Sixth Blog Question: Response

The Old and New Testaments are from different times, different genres, and even different languages, it is true. (And hey, being American, it’s all Greek to me! Ha ha… Ha.) But lame puns aside, there are many similarities between the two in the realms of sparseness and showing verses telling, and even in differences of stories.

The gospels do not all share the same stories between them, some leave out what others have or have what others do not. And in the stories that are the same, there are differences in the details. One example of that would be found most obviously in the crucifixion of Jesus. The gospels do not all agree on what Jesus’ final words were before dying. The phrases vary between “It is finished” (John), “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Matthew and Mark), and “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke). After Matthew and Mark’s statements he cries out, and maybe he cries out Luke’s statement and they didn’t know about it, but who knows. John mentions no crying out at all.

If you’re wondering how that has anything to do with connections to the Old Testament, just look at Genesis. In Genesis, the order of things vary from chapter to chapter, not even as much as book to book. Were Adam and Eve created at the same time, or did Eve come after Adam? Were animals created first or humans? Compare the first two chapters of Genesis and let me know what you find.

So maybe Jesus said all of those things and maybe he said none of those things and they are just elements that bring together a good story. We just don’t know without asking the original authors of the books.

Now to be less broad, let’s look at Mark in particular. Mark focuses a lot on the actions of Jesus and doesn’t explain them to us. He let’s the actions speak for themselves. He never states that Jesus is divine, that he or anyone else thinks of him as divine, or even that he saw the things he wrote about. The only thing stated about who Jesus is, is that he is the son of God. But the meaning of that is never explained. Mark’s quietness and sparseness on these issues is often referred to as authorial silence. He doesn’t tell us why these things are important, but the fact that he chooses to write about them makes them important.

Mark doesn’t state whether what he wrote about what literally happened or whether the stories are partially or wholly fabricated in order to portray a certain image of Jesus. All we have is our own interpretations of the scriptures. It’s quite possible that Mark didn’t even write his gospel in chronological order, considering the patterns found in the way it is set up. Like Price has said, Mark’s focus is on the story itself, not on reporting dry facts. And the fact that his faith is entwined in his account gives the story life, whether it is meant to be perfectly accurate or not.