What I found interesting about this passage was that I initially found myself thinking like the righteous persons when reading this passage. When the father of the prodigal son praised the son who returned and the loyal one got upset, I understood where he was coming from.  I almost started to feel like I should become a sinner so that I can repent later and God can rejoice.  However, when I read that his father said to him: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31), I interpreted this to mean that God does not view his loyal righteous people as less than the sinners who have repented, he has already accepted them and rejoices in their company. Even though Jesus show’s how the son was welcomed back with open arms, he does not further elaborate upon what happened to the prodigal son. His father had already given him his share of the farm, So I assume he will no longer inherit the land. Upon further reflection of this parable, I conclude that it is essential for us to stay loyal and righteous in God’s eyes, and rather than getting jealous for a sinner being praised for repentance, we should join God in that rejoiceful appraisal of someone turning from evil and entering the kingdom of God.

In fact, it seems as though calling the people righteous persons in the text is actually a bit ironic. At the time, according to the people of the world, being “righteous” simply meant that they piously followed the Jewish customs of law. They believed that this is how they found favor in God and that the sinners and tax collectors could not.

I’ve known this parable of Jesus for a while, but what I discovered through a second read of the passage and reviewing The Broadman Bible Commentary is that there was confusion about the idea of who is your neighbor. According to the Broadman Bible Commentary, at the time, the question of who is my neighbor was a “legitimate question in contemporary theological discussions (Dean). Also, apparently Pharisees would often limit the definition of the word neighbor to include only fellow Jews and even exclude tax collectors and sinners. Jesus implied that any fellow man could be a neighbor since He did not specify the assaulted man’s race or nationality. Furthermore, he uses the example of a Samaritan, a race that his hearers felt very prejudiced towards. So, not only was Jesus undermining the power and authority of the Pharisees by subverting their definition of what a neighbor is but he was also directly going against the bigoted minds of his hearers. I personally enjoy and find that the way Jesus thinks about the world resonates with me the most as opposed to how the Jews felt about the law. Through his parable, Jesus shows how we should exhibit the love of God to any and all kinds of people.

Also, there are good reasons why people passed him by. For instance, the priest could have helped the man, but the situation is very complicated for him since he is in high religious authority. If he touches the man’s body and he turns out to be dead, he can become defiled (Lev. 21:1) (Dean). Also, a Levite is one of the helpers in the Temple, and helpers are typically compelled to follow the priests’ example (Dean).

 

Works Cited.

Dean, Robert James. Luke. Broadman Press, 1983.

Jesus of Nazareth often used parabolic speech forms in order to articulate his teachings using fabricated examples that the people he was teaching to could understand. To refer to one of Cosby’s examples, he speaks to how he used to wear shrink-to-fit jeans, so he had a good understanding of the parable of shrunk and unshrunk clothes. On the other hand, Jesus also speaks of fermenting grape juice into wine via the use of animal skins, which is something I’m assuming the people of Israel and the other nearby nations were well acquainted with. I believe these examples sum up again how we are to interpret biblical readings. Understanding more and more of the ancient context helps us to get a better grasp of what Jesus means when he’s using these olden examples.

For instance, in Mark 6:21 when Jesus used aphorisms to communicate distilled wisdom into society, he refers to the idea that no one can serve two masters. By doing this, he alludes to slavery, which was accepted at that time. However, I would conjecture that if Jesus were here today in our American society, he would teach more Westernized parables that would make more sense to us in our current cultural context. Surely in 2,000 years from now, education will be more advanced and the culture of whatever dominant society prevails at that time would certainly be different. This is just how the passage of time works. Furthermore, I noticed how imperative it is to be aware of when Jesus uses hyperbole, sarcasm, and even grotesque comical imagery to illustrate points. I took notice that Jesus is a pretty funny guy when it comes to calling people out on their pious law-keeping nonsense, especially the Pharisees. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize when Jesus uses hyperbole, and not to just take what he says literally always. To provide a case, I’ll refer to when Jesus commands us to cut our hand off, or gouge our eyes out if they cause us to sin. I think it’s important to recognize he was using hyperbole here, and not commanding us to legitimately disfigure ourselves if we sin.

