The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are called synoptic Gospels because of the similarities of many of the stories they recount. This essay will focus on a comparison of the Gospels of Mark and Luke in their historical and cultural context. There are many competing theories as to the priority of the Gospels, where they were written and in what time period. The identity of the writers is also queried. Many of these theories are based on subjective criteria and circular reasoning rather than historical, archaeological and philological research and argument. Using subjective modern literary theories many scholars have created fictional Communities and then read the gospels in the light of these artificially constructed entities that cannot be proved historically to have ever existed.
Many modern writers place the
writings of Mark and Luke in a time period post 70 AD and they speak of Markan
and Lukan communities that developed their oral traditions into the Gospels we
have of those names. Thus they do not accept the traditional belief found in
the Fathers of the Church that these Gospels were written by John Mark (St
Mark) or St Luke. However Bishop John Robinson a famous liberal Anglican set
out, after a lifetime of accepting the modernist late datings of the Gospels,
to research why we accept these late datings. He soon discovered that it was
all built “on a house of cards”. There is no historical, philological,
archeological or scientific evidence for dating the Gospels after 70 AD but
much evidence that they were written before 70 AD. [1]
There is no knowledge of the destruction of Jerusalem or the Temple in the New
Testament except for a prophecy of Jesus. Those who don’t believe in prophecies
due to their naturalistic philosophy[2]
see this as evidence of knowledge of the destruction of the Temple. Using the
same logic we would have to say that Isaiah 53 was written after Christ as was the
Book of Daniel which also told of the Temple being surrounded by armies and
destroyed.[3]
Torrey writes:
It
is perhaps conceivable that one evangelist writing after the year 70
might fail to allude to the destruction of the temple by the Roman
armies (every reader of the Hebrew Bible knew that the Prophets had definitely
predicted that foreign armies would surround the city and destroy it), but that
three (or four) should thus fail is quite incredible. ..On the contrary,
what is shown is that all four Gospels were written before the year 70.
And indeed, there is no evidence of any sort that will bear examination tending
to show that any of the Gospels were written later than about the middle of the
century. The challenge to scholars to produce such evidence is hereby
presented.[4]
Nobody has successfully presented any such historical or scientific evidence since Torrey wrote this. Modern scholars have just continued to accept the elaborate and fanciful literary theories of the Higher Critical School. Bishop Robinson quotes a layman about these modernist Higher Critics:
There
is a world--I do not say a world in which all scholars live but one at any rate
into which all of them sometimes stray, and which some of them seem permanently
to inhabit--which is not the world in which I live. In my world, if The
Times and The Telegraph both tell one story in somewhat different
terms, nobody concludes that one of them must have copied the other, nor that
the variations in the story have some esoteric significance. But in that world
of which I am speaking this would be taken for granted. There, no story is ever
derived from facts but always from somebody else's version of the same story. .
. . In my world, almost every book, except some of them produced by Government
departments, is written by one author. In that world almost every book is
produced by a committee, and some of them by a whole series of committees. In
my world, if I read that Mr. Churchill, in 1935, said that Europe was heading
for a disastrous war, I applaud his foresight. In that world, no prophecy,
however vaguely worded, is ever made except after the event. In my world we
say, "The First World War took place in 1914-1918." In that world
they say, "The world-war narrative took shape in the third decade of the
twentieth century." In my world men and women live for a considerable
time--seventy, eighty, even a hundred years--and they are equipped with a thing
called memory. In that world (it would appear) they come into being, write a
book and forthwith perish, all in a flash, and it is noted of them with
astonishment that they "preserve traces of primitive tradition" about
things which happened well within their own adult lifetimes…[5]
The whole question of whether there
were any such things as Matthean, Markan and Lukan communities has been
challenged by certain recent scholars. Peterson in his book “The Origins of
Mark: The Markan Community in Current Debate” writes:
…lack
of agreement among Gospel community constructors is related more to the
futility of the entire enterprise than to a need for further study…that the inferring
and reconstruction of Markan communities from the text of the Gospels in order
to provide a sure footing for its interpretation is a highly problematic
practice indeed…[6]
Michael Bird in
his article on the same question also mentions Richard Baukham’s opposition to
using the gospel for a subjective construction of the community it is
supposedly addressed to.[7]
Bird himself using Baukham as his starting point sets out to demonstrate that skepticism
is needed in regard to a connection between the Gospel of Mark and a Markan
community and that if even such a community did exist it is impossible to
identify its geographical setting with any certainty.[8]
Bird also mentions how scholars cannot even agree about the location of this
so-called ‘Markan Community’. Very erudite books have been written proposing
Rome or the Galilee or Syria.[9]
Even Raymond Brown wrote that that modern scholarship is not able to
“reconstruct the profile of the community addressed by Mark”.[10]
Maybe a solution to this is to accept that Mark and Luke’s Gospels were written
to a certain type of early believer no matter where they were located.
