The Women
Mark 16:1-8
The disciples ran away at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. The women in Jesus’ life stayed. I would think that they could have been in as much danger as the disciples, but they stayed.
As I said before, I would have been long gone. But the women came to the tomb to do the honorable thing which was to anoint Jesus’ body. They were unable to anoint him when he was first placed in the tomb because it was the evening of the Sabbath. But they came when they could, and even on the third day the men were nowhere to be found.
Throughout his life Jesus treated women as equals. It is a wonderful part of the story to me. It has taken the some of the rest of the world 2000+ years to catch up to him…and we really aren’t there yet.
All through Mark Jesus has told the apostles and the disciples that he would rise from the dead. No matter what kind of miracles he performed…even raising Lazarus from the dead, nobody seemed to believe that Jesus was going to be resurrected. And if the people were familiar with the Hebrew Bible, they knew that Elijah raised a woman’s son from the dead. I Kings 17:17-24.
But today we are the same. If we don’t see something happen, it is difficult for us to believe it has happened. That is why faith is so important for all of us. The Samaritan woman believed because she saw. We read the Bible, our book of faith, and are required to step out and believe on faith alone.
If we can do that, we will experience joy like we have never experienced before. I am not talking about happiness. Happiness and joy are two very different things. Joy lives within us. Happiness comes and goes and is dependent upon various situations in our lives. But the joy lives deep within us.
For much of my life I did not have that joy. I do now. It is wonderful. I have been blessed.
Carol
PS In my Bible it says that “the most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.” I just noticed that this time through this scripture.
Bible Breath: He has risen / He is not here
March 25, 2008 at 12:11 am
Greetings friends at Wabash UMC,
Regarding that footnote about Mark 16:9-20 — it isn’t worded very well. Two important Greek manuscripts from the 300’s do not contain Mark 16:9-20. But three patristic writers in the 100’s used material from Mark 16:9-20. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, explicitly quoted Mark 16:19 and said that he was quoting from near the end of the Gospel of Mark, in the third volume of his composition “Against Heresies” (III:10:5-6), and that was in 184, more than 100 years earlier than those two copies from the 300’s.
In addition, one of those copies (Vaticanus) has a blank space after Mark 16:8, and the other one does not have its original pages from Mark 14:54 all the way to Luke 1:56.
For more details, I welcome you to read an online presentation that I have developed especially to address the issue of whether or not Mark 16:9-20 is authentic Scripture. It includes replicas of manuscript-pages and lists some patristic evidence. It begins at
http://www.curtisvillechristian.org/MarkOne.html .
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
Minister, Curtisville Christian Church
Tipton, Indiana
(Class of 1986, Northfield H.S.)
March 25, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Hi, Jim,
Thank you so much for your comment!! It is good to know that somebody is “out there”. Doing this Bible in a Year is kind of an act of faith on my part. I have no special knowledge, but I wanted a program to be available for people who might want to participate. Thank you for participating.
Thanks also for the link to your article. As you thought, I had just included the footnote which was in my Bible. At the time I wondered who decided to include/exclude the remaining chapters.
I have not read your article completely yet, but I will because you have done some terrific work on it. I also am terribly curious about such things.
Once again, thank you for participating.
God bless you and your church!
Carol, website editor, budding computer guru, JGIT (Junior Geek in Training)