The launch of the FCA is available on video  here.

As the title of my blog states I am an Anglican Ordinand. Sometimes I am happy (even proud) to be part of the CHurch of England. Sometimes, I weep. Today, it happens, I am filled with anger after reading the following briefing from Ekklesia ‘ Where is the Church of England’s heart invested.

If this report is true then it is tragic.  The Lorship of Christ should impact every sphere of life including that of financial investments. The following quote fills me with rage anger,

“The core of the problem is that the Established Church sees its investments primarily in terms of fundraising rather than in terms of core calling and purpose (including economic justice).

See also

E-mail a letter of protest here.

A couple of weeks ago I read the excellent monograph (based on his doctoral work) of Dr Timothy Gray entitled ‘Jesus and the temple: The narrative role of the temple in the Gospel of Mark’.

The Temple in the Gospel of Mark
A Study in its Narrative Role
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2 Reihe – WUNT 242
by Timothy C. Gray
Mohr Siebeck, 2008
xi + 226 pages, English
Paper
ISBN: 9783161496851
Your Price: $87.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/item/GRATEMPLE

It  is currently unavailable through amazon but his dissertation can be purchased through proquest. My guess is that it cheaper to buy the origonal dissertation rather than the book which is published by Eisenbrauns. As far as I can see their is no difference in content. The disadvantage is that I had to print out my pdf version.

Here is the blurb

Abstract: Scholars have long recognized the salient place held by the temple in Mark’s narrative. What remains to be examined is why Mark gives the temple such a conspicuous place. There is also in Mark a significant connection between the temple and eschatology that has never been examined in depth. This study takes up a narrative analysis of the eschatological role of the temple in the latter part of Mark (chapters 11-15). Coinciding with Mark’s emphasis on the temple in these chapters is his prominent use of Israel’s Scriptures through citation and allusion. Thus, the present study gives significant attention to Markan intertextuality. One of the methodological findings of this study is that Mark’s use of intertextuality often relates to his intratextuality, that is, many of the key words and themes of Mark’s Gospel are interwoven through repetition into the narrative tapestry of his story. The study of Markan intertextuality, particularly Mark in 13, shows that an important pattern underlies the clustering of OT texts throughout. Mark’s gospel frequently deploys OT texts that speak of prophetic eschatology, particularly those concerning the great tribulation that surrounded the fall of Jerusalem and the temple at the hands of the Babylonians. Mark applies these texts to the second temple in order to show that its destruction marks the end of the ages foretold by the prophets. Mark then connects the death of Jesus to the eschatological tribulation, rooting eschatology first and foremost in Jesus, and secondarily in the temple. Whereas the temple was called by God to be the focal point of Israel’s restoration and the final ingathering of the nations, it failed to fulfill this vocation and is declared by Jesus ‘a den of thieves,’ doomed for destruction. Through his passion narrative and especially his description of Jesus’ death, Mark portrays Jesus as the cornerstone of a new temple that succeeds where its predecessor failed.

After reading the dissertation I did some googling and have found that he has produced a series of bible studies in mp3 format. His teaching style is excellent and these are certainly worth a listen. It is great skill for a scholar to be able to communicate passionately.

Here is the link

Mark 1:1 ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ’ Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ

“εὐαγγέλιον in the imperial cult. This is the most important usage for our purpose. Note must be taken of what is said concerning the θεῖος ἄνθρωπος (→ 712), τύχη and σωτηρία. The emperor unites all these in his own person. This is what gives εὐαγγέλιον its significance and power. The ruler is divine by nature.30 His power extends to men, to animals, to the earth and to the sea. Nature belongs to him; wind and waves are subject to him.31 He works miracles and heals men.32 He is the saviour of the world who also redeems individuals from their difficulties (→ σωτήρ). τύχη is linked up with his person; he is himself τύχη.33 He has appeared on earth as a deity in human form. He is the protective god of the state. His appearance is the cause of good fortune to the whole kingdom. Extraordinary signs accompany the course of his life. They proclaim the birth of the ruler of the world. A comet appears at his accession, and at his death signs in heaven declare his assumption into the ranks of the gods.34 Because the emperor is more than a common man, his ordinances are glad messages and his commands are sacred writings. What he says is a divine act and implies good and salvation for men. He proclaims εὐαγγέλια through his appearance, and these εὐαγγέλια treat of him (→ 713). The first evangelium is the news of his birth: ἦρξεν δὲ τῶι κόσμωι τῶν διʼ αὐτὸν εὐανγελι[ων ἡ γενέθλιος] τοῦ θεοῦ.35 “The birthday of the god was for the world the beginning of the joyful messages which have gone forth because of him.” TDNT 2:724″

