Commentary on Mark (Commentary on the New Testament Book #2)

Gundry, Robert H.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781441237590
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Delve Deeper into God's Word In this verse-by-verse commentary, Robert Gundry offers a fresh, literal translation and a reliable exposition of Scripture for today's readers. The Gospel of Mark counters the shame of Jesus' crucifixion by showcasing Jesus' power to perform miracles, cast out demons, teach authoritatively, best his opponents in debate, attract crowds, and predict the future. Pastors, Sunday school teachers, small group leaders, and laypeople will welcome Gundry's nontechnical explanations and clarifications. And Bible students at all levels will appreciate his sparkling interpretations. This selection is from Gundry's Commentary on the New Testament.

Introduction

Dear reader,

Here you have part of a commentary on the whole New Testament, published by Baker Academic both in hardback and as an ebook. The electronic version has been broken into segments for your convenience and affordability, though if you like what you find here you may want to consider the whole at a proportionately lower cost. Whether in whole or in part, the e-version puts my comments at your fingertips on your easily portable Kindle, iPad, smartphone, or similar device.

I’ve written this commentary especially for busy people like you—lay people with jobs and families that take up a lot of time, Bible study leaders, pastors, and all who take the New Testament seriously—that is, people who time-wise and perhaps money-wise can’t afford the luxury of numerous heavyweight, technical commentaries on the individual books making up the section of the Bible we call the New Testament. So technical questions are avoided almost entirely, and the commentary concentrates on what will prove useful for understanding the scriptural text as a basis for your personal life as a Christian, for discussion with others, and for teaching and preaching.

Group discussion, teaching, and preaching all involve speaking aloud, of course, and when the New Testament was written, even private reading was done aloud. Moreover, most authors dictated their material to a writing secretary, and books were ordinarily read aloud to an audience. In this commentary, then, I’ve avoided almost all abbreviations (which don’t come through as such in oral speech) and have freely used contractions that characterize speaking (“we’ll,” “you’re,” “they’ve,” and so on). To indicate emphasis in oral speech, italics also occur fairly often.

You’ll mostly have to make your own practical and devotional applications of the scriptural text. But such applications shouldn’t disregard or violate the meanings intended by the Scripture’s divinely inspired authors and should draw on the richness of those meanings. So I’ve interpreted them in detail. Bold print indicates the text being interpreted. Translations of the original Greek are my own. Because of the interpretations’ close attention to detail, my translations usually, though not always, gravitate to the literal and sometimes produce run-on sentences and other nonstandard, convoluted, and even highly unnatural English. Square brackets enclose intervening clarifications, however, plus words in English that don’t correspond to words in the Greek text but do need supplying to make good sense. (As a language, Greek has a much greater tendency than English does to omit words meant to be supplied mentally.) Seemingly odd word-choices in a translation get justified in the following comments. It needs to be said as well that the very awkwardness of a literal translation often highlights features of the scriptural text obscured, eclipsed, or even contradicted by loose translations and paraphrases.

Literal translation also produces some politically incorrect English. Though “brothers” often includes sisters, for example, “sisters” doesn’t include brothers. Similarly, masculine pronouns may include females as well as males, but not vice versa. These pronouns, “brothers,” and other masculine expressions that on occasion are gender-inclusive correspond to the original, however, and help give a linguistic feel for the male-dominated culture in which the New Testament originated and which its language reflects. Preachers, Bible study leaders, and others should make whatever adjustments they think necessary for contemporary audiences but should not garble the text’s intended meaning.

Out of respect for your abilities so far as English is concerned, I’ve not dumbed down the vocabulary used in translations and interpretations. Like the translations, interpretations are my own. Rather than reading straight through, many of you may consult the interpretation of an individual passage now and then. So I’ve had to engage in a certain amount of repetition. To offset the repetition and keep the material in bounds, I rarely discuss others’ interpretations. But I’ve not neglected to canvass them in my research.

