An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 196: Salt Salt Salt Salt (Mark 6-10)

Mark 6-10
Salt Salt Salt Salt.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Mark 6

“But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.”

More episodes from the life of Jesus, told in Mark’s more succinct fashion compared to Matthew, again with a lot less reported speech from Jesus, apart from a few lines of instruction here and there.

Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, and people are amazed at his wisdom (which Mark sneakily avoids actually telling us), but also because this is presumably Nazareth (we are only told that it is is Jesus’ “own country”) they’re not convinced that the carpenter’s son should be wise in religion, hence Jesus’ riposte given above.

Next, Jesus sends out the disciples in pairs to spread the word and cast out evil spirits, but to “shake the dust from their feet” when they leave a house if their word has not been heard, as a sign of contempt. There’s more dashing around the Sea of Galilee being followed by multitudes, and here we get the miracle of the bread and fish, as well as Jesus walking on the sea to where his disciples are caught in a storm in a boat. In Mark, there seems to be a lot of occasions where Jesus and the disciples preach from a boat or ship just off the shore, which I guess would actually make a fairly good stage from which to address a beach full of people. Also in this chapter Mark jumps back in time to the death of John the Baptist, killed by Herod due to the wrangling of his wife and her daughter.

Mark 7

“Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?”

The Pharisees criticise Jesus and His followers for poor hygiene, to which Jesus replies “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man”. Things that come out of a man include “evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness”. Which is all very well, but evidently Jesus is a theologian and not a microbiologist.

Jesus also heals the daughter of a Greek woman, and a deaf/mute man, the latter perhaps as much a metaphor as it then becomes said that “he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak”.

Mark 8

“But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”

There’s another mass-feeding in this chapter; as in Matthew the miracle of loaves and fish (in this case, just loaves, it seems), is repeated. And it evidently has some deeper meaning, as Jesus warns the disciples to “beware the leaven of the Pharisees” and they, to His annoyance, go on about having no bread. Jesus complains about them not understanding what it means that twelve and seven baskets of bread respectively were got from a small number of loaves, but I’ll admit the meaning is lost on me. Spiritual enlightenment is an unlimited resource? Something dubious and numerological? (I really hope not). Anyway, here the story turns to the next phase, as Jesus gets the disciples to name Him as Christ (rather than John the Baptist, Elijah or another reborn prophet), and warns them that He will suffer, die and rise after three days. It gets a little culty at the end, with Jesus basically saying that the most blessed is the person that gives up everything to follow Him.

Mark 9

“And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them.”

The chapter starts with another version of the vision given to the select disciples on the mountaintop, where Moses and Elijah appear alongside Jesus, and then a voice from the clouds proclaims Jesus as its son.

It’s around this point that Jesus begins to get a bit testy and impatient with His disciples. There is an incident here where the disciples have failed to cast out a devil possessing a young boy, causing Jesus to lament “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?”, which I read as “I can’t leave you guys to do anything.” Then later the disciples get into an argument about who is the best, and here some of the words in Matthew make a bit more sense, concerning “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”. Here it is given as “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all”, and in context it’s clearer, don’t try to put yourself forward as leader. How that idea gibes with the fact that, earlier in the chapter, only Peter, James and John get to see the transfiguration, I don’t know. There’s more stuff about cutting offending parts off your body, ending with “Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another”. Salt salt salt salt. Yep, doesn’t look like a proper word any more.

Mark 10

“Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”

This chapter includes a lot of direct speech from Jesus, unusual for Mark so far, and is very similar to the equivalent sections in Matthew. Jesus debates divorce with the Pharisees, Jesus tells the disciples to “suffer the little children to come unto me”, Jesus councils the young man to give obey the commandments and to give up all he owns. Here, James and John ask Jesus directly to sit at his side in heaven, it’s not their mother that asks on their behalf as it is in Matthew, but the upshot is the same. Considering most of this chapter is linked by the theme of how to get into the kingdom of heaven, as well as the oncoming fate of Jesus, it ends rather incongruously on the healing of a blind man. Only the man’s name, Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, is of interest as it seems to lend weight to “Barrabbas” being “Son of Abbas (father)”, if that means anything.