Thursday, February 5, 2009

Exegetical Goodness?

I commented last week on “the gospel” from Mark 1.1 and as I was teaching through this, I thought I’d point out another little exegetical nugget for you. After Mark announces the beginning of the gospel concerning Jesus Christ, Mark immediately quotes Isaiah (he actually combines a quote from Malachi and Isaiah and attributes it to Isaiah. How can he do that? That is a subject for another blog).

Mark’s quote is almost a verbatim quote of Isaiah 40.3 from the Greek translation of the OT (the Septuagint). If we work backwards, the term for Lord in Mark and Isaiah is kurios. However, the Hebrew term for Lord in Isaiah is Yahweh.

So, when we put this all together, Mark is telling us that John the Baptist (the forerunner of Malachi 3 and 4) was preparing the way for Yahweh. For those who claim that Jesus was not God, nor did he ever claim to be, the author of the second gospel sure thought he was.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting. Always good stuff.