On the theological front, the commentary is unabashedly evangelical, so that my prayers accompany this volume in support of all you who strive for faithfulness to the New Testament as the word of God.

Robert Gundry

Mark

Reserved mainly for slaves and criminals being treated as slaves, crucifixion was considered the most shameful of deaths. This Gospel therefore counters the shame of Jesus’ crucifixion by showcasing his power to perform miracles, cast out demons, teach authoritatively, best his opponents in debate, attract crowds, and predict the future (including his own death and resurrection). According to very early church tradition Mark, a sometime companion of the apostles Peter and Paul, wrote the Gospel and got his information about Jesus from Peter. Since Peter didn’t associate with Jesus till their adulthoods, then, the Gospel starts not with Jesus’ birth but with the beginning of his public ministry, introduced as it was by John the baptizer (not to be confused with the apostle John).

JOHN’S PREDICTING A MORE POWERFUL BAPTIZER THAN HE
Mark 1:1–8

1:1–3: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, 2according as it’s written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I’m sending my messenger before your face [= ahead of you], who’ll pave your way [= the road you’ll travel], 3[the messenger who is] the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.’ ” “Gospel” means “good news.” Jews would associate this good news with Isaiah 52:7: “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, [and] says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’ ” Non-Jews would think of the good news of an emperor’s accession to power, birthday, visit to a city, military victory, or bringing of prosperity to the empire. But Mark’s good news has to do with the salvation and victory brought by Jesus over evil in all its demonic and physical forms. “The gospel of Jesus Christ” therefore means “the gospel about Jesus Christ” and refers to a proclaimed message (“the voice of one crying out”), not a book (though because books like Mark’s contain that proclaimed message, the term came to refer to those books in the capitalized form of “Gospels” to distinguish them from the message, kept uncapitalized as “gospel”). “Jesus” is a personal name, the Greek spelling of the Hebrew name “Joshua.” “Christ” is a title, meaning “anointed one” in the sense of “someone divinely appointed for a task.” It’s the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew “Messiah,” which has the same meaning. Somewhere along the line this title “Christ” evolved into another personal name for Jesus. By itself, “God’s Son” doesn’t have to connote deity. The term occurs elsewhere for angels and ordinary kings, for example. But as this Gospel progresses, no doubt will remain that Mark means us to understand that as God’s Son, Jesus is indeed divine.

“The beginning of the gospel . . .” takes place “according as it’s written” in the following Old Testament quotation, which Mark applies to the introductory ministry of John. So this beginning covers John’s ministry in 1:2–8 and no more. The agreement of his ministry with the quotation shows that God, who stands behind the writing of “the prophet,” is working out his plan. Mark names Isaiah as the prophet, and indeed 1:3 contains the text of Isaiah 40:3. But in 1:2 “Behold, I’m sending my messenger before your face” comes from Exodus 23:20, and “who’ll pave your way” comes from Malachi 3:1. Never mind, though. Isaiah deserved mention for providing the bulk of the quotation. God is the “I” who sends John as his “messenger” ahead of “you,” who is Jesus Christ. In Exodus 23:20 the messenger is an angel, and “you” is the nation of Israel. In Malachi 3:1 God is the one whose way is paved. And in Isaiah 40:3 “the Lord” is God. So using acceptable literary license, Mark changes some of these referents to make his quotation apply variously to God, John, and Jesus. God sees to it that someone prepares for his Son’s journey onto the public stage. As is fitting for so high a dignitary as the Christ, God’s Son, the Lord, the road he travels onto that stage needs to be paved, clear, and straight—easily traveled, not like the twisting roads in hilly, mountainous Israel.

