Monday, January 21, 2008

Mark, chapter 9

1 And Jesus was saying to them, "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."
Hm, so either we have some 2000-year-old people walking in our midst or Jesus didn't speak so truly after all. But maybe he just had a bad prophecy day ... Or the kingdom of God has come and nobody has noticed it. Which would be weird since Jesus is supposed to come back on clouds or something like that. And that would definitely have shown up on Youtube!
10 They seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead meant.
Zombie movies obviously weren't in at the time. Otherwise they would have known what it meant. Or they could just have asked the Egyptians about what happened to Osiris.
20 They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth.
So epileptics are possessed by evil spirits?
23 And Jesus said to him, " 'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes."
Seems like Christians don't really believe then. Otherwise they would be able to cure each other from cancer or bring peace to troubled regions. But probably 'all things' didn't really mean 'all things' ...
28 When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, "Why could we not drive it out?" 29 And He said to them, "This kind cannot come
out by anything but prayer."
This raises two questions:
- Didn't the apostles believe enough to be able to do this? (see above)
- What do they usually do or use to drive out demons if not prayers? Weapons like those from the Ghostbusters?
43 "If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire.
So now you know what to do if your hand is doing something sinful ... Although one could argue that it's not the hand that does the +- evil thing but the mind. So why not cut your head off? But the ancients probably thought that the hand had a mind of its own?

4 comments:

Dwacon said...

John saw the kingdom when he experienced and wrote about the apocalypse (the book of Revelation).

This is not Biblical exegesis... just picking apart scriptures for fun.

Keep in mind that the Bible was not written in English, only translated. If you want to know what is really being said, study the original language.

Μιλάτε τα ελληνικά?

Daldianus said...

dwacon:

If it was necessary to study Greek in order to know what the Gospels say then only a tiny number of people would actually know. I agree that some idioms, especially ancient ones, are hard to translate. But if the Bible is God's Word(tm) then why doesn't he issue God's Translations(tm) as well?

And reading the Gospels in Greek does not resolve most of the problems and incoherences I mention on these site.

And what original Bible in the first place?? There is no original Bible, only later copies. And most ancient copies, or fragments of manuscript, differ already slightly in the words or even miss whole paragraphes.

So where is this original Bible? And from when does it date?

Christine Vyrnon said...

Good DVD's on the subject are "Corpus Christi" and "The Origins of Christianity"... many many hours of documentary talking-head viewing pleasure.

Funny about God issuing his own translation... had never heard that one before.

And who's to say your interpretation isn't the best one?

Keep it up.

Daldianus said...

christine:

>Good DVD's on the subject are "Corpus Christi" and "The Origins of Christianity"... many many hours of documentary talking-head viewing pleasure.

Thanks a lot, I'll check them out!

>Funny about God issuing his own translation... had never heard that one before.

But a fair question, don't you think? ;)

>And who's to say your interpretation isn't the best one?

Indeed :)

>Keep it up.

Thanks, you too!