Chapter # 3 Paragraph # 4 Study # 1
November 5, 2019
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis: Mark's second "response" thesis involves the idiotic decision of Jesus' "family" particularly in respect to Jesus' "The Son of The Man has authority on earth to forgive sins".
Introduction: We have been arguing that Mark, having presented his explanation for why Jesus was rejected by the established "religion", is now presenting the three types of responses Jesus received from the people in respect to "Who" He is and "What" He is capable of doing.
The first of these is the record we have already considered: the response of The Twelve. This is the only legitimate response of those recorded. There were "called by Him" because they were the ones He wished to be His disciples. They were also, by extension, given new identities into which they were to "grow" by "being with Him" and "being sent out by Him".
This evening we are going to begin to look into the next type of response: that of His family. It is the totally unacceptable "lukewarm" response of the real "mentally unstable ones".
- I. The Identification of Them as "Family".
- A. Mark does not, at first, identify them in this way.
- 1. The response itself is actually recorded in an "interrupted" form that begins in 3:20-21 and is then clarified and expanded in 3:31-35.
- 2. In this initial part of the record, Mark identifies them as "those alongside of Him": it is actually the use of a plural definite article coupled to a preposition followed by a personal pronoun.
- a. Because this particular preposition is initially used only in 1:16; 2:13; and 4:1 with this use in 3:22 stuck into the record at this point, we can see that Mark considers "those" who have this "identity" as completely in contradiction to what it was supposed to mean.
- 1) Before this "identity" is assigned, it was only used to describe Jesus' "alongside" status in regard to the Sea of Galilee while He was selecting "disciples" and summoning them to "Follow Me".
- 2) Then, after this "identity" is assigned, the very next use has Jesus "alongside" the sea in His "teaching mode" once again (as in 2:13).
- B. It is only later, in 3:31-35, that this "group" was actually His own mother and brothers.
- 1. Clearly, of all of the people on the planet, these should have been eager to be His disciples.
- 2. But, as shows up almost immediately after this record in 3:31-35, there was a "reason" for this false response given in Jesus' teaching in 4:1-20.
- II. The "Problem" The Family Had With Jesus.
- A. There is nothing in the immediate text (3:20-21) to indicate a "problem".
- 1. There is nothing "wrong" with being swamped by people.
- 2. There is nothing "wrong" with being extremely busy.
- B. But, Mark has already indicated what is "wrong" be the way he forces "recall" upon his readers.
- 1. First, he makes the rather innocuous statement, "He is coming into a house."
- a. The oddities begin with the present tense verb set into historical (past tense) narrative: it indicates something significant.
- b. Then there is another thing about "a house".
- 1) There are two words in Mark's record for "house". oikos (masculine gender) and oikia (feminine gender) [Vine's Expository Dictionary claims that "Attic Law" (ancient Greek law) used oikos to indicate an entire estate and oikia to indicate only the dwelling.
- 2) But the issue is not whether Jesus was "on an estate" or "in a house" as far as Mark is concerned: the issue is the way he used the words earlier in his record.
- a) If he had used oikia in our current text, our memories would have pushed us back to either 1:29 and the initial healing of those healed by Jesus to build His reputation, or to 2:15 and Jesus' eating in the house of Levi with the "deplorables" as one of the reasons the scribes and Pharisees criticized Him.
- b) Because he did not want us to go to either of those prior "issues", he deliberately used the word oikos because he first used it in 2:1 in a very similar setting and because he wanted us to recall what happened in that oikos in that setting: He Self-identified as "The Son of The Man Who has authority to forgive sins" and got into immediate trouble with the scribes and Pharisees.
- c) To cement this desire, he "stacked up" the vocabulary between the two records (3:20-21) and (2:1-12).
- i. The word "went" is used in both paragraphs (though in 2:3 it is translated "come").
- ii. The word "oikos" is used in both paragraphs (as already noted).
- iii. The word "multitude/crowd" is used in both paragraphs.
- iv. The word "again" is used in both paragraphs.
- v. The word "so that" is used in both paragraphs.
- vi. The words "they could not" are used in both paragraphs.
- vii. The word "heard" as a motivation word to produce action is used in both paragraphs.
- viii. The word "existemi", inconsistently translated by the translators is used in both paragraphs.
- ix. This is a remarkable "stack" of shared words given that 3:20-21 is only two verses long.
- 2. This makes a case for the answer to the question: what is the family's problem?
- a. Either they cannot get past His "I have authority to forgive sins as the One Who is going to receive an eternal kingdom from the Ancient of Days" (Daniel's vision).
- b. Or they realize that there is real trouble coming because of the "religious and deadly reaction".
- 1) This particular two-verse introduction, being interrupted by the record of the official stance of Judaism, indicates that it may well be the reason for the family's intentions.
- 2) But, if this is the real reason, underlying it is the idiocy of thinking that "The Son of The Man" cannot handle that murderous intention of the scribes and other leaders of Israel.