1:4–5: There came on the scene John, the one who was baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5And all the Judean region and all the Jerusalemites were going out to him and getting baptized by him in the Jordan River as they were confessing their sins. John’s coming on the scene matches the sending of God’s messenger in 1:2. Baptizing matches paving the way of the Lord, also in 1:2. The wilderness here matches the wilderness there. John’s preaching matches the shouting of a voice in 1:3. And the baptism of repentance matches preparing the Lord’s way and straightening his paths. A wilderness was by and large devoid of human population, but not necessarily of vegetation. There was, in fact, plenty of vegetation along the Jordan River. The sparsity of human population highlights by contrast the going of “all the Judean region and all the Jerusalemites” to John to have him baptize them. “The Judean region” stands for its inhabitants. The first “all” emphasizes the wide extent of this region and joins the second “all” to emphasize the large number who came to be baptized. This large number anticipates the even larger numbers of people whom Jesus will attract to himself. The references to Judea and Jerusalem, which was located in Judea (the southern part of Israel), imply that John was baptizing toward the southern end of the Jordan River, close to where it empties into the Dead Sea. Baptism represented the washing away of sins. Flowing water, such as that of the Jordan River, was especially suited to represent such a washing; and the very word “forgiveness” means a “sending away” that separates sin from the sinner. This separation indicates why Mark has called John’s ministry “the beginning of the good news.” In and of itself, baptism didn’t result in the forgiveness of sins. It was repentance that did. Repentance led to baptism; and confession of sins accompanied baptism to verbalize the repentance, which means a change of mind that results in a change of behavior. The people didn’t baptize themselves. To have done so would have symbolized self-cleansing and self-forgiveness (much as in some contemporary psychology). As a messenger of God, John baptized people to symbolize God’s cleansing them and forgiving their sins.

1:6–8: And John was clothed with camel’s hair and [had] a leather belt around his waist and was eating locusts and wild honey. 7And he was preaching, saying, “The one [who’s] stronger than I is coming after me, the strap of whose sandals I’m not worthy, bending down, to loosen. 8I’ve baptized you with water, but he’ll baptize you in the Holy Spirit.” John was no city-slicker. His clothing and diet carry forward the preceding theme of a wilderness and characterize him as a prophet in the mold of Elijah, whose return was predicted in Malachi 4:5 (see 2 Kings 1:8 for a similar description of the Old Testament Elijah). The one who’s coming after John is Jesus. “After” has a spatial meaning, “behind,” and a temporal meaning, “subsequent to.” Spatially, Jesus will follow as a disciple behind John to the extent of submitting to John’s baptism. Temporally, Jesus will follow John by starting his ministry later than John’s. John attracted all the Judean region and all the Jerusalemites and got them to submit to the baptism of repentance. So if Jesus will be stronger than John, he must be very, very strong. And John’s unworthiness to perform even the extremely menial task of bending down and loosening Jesus’ sandal strap adds yet more to the description of Jesus as stronger. Still further, Jesus’ upcoming baptism of people in the Holy Spirit contrasts favorably with John’s currently baptizing them with mere water. This contrast puts an exclamation mark on Jesus’ greater strength, particularly because the Spirit connotes power (as in Acts 1:8, to take but one example: “you’ll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you”). The Spirit will enter Jesus at his baptism in 1:9–11, so that he’ll exercise power in preaching, teaching, casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead, and even (as we’ll see) in dying as a ransom for people, not to mention rising from the dead. In Mark’s Gospel it’s these very activities—not a later imparting of the Holy Spirit as in Luke-Acts, for example—that will constitute Jesus’ baptizing people in the Holy Spirit (see especially Mark 3:20–30).

GOD’S EMPOWERMENT, ACKNOWLEDGMENT, AND APPROVAL OF JESUS
Mark 1:9–11

1:9–11: And it happened during those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and he was baptized by John into the Jordan. 10And immediately, while coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being split apart and the Spirit descending like a dove [and coming] into him. 11And a voice came from heaven: “You’re my beloved Son; I’ve taken delight in you.” “Those days” refers to the beginnin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Mark
• Notes
• Back Cover