A declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us (Intro to Luke)

I was thinking that I wasn't really satisfied with the way my coverage of the book of Mark ended up. The thing is, it's been my policy in general that when I've covered a topic, rather than going over it again, I prefer to link back to the old post where I covered it in the first place. In general, that's not a bad way of doing things. Except...

When you get to the gospels, you're dealing with essentially the same story told four times over. Yeah, each of the four gospels has its own unique features, but there's a lot of overlap. As a result of that overlap, when I worked my way through the book of Mark (which doesn't have a lot that Matthew doesn't) I ended up having post after post of "I already covered this, let me give a link..." To some extent, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but in another way, it made for rather poor reading.

I've decided that I don't want to do that again, so when I go through the book of Luke (and John as well), I'm going to treat everything as though I'm explaining it for the first time. I just think it will make the posts better, as well as the fact that I assume the majority of my readers are coming here from the SAB, and if they're looking for anything, they want simple answers, not links shunting them off to a variety of other places.

That being said, I'm not going to redo the sections I've already done, so let me just give links to:

John the son of Zacharias (Luke 1:1-25)

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 1:26-80)

Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son (Luke 2:1-20)

All things must be fulfilled which were written in the law (Luke 2:21-52)

Who shall ascend into heaven? (Mark 16)

Mark 16 is going to be largely a repeat of all the questions from Matthew 28 (please check that one out as it explains a lot), but I know all of the resurrection accounts have their own quirks that need to be dealt with, so let's see what Mark brings up as new.

"Were the men or angels sitting or standing?" Yeah, this is a contradiction, but a pretty minor point. If I had to give my opinion, I'd go by the consensus of Mark and John's Gospels I guess. I was going to say because they were eye witnesses, but they weren't eye witnesses to this event, were they?

As the SAB points out, Mark's Gospel is largely believed by scholars to have ended at verse 8, making verses 9-20 a later edited better ending. This is probably true, as I understand some very good scholarship points to this being the case. The SAB goes on to address the last verses, however, so I do as well. And anyway, it reads like an add-on as it doesn't seem to stick with the more or less chronological story so far, but adds some notes about the day as a whole.

"Did the eleven disciples believe the two men?" I think this is a manufactured contradiction, as the verse in Luke doesn't say the two men were believed (and I do believe that this passage is talking about the two men from Luke, which I'm sure we'll hear more about when I cover that Gospel.) So they said Jesus had appeared to "Simon", but are we talking about Simon Peter, the apostle, or some other Simon? (You may have noticed that "Simon" "John" and "Mary" are very popular names in the N.T.)

There are a lot of other questions that I've answered in various places towards the end of this chapter, but the last one I see here being new is "When did Jesus ascend into heaven?" I suppose this may be a contradiction, but there are a few things to be said about the whole thing. As I already said, the last few verses of Mark aren't about establishing any kind of chronology of events, so they can be dismissed for this question. With that out of the way, only the passage in Luke 24 remains to be addressed, as the other verses, although listed separately, really do agree. (I mean, forty days is many days, isn't it?) So what is there to be said about the Luke passage? I would say this: There's no reason why Jesus couldn't have ascended into Heaven multiple times, after all, he came back down from Heaven to witness to a number of people long after Pentecost, most notably the Apostle Paul.

I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine (Mark 15)

Mark 15 once again is going to be largely a repeat of the issues in Matthew 27. Looking through the notes, I see two issues not covered yet, one of which I have an answer for, and one of which I don't.

"Did Jesus drink from the cross?" It may be worth noting that in the two verses shown here, there are two different substances being offered to Jesus to drink. At the Last Supper, Jesus said that he wouldn't drink wine again until in his kingdom, so when they offered him wine, he refused. That doesn't mean he couldn't take anything at all to drink, and so I figure at a separate time they offered him vinegar and he took it.

"When (at what hour) was Jesus crucified?" There does seem to be a true contradiction here, and while I have heard there were different methods of reckoning time in the first century I don't know that any of them make this work out. Mark seems pretty clear that it was the "third hour" which means mid-morning, but the other Gospels all make it sound like an afternoon event.

Oh, and I guess I could make a response to the note on verse 33. If the darkness spoken of (which was not called "complete" darkness) was something like a solar eclipse, that would be noteworthy, but since it doesn't say, it may have simply been a sudden heavy cloud cover, which would hardly be historically notable.

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.

Filled with the Holy Ghost (Mark 11-12)

As it happens, all of the issues that the SAB brings up in Mark 11 were addressed when I covered Matthew 21 (which also covers the parable of the vineyard at the beginning of the next chapter).

So Mark 12 ends up likewise being very similar to Matthew 22, but there are a few differences there. Verse 26 asks "Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush?" I'm surprised I didn't cover this back in Exodus 3; I assume this is a note that has been added since I covered Exodus. Anyway, the O.T. passages that talk about this occurrence make reference to "the angel of the LORD", and thus the SAB says that it was an angel, and not God. However, most people who study the Bible understand that "the angel of the LORD" is the equivalent of God, so while it may sound strange, it's not a contradiction.

I addressed how many gods there are in Exodus 12. The question of "When was the Holy Ghost given?" is a tricky one that I thought I'd addressed, but it appears not. It gets more complicated than even the linked page lets on, as I think you can rightfully include any mentions of "the spirit of the LORD" which are plentiful in the O.T. Anyway, the answer is that the Holy Ghost was given generally to the Church as a whole at Pentecost shortly after Jesus' resurrection, but there were occasional dispensations that preceded that event.

Those are all the big issues from these two chapters, but I'll make a comment on the SAB's final note on 12:41-44, "Jesus believed in progressive taxation." I'm happy to think that this may have been the case, as I myself am a fan of progressive taxation, but I think reading that into the scene may be a bit much. In fact, given that the widow "cast in all that she had" progressive taxation would imply that Jesus thinks everyone should be taxed at 100%.