The First Gospel

For this episode, we’re diving into the Gospel of Mark. We unpack why Mark was likely the first Gospel written, who it was written for, and what was happening politically under Roman occupation. Drawing on scholarly interpretation, we look into how Mark’s storytelling and its urgency, as well as its focus on common people, challenge the Empire and center the marginalized. This perspective also redefines discipleship as active resistance through themes like repentance, liberation, and community transformation, showing how Mark’s “good news” remains a radical call to action for today’s world.

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This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

1 (10s):
Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G. Murphy.

2 (13s):
And I’m Father Shannon TL Kerns. We’re the co-founders of queer theology.com and your hosts from

1 (17s):
Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news, LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how

2 (23s):
Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Welcome back to the Ology podcast. This week we are gonna do a deep dive into the gospel of Mark, and I am so excited. This is

1 (40s):
Me too.

2 (41s):
This is where I get to be like super nerdy and this is my favorite stuff in the world. And so, yeah, so I’m excited to dive in. I, I feel like we’ve talked about this a lot, but I know that for me, I was not raised with looking at the historical context at all of the Bible where even reading the gospels right, we like try to jam all four of them.

1 (1m 7s):
Yep. Yeah. Together

2 (1m 8s):
Into one coherent narrative. And so we are not gonna do that on this, this podcast. We’re really gonna dig, take a deep dive into looking at just what does Mark say and why does Mark say it and all of those things. And I’m, I’m super excited. Brian, why are you excited to talk about the gospel of Mark? I

1 (1m 28s):
Mean, for a lot of those same reasons, I think before I, so I studied film production in college, but I also studied religion in college. And when I added religion as a second area of focus, my parents were like, when we said double major or minor, we meant like math or business, not another, not useless, but not another soft area of study. So I am, I stu, this is like my jam. I studied religion in undergrad. One of my classes that I took was actually just the entire name of the class was called Jesus. So I kept saying I have to go to Jesus class. And I think my friends all semester long thought that I was like, it was actually like religion 4 0 3, like the world of the New Testament or something like that.

1 (2m 11s):
And they were, and it was like, no, it was like religion 4 0 3 colon, Jesus. So I’m really excited to sort of like be nerdy about that. I also, like you, I think before, before studying this had a similar approach of the gospels of like, they all tell different parts of the same story and we can sort of like smush them all together to get a coherent picture. And you know, even just sort of like a, an activity pageant at church has the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke smush together and there’s no births and they’re totally, totally different, but they get smushed together in our popular imagination and there’s no birth story in in Mark, which we’ll get to.

1 (2m 54s):
But, so I’m excited about that just from like a nerdy sort of like I get to dive into this world of academia that I I that I find it fascinating and hopefully make it interesting for y’all. But I think also on a personal level that this sort of work of seeing the gospels for what they were and what they were intended to be and the ways in which they are different and the sources that they draw upon and that then like the ways in which they go on to influence other sources and our theology and our lives, it was sort of like a process of like demystifying my faith and what I believes in about the Bible.

1 (3m 38s):
And I think like through the process of demystifying it, then I emerged on the other side of that with a much more like I was able to like re-size it and like demystify and then like make it sacred again that this, we don’t want to just stop at facts about Jesus or about the gospel of Mark, but like, I think like the question that sort of underlies all of this is like, and then so what, like what does this say about our lives, our world, our communities, our faith, our spiritual practices?

1 (4m 20s):
And like when I’m able to see the gospel of Mark more clearly, I can like more fully enter the world of both Jesus and Mark and then bring Jesus un mark and that message along with me to the current millennia and it becomes like a divine voice still speaking. And so I think that we’re hoping to merge the head of this with like the heart of faith. And so that’s why I’m excited about this.

