Once in a great while I'll find something in a Christian publication that I agree with. Christianity Today for July/August 2018 has an article "The Bible's Slowness" by Sandra McCracken, and "Holy Inefficiency" by Christina Crook. Here is one of her websites encouraging others to feel the joy of missing out. Well said.
While the change must be to some extent arbitrary, the adult-kiddies need to start paying attention to the down-side of modern technology, instead of just gobbling it up like starving teenagers at a pizza party.
Missing out on most of the online buzz would probably do you a lot of good. How did we ever survive in the world when we weren't able to be connected to each other 24/7?
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My reply to Bellator Christi's "Three Dangerous Forms of Modern Idolatry"
I received this in my email, but the page it was hosted on appears to have been removed ===================== Bellator Christi Read on blo...
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I challenged "annoyed pinoy" at his blog as follows: 1 comment: barry November 7, 2019 at 4:01 PM I'd like to d...
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"Annoyed Pinoy" regularly posts at Triablogue. See here . He defends the Trinity doctrine at one of his own blogs. I posted t...
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https://twitter.com/barry35962347 #lawsuitagainstjamespatrickholding
what are your thoughts on this:
ReplyDelete"The original ending of Mark had no one seeing Jesus at all,"
because it's a prequel. the resurrection and appearances of jesus were already well established in the early church; paul writes on them.
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ReplyDeleteThe unanimous view of the early church was that Mark's gospel was a written record of what his church had already heard Peter preach. If we allow what inerrantists wish, and assume this historical tradition valid, then the idea that Mark was silent about a fact because his church already knew about it, becomes highly unlikely, and his silence would need to be explained by some other theory.
ReplyDeleteBecause Mark's primary purpose was to REPEAT what the gospel-requesting church already knew and believed (i.e., what was "already established"), more plausible theories for Mark's omitting a resurrection narrative would be:
*he deemed such material unimportant,
*he thought the stories false/unreliable
*he simply didn't know about them.
Either of which do violence to Christianity.
Did Mark think the stories of a risen Jesus appearing to the disciples were 'unimportant'? It doesn't need to be spelled out why a gospel authors apathy toward stories of the risen Jesus would harm Christianity. An inerrantist could not allow this because they say Acts 1:3 is true history, making it highly likely that Mark, being a close associate of Peter who experienced these 40-day resurrection appearances, would surely have both heard them from Peter and found them important enough to repeat, especially given that Mark found more banal truths edifying to repeat (like Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist), since during said 40-days of resurrection appearances the risen Christ was teaching "things concerning the kingdom of God", Acts 1:3. And Mark's love for what Jesus had to say about the "kingdom of God" is beyond dispute...so it is reasonable to raise an eyebrow or three as to his silence toward the kingdom of God teachings from the risen Christ.
Did Mark think the resurrection appearance stories false? It hardly needs to be spelled out how this would kill Christianity in it's cradle.
Was Mark honestly ignorant of the risen Jesus' appearances to Peter and the other apostles? That's possible, but again, granting the inerrantist assumptions that Jesus appeared to Peter and the others over 40 days (Acts 1:3), which took place in the same Jerusalem city that was the location of Mark's home (Acts 12:12). Historically, Mark's living in Jerusalem and being a close associate with Peter argue that the resurrection appearance narratives Mark would likely have been initially familiar with would have been those 40-days of appearances in Jerusalem, mentioned in Acts 1:3.
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As an atheist bible critic, I would imagine the safest course that a Christian could take is to make argument that Mark wrote a resurrection narrative, either his "long ending" or another ending that was lost via textual corruption. Otherwise, the theory that Mark omitted a resurrection narrative would make non-Christians reasonable to conclude that the earliest form of the gospel said nothing more about the matter than the very generalized comment that Jesus rose and the apostles met him in Galilee, which would make it reasonable in turn to classify the more detailed narratives found in the later gospels as mere fictional embellishments.