Analyzing the Gospel with a literary
theory or theories in order to create an imaginative ‘Markan Community’ is a
use of the creative imagination but not authentic history or science. There are
also numerous competing theories on the priorities of the Gospels which are
much too numerous to mention in this small essay. Many believe that Mark was the first Gospel
written and that Matthew and Luke drew on it. Matthew and Luke also drew on a
lost source as well as Mark which they call Q. This theory is known as the
“Two–Source Hypothesis”. E.P. Sanders, a famous New Testament scholar, writes:
…The evidence does not seem to warrant the degree of certainty with which many scholars hold the two-document hypothesis. It would also seem to forbid that a similar degree of certainty should be accorded to any other hypothesis…I believe our entire study of the Synoptic Gospels would profit from withholding judgments on the Synoptic problem while the evidence is resifted…[11]
Sanders
considers that the solution to the synoptic problem would be much more complex.[12]
Robinson working from a historical
methodology dates the Gospel of Luke between 40-60 AD and the Gospel of Mark
between 45-60 AD. A leading Catholic scholar and one of the translators of the
Dead Sea Scolls, Father Jean Carmignac, uses a philological and historical
methodology. He discovered that it was very easy to translate the Greek Mark
back into the Hebrew of Qumran. Carmignac states:
…I was convinced that the Greek text of Mark could not have been redacted directly in the Greek and that it was in reality only the Greek translation of an original Hebrew…The Hebrew-Greek translation had transposed word for word and even preserved in Greek the order of the words preferred by Hebrew Grammar.[13]
Carmignac then
spent the next 25 years of his life researching the Hebrew origins of the
Synoptic Gospels. One beautiful example he found in the Gospel of Luke was the
Benedictus of Zechariah the father of St John the Baptist and husband to St
Elizabeth. When Carmignac translated the Greek back into Hebrew he found a
Hebrew play on words that was not there in the Greek. Zechariah proclaims:
“..To show the mercy promised to our Fathers, and to remember his holy
covenant: the oath which he swore to our father Abraham…”.[14] The
Benedictus prayer (Luke 1:68-79), Carmignac tells us, when translated back into
Hebrew is made up of three stanzas (strophes), each having seven stitchs. The
prayer starts in the first stanza with “Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel”
which is a Biblical and Qumran invocation. In the second stanza the first stitch[15]
is the word mercy or grace which in Hebrew is hanan which is the root of the name Yohanan (John), the second
stitch is ‘remember’ which in Hebrew is Zakar
and is the root of the name Zechariah and the third stitch is the two words
‘oath’ and ‘swore’ which are two forms of the Hebrew Shava or Shaba which is
the root of the name Elizabeth (Elisheva). The third stanza starts as it often
does in Qumran literature with a personal pronoun “and you child”.[16]
A Protestant scholar Robert Lindsey also
discovered the same thing about translating the Greek of the synoptics into
Hebrew. He also began with the Greek of Mark, however he found that the Gospel
of Luke was even easier to translate back into Hebrew.[17]
Both Carmignac and Lindsey along with the French Catholic scholar, theologian
and Hellenist, Claude Tresmontant,[18]
believe that the original Gospels were in Hebrew and not Aramaic. The famous Orthodox Jewish New Testament
scholar Professor David Flusser of the Hebrew University writes:
The spoken languages among the Jews of that period were Hebrew, Aramaic, and to an extent, Greek. Until recently, it was believed by numerous scholars that the language spoken by Jesus' disciples was Aramaic. It is possible that Jesus did, from time to time, make use of the Aramaic language. But during that period Hebrew was both the daily language and the language of study. The Gospel of Mark contains a few Aramaic words, and this is what misled scholars… There is no ground for assuming that Jesus did not speak Hebrew; and when we are told (Acts 21:40) that Paul spoke Hebrew, we should take this piece of information at face value''[19].
