostle, but he had been a long-term companion of Paul (Acts 16-28) and his Gospel was Paul’s.  An early tradition reported that a man named “Mark” had been the interpreter/assistant of Peter in Rome, and the Gospel according to Mark was in fact Peter’s Gospel. 

Luke’s work, Acts of the Apostles, mentioned a "John whose other name was Mark."  The mother of this John/Mark had a well-to-do house church in Jerusalem where Peter was prominent (Acts 12).  This Mark was a cousin of Barnabas, sponsor of and co-worker with Paul.  Mark accompanied them in their work, and when Barnabas and Paul separated he went with Barnabas (Acts 15:36-39).  Paul occasionally mentioned the valuable help of a “Mark” in his later letters (Philemon 24 and Colossians 4:10), which could be a reference to the same man. 

The letter of I Peter, probably not by the “true” Peter, has the comment, “Your sister church in Babylon [Rome]…sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark.”  This locates “Mark” in Rome and definitely associates him with Peter, whenever this was written. 

About 180 of the Christian Era, the churchman Ireneas wrote:  “So Matthew among the Hebrews issued a Writing of the gospel in their own tongue, while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel at Rome and founding the Church.  After their decease Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what Peter had preached.”  (Against Heresies, III, 1, trans. Edward Rochie Hardy, in Early Christian Writers, vol. 1, Westminster, 1953, p. 370.) 

That remained the view of the origin of the Gospel According to Mark until the nineteenth century. 

6.      My Conclusion. 

The Gospel was dictated by an experienced reciter of the oral lore to a (professional) scribe in Rome, sometime after the death of Peter (64 to 70 CE).  It was an essentially Galilean-oriented presentation, though it had come to Rome (as had both Paul and Peter in the early 60’s) and become authoritative there, with perhaps a few adaptations to the new setting.  It circulated early, on written scrolls, to other Christian centers, where Matthew (Syria) and Luke (Greece) knew it.  It was probably preserved after the other Gospels became more popular, and held its place as one of the four, precisely because it was the Gospel of Rome.

 Hearing Mark (Contents)

A recent commentator on Mark begins his work this way: 

The Gospel of Mark is a written text to be read aloud, all at once… Before proceeding, the reader is advised to cease and desist from reading all secondary literature (including this commentary) and to read the Markan narrative itself as a whole—or better yet, to listen as the story is read aloud by someone else.  (M. Eugene Boring, Mark. A Commentary, “The New Testament Library,” Westminster John Knox Press, 2006, page 1.) 

Hearing rather then reading.  This recommendation comes from the recognition – finally – that the Biblical world was an ORAL world.  Throughout the 20^th century, study of the Gospels was mostly caught in the “Gutenberg Galaxy,” the mass of unconscious assumptions imprinted on Western scholars by constant exposure to the printed page.  Scholars talked constantly – and only – about "writing," “authors,” and “books.”  (If they were going to be historically accurate they would have spoken of reciters rather than writers and they would have banned the word “book” and spoken only of scrolls.) 

The ancient world was ORAL; few could read; most people listened – and many were good listeners!  The scrolls, besides being rare, required practiced readers who could turn unvocalized (Hebrew) and unpunctuated (Greek) texts into intelligible oral performances. That’s how the Scriptures lived for early Christians.  (Among many resent writings on this topic, see especially Antoinette Clark Wire, The Case for Mark Composed in [Oral] Performance (Cascade Books, Wipf & Stock, 2011). 

Contents.  The above is a preface to hearing Mark, but we still need to address the question, what do we find when we look into and listen to this Gospel?  

Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, teacher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, published Hearing Mark: A Listener’s Guide (Trinity Press International, 2002).  She describes a project she did with community churches (Protestant and Catholic), which concluded with a “performance” of Mark.  There were four sessions, each devoted to listening to a large hunk of Mark:  Kingdom (Mark 1-4:34), Community (Mark 4:35-8:26), Discipleship (Mark 8:22-10:52), and Suffering (Mark 11:1-16:8). 

That is one way of identifying major themes in the successive sections of the Gospel. 

While scholars divide Mark in many ways, most recognize that, whatever else is true, Mark has two major sections, following a theme-setting introduction. 

