An Idea about the Disciples

In the reading of Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels the editors present an idea about the disciples that is very interesting. When the disciples are introduced they get a positive portrayal from Mark, and then later they get a very negative portrayal. The book says the disciples did not truly comprehend Jesus' ministry of teaching. That is a very interesting thought to think about, because we always think about the disciples always standing behind Jesus accept the few that notably didn't stick behind him. Their incomprehension eventually leads to Judas betrayal and Peter's denying Jesus. I had never thought about the disciples in this manner it was a deep thought to think about.

"I want a Possy like That"

In the first part of our reading in Mark 3:7-12, it talks about how Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake. There were so many people that had heard of all he was doing from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon, as verse eight tells us. This passage talks about all the different kinds of people that were trying to find him and there was a variety. My title said, "I want a possy like that;" though Jesus was doing many miracles, he was also doing great teaching too, and "great" is an understatement. I want God to be able to use me in a way that my teaching and preaching like Jesus' draws a crowd like that. I hope that there would be all kinds of people - that I would not just reach a certain group of people but all. I know this passage may seem simple, but I read it in a different way this time. The devotion of the crowd and how Jesus attracted them just really stuck out to me.

Mark Who?

I thought the discussion near the end of class last Wednesday was very interesting. It's been over a year since I have had New Testament survey, and I had forgotten that Mark was not neccesarily named after Mark. To hear that the title of Mark was added much later reminded me of truly how much you need to know the history of the text and who wrote it and all of the other important details about the text. Without researching and having a good understanding of those things, it becomes much harder to interpret in most cases. However, in this case Dr. Foster brought up the question of whether knowing or not knowing the author really matters in this case. That is a very intruiging question. I'm looking forward to more little things that I have forgotten from New Testament, going into much more detail on some of those, and even learning a whole lot of new things.

Not just Historians but people

I thought Dr. Foster's description of all of those people was great in class on Monday. He made people, that just reading about them in a normal history book might not be all that interesting, become quite interesting and gave them personality. Most of the people that you read about in history books you know what they did, but never can really tell what their personlity was like. An example of one of the people was Archalaus. Dr. Foster described him as a jerk and said no one liked him. Now instead of just knowing that he was a bad ruler and did bad things, we can put another trait with it. It may seem kind of simple, however it made some more things stick out to me about some of the rulers and people discussed on Monday.