Today we dive into Mark Chapter 1 verse 22. We talk about why others perceived a difference between when Jesus spoke and when the religious teachers of the law were speaking. We talk about the dynamics of “Outer Authority” vs “Inner Authority” and how that development moves as we grow. We speak about the confidence in our own ground and our own voice and the wisdom within that voice.
This Podcast utilizes the New Living Translation to take advantage of its contemporary language if for no other reason. The mission of this podcast is to help listeners explore the deep shift from Ego-Centricity to Cosmic-Centricity while also coming to a deeper appreciation of the Jesus of the New Testament as an incredible example of what that development looks like.
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Thanks, again, Bill! This is a great series, esp using the Gospel of Mark, perhaps one of the least distorted of the NT books? And thanks again for setting me off on a journey last summer of studying the historicity of the bible (and BoM from folk tales, etc, borrowing, improving on stories, making them their own…).
I am enjoying the tie-ins in the bible borrowed from the earlier Sumerian records which our bible reflects, and gleaning what we can from the various versions of stories (contradictions and “impossibilities”) within Sumerian and bible history and the ties to their beliefs, and to the zodiac and more.
No wonder we didn’t hear of baptism before the stories from Jesus’ era, the kick-off of the age of pisces, a water sign, and all the fish symbolism starting then.
I now more fully appreciate the varying versions of Noah, Adam etc from all those varying records, accounts or stories, some of them copying earlier stories of magnificence, the same stories repeating forever, some of them even more fantastically as we go.
It now makes sense how Abrahamic religions broke off from and reviled their parent Sumerian (Babylon) religion (as Jesus did too with Judaism – for greater truth, to set our minds free, which gets lost in the clutter and commanding…), and how many references to the many Sumerian Gods are also embraced right in our own bible too (including the most high god and his two rival son gods of opposite intentions – very Yin and Yang… and also rooted in all cultures root stories), and what all these cultures and stories and tribes divide and come from as well (India, Druid, China, Japan, Americas…).
Varying perspectives are now more fascinating rather than distracting and disenchanting (“lets just toss baby Jesus out with the filthy bathwater…”).
This story or narrative variations concept also hit me strongly at my family’s 4th of July picnic where one of my sons retold an old folk story (Big Claus and Little Claus a morbidly hilarious story with an ironically good moral), passed down verbally from Denmark from the 1800’s through my great grandparents to us. I finally saw the variations in the story as interesting and amazing instead of frustrating that “My son didn’t stick perfectly to the old true version of the story my grandma told us over and over.”