2 (4m 51s):
Yeah. So this week we’re gonna look all around the background information, talk a lot about some of the political and historical context, some of the unique features of Mark, of which there are a lot, and also dive into some of the major themes. And then over the next several weeks we’re gonna pull out some of those themes by looking at specific stories in the gospel mark. And so I wanna start by saying that it’s really important that we look at things like the background information, like when it was written, to whom was it written, because that really impacts how we read and understand these texts.

2 (5m 35s):
And I also wanna just name that we are indebted to other scholars that have done this work. We’re relying a lot on Che Meyer’s book Binding the Strong Man. If you want a deep and nerdy dive all into the gospel of Mark, that’s a great book. We’re also using the new interpreter’s commentary for other background information. And so we’re really drawing on that. We’re not just like making shit up, right? This is drawing on a lot of scholarly research to look at these different things. And as we talk about and read the gospel of Mark, I we’re also focusing just on Mark. And the reason that that’s important is that this author, whoever wrote Mark, is telling a really particular story in a particular way to particular people.

2 (6m 24s):
And so when we bring in things that we know from the other gospels or we try to, you know, mash them all together, we’re actually doing ourselves and the text to disservice, like this was meant to be read on its own as a very particular thing. And so that is how we’re gonna do it.

1 (6m 42s):
And also at the time that Mark was written, there weren’t yet other gospels. Like Mark was definitely the first gospel written. And so like the, the, the original audience so would not have been able to even bring in ideas from the other gospels because like they had not yet been created,

2 (6m 57s):
Though they may have had other oral traditions. Sure, sure. And so Mark is definitely like choosing from the oral tradition specific stories to tell a particular narrative. And the other thing that we need to remember as we look into all of this is that there are two times operating at the same time, right? There’s the time about which the author of Mark is writing. So Mark is writing about Jesus in a specific time, but there’s also the time in which the author of Mark is living. And those are two very different times. And as we’ll see, mark is bringing in things from his time and telling stories about Jesus in his time to like make meaning today, which is what we’re gonna do as well.

2 (7m 49s):
But it’s important to, to be able to separate those things out and to realize that when Mark quote unquote makes mistakes that often he’s making them intentionally. So, alright, let us dive in to some of this background. So Brian, you already said Mark is the first gospel. Can you talk a little bit more about that and when Mark was written?

1 (8m 14s):
Sure. So I I I, before we started recording this episode, I was like, I’m pretty sure it was written like around 70, around 70, like post Jesus common era. And then I confirmed that that is the one when most scholars believe that that was to be written. So that I, I written in Greek probably maybe with some quotes in other languages and I think I now I would have to like brush up on this, but I think like some folks think that Mark was writing more to a Roman or a Gentile audience and like making that case or at least sort of like writing in the context of Roman occupation of Jerusalem and the conflict that was brewing there.

2 (9m 9s):
Yeah. So Chen Meyers thinks that Mark has written prior to 70 during the revolt. So after 66 prior to 70, that’s the window that he’s, that he’s working in. I think other scholars have, some have said slightly past 70, right? All of, yeah,

1 (9m 30s):
Yeah.

2 (9m 30s):
All of those things we don’t know entirely. Yeah. And

1 (9m 33s):
So let’s just for for a second like to, for folks who don’t know, like what happened in 66 and then in 70 that like in 66 common era there was sort of like a Jewish insurrection in Jerusalem to reclaim the holy land as you know, like the gospels are set in in time when Jerusalem is like still under Roman oc occupation. How to relate to the Roman occupiers is a big theme definitely in Mark and in other gospels as well and in other writings of the Christian New Testament. And so seized re seized Jerusalem in 66, held it for a while and then in 70 common era the Raman army was able to quash that rebellion, completely destroy the temple with everything except for the western wall, which is sometimes called the whaling wall, which is now a sacred site in Jerusalem.

1 (10m 21s):
That’s all that remains of the second temple and expel the kill and expel a large portion of the Jewish folks from Jerusalem and even Israel larger than that. And sort of a return to exile.