Ched Myers ‘ He [Mark] is serving notice that he is challenging the apparatus of imperial propagation……Mark is taking dead aim at Caesar and his legitimating myths. From the very first line, Mark’s literary strategy is revealed as subversive. Gospel is not an inappropriate title for this story, for Mark will indeed narrate a battle. But the ‘good news’ of Mark does not herald another victory by Rome’s armies; it is a declaration of war upon the political culture of empire.’ (Binding the Strong Man, 124)

John Goldingay - Old Testament Theology Volume One, Israel's Gospel

I am currently breakign up my research day (Mark’s Gospel, Temple, Atonement) with reading a few pages of Goldingay. He is a greatre writer and causes one to think outside normal systematic catergories.

‘God is not a micromanager who seeks to make every decision for the company, but the wiser kind of executive who formulates clear goals but involves the work force in determining how to implement them, and also recognizes that the failure of members of the work force will require ongoing flexibility in pursuing these goals. The story does not give the mpression that from the beginning God had planned the flood, or the summons of Abraham, or the exodus, or the introduction of the monarchy, or the building of the temple, or the exile, or the sending of the messiah. It portarys these as responses to concrete situations, while all are outworkings of God’s purpose and character. Our security lies not in the world’s actual story being the outworking of God’s plan (that would be scary) but in its unfolding within the control of an executive who will go to any lengths to see that the vision gets fulfilled–even dying for it. In this sense the lamb of God was slain before the world’s foudnation. God has always been that kind og God.’ Page 60

What do you think?

Golo

I have been reading a great doctoral dissertation from T.C Gray entitled ‘Jesus and the Temple’. In a chapter examining the eschatological discourse in Mark 13 he offers a illustration about the differences between narrative and source/redcation criticism. I like it, here it is.
‘Here the approach to the text can be likened to examining an oriental rug. The source and redaction critics look at the underside of the rug to find seams and places where different sources are threaded together, wheras the narrative critic looks at the other side of the rug to discern the patterns and unity that have been woven out of the different sources’ page 160

Does anyone have any book suggestions for those seeking to explore narrative criticism in the gospels?

David J.A. Clines offers us this intersting quote,

‘If there are no ‘right’ interpretations, and no validity beyond the assent of various interest groups, biblical interpreters have to give up the goal of determinate and universally acceptable interpretations, and devote themselves to producing interpretation they can sell- in whatever mode is called for by the communities they choose to serve.’- in ‘Reader-Reponse, Deconstruction and Bespoke Interpretation’ New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible

Sorry Mr Clines I think that your response to modernity is a bit over the top. Sit down, have a cup of tea and read about a critical realist approach to historiography.

Matthew Arnold- Victorian Poet: The Buried Life

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there’s a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,                        10
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal’d
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved                                     20
Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves–and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!–doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?–must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain’d;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain’d!

Fate, which foresaw                                                    30
How frivolous a baby man would be–
By what distractions he would be possess’d,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity–
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being’s law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;                        40
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;                        50
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us–to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves–            60
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress’d.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well–but ’tis not true!
And then we will no more be rack’d
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;                                                70
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul’s subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.

Only–but this is rare–
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,                                               80
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen’d ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress’d–
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.            90

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.