2007-03-07

Existential Jesus: Mark’s gospel / John Carroll – broadcast

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

This morning there’s a radio program (web accessible) on Mark’s Gospel — John Carroll sees Mark’s gospel as “up with Homer as the great Western storyteller; the other gospels are inferior. . . .”

This can be heard live from http://www.abc.net.au/rn/

but podcast will be available for 4 weeks at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/default.htm (Transcript will be there forever)

The announcement from last week:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2007/1859260.htm#transcript

Stephen Crittenden: Welcome to the program.

Before we get under way, a reminder that next week on the program we’ll be reading the strangest and most troubling of the four gospels, St Mark’s gospel. It’s the one with the angry Jesus who frowns at the fig tree because it’s not in season, and turns it into a black stump; who gives up trying to teach his disciples because they don’t get it, and who dies alone and in despair.

Sociologist John Carroll has written a new book about Mark, ‘The Existential Jesus’. He says that Mark is up with Homer as the great Western storyteller; the other gospels are inferior, just footnotes, although at least John’s footnotes are better than Luke’s and Matthew’s. So, it’s time to refresh your memory of a great Western storyteller, the man who invented Jesus. That’s next week.

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