Flusser
is convinced that the sayings of Jesus where mostly originally in Hebrew not
Aramaic as taught by many scholars of the past. He writes:
` There are sayings of Jesus which can be rendered both into Hebrew and Aramaic; but there are some which can only be rendered into Hebrew, and none of them can be rendered only into Aramaic. One can thus demonstrate the Hebrew origins of the Gospels by retranslating them into Hebrew'' [20]
Thus Carmignac dates the Hebrew Mark
to around the years 40-42 AD and its Greek version between 45-50 AD and the
Greek Luke to just after 50 AD. It would seem very clear that the Gospels dated
before 70 AD allows them to have been written by St Mark and St Luke themselves
and the need for some kind of creative Markan and Lukan communities becomes
redundant. Rather than relying on some fabricated oral traditions based on the
literary theories of modern scholars one can now turn to the authentic oral
traditions that are historically provable as they were written down by the
fathers of the church and early ecclesiastical writers. Irenaeus tells us that
St Mark was the disciple and interpreter of St Peter and "transmitted to us in writing the things preached by Peter." As does Eusebius who quotes Papias who quotes
St John the Beloved Disciple of Ephesus.[21]
Here we see an actual historically verifiable oral tradition and its
transmission. Irenaeus also tells us that St Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke
under the influence of St Paul. [22]
Peter with Mark arrived in Rome
sometime between 40-42 AD and Mark left for Alexandria sometimes around 43-44
AD. From Alexandria he went to Jerusalem and Antioch in 46 AD and then he was
in Salamis in 47 AD.[23]
He then returned to Rome until 49-50 AD when the Jews were expelled from Rome.
Some older writers[24]
claimed that 1 Peter was written around or before 49 AD when the Roman Jewish
community was under threat. Mark after going to Antioch and then Cyprus
eventually returned to Rome and was there during the time of St Paul’s first
imprisonment[25].
Harrington writing in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary also agrees for a
pre-70 AD date for the publishing of the Greek Mark. He states that the mention
of the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple in Mark 13 does not mean that
Mark was written after 70 AD.[26]
He dates the publishing of the Greek Mark around 60 AD as he thinks that the
persecution is connected to the persecution of Nero[27]
rather than the earlier persecution under Claudius. He concludes that the
Gospel was written in Rome by Mark as Papias states because of certain
loanwords from Latin found in the Greek text. That Father Harrington uses
historical (Papias) and philological (loanwords) evidence gives one more
confidence in his opinion.[28]
The Roman Church at this time was
situated in two main centres the House of Prisca and Aquila where the more
simple Jewish and Gentile believers met and the British Palace that became the
House of Pudens where the Gentile believers met possibly with the more
aristocratic Hellenist Jews. St Peter was closely connected with both centres.