I chose to read the book of Mark for the reading assignment. I found that after reading this book, my perspective on the definition of the gospel has changed. My old definition was: “I believe that the gospel is the good news of God and Jesus, written in the Bible”. I now see that the gospel is much more than this. The book of Mark is riddled with stories of Jesus performing miracles such as healing the sick, feeding thousands of people with few loaves of bread, correcting the disabled, and so much more. He also outright went against the highest, most pious religious upholders of the law, the Pharisees. I am not 100% certain but I believe that would have been a very bold move for someone to do that during that time period. It is truly amazing to read about all the good works Jesus had done for his people. Furthermore, a story that resonated with me greatly was The healing of a boy with a spirit, from Mark chapter 9. The portion of the story that I liked was verse 24, which says,  ^“Immediately the father of the child cried out,^[h] “I believe; help my unbelief!”’.

I interpreted this to mean that even though our doubts, and when we wrestle in our faith, Jesus can still help us by answering our calls to him. I also found it interesting how Jesus articulated this specific instance of casting out spirits could have only been done via prayer. I think I would like to talk more about that in class. What makes that instance of casting out demons in his name any different from the other times his disciples were doing that? Lastly, I think a perfect definition of what the Gospel is comes from the ending of Mark, where Jesus tells his disciples to go about the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. Since Gospel and good news seem to be interchangeable, I would say that the gospel is this: Anyone who undoubtedly believes in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ will be saved, and anyone who does not will be condemned.

Furthermore, those who believe will be able to cast out demons, speak in new tongues, pick up snakes in their hands, drink harmful liquids without pain, they will be able to lay their hands on the sick, and they will be healed. These are very bold claims by Jesus and I would also like to discuss these more. For example, if we drank poison, would we not feel pain? I know this seems like a silly question but I would like to delve into it more.

According to the definition I derived from Google, the gospel is the teaching or revelation of Christ.

I’ve always heard that the word Gospel means good news, so that is what I think it means.

I believe that the gospel is the good news of God and Jesus, written in the Bible. It’s a simple definition but that’s how I would define it.

 

In this reading, I especially took notice to Cosby’s idea of intentionally trying to notice what the authors of the gospel intentionally leave out, and what they believe needs further explanation. This can help you gain a better idea of what audience they were writing for, and will certainly help with interpretation in general. Furthermore, I find it interesting that the Book of Matthew uses circumlocutions for God and that this Jewish tradition of indirectly referring to God has stayed in the culture to this day. Going along with the idea of repetition being important, Matthew often repeated that Jesus was fulfilling prophecy. This must have been an important idea to him. It is also to see how the authors of the gospels had different writing styles. For example, Mark has bad grammar in his writing, while on the other hand, Luke uses writing conventions of the highly educated. These authors, like all people, come from different upbringings which influences the way they see Jesus and the world. I also find it interesting that the book of Mark was written for a gentile audience, and Cosby says this is so because Mark explains the Jewish customs in detail for those he assumes are not aware. Furthermore, what I found interesting is that Luke arranges the events in Jesus’ life topically, rather than chronologically. This seems like a good way of organizing for the intention of deriving meaning, but since his book is also the one that focuses on history, writing like this can be a little challenging to read. It’s important to keep this background information in mind when reading the gospels, so that we can understand the writer’s biases and try to throw our own out the door.

What I found particularly interesting about the book of Malachi was when God was saying to the people that their sacrifices were not honoring to him. The people he was speaking about were sacrificing their either sick, lame, or handicapped goats. The Lord called the sacrifices they were giving “polluted foods”. I find this idea interesting because many times in the Christian faith, we see the commands of the Lord and obey them on a very surface level. For example, if a significant other were to ask their boyfriend or girlfriend: “What did you do this weekend” and they went to the club with friends and cheated on their significant other, but simply replied “I went to the club with friends then went home to sleep” then that person would not technically be lying. However, that line of thought is dishonest and is referred to as lying by omission. So while yes, someone could not technically be lying, they are still not being sincere, which is what God wants. What challenged me about this chapter was the very first sentence, “An oracle. The word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi”. This sentence makes me ask, is this book an interpretation of what God would say to Israel, or was God speaking to Malachi and he simply wrote down what He was saying. Something else I noticed about this book was that at the end of chapter 2, God criticized those who ask “Where is the God of justice?”. I feel like this a question many Christians ask themselves nowadays, but its wording possibly more resembles something like “Why does God allow suffering?”. Interesting read.

