Mark’s Counterculture

Last week I was reading through the proofs of an article that I’ve written and will come out later this year. The article compares the ancient novel The Life of Aesop and the Gospel of Mark. Coming back to this text, it struck me again just how deeply countercultural Mark is. Read through this text…

Honor Among Christians: The Cultural Key to the Messianic Secret

Publisher: FORTRESS PR Publication Date: 10/2010 ISBN-13: 9780800697099 Author: David Watson You can purchase your copy here. Readers have long puzzled over peculiar aspects of the Gospel of Mark: Jesus’ attempts to conceal his deeds and his identity. William Wrede called these and similar motifs the “messianic secret” in Mark, and proposed that Mark had…

A very interesting religious figure

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is one of the more interesting figures in public religious discourse today. He’ll be a Stillwater UMC near Dayton, Ohio, on December 1 at 7:00 p.m. to speak on the topic “Finding Faith Without Fanaticism.” If you can make it, I’d love to see you there.

Honor Among Christians

Well, at long last, it’s out. Honor Among Christians is my take on the so-called “messianic secret” in Mark. I’m trying to answer the question, “How would ancient Mediterranean people have heard these stories in Mark in which Jesus attempts to conceal his deeds and identity?” In 1901 William Wrede wrote a book that we…

Buddy Walk

My family and I participated in the Dayton area 2010 Buddy Walk yesterday. The Buddy Walk is an event that occurs all over the country to raise awareness and promote inclusion of people with Down Syndrome. There were several folks from the UTS community there who are not directly affected by DS but who came…

The Disabled God

This work began as Nancy Eiesland’s master’s thesis, but eventually became a classic work in the area of theology and disability. At less than 120 pages of text, it functions essentially as a programmatic call to rethink assumptions, practices, and theological models that are harmful to persons with disabilities. The actual constructive theological proposal is…

New book on Bible and disability

Some time ago, I read Amos Yong’s book, Theology and Down Syndrome. As noted in one of the posts below, I found this book extremely helpful. Recently, Prof. Yong was kind enough to send me a manuscript of his forthcoming book, The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision for the People of God.…

Should we preach on Mark’s longer ending?

After reading James Sanders’ Torah and Canon, I made my way through its brief companion and sequel, Canon and Community. Sanders holds that historical critics, whether they meant to or not, have effectively “de-canonized” parts of the Bible. If some part of the Bible is deemed to be an interpolation, spurious, or somehow later than…