2 (10m 39s):
Yeah. So this idea of Roman occupation, this idea of the temple state and, and the political economy of that time and the ways in which some of the temple was in collusion with Rome. Mark critiques a lot of that. So this is all like really important background to understanding how to read Mark and what Mark was trying to say. And I just wanna name that like we’re talking about Mark as the author of Mark, but like the reality is that we dunno who wrote Mark, it was probably not one of the disciple mark’s.

2 (11m 21s):
Mark was a super common name. Lots of lots of biblical texts are written and named after people, but we know that those people didn’t write those. And so as we talk about Mark, we are not talking about a specific mark, we’re talking about whoever the author was of this gospel that has been named after Mark. But Che Meyers and other scholars think that Mark wrote this text in or near Northern Palestine, that it was written to a mostly gentile audience because some of the things that Mark describes, he just gets wrong and he was Jewish or from the Jewish community that he wouldn’t have gotten them wrong.

2 (12m 6s):
So that’s just important to note. I wanna read this from binding the Strong Man because I think it’s, this is actually really fascinating and also really important. He says Mark is written in Greek, but a notoriously poor Greek peppered with Latin and Semitic syntactic in idiomatic intrusions indicating that Greek was Mark’s second language. And assuming that Mark writes from Palestine, this is not surprising, but the things that are sprinkled in the Latin sources that are are sprinkled in the gospel are all military, judicial or economic terms, which is really fascinating to me.

2 (12m 46s):
And he’s pulling them in because this was a, a people and a population that’s under Roman colonial administration. And so all of these different terms that have become a part of their language have come because of occupiers, right. Of occupiers that have taken over this land. And so when he’s using those terms too, he’s making really specific political and military digs, which I think is fascinating and we’re gonna, we’re gonna really dive deep into that next week, but just know that that is kind of happening and, and pay attention to that in the background.

2 (13m 32s):
Alright. We’ve talked a little bit about some of the political and historical background around the temple. What else, Brian, do you know or wanna bring out about this, the period in which Mark was writing? So again, not the period in which Jesus is living, but the period in which Mark is writing about when Jesus was living.

1 (13m 54s):
Sure. So one of the things that I want to bring out is I think a actually in this case applies to both the period that Jesus was living and the period when Mark was writing that, like around the first century was a time of like a lot of, like, there was a bunch of different Jewish sex that were all sort of like wrestling together with like, what does it mean to be a Jewish people in general? And in particular, what does it mean to be Jewish in oc like under Roman occupation, there had been folks who had claimed to be the Messiah in the past that had like attempted to lead revolts, things like that.

1 (14m 37s):
Also that there were sort of like three main groups at around that time. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Enes that like folks might have heard of. And I think it’s like, I just like wanna underscore that like we, sometimes we Christians sometimes use like pharisees like in a sort of a derogatory sense. And I think it’s like really important to name that like modern rabbinic Judaism is like descended from the Pharisees. And so it’s not like this, they’re not these like evil people from the past. It’s like a rich and vibrant and justice oriented culture that continues to today. I was saw like a rabbi who was saying, who was proposing that perhaps Jesus himself might have been a Pharisee and it was like an inter, a lot of his like digs against the Pharisee were not, were like coming from place of like in intra community arguments about like, what does Jewish identity mean?

1 (15m 33s):
And so I think like that sort of like background of this time of like, what do we do? Like how does a temple fit in like the ways in which Rome had been occupying, not just Jerusalem, but also sort of like influencing temple life, temple practices, things that were displayed at the temple, I think was a big source of conflict. And the sort of like how do we respond to Rome like assimilation, armed resistance, nonviolent resistance, like all of that is sort of like swirling around, especially in the context of if we take sort of Che Meyer’s dating of like post the start of the revolt, pre destruction of the temple, like we’re like in the middle of it.

