Mark

So, hmm.  This is interesting.  You may recall that in my Matthew review, I mentioned that among most Bible scholars, it’s thought that the Book of Matthew uses Mark as its source material.  Matthew doesn’t have a known author, and I went into Mark thinking that its author and origin would be more clear.  But, as it turns out, we’re not really sure who Mark’s author is either.  Wikipedia states that Mark was likely written in 66-70 A.D., and it “appears as the second New Testament gospel because it was traditionally thought to be an epitome (summary) of Matthew, but most scholars now regard it as the earliest written gospel.”

Matthew: Analysis

Alright guys.  So I wound up splitting my Matthew review into 2 separate posts: A recap post, which you can find here, and an analysis post, which is the one you’re reading now.  The book is just so densely packed in with important stories and covers so much territory (from Jesus’ immaculate conception and birth to his death and resurrection) that I felt like I wanted to do it justice in my recap without skipping major events.  But putting my analysis in the same post would be way too long, hence the split.  If you’re already an expert on the book of Matthew or if you’re only interested in my takeaways from it, you can just start here and skip the recap.

Matthew: Recap

OMG we finally made it to the New Testament!!!  I never thought this would happen.  And it only took 500 years.  I have really flown right through this thing, haven’t I?

We begin the New T with the Gospel of Matthew, and we discover quickly that the New T really wastes no time jumping right into this story and all these new concepts.  Last we saw God’s chosen ones, they had rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem and were already starting to misbehave yet again.  We then pick up in the New T a good 450-ish years later and suddenly we’ve got some dude named John the Baptist wandering around baptizing people and … wait – what the heck does “baptize” mean?  Did they even do that in the Old Testament?  O.k. I just checked – it seems that baptism-like acts were performed a few times in the OT, but they didn’t use this term.  An example is this passage from Leviticus: “8:5 Moses said to the assembly, ‘This is what the Lord has commanded to be done.’  8:6 Then Moses brought Aaron and his sons forward and washed them with water.”  But the Bible really hasn’t yet given an explanation of why it’s being done or what it has evolved into in terms of ritual and meaning by the time it shows up at the start of the New T.  Is it weird that baptism is apparently a Christian ritual that happens without ever being defined by the Bible itself?