1. Mark 1:1-13 is a succinct introduction.  John the Baptist is introduced, baptizes Jesus, who is empowered by God’s spirit and certified by the heavenly voice as God’s son.  Jesus is then tempted, setting up the cosmic struggle between God’s Spirit and Satan that is the real drama behind what follows. 
2. Mark 1:14-8:30 presents Jesus active in Galilee.  He proclaims that God’s kingdom is at hand, and acts accordingly.  He recruits disciples, exorcises unclean spirits, forgives sins, and in general exercises divine authority in ways people have not seen before.  They flock to him, hear his parables, and receive his healing, feeding, and compassion.  In all this, the demons know he is really the Son of God who will destroy them, and the scribes and Pharisees criticize and oppose him.  Jesus urges people to keep his divine powers secret; he is a Messiah, but a secret one.  This section concludes when Jesus elicits from the disciples their recognition that he is indeed the Messiah (8:27-30). 
• Mark 1:14-5:43 is a cycle of disciples, healings, controversies, and teaching around Galilee.  Jesus calms a storm to save the disciples' boat.  
• Mark 6:1-8:30 has Jesus rejected in Nazareth, then sending out disciples, and a wider cycle of healings, controversies, and teaching -- this time with marvelous feeding of the multitudes.  Jesus walks on the stormy lake to reach the disciples' boat.  By the end the inner circle knows Jesus is the Messiah.  
3. Mark 8:31-16:8 presents Jesus going to Jerusalem to die as the Suffering Servant.  Jesus tells the disciples three times that he will suffer and die but also rise on the third day.  In one key statement Jesus says, “For the Son of Man came… to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45).  The disciples do not (cannot ?) hear this – either the death or the rising again.  The cost of following Jesus is heavily emphasized.  One who gives up one’s life for Jesus will in fact save it.  Jesus makes a royal show entering Jerusalem, holds public debates with the authorities who oppose him, blesses his little group with a final supper, and is betrayed to the powers, both Judean and Roman, finally confessing to the high priest that he is indeed the Messiah and Son of Man.  They crucify him, thereby carrying out God’s will, as Jesus recognized in his prayer in the Garden.  The Gospel ends with an empty tomb; the women who find it tell no one, but a heavenly messenger informs them that everything goes back to Galilee (Mark 16:7).  
• Mark 8:31-10:52 has Jesus say the Messiah must die, but three disciples get a glimpse of the glory beyond the passion -- a forecast of the risen Jesus.  On the way to Jerusalem there are controversies, now about marriage, children, wealth, and leadership (in the coming church).  Jesus gives sight to a man who calls him "son of David."  
• Mark 11:1-13:37 has Jesus come to Jerusalem as king, clear the temple of merchants, condemn the current leaders of Israel, and deliver a long discourse about the coming end of the world.  
• Mark 14:1-15:41 presents in powerful detail the death of the Suffering Servant.  Jesus is anointed, betrayed, and abandoned -- but not before he has given his followers a solemn meal to keep his presence with them.  A Judean court finds a way to condemn him and a Roman governor, against his better judgment, has him crucified.  The crucifixion is remembered more for the mocking by the onlookers than for any intense suffering.  However, the cosmos is darkened in recognition of who has died, and an awe-struck Roman officer says, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" (15:39, NRSV).  
• Mark 15:42-16:8 introduces a previously unknown follower, with wealth and status.  This Joseph of Arimathea gets Jesus buried in an upper-class tomb, with a stone closing it in.  Two days later, however, three women find no body in the tomb but are told by a heavenly messenger that Jesus is risen from the dead, and will continue his mission with them back in Galilee.  The women are terrified and tell no one.  

The Meaning of Mark

Here are the things I conclude are most important about this Gospel.  

1. The supernatural status of Jesus is essential to Mark’s presentation of the gospel.  In Mark’s terms, Jesus’ baptism and temptation open a cosmic-level conflict between the Spirit and Satan which is then carried on on the human level in Jesus’ exorcisms, healings, and disputes with authorities. 

2. Mark presents the apocalyptic Jesus.  Jesus told people the judgment of God is at hand, is actually beginning in his work.  Good news for some, bad news for others.  He said the final reckoning would come in his generation.  

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (1:15, NRSV margin).  

