The Gospel According To Mark
What does it mean to be saved? Can a man be saved by merely accepting the premise that God exists and then living as though he believed it (Pascal’s Wager)? If so, why is Jesus necessary (I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father, except through me)? For the conservative Christian, Jesus is the only way to eternal life (Heaven), and those who reject him are doomed to live in eternal torment (Hell). The present age in which we live is seen as a temporary place, a testing ground for our passage into eternity.
Non-Christians see these claims as exclusive and arrogant. They take a more egalitarian approach, as in “All roads lead to God” or “I‘m not a bad person. No loving God could condemn someone to unending torture.“ For many Evangelicals, the Bible is the inerrant word of God, “If the Bible says it, I believe it, and that’s just the way it is!”
The question that is seldom asked in evangelical circles is, “What did Jesus really mean”? They accept the Bible as a kind of magical document, reflecting God’s infallible will, with human agents acting only as God’s secretaries. The historical truth is far more complex and messy, resonating in a very real and human way. Not surprisingly, so does the Bible as a theological document.
I was having a conversation with a friend who said he viewed the Bible as the autobiography of God. After years of study I’m inclined to see it as more a case of God’s inspiring hand, attempting to teach his thick-headed and rebellious children. A history written by the gifted few who actually paid attention long enough to convey a Father’s message that is simultaneously a warning and a love letter. The cost for the few who were attentive enough to listen was often everything they had—including their life.
Is there a place for legitimate debate, or has the case been closed since the time of the apostles and the close of the scriptural canon? Others might suggest that the case was closed with the completion of a book written in the 19th century, one with a very different Genesis story. The importance of these questions both in secular and spiritual terms demands a coherent response.
Since the Enlightenment, and particularly after Charles Darwin, the question of the Bible as the infallible word of God took on new meaning. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species offered a stark new translation of the creation narrative, beginning with a similar “out of the dust of the earth” but this time through a random, unguided, purely-natural process. Darwin’s theory could be seen as the logical progression of enlightenment thinking. Having replaced superstition with reason and guided by the scientific method, he could finally answer life’s ultimate questions: “Who am I, what am I, and how did I get here”?
With differing origin stories competing for the minds of society, Christians rallied the troops around the doctrine of infallibility—developing the “thread in the sweater” theory (if one thread could be exposed as untrue, then the whole garment might unravel). This resulted in dogmatically asserting from scant evidence the age of the earth as being no more than 6,000 years old and then extrapolating from that a broad range of other theological assumptions. For both evolutionists and Christians alike, their willingness to infer from a few facts vast cosmologies created out of whole cloth spoke volumes about human arrogance and its cost.
For the new science of evolution, the bill would come due in the form of the emerging eugenics movement. Darwinism recapitulated in social and economic terms. Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao and a host of other enlightened socialist movements, pursued a brave new world as defined by their prophets, Darwin, Nietzchze and Marx. Ultimately culminating in a death toll of more than a hundred million people in little more seventy years—most of which occurred during peace time, not war. For Christian societies, the numbers weren‘t much better, slavery, genocide and colonial rule had a new, more-benevolent justification called manifest destiny.
Does this mean that science and faith mutually exclusive? Is questioning scripture from a historical or scientific perspective an expression of doubt or is the world itself a reflection of God’s nature and the basis for logical inquiry? Mark: 11:23 says, “I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes…“ Is there a legitimate place for a more reasoned approach? Consider Isaiah:1:18 "’Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.’”
The Bible like any other book is the product of language, which can be expressed in numerous ways. It can be written, spoken, or conveyed through sign language, smoke signals, mathematics, or art in its various forms with rules of grammar and syntax that are difficult to understand outside the context of culture, time and place. The Bible is no different, relying on the disciplines of archeology, history and linguistics to obtain its likely meaning.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written primarily in Greek and some Aramaic. Greek was the common language of the ancient world of Jesus’ time, the result of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The impact of Greek culture, philosophy, government, religion, art and science reshaped everything, including the way in which scripture was understood. Jesus used Greek mythology as a basis for his own descriptions of Hell, Hades and the afterlife. With the Roman acquisition of those same territories conquered by Alexander, it was expedient to maintain Greek as the common language to facilitate government and commerce. Latin was the language of Rome, adding another layer of difficulty.
One of my closest and oldest friends asked me if I thought that the Bible could only be understood by scholars. When you consider that it was the product of men from every walk of life, kings, shepherds, carpenters, tax collectors, doctors and religious scholars, the answer would appear to be no. Unfortunately the original Biblical manuscripts don’t exist, and few of us have the ability to read it in its native languages.
According to scholar’s best estimates, the Old Testament as a complete or near-complete collection didn’t emerge until a few hundred years before Christ. Even then it existed in two separate forms, Hebrew (the pre-Masoretic Text) and Greek (the Septuagint). These competing versions of the Old Testament offered one for the predominantly Jewish-Greek speaking world, the other in the more traditional Hebrew, with the Septuagint considered as too favorable to Jesus, and as such, rejected by many Jewish scholars.