Archaeological discoveries at the sites of these two places have confirmed
these early Christian traditions.[29]
It may have been the Greek speaking Gentiles meeting at the House of Prisca and
Aquila and the House of Pudens (the Palatium Britannicum) that desired a
literalistic translation into Greek of the Hebrew Gospel compiled by Mark based
on Peter’s teachings. Mark in his Greek gospel edited it to exclude information
that would not be of interest to his Gentile readers and added some information
to explain Jewish customs (see Mark 7).[30]
Even though the Greek Mark was
written for Gentiles it is necessary to understand the Jewish cultural context
of the Hebrew original. Mark 7 is a good example. Many exegetics misinterpret
Mark 7 in an anti-Jewish manner.[31]
Harrington writes based on his faulty antinomian interpretation of Mark 7 that Jesus:
...gives a public statement and a private explanation about the invalidity of the Jewish food laws... rejects the Pharisaic tradition surrounding the law’s observance... and abrogates the OT food laws...[32]Jesus and the writer of the Gospel of Mark did not intend to discredit the traditions of the Sages of Israel. Jesus did criticize a group of Pharisees and Scribes who were placing the teachings of the Sages (Chazal) above the Biblical commandments and interpreting them in a way that distorted both the Sages teachings and Scripture.[33] Mark in chapter 7 verses 3-4 is not criticizing the Jewish customs about various washings but explaining them to the Gentile audience he is writing to. Jesus also in Mark 7 gives some examples of this misuse of Scripture and Tradition. These Pharisees and Scribes appeal to the authentic ‘traditions of the Sages’ but Jesus never criticizes this tradition only the twisted reasoning of this group who have misused the ‘traditions of the Sages’ to create their own man-made tradition that actually undermines the Torah and its interpretation by the Sages. Jesus very pointedly calls it “your tradition” to distinguish it from the “tradition of the Sages”.
Jesus using the commandment of
“Honour thy mother and father”, as an example, demonstrates this unspiritual
approach. Jesus is not criticizing the idea of a korban or the setting aside of gifts for God’s service. What he is
criticizing is this groups perverted use of tradition to justify their evil
desire to not help their parents and thus by their twisted use of tradition
they undermined the written Torah and make the mosaic tradition of no value.
When they criticized others for not performing n’tilat yadaim (washing of hands),[34]
Jesus saw that it was from a hypocritical heart of judging others on secondary
matters that at this time was not even a universal custom. Unfortunately this
has been confused by the Greek of the text which has translated the Hebrew work
‘kol’ as ‘all’ when in Hebrew it can
also mean ‘many’. The text should read in English ‘and many of the Judeans’
rather than “and all the Jews”. The Jews of the Galilee had a different minhag (custom) but it is obvious that
Jesus himself observed the Judean and Pharisee minhag as they did not criticize him for eating without doing n’tilat yadaim, only some of his
disciples. The reason for this is that Jesus’ family originally came from Judea
and observed this greater stringency of washing before eating ordinary food
(chullin/ common)[35]
that many of the Pharisees practiced at that time. This stringency is not what
Jesus condemned when done in the right spirit of enhancing the spiritual
sanctity in ordinary acts, but when this stringency was used as a judgment of
how pure another Jew was, he was indignant.
The Sages of
Israel compare the holy vessels of the Temple with the vessels of one’s tongue
and heart. It is forbidden to comment on the level of observance of another Jew
in a negative way this is lashon hara
(evil talk). This is why Jesus is so upset with these Pharisees, that they
should be committing the sin of lashon
hara which is much worse than putting non-kosher food on holy vessels. To
speak lashon hara pollutes the inner
man. The temple and domestic purity of dishes is only a sign alluding to this
spiritual purity/impurity of the inner heart and tongue.
Mark 7:19 is
also a verse in which modern scholarship has reinterpreted the text as an
editorial comment by Mark rather than an extension of what Jesus is saying.[36]
The Latin Vulgate uses "purgans omnes escas" for the Greek
"katarizo pas ho broma" both meaning "purging all the
meats". This refers to the stomach or body purging or purifying all foods
from the body and it is part of what Jesus is saying. The King James Version
and the Catholic Douai-Rheims agree with this translation. It is only some
modern translations that falsely separate this from what Jesus is saying and
make it artificially an edit by Mark "and thus he declared all foods clean".