1 (16m 20s):
And these theological claims that folks are making also have deeply like political consequences also have like are can be like life or death. Like are we going to get slaughtered? How do we survive? How do we survive this occupation? How do we survive into the future? And being such a small minority that has dealt with, you know, exile and occupation in the past this was sort of like, you know, I swear, but other times we both in the past in the, in the present, like the future of all the Jewish people kind of like potentially hangs in the balance here.

2 (16m 57s):
Yeah. And, and that there’s also, you know, there’s not a separation of the political and yeah. The spiritual that, that you cannot read any of these actions that these various Jewish groups are taking as separate from religious religiously motivated action, but also like the political and the religious is so intertwined that we can’t separate them out. So as we’re reading, you know, and we’re talking about political meanings, it, I I think some folks are like, well, you just, you’re always turning the gospel into a political text and it’s like, yeah. Because it’s like these things are so intertwined and, and it’s important that we not separate them out.

2 (17m 43s):
I think too, to your point Brian, that th this is, this had been an ongoing process of small groups taking sometimes symbolic action, sometimes political action, sometimes violent action as a way to kind of fight back against their oppressors. And that we are gonna see more of that in, in mark. And that mark is actually also encouraging people to, to do more of that. And that many of the things that he attributes to Jesus, many of the actions that he attributes to Jesus are in line with these symbolic actions that other groups have been taking.

2 (18m 24s):
So Jesus is coming out of a line of people that were already doing this work. It’s not like, it’s not like nothing was happening and then Jesus came and st things started to happen. Like he is part of a system and a and a and a people that are already fighting back. And so, so some of the question is how shall we fight back in line of what Jesus is teaching? One of the stories that Myers tells in his book, which I think is really, really fascinating, is that there was a group that, that fought back that they engaged in this action and the first thing that they did was burned the public archives where the records of debt were capped.

2 (19m 9s):
And it’s

1 (19m 9s):
Like, oh, I love that.

2 (19m 10s):
Right? Like this, this is a, a fight back in a, in a spiritual sense, but it’s also very much a protest against economic oppression. And, and like those, those things are all intertwined and I think that that’s, that’s really beautiful and we’re gonna find a bit more resonance as we, as we dig even deeper into this.

1 (19m 32s):
And that was like, like a Jewish resistance action, not a specifically like Jesus followers.

2 (19m 40s):
Correct. Yeah.

1 (19m 41s):
Because at this point Christianity doesn’t ask, doesn’t exist and that like, I mean at around 70, like into like the hundreds, like continuing on into like is like, this is when Christianity is beginning to start to pull away, but at, at this point it’s still very much not a separate thing yet.

2 (19m 59s):
Yeah, yeah. And that all of these things, like so much of, of the conflict that’s happening religiously is also a conflict about class, right? It’s about violence. Yeah. It’s about oppression, right? You can’t, you can’t separate those things out. So let’s talk a little bit about Mark. There are some really unique things about Mark, especially in line with the other gospels. You mentioned earlier, Brian, that there the, there’s no birth narrative. What do we do with that?

1 (20m 35s):
Yeah, I, so I think like the first thing is that like, it, it just wasn’t important to Mark. We do see in, so some of the, right, some of the letters in the New Testament from Paul, et cetera, likely date to around this time perhaps before it. And they, there are some references to sort of like the, you know, either like virgin things like that. But we don’t have, you know, the robust, the robust birth narratives are really in Matthew and Luke. I likely come from an oral tradition that had been circulating before they were written down there, but at least for Mark, he’s not concerned about about Jesus’ birth and kind of just like jumps right into the action of it all.

1 (21m 21s):
And I think like that’s really interesting, especially as the first gospel to be written that for the first one it really wasn’t that important.

2 (21m 31s):
Yeah. And, and like you said, he jumps right into the action. That’s kind of one of the characteristics of Mark, that it’s, it’s really rather spartan. There’s not a lot of detail. He, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of like, Jesus did this and then he did this and then he did this. And so because of this, when Mark chooses to tell a similar story twice, which he does in, in a couple of different places, we need to really pay attention to those stories to pay attention to the differences between them and why Mark would have chosen to tell them a, a similar story in two different times. Mark also uses a really interesting literary device often where he starts telling a story, he interrupts that story with another story, and then he returns to the original story.

