Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

gmark - Re: Chaper 13

gmark AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Kata Markon

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Hudson Barton <hhbv AT highwinds.com>
  • To: "Kata Markon" <gmark AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Chaper 13
  • Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 16:34:35 -0500


Professor L.W. Hurtado" wrote:

Well, it does seem likely that the author of Mark expected/hoped
for the coming of the Son of Man sooner than has proven to be the
case!! But, on the other hand, the dominant thrust of chap 13 is to
REFUTE and DISCOURAGE any notion that the end is immediate
(13:5-8, 10, 13b, 21-23), but must be preceded by (1) all sorts of
traumas that are merely what characterizes an indefinite time
period (the single most repeated theme is warning against being
> led astray and alarmed at the disasters)


Yes. The passage warns of predictions which move the date of this "end" either forward or backward..."Take heed, watch, for you do not know when..." The point Jesus is making is to recommend that his disciples interpret clues about the "end" with faith and not by sight. Jesus here is engaged in his well understood habit of obscuring facts for exactly the purpose of teaching his disciples how to walk by faith. It may be reasonable to conclude that Jesus himself felt unsure of the end's details in his early ministry, but this would merely point to the fact that he himself was attempting to "walk by faith."

Mark 13 also presents a simile of a man leaving his servants in charge of his affairs as he departs on a journey... "It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge..." The man provides no prediction of when he will return. Indeed, even he may not know the hour when... If this "master" dies while he is away and his heir returns to claim the inheritance, the law is clear that the servants (and/or their heirs) have a duty to turn over the property to the rightful owner.

Therefore, I see no problem with Mark 13 being about the final "end", even an immanent one. At the very least it is a layer of meaning that cannot be avoided. To make sense of it, the word "generation" should be taken in its broadest sense to include all servants (and heirs of servants) who have been entrusted with the Master's property.

Finally, this obsession with marking time, to know the exact hour of everything, is even more an issue with modern man than it was with those whom Jesus warned.... but I digress.


Hudson Barton




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page