WELCOME TO OUR BOOK CLUB May 2012

Hello everyone.  Well I've taken the plunge and started a blog!  How exciting is this.

This month we are studying the book of Mark in the New Testament of the Bible and we have two questions to answer:

1. How many healings are recorded in the book of Mark?
2. Who do you think wrote the book of Mark and for whom?

I like what Eugene Petersen writes in The Message as his preface to the book: "Mark wastes no time in getting down to business - single-sentence introduction, and not a digression to be found from beginning to end. An event has taken place that redically changes the way we look at and experience the world, and he can't wait to tell us about it. There's an air of breathless excitement in nearly every sentence he writes."

How many readers in our little book club have discovered the author of this Gospel i.e. who was this Mark person?  
Dummelow's One Volume Bible Commentary has this to say: "..it is as the companion of St. Peter that St. Mark is best known.. St. Peter, in all probability, was not a very good Greek or Latin scholar.  Preaching in Aramaic, he required the services of an interpreter to translate his sermons ..into Greek or Latin..and also to conduct his correspondence."  Dummelow suggests that Mark did not give us a record that is in historical order, but that he certainly gave us an account which is both thorough and accurate.

When did Mark compose his account?  Dummelow gives us possible dates of 61AD (around the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome) or 66-70AD.  Apparently Peter's followers exhorted Mark to put down Peter's recollections.  Note that it is pretty certain that Mark himself had not been an immediate disciple of Jesus, and only found this way of thinking through Peter.

Who was he writing for?  The answer is perhaps twofold.  We learn that Peter framed "his teaching to meet the [immediate] wants [of his hearers]", so we presume that Mark, the transcriber, had a specific audience in mind.  Who were they?

more another day.....