2 (22m 18s):
He does this all over the gospel. And so that’s something to pay attention to, to, as you’re reading. Also, I, I think it’s really important to note that when Mark calls his text a gospel, he’s actually starting a new literary form. That that form in antiquity didn’t exist before. Mark wrote it down that a gospel was a verbal proclamation, often a political proclamation. And so for Mark to do a written story and to call it a gospel, he starting something entirely new, which I think is really fascinating and beautiful.

2 (23m 2s):
And it’s something that we miss, right? Because we, we have four gospels, we know a lot about the gospels, we talk about it all the time. But to know that he’s actually starting something new is really cool. And

1 (23m 13s):
I think it’s important to like dis to distinguish like gospel from history, right? Because like history written, history existed and even like written history is part of the Hebrew scriptures. Like parts of like, this is history, this is like myth maybe. And that the gospel is something else other than a strict history. It’s, you know, a religio political propaganda in some way. That it’s, it’s, it’s making a case for something not simply recording it. It’s not a history book.

2 (23m 44s):
Yes. And that the other thing that’s really unique about Mark is that Mark’s story is for and about common people, which was also different in a lot of texts that we find in Kodi that were written about, you know, the upper class, the ruling class royalty. Here we have a text that is very much centered on fishermen and people who are poor and that that’s also a unique thing. And so that’s, that’s something to pay attention to with Mark

1 (24m 18s):
Too. And that’s also kind of in, its in a way like making a statement, right? That like these people and these stories like deserve to be written down in the same way that we write about emperors and generals. And that like, it’s kinda like pointing a finger and saying like, this, this here this is, this matters. Yes.

2 (24m 38s):
Yeah. So there are a lot of major themes in Mark, but many of them kind of circle around each other. Mark talks a lot about discipleship, which we’re gonna talk more about next week. He talks a lot about debt and literal economic debt and purity, which is interesting. We’re gonna talk more about purity in week three. He also talks about repentance. And I, I think it’s important, you know, often when we hear about repentance, especially for those of us who grew up in evangelical or more conservative cultures, we think of repentance as a spiritual thing.

2 (25m 23s):
I mean, how were you taught about repentance, Brian?

1 (25m 26s):
Yeah, I remember like there’s this, this sort of like visual representation of like turning away, right? That like, it, like it definitely, I think for me there was some element of like a change of action follows a change of heart that like, ’cause it was like, part of it was trying to get around this whole, which we talked about with our salvation stuff. Like what is salvation? And if you say this prayer and you accept Jesus, like, can you be unsaved? But then like if your actions are bad, maybe you never were really a Christian. And so like for me there was some element of like your actions should reflect your repentance to sort of like prove that you like really mean it.

1 (26m 12s):
But it was definitely like, but like the actual sort of like theologically significant event was sort of like the reorientation of your heart. And then from that, the like appropriate actions will follow. And also for me, the appropriate actions that follow in that process definitely didn’t have anything to do with debt. Like, like economic debt or Roman occupation or violence. It was like sexual purity and just like that, like the word discipleship was a word that I, that I heard a lot growing up and in, in that church world, but it was like really vaguely defined like what discipleship meant.

1 (26m 57s):
And it was like, you know, because I remember like, leave your nets behind, you have to actually like take action and like do stuff in the world. But it was like, I think the actions that we were supposed to be taking was like reading your bible daily and like praying and like being a witness in your secular workplace in some way so that people would be like, oh, he’s so professional and so nice and kind and really honors his word and doesn’t gossip. So like look how godly he is. Like maybe I want a taste of that. Jesus. Also, it wasn’t ever to sort of like change material conditions of, of the world. It was like this sort of like personal piety that then you sort of like project it onto the world to then attract people to their own sort of personal piety.