“And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power’” (9:1).  “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (13:30).

These last two sayings are not convincing as creations of the early church (as many have argued) rather than as coming from Jesus.  Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist and shared his message that the reign of God was about to overwhelm the current world.  Jesus insisted, even through his own death, that the Kingdom of God (Reign of God) had its preliminary start in his presence and person.  The longest discourse in Mark is about the coming -- and not coming -- of the Son of Man in power (chapter 13).  The post-Markan churches gradually found ways around the embarrassment of the unfulfilled prophecies.  (Luke evolved the Kingdom into the Church by writing Acts – but without giving up the expectation that the Son of Man would indeed soon come in power.) 

However, these hard sayings were not simply eliminated from the tradition or the Gospels.  They were accommodated to the faith that a new life option had appeared as an alternative to the worldly ways of the “present age” that is passing.

3.  Community and Discipleship are an alternative life option.  (Elizabeth Malbon’s emphases were correct.) 

After Jesus was rejected by his own people at Nazareth, he began shaping his disciples into an alternative community.  A new wider circuit of activity (chapters 6-8) was initiated by the sending out of the disciples, and new topics appeared with the feedings of the multitudes (intimating communal living in the care of the disciples).  And after Jesus heads toward Jerusalem, topics of communal life are the focus:  marriage, children, wealth, and true greatness (chapter 10). 

Mark’s Gospel prepares people for a new manner of communal life in Jesus’s name. 

After Jesus announces clearly that he must go to Jerusalem to die, the requirements of following Jesus (Discipleship) are stated in stark terms.  “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (8:34-35, ESV translation).  As Mark presents them, the disciples are not usually up to expectations, but their limitations are pretty clearly designed to show how relatively ordinary people can in fact become Jesus’ true followers and disciples!  

4. The Passion Narrative is the fundamental core of this Gospel.  (The subscript, deepest-level message, of this narrative is that, “God suffers!”  See the discussion of the Passion Narrative in the Good Friday Lectionary readings for 2021.) 

The divine necessity of Jesus’ rejection, suffering, and death is announced in unmistakable terms.  “ ‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering... and be killed, and after three days rise again.’  He said all this quite plainly…. But they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him” (8:31-32 and 9:32).  The narrative from Palm Sunday to the Empty Tomb (chapters 11-16) is about one-third of the Gospel, and the earlier parts of the Gospel serve as preface and explanation of the passion. 

The earlier parts make sure we understand who it is that suffers, dies, and is exalted to heavenly power. 

5. The Structure of the Gospel shapes the message.

(1) The Spirit-empowered mighty acts of the Galilean period (chapters 1-8:30) culminate in the disciples recognition of Jesus as the Messiah (finally catching on to what the demoniacs—and the hearers of the Gospel—knew from the beginning).  

(2) The Jerusalem-oriented period of divinely-ordained rejection, suffering, and death of Jesus (8:31-16:8) is the real message about the Messiah ("Christ" = Messiah).  The relatively amazing episode of the Transfiguration on a mountain in Galilee (9:2-10) is Mark’s (only) presentation of the Risen Jesus.  There is no appearance in Jerusalem.  There Jesus’ followers know only the death of the Messiah and an empty tomb.  The sequel will take them back to Galilee (16:7).  (This is an outcome radically rejected by Luke and John, who were deeply invested in a Jerusalem-based Christianity.)

6. The narrative detail in Mark is compelling.  Compared to Matthew’s and Luke’s treatments of the same narratives Mark has more color and vigor (for example, the Gerasene Demoniac, Mark 5:1-20, and the epileptic boy in Mark 9:14-27).  One should read the passages found in all three Gospels in a Synopsis -- for example, Gospel Parallels, Burton H. Throckmorton, Jr (Nelson, 1979 and 1992).  It is hard to avoid the view that Mark is closest to a real human Jesus (as classic commentators like A.B. Bruce and Henry Swete, 1898, believed).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For eighteen hundred years Mark was the neglected one among the four Gospels.  In modern times, the last has become first!  Mark has been recognized as the earliest of the written Gospels, and perhaps the most original testimony to the activity of the Messiah.   The special message of Mark is that the impending Reign of God leads to – and beyond – the cross in Jerusalem.