They add "And thus he declared" a phrase which does not appear in the
original text. This gives the passage an
interpretation that is contrary to the original text. In fact the English
translation of the Peshitta Aramaic text reads:
..17And when Yeshua entered into the house, away from the multitudes, his talmidim began asking him about this saying. 18He said to them, "You too are slow to understanding. Do you not know that everything which enters from the outside into a man is not able to defile him. 19Because it does not enter into his heart, rather into his stomach and is removed by way of excretion, which purifies all the food. 20But anything that goes out from a man is what defiles a man. 21For it is from the inside of the heart of the sons of men that evil thoughts proceed such as adultery, fornication, theft, murder, extortion, 22wickedness, deceit, lust, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride and foolishness. 23All of these things are evil, and from within do they proceed and defile a man…[37]
Many writers have proposed that St
Luke was a Gentile because of Colossians 4: 10-11 where Paul mentions those of
the Circumcision. However others believe that Luke was a Hellenistic Jew and
wrote his Gospel for Hellenistic Jews.[38]
Origen states that St Luke is also called Lucius and is the same person as the
Hellenist Jew mentioned in Acts as Lucius of Cyrene and he is also mentioned by
Paul in Romans16:12.[39]
John Wenham also gives seven reasons for identifying him with Lucius of Cyrene.[40]
Luke not only is a Hellenistic Jew but he seems to have also been influenced by Essene Judaism with his recurring theme of the Messianic Banquets. N T Wright lists the eight Messianic Banquets in the Gospel of Luke. Firstly there is the banquet at Levi’s House in Luke 5:29-35, secondly the banquet at a Pharisee’s house in Luke 7:36-50, thirdly the feeding of the five thousand in Luke 9: 12-17, fourthly the dinner at Martha and Mary’s house in Luke 10:38-42, fifthly another banquet at a Pharisee’s house in Luke 11:37-54, sixthly a third banquet at a Pharisee’s house in Luke 14:1-15, seventhly the Last Supper and eighthly the Road to Emmaus breaking of the bread meal.[41] The eighth day has deep Messianic significance and is associated by the early Jewish Christians with the Sunday of the Resurrection. Brant Pitre also writes extensively on the theme of the Messianic Banquet. He quotes from the Qumran Rule:
…”At a session of the men of renown, those summoned to the gathering of the community council, when God begets the Messiah with them: the chief priest of all the congregation of Israel shall enter, and all his brothers, the sons of Aaron, the priests summoned to the assembly, the men of renown, and they shall sit before him, each one according to his dignity. After, the Messiah of Israel shall enter and before him shall sit the heads of the thousands of Israel, each one according to his dignity, according to his position in their camps and according to their marches. … And when they gather at the table of community or to drink the new wine, and the table of the community is prepared and the new wine is mixed for drinking, no-one should stretch out his hand to the first- fruit of the bread and of the new wine before the priest, for he is the one who blesses the first-fruit of the bread and of the new wine and stretches out his hand towards the bread before them. Afterwards, the Messiah of Israel shall stretch out his hands toward the bread. And afterwards, they shall bless all the congregation of the community, each one according to his dignity. And in accordance with this precept one shall act at each meal, when at least ten men are gathered”…[42] (1Qsa 2:11–22).
