Wednesday, November 27, 2013

As for the perfume (Mark 13-14)

Mark 13 has got a lot of notes on it, but it's clearly almost entirely repetition of Matthew 24. The only thing missing is an answer to "Did Jesus know everything?" which I covered here.

Now Mark 14 is mostly a parallel to Matthew 26, but I think it has a lot more differences to cover.

The SAB asks "Is it OK to use perfume?" which I think is one of the biggest stretches for a contradiction I've seen in the SAB. The Exodus verse is a special case in which special perfume was made that was not to be used except for special purposes, and I think that's pretty clear. The Proverbs verse is indeed talking about a whore, but if you're going to say that because she's a whore, everything she does is bad, then you'd have to say that it's also evil for a woman to go outside or use Egyptian linen. While I'm not 100% sure about the Isaiah passages, they sound to me like they're in the same boat as the Proverbs passage.

The SAB then asks "Was Jesus crucified the day before or the day after the Passover meal?" This makes me laugh, because it's a simple misunderstanding. Ask any practicing Jew and they'll tell you that there is a special meal on both the first and second nights of Passover. The verses in John that are referring to the preparation of the meal are talking about the preparing of the second meal.

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