What I found particularly interesting in this chapter was the repetition of promises God made. He understood of a certain population of a city committed three transgressions, but had they committed a fourth, he would not forgive them. This theme of God being ok with three but not with four occurs many times throughout the book of Amos. Throughout this chapter, I noticed that there was quite a bit of violent imagery associated with God, which goes against the traditional depiction of God that is displayed often in the New Testament, and often in contemporary protestant teachings. Also throughout this chapter, God seems to be angry with literally all the people of every town and city. Even Israel, the holy land, God says he will strike the capitals until the thresholds shake, and shatter them on the heads of all the people; and those who are left he will kill with the sword; not one of them shall flee away not one of them shall escape. In Amos chapter 5, God speaks of how the Israelite’s false gods will all come to nothing, and he will destroy them. He states that if you seek the LORD, you will live. Even throughout this extreme righteous anger, God still gives a way out to those who desire to follow him. God says 

“I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
    and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
    and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.”

To me, this last quote seems to be a glimmer of hope for the Israelites who have wronged God via the worship of false Gods or other sins. I find this last excerpt interesting, and the idea of this extremely angry God to be a bit challenging. I think it would be interesting to discuss in class the topic of righteous anger

To begin, there isn’t too much I could say regarding a two-page chapter covering the topic of the prophets of Ancient Israel. I am kind of challenged as to why Cosby did not make this a more intentionally informative chapter. He could have included stories and more background information about these prophets. However, he certainly knows more about this subject than I so I won’t question him too much about his decision to make this chapter so short. I liked the point where Cosby gave the definition of a prophet. Which is: A prophet is a messenger of God, one who is entrusted with a message from God that is addressed to a specific group of people in a particular historical context. The concept of a prophet is very interesting to me because even though they are not directly quoting scripture, they are a specially chosen people by God to articulate the message and wishes of God. Furthermore, the concept of a prophetic frenzy was a very interesting one to me. It bewilders me how at times, for someone to hear from God they enter a certain trance-like state that allows them to be fully receptive to his message. To me, it makes sense that it is necessary to be in a state of trance.

Trance is defined as a half-conscious state characterized by an absence of response to external stimuli, typically as induced by hypnosis or entered by a medium. In other realms of life, a trance sounds like an evil place to be, but if one were hypnotized by God to receive his message then that sounds like a good thing, especially since they develop a lack of acknowledgment to external stimuli, i.e distractions. If you can block out distractions and only hear God’s voice, then it must be certain that his message will return true and unaltered.

What I found interesting about that God works through Jonah no matter what he does. Even when Jonah fleed from Nineveh to Tarshish God worked through Jonah by creating a big storm. Once the storm was affecting the sailors, they asked Jonah what God he worshipped. Once he told them the whole spiel, they heaved him off the boat. After they performed this action, the storm stopped and the sailors suddenly feared God. So through, Jonah’s disobedience, God made something good happen. Also, when Jonah was swallowed by the great fish, he claimed that he cried out of the belly of Sheol. This was a concept that Cosby introduced to us in one of the readings we did for class recently.  Throughout this story, despite Jonah being disobedient, he seems to have a very personal relationship with God, one that we never really hear about nowadays. A question I’ve always had is why doesn’t God speak outright to people like he used to in the Old Testament? Did this stop after the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Anyway, I wonder to what significance the fish brought to the story. It just seems like a good way for God to transport Jonah.

Furthermore, what I found interesting was that this story did not end with a happy ending. The story climaxed with Jonah and God disagreeing with each other. Jonah was stubborn yet again. Jonah must have had something against the people of Nineveh because he did not care that they had a change of heart, he just wanted God to destroy them. That’s pretty messed up.