Posts Tagged: Mark

Chiastic Structures – The Key to Interpreting the Bible

Where in the Bible …is Poetry

chiasticStructure

In order to appreciate the Joseph story as the masterpiece that it is we must introduce you to a concept with which most of you probably are not familiar. Ancient writers and rhetoricians loved to use a literary structure that in modernity has come to be called the “chiasm,” referring to the Greek letter “chi” (our letter X). A chiastic figure of speech is a… Read more »

The Elijah Theme in the Gospel of Mark

Where in the Bible …is the GOSPEL

If we assume the integrity of the longer ending of Mark’s Gospel, Christ’s answer in Mark 9:12-13 to the disciples’ Elijah question occupies a position almost precisely in the center of the book. The centrality of the Elijah question suggests that one purpose of the Gospel of Mark was to respond to the query that arose as a consequence of the scribal teaching (certainly based… Read more »