
This post will be a companion piece to my earlier The Twelve Disciples: their names, name-meanings, associations, etc. That post was based on the thoughts of Dale and Patricia Miller, Robert M. Price and Albert Ehrman. This post draws on both the scholarship and imagination of Paul Nadim Tarazi in his book on Paul and Mark. (Some of his arguments or flights of fancy are, let’s say, “not strong”, and I have ignored the most obvious of those. Some readers may think most of the ones I have included are “not strong” either. I am not fighting to the death over them. I am presenting them as potentially thought-provoking.) Many of the place-name meanings are direct from standard reference works such as collated on NETBible’s Dictionary. I also include a throw-back to an argument by Roy Kotansky.
Peter and Andrew Casting a Net or Doubtful and Vacillating?
Jesus is walking along by the sea when he notices Simon Peter and Andrew “amphiballontas in the sea” (1:16).
The Greek word literally means “to throw around” and is frequently used in reference to nets. Here it is used in connection with the sea, so it is usually translated “casting a net”. But the word “net” does not appear in the text.
The omission of “net” is not to be ignored, for the verb amphiballo without an object also carries the meaning “to vacillate/to be doubtful,” which would make it a particularly apt allusion to the apostles’ behavior . . . .
Peter has become proverbial as the wavering disciple. Continue reading “More Puns in the Gospel of Mark: People and Places”