By the time of Jesus’ birth Hebrew was already a dead language, used mostly in worship—similar to the use of Latin in Catholic rituals. All of these linguistic variables created a problem in translation. Jesus spoke Aramaic as his birth language, reinterpreting the meaning of ancient Hebrew texts with a radical new vision that was translated as scripture into Greek and then disseminated throughout the Roman Empire.
As contemporary readers, we are two thousand years removed from the Greco-Roman-Jewish culture of the time. It may be that what Jesus really meant isn’t so easily rendered, especially when adapted to a vastly different time and place.
The New Testament is the best documented of all ancient writings with no other texts or manuscripts coming close in number. Homer’s The Iliad comes in a very distant second. The New Testament, then, gives us a standard of unparalleled reliability. However, with mostly fragments and portions of books scattered all over the world, it would be impossible for one man, no matter how well educated, to grasp it all.
The Bible then, in its original form, could only be understood by a scholar, more realistically not one but many, including scientists from a broad range of disciplines. This leads us to one inescapable conclusion: reason, scholarship and education are absolutely indispensable in understanding God’s Word. Conversely, we can conclude that innocence, good intentions and intuition, as a way of knowing God’s Word, is not only unrealistic but impossible.
The general way of dealing with such statements is to say, “All things are possible with those that love the Lord.” The question should be the same for believer or agnostic, “What does the evidence tell us”? This is where most Christians throw up their hands and either accept a simplified world view, one that can only be sustained by willful ignorance, or abandon the faith altogether.
The Bible can no more escape this problem than any other book, even one inspired by God, since it relies upon the very real human limitations of understanding and communication. This doesn’t mean we reject the possibility that it might really be the word of God. The critical question should be, “What does that really mean”?
The apostle John borrowed from the Greek philosopher Philo of Alexandria the concept of the Logos or “the Word.” Philo used allegory to blend Greek philosophy and Judaism, defining the Logos as the blueprint or reason of God. John, in writing the last and most radically different of the Gospels, adopted the term saying, “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” For John, his old friend and master was the spoken, logical and reasonable reflection of the living God.
The scientific method was in part inspired by this distinctly Jewish vision of a logical God who could be known by observing his creation. At best, this was an imperfect process, recognizing the limitations of man’s understanding. Is it possible that the constraints of human nature, instead of limiting the biblical narrative, are the very story that God has been telling all along—and from this perspective the only way to truly understand it?
Mark S Magula
Non-Christians see these claims as exclusive and arrogant. They take a more egalitarian approach, as in “All roads lead to God” or “I‘m not a bad person. No loving God could condemn someone to unending torture.“ For many Evangelicals, the Bible is the inerrant word of God, “If the Bible says it, I believe it, and that’s just the way it is!”
The question that is seldom asked in evangelical circles is, “What did Jesus really mean”? They accept the Bible as a kind of magical document, reflecting God’s infallible will, with human agents acting only as God’s secretaries. The historical truth is far more complex and messy, resonating in a very real and human way. Not surprisingly, so does the Bible as a theological document.
I was having a conversation with a friend who said he viewed the Bible as the autobiography of God. After years of study I’m inclined to see it as more a case of God’s inspiring hand, attempting to teach his thick-headed and rebellious children. A history written by the gifted few who actually paid attention long enough to convey a Father’s message that is simultaneously a warning and a love letter. The cost for the few who were attentive enough to listen was often everything they had—including their life.
Is there a place for legitimate debate, or has the case been closed since the time of the apostles and the close of the scriptural canon? Others might suggest that the case was closed with the completion of a book written in the 19th century, one with a very different Genesis story. The importance of these questions both in secular and spiritual terms demands a coherent response.
Since the Enlightenment, and particularly after Charles Darwin, the question of the Bible as the infallible word of God took on new meaning. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species offered a stark new translation of the creation narrative, beginning with a similar “out of the dust of the earth” but this time through a random, unguided, purely-natural process. Darwin’s theory could be seen as the logical progression of enlightenment thinking. Having replaced superstition with reason and guided by the scientific method, he could finally answer life’s ultimate questions: “Who am I, what am I, and how did I get here”?
With differing origin stories competing for the minds of society, Christians rallied the troops around the doctrine of infallibility—developing the “thread in the sweater” theory (if one thread could be exposed as untrue, then the whole garment might unravel). This resulted in dogmatically asserting from scant evidence the age of the earth as being no more than 6,000 years old and then extrapolating from that a broad range of other theological assumptions. For both evolutionists and Christians alike, their willingness to infer from a few facts vast cosmologies created out of whole cloth spoke volumes about human arrogance and its cost.
