Biblical Literacy

Session 9: April 15, 2021

The Session Assignment [link]

The Lead-in:

I was as unhappy as you were that we had only a few minutes at the end of our session to address the fairly complex but fascinating question of why Mark's Jesus insists on keeping his status as messiah a secret. We'll take a few more minutes at the beginning of our session to discuss it more thoroughly. Please reread the pastiche of explanations by Ehrman to refresh your recollection!

I've added to the regular assignment a short piece from Ehrman's blog in which Mark Goodacre of Duke summarizes his latest book. It's a terrific way to "nail" the resolution of the question of Markan priority and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Finally, I should point out that we'll be reading non-Markan material from Luke including a fair amount of Q. As I said last time, all you really need to know is the Q is the material which appears in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark. But you'll be pleased to also know what scholars have done with this non-existent document. I've assigned two short bits but also provided a link to the longer Atlantic magazine article from 1996.

The Lead-out:

Thanks for the wide-ranging discussion! We didn't quite make it to the end but we'll pick up where we left off next week.