Pitre links the
Messianic Banquet concept to Luke 22: 28-30:
…You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel…[43]
This passage would only be truly understood and appreciated in its Jewish and Essene background by those of Jewish culture and learning. This idea is also found in Luke 13: 28-29:
…There you will weep and gnash your teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God and you yourselves thrust out. And men will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the Kingdom of God…
These
references also allude to the Heavenly Banquet mentioned in Exodus 24 as does
Luke 22:20’s mention of the “new blood of the covenant” with Exodus 24:8’s “behold the blood of the Covenant”. Exodus 24
references the inauguration of the Sinai Covenant as a prelude to a Celestial
Banquet before the Sapphire blue pavement or brickwork.[44]
It is also only the Jewish
Christians who would instantly see the connection with the Infancy narrative of
Luke being linked with the Ark of the Covenant imagery and thus realising that
the Virgin Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant which the Almighty has overshadowed
with his Presence. They would immediately see that Mary’s encounter with her
cousin Elizabeth parallels King David’s encounter with the Ark of the Covenant
in 2 Samuel 6-7. There are many other examples that could be discussed but due to
the limits of this essay these will be a representative sample of why Luke is
written by a Jew to an educated (Hellenistic) Jewish audience.
This brief essay has sought to
demonstrate that there are no such late post 70 AD Markan and Lukan communities
as imagined by some modern scholars. Mark and Luke were Jews who wrote to the
situation of the pre-70 AD church and it is this audience to which their
Gospels were addressed. The Greek Mark to the Gentile believers and the Greek
Luke to the Hellenistic Jews of the Roman Empire. One can almost smell the air
of the sea of Galilee and its fishing boats in the down-to-earth narratives of
Mark’s Gospel reflecting the story-telling of the Big Fisherman and this
earthiness also appealed to many of the Gentile believers from among the poor
and working class. These believers are attracted to the idea of the powerful
Saviour who has suffered like they do.[45]
These are persecuted believers[46]
firstly by the Romans and secondly by the Jewish community in Rome which
eventually causes the Emperor to expel them in 49-50 AD.
Luke’s Gospel retains a more
elevated style which has polished up these stories to appeal to the more
educated and sophisticated Hellenistic Jews such as Theophilus the former
Jewish High Priest (who may have written the Letter to the Hebrews). This essay
chooses certain hypothesises that are based on looking at the historical,
archaeological, cultural and philological context of the two Gospels rather
than an invented and imaginary approach based on a highly artificial literary
theories proposed by those of a modernist and naturalistic mindset.[47]
It is highly unlikely based on these criteria that any such Markan or Lukan
communities existed in the post 70 AD Church as described by many modern
scholars and they are merely the fabricated fantasies of literary theorists.
The community that embraced these Gospels, along with Matthew and John, was the
Universal Community (Kehilla K’lali) of believers under the authority of the
Petrine ministry and moving in the grace of the Pauline missionary mandate.
[1] Bishop John A T Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philedelphia: Westminister Press, 1976) 1-30.
[2] Gary R Habemas, “The
Late Twenthieth-Century Resurgence of Naturalistic Responses to Jesus
Resurrection” Trinity Journal 2001, 179-196.
[3] Bishop John A T Robinson, Redating the New Testament, 1-30.
[4] C. C. Torrey, The Apocalypse of John, (New Haven, Conn, 1958),
86
[5] Bishop John A T Robinson, Redating the New Testament, 356.
[6] Dwight N Peterson, The Origins of Mark: The Markan Community in Current Debate, (Leiden:Brill,
2000), 4-5.
[7] Michael F Bird, “The
Markan Community, Myth or Maze: Bauckham’s The Gospel For All Christians
Revisited” Journal of Theological Studies
Vol 57 pt 2 (UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 475
[8] Michael F Bird, “The
Markan Community, Myth or Maze: Bauckham’s The Gospel For All Christians
Revisited”, 476.
[9] Michael F Bird, “The
Markan Community, Myth or Maze Bauckham’s The Gospel For All Christians
Revisited”, 477.
[10] Raymond Brown, The
Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist, 1984), 28.
[11] Professor E P Sanders,
The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition,
(Cambridge: University Press, 1969), 278.
[12] E P Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition,
278.
[13] Father Jean Carmignac,
Birth of the Synoptics, (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1987), 1.
[14] Luke 1: 72-73
[15] In Hebrew poetry stitching is
the repetition of keywords to tie a poem together.
