The Bible Study Group

In the introduction we mentioned that, although the group was only two and a half years old, two original members had moved on. One of them was Samuel, who struggled hard to follow discussions in English, and who, an Eritrean immigrant, had to move to London. Samuel returned to our last meeting, on a brief visit from his course of study. This time we, rather than Samuel, were struggling, because Samuel studied theology in Ethiopia well before he came to live in England.

The group is near the end of its study of St Mark's Gospel. After listening quietly to our discussion on Chapter 15, the next-to-last chapter that takes us quickly through Jesus' arrest, interrogation, torture and crucifixion, Samuel opened some notes from his earlier studies of the gospels. Beginning with comments on our discussion, comments that showed that he had followed our English with no trouble at all, Samuel introduced ideas which we (or some of us) had not thought of.

St Mark's gospel is fairly laconic. Traditionally it was written from St Peter's recollection of his journey with Jesus. Samuel took us through evidence in support of this: Mark's gospel records events only from Jesus' baptism, through his ministry to his crucifixion and resurrection. It tells us nothing about Our Lord's birth and early life, because Peter had no first hand knowledge of those events but also because Mark's gospel is about Jesus and his ministry, whilst St Matthew's gospel is about God the Father sending his Son to fulfil promises in the Old Testament and St Luke's is about God sending his Holy Spirit to support and comfort the Church after Jesus' ascension.

Mark himself does not appear explicitly in his gospel. He does appear obscurely as (probably) the young man who escaped out of his clothes when Jesus was arrested. This, Samuel said, was the general style of writing in New Testament times and shortly after them; the author kept him-or herself out of the book except for an implicit reference to establish authenticity. Samuel went on to refer to writings by the Christian fathers in the early centuries of the Christian era. In these writings, Father Jerome and others recorded details of Jesus' early life, and of Mary's (his mother's) life and ancestry. These writings are still around, and are recorded in later religious art; but they are not in our Bible. Unlike Samuel, the Bible Study group members are not theologians; we do not know, though we may try to learn, more than this about what Samuel told us.

John Bradberry