IT'S A TESTAMENT OF SOMETHING - Was Mark Chanelling Peter?

I've decided how best to proceed with reading the New Testament. To meet and react to my emotional responses too it, in as honest a way as possible. Forming my own opinions. Not struggling to filter them through, any dissonance with a pre established theology or metaphorical framework in a commentary. If I were to do that, how do they then appear? What is impressed upon me? I want the Gospels to speak to me on this level first and foremost.

As I wrote previously, Matthew and Mark share a high percentage of the same stories, at times almost word for word. There are chapters where they diverge, or in Mark's case, he adds incidents that appear no where else in the Canonical Gospels. We must assume Mark is the source and originater of this Testament, though its likely he drew what is recounted directly from Peter. 

There are accounts in Mark's Gospel of frequently fractious interactions between Peter and Jesus, where Jesus reprimands him severely for behaving impulsively or inappropriately. I imagine Peter as essentially a practical man, with a firey personality. A passionate and devoted follower of Jesus, he appears throughout Mark's Gospel to be prone to speaking first and thinking later. The image we hold today of Peter as a bit of a well intentioned clunk. This may be derived from Peter, using Mark's gospel to retrospectively self flagilate himself over how badly he often  behaved in Jesus's presence. Alternatively,  Peter may, of course, be being written on this way to demonstrate a particular type of disciple, the naive enthusiast, who constantly puts his ideological foot in it.

Mark's account of The Transfiguration is the same story in basic outline, but with quite different dialogue and detail. But then neither Matthew nor Mark were actually present at The Transfiguration, so they both portray this incident from what Peter, James or John recounted to them. There is quite a degree of divergence, either through faulty memory,  'Chinese whispers', or origins in a different stream of storytelling legacy. 

Though I said in the previous blog, its thought the Gospel's are not written from the perspective of an eye witness. There are moments in Mark when the sense of a personal recollection pops up, as in Ch 4. V 33.

'He used to tell them a lot of parables like this, speaking the word as much as they were able to hear. He never spoke except using parables. But he explained everything to his own disciples in private.'

This has the feeling as though it were lifted direct from someone's statement. This might be Peter's voice we hea. There are only a few pieces reputed to have been written by Peter. Short epistles in letter form that are accepted as authoritative and The Gospel of Peter that is for some reason not included within the New Testament canon. So not a lot of written sources to go on. Yet his influence on the future institutional direction of Christianity is greater than any other Apostle. Perhaps Mark's Gospel has always been seen as really that of Peter. Hence adding anything else by 'Jesus"s Rock' was less important.

One of Mark's jobs was as Paul's translator. But he also functioned as an archivist, preserving in documents Peter's experience of Jesus. This could imply that Peter was more a man of practical action, rather than a master of words. It would be wrong to assume Jesus's disciples were all educated or fully literate. Certainly not in Greek. So when it came to putting down what they'd experienced in written words on a page, some may indeed have required help from scribes. Hence we have Mark's Gospel.

One of the aspects of the New Testament I had not expected, is how much there is an atmosphere of doom and gloom, expectations of a looming apocalypse. Jesus's ministry is tapping into this mood. Operating on the basis that - its all going to shit, and this is only going to get worse, unless we change, and the kingdom of God can then arrive. 

A huge sense of urgency permeates the entire New Testament. The imperative being, we should do all we can to save ourselves and Jesus is the conduit for that, as the Saviour. This is an era when the power and might of the Roman Empire was expanding inexorably. The land of Israel once again was an occupied nation. The Hebrew religious institutions were not up to scratch, accommodating themselves to the Roman presence, sometimes to the point of being collaborators. There was a widespread yearning in Israel for the sense of renewal, that a Messiah was said to bring.

It intrigues me, how much this apocalyptic strain in the New Testament, affects us still.  In the interpretation we put on our own contemporary geo-political situation. You could say that Christianity, of all the major religions, ought to be best placed to thrive in any possible future apocalyptic senario. Its always been designed from the start for dealing with it.