[16] Father Jean Carmignac,
Birth of the Synoptics.
[17] Robert Lindsey, Jesus,
Rabbi and Lord by (USA:CornerstonePublisher, 1990) 17-18.
[18] Claude Tresmontant, The
Hebrew Christ: Language in the Age of the Gospels, USA:Franciscan Herald
Press, 1989.
[19] Professor David
Flusser, Jewish Sources in Early
Christianity, (Israel: Mod Books, 1989), 11.
[20] Professor David
Flusser, Jewish Sources in Early
Christianity, 11.
[21] Daniel J Harrington
SJ, “The Gospel According to Mark” The New
Jerome Biblical Commentary (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, 1990), 596.
[22] Hans Conzelman, The History of the Primitive Church,
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1973.
[23] Joseph MacRory,."St.
Mark." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. (New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1910.) .
[24] George Haydock, Haydock
Bible Commentary 1859
[25] Pheme Perkins, “Mark
Jesus, Suffering Messiah” Reading the New
Testament: An Introduction (New York:Paulist,1978), 204.
[26] Daniel J Harrington
SJ, “The Gospel According to Mark”, 596.
[27] Daniel J Harrington
SJ, “The Gospel According to Mark”, 596.
[28] Daniel J Harrington
SJ, “The Gospel According to Mark”, 596.
[29] Professor Samuel Terrien, Till the Heart
Sings: A Biblical theology of Manhood and Womanhood, (USA: Eerdman, 2004),
176-7.
[30] Pheme Perkins, “Mark
Jesus, Suffering Messiah” Reading the New
Testament: An Introduction, 204.
[31] Daniel J Harrington
SJ, “The Gospel According to Mark”, 611.
[32] Daniel J Harrington
SJ, “The Gospel According to Mark”, 611.
[33] Rabbi Harvey Falk, Jesus
the Pharisee; A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus, New York ; Paulist
Press, 1985.
[34] Rabbi Harvey Falk, Jesus
the Pharisee; A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus, 149-150.
[35] See Tractate Chullin
in the Talmud. Chullin means profane or unconsecrated or common.
[36] Daniel J Harrington
SJ, “The Gospel According to Mark”, 611.
[37] Mark 7:17-23
[38] Professor E.Earle
Ellis, The Gospel of Luke (USA:
Eerdmans, 1980), 52-4
[39] Professor E.Earle
Ellis, The Gospel of Luke, 52-4
[40] John Wenham, The Identification of Luke
[41] Nicholas T Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, (USA:
Fortress Press, 1996), 558.
[42] Brant Pitre, “Jesus, the Messianic Banquet and the Kingdom of God” Letters and Spirit Volume 5 (2009), 136-7.
[43] Brant Pitre, “Jesus, the Messianic Banquet and the Kingdom of God”, 153.
[44] Brant Pitre, “Jesus, the Messianic Banquet and the Kingdom of God”, 157-8.
[45] Pheme Perkins, “Mark
Jesus, Suffering Messiah” Reading the New
Testament: An Introduction,207-210.
[46] Pheme Perkins, “Mark
Jesus, Suffering Messiah” Reading the New
Testament: An Introduction, 210.
[47] Gary R Habemas, “The
Late Twenthieth-Century Resurgence of Naturalistic Responses to Jesus
Resurrection”, 179-196.
Bibliography
Bird, Michael F. “The Markan Community, Myth or Maze: Bauckham’s The Gospel For All Christians Revisited” Journal of Theological Studies Vol 57 pt 2 (UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 474-485.
Brown, Raymond. The Churches the Apostles Left Behind New York: Paulist, 1984.
Carmignac, Jean. Birth of the Synoptics Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1987.
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Ellis, E Earle. The Gospel of Luke USA: Eerdmans, 1980.
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Haydock, George. Haydock Bible Commentary 1859 <http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id264.html>
Lindsey, Robert. Jesus, Rabbi and Lord USA: Cornerstone Publisher, 1990.
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