For the new science of evolution, the bill would come due in the form of the emerging eugenics movement. Darwinism recapitulated in social and economic terms. Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao and a host of other enlightened socialist movements, pursued a brave new world as defined by their prophets, Darwin, Nietzchze and Marx. Ultimately culminating in a death toll of more than a hundred million people in little more seventy years—most of which occurred during peace time, not war. For Christian societies, the numbers weren‘t much better, slavery, genocide and colonial rule had a new, more-benevolent justification called manifest destiny.
Does this mean that science and faith mutually exclusive? Is questioning scripture from a historical or scientific perspective an expression of doubt or is the world itself a reflection of God’s nature and the basis for logical inquiry? Mark: 11:23 says, “I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes…“ Is there a legitimate place for a more reasoned approach? Consider Isaiah:1:18 "’Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.’”
The Bible like any other book is the product of language, which can be expressed in numerous ways. It can be written, spoken, or conveyed through sign language, smoke signals, mathematics, or art in its various forms with rules of grammar and syntax that are difficult to understand outside the context of culture, time and place. The Bible is no different, relying on the disciplines of archeology, history and linguistics to obtain its likely meaning.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written primarily in Greek and some Aramaic. Greek was the common language of the ancient world of Jesus’ time, the result of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The impact of Greek culture, philosophy, government, religion, art and science reshaped everything, including the way in which scripture was understood. Jesus used Greek mythology as a basis for his own descriptions of Hell, Hades and the afterlife. With the Roman acquisition of those same territories conquered by Alexander, it was expedient to maintain Greek as the common language to facilitate government and commerce. Latin was the language of Rome, adding another layer of difficulty.
One of my closest and oldest friends asked me if I thought that the Bible could only be understood by scholars. When you consider that it was the product of men from every walk of life, kings, shepherds, carpenters, tax collectors, doctors and religious scholars, the answer would appear to be no. Unfortunately the original Biblical manuscripts don’t exist, and few of us have the ability to read it in its native languages.
According to scholar’s best estimates, the Old Testament as a complete or near-complete collection didn’t emerge until a few hundred years before Christ. Even then it existed in two separate forms, Hebrew (the pre-Masoretic Text) and Greek (the Septuagint). These competing versions of the Old Testament offered one for the predominantly Jewish-Greek speaking world, the other in the more traditional Hebrew, with the Septuagint considered as too favorable to Jesus, and as such, rejected by many Jewish scholars.
By the time of Jesus’ birth Hebrew was already a dead language, used mostly in worship—similar to the use of Latin in Catholic rituals. All of these linguistic variables created a problem in translation. Jesus spoke Aramaic as his birth language, reinterpreting the meaning of ancient Hebrew texts with a radical new vision that was translated as scripture into Greek and then disseminated throughout the Roman Empire.
As contemporary readers, we are two thousand years removed from the Greco-Roman-Jewish culture of the time. It may be that what Jesus really meant isn’t so easily rendered, especially when adapted to a vastly different time and place.
The New Testament is the best documented of all ancient writings with no other texts or manuscripts coming close in number. Homer’s The Iliad comes in a very distant second. The New Testament, then, gives us a standard of unparalleled reliability. However, with mostly fragments and portions of books scattered all over the world, it would be impossible for one man, no matter how well educated, to grasp it all.
The Bible then, in its original form, could only be understood by a scholar, more realistically not one but many, including scientists from a broad range of disciplines. This leads us to one inescapable conclusion: reason, scholarship and education are absolutely indispensable in understanding God’s Word. Conversely, we can conclude that innocence, good intentions and intuition, as a way of knowing God’s Word, is not only unrealistic but impossible.
The general way of dealing with such statements is to say, “All things are possible with those that love the Lord.” The question should be the same for believer or agnostic, “What does the evidence tell us”? This is where most Christians throw up their hands and either accept a simplified world view, one that can only be sustained by willful ignorance, or abandon the faith altogether.
The Bible can no more escape this problem than any other book, even one inspired by God, since it relies upon the very real human limitations of understanding and communication. This doesn’t mean we reject the possibility that it might really be the word of God. The critical question should be, “What does that really mean”?
The apostle John borrowed from the Greek philosopher Philo of Alexandria the concept of the Logos or “the Word.” Philo used allegory to blend Greek philosophy and Judaism, defining the Logos as the blueprint or reason of God. John, in writing the last and most radically different of the Gospels, adopted the term saying, “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” For John, his old friend and master was the spoken, logical and reasonable reflection of the living God.
The scientific method was in part inspired by this distinctly Jewish vision of a logical God who could be known by observing his creation. At best, this was an imperfect process, recognizing the limitations of man’s understanding. Is it possible that the constraints of human nature, instead of limiting the biblical narrative, are the very story that God has been telling all along—and from this perspective the only way to truly understand it?
Mark S Magula