Chapter 5 begins with the longer version of the healing of the demon possessed man (where we saw 2 men described in Matthew 8.) Mark shares more details about the man and ends the story with Jesus encouraging the man to go and share the good news of what the Lord has done for him. Mark seems to care about him and the people in the Decapolis - ten Gentile cities on the East side of the Sea of Galilee. Matthews focus on the Jewish Christians sees less importance in these details. Luke will capture more of this story and the next two, but his gospel is to a Gentile audience of one!
Two more healings finish this chapter with again the longest version here in Mark, with Matthew cutting the detail down to a minimum even eliminating the name of Jairus noted here as a ruler of the synagogue. A former pastor in one of my congregations years ago would sometimes quote a line only in Marks telling of the story of the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. He would quote verse 26, "She had suffered a lot under the care of many doctors, and had spent everything she had without getting any better. In fact she got worse." As you can imagine, Luke the doctor did not copy this line into his gospel, nor did Matthew.
In the raising of Jairus' daughter we hear Jesus speaking in Aramaic and then having the words translated for the reader. It is thought that this gospel and all the others were originally written in Greek and so phrases quoted directly in Aramaic are thus all translated for the readers' benefit.
In chapter 6 there is more strong language as in verse 3 the people of his hometown of Nazareth were "repulsed" by him. Then in verse 6 Jesus is "appalled" by their disbelief! And I find verse 5 curious as often we say something and then backpedal a little. After all Mark probably had no eraser and once he writes that Jesus was unable to do any miracles there, then he remembered that he actually did heal a few sick people. Paul will later write some similar retractions.
Similar to Matthew here Jesus sends out the 12 disciples and we read the story of the death of John the Baptist. But then only Mark tells of the 12 returning and Jesus inviting them to come away from the crowds and rest for a while. This is followed by the telling of the feeding of the 5000 which is one of the few stories outside the holy week stories that appears in all four gospels. This is quite similar to what we read in Matthew though here Peter is not invited to step out in faith and try it too. Incidentally, Luke deletes this story from his gospel. And the ending here is odd, so I can see why Matthew changes it to affirm that the disciples came to believe in Jesus because of this miracle. Mark's gospel only points out that they were so baffled because they had not understood about the loaves (in the feeding story jut told.)
No comments:
Post a Comment