2 (27m 44s):
Yeah. It’s, it’s very much like me and Jesus, right? It’s, it’s me and God. It’s, it’s an individual process of conversion. It’s not a political or communal process of of conversion. Yeah. Which is very different than what Mark is talking about when Mark is talking about repentance, mark’s talking about turning away from empire, which is a very different, a different thing

1 (28m 9s):
For a lot of conservative Christianity. Repentance is turning towards empire it seems like. Yeah.

2 (28m 13s):
Right. And, and along with this, this theme of repentance is Mark’s theme of resistance, which is about, you know, both, both churning away from empire but then also being actively resisting of it and to Meyer says to find meaningful ways to impede imperial progress, right? Yes. In which is, which is awesome and we’re gonna talk more about that. Mark is also talking a lot about liberation from specific structures of oppression and, and he’s also talking about the ways that when you are under those structures of oppression that it embeds into your spirituality and your personality.

2 (29m 6s):
And so like when we’re talking about getting freed spiritually, it’s also about getting freed politically. Like for Mark, these two things are together. Yeah. Which I think is you

1 (29m 20s):
Can’t have one one or the other in many ways.

2 (29m 22s):
Exactly. Yeah. So Meyer says thus the per the purpose of the author of Mark was not to merely present certain ideas about Jesus or to warn his readers against some group distinct from themselves and this is what’s key, but to lead his readers through a particular story in which they discover themselves and thereby change. And like That right there is huge and we’re gonna keep coming back to that. The other, just a couple more kind of main themes of Mark that, that his gospel is structured around three kinds of symbolic action.

2 (30m 3s):
There are lots of journeys across the sea of Galilee representing the imperative to overcome the social structures of segregation between Jew and Gentile. So that’s one, there are lots and lots of healings of social outcasts, which were representative of the imperative to overcome the social structures of class division. And there are multiple feedings of poor masses in the wilderness representing a practice of economic sharing. So as you read the gospel of Mark, pay attention to journeys across the Sea of Galilee, healings of social outcasts and feedings of poor people. Those are things that we’re gonna talk about a lot.

1 (30m 43s):
Yes.

2 (30m 44s):
And one more thing from Myers. He says these three narrative strands also represent the key aspects in Jesus’s Messianic program confronting the old order, constructing an alternative order, and bringing liberation to the poor.

1 (31m 0s):
Hmm. Oof. Yeah,

2 (31m 2s):
Good stuff.

1 (31m 3s):
Yeah, I think like as you were sort of going over those sort of like three kinds of symbolic actions, I was like thinking about like, sort of like flashing in my head was all the various stories of the Bible that I’ve heard about Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee or Jesus healing this or that person or the various like fishes and loaves stories feeding the people. And I’m like, oh yeah, like I know all of these stories individually, but like when you just sort of like shine this particular light on it, you’re like, oh yeah, like this is what’s happening. But we, I had been so conditioned to read them as like little personal narratives or it was, everything was pointing towards Jesus as like a superhero, like glowing God walking around on earth with magic powers that I like missed the like ways in which all this is absolutely present and like why like Jesus could have healed anyone or could have fed anyone or could have journeyed anywhere.

1 (32m 9s):
Like what does these actions in these contexts mean and why is Mark highlighting them?

2 (32m 20s):
Yeah. And I think like for me when I started to uncover some of this, it was like, oh, oh, this is the good stuff, right? Yeah. Like this is, this is a much more inspiring and powerful and challenging call to be involved in something than like pray a prayer in the right kind of way and get, get your, get outta hell free card. And that it also, like there are so many things that are really, really subtle that we miss if we don’t know all of these contexts.

2 (32m 60s):
And also that because they’ve been missed, have been taught in really, frankly, often the opposite way than they were intended to be taken. Yeah. We’re gonna talk next week about, about the thing that you mentioned earlier. You know, leave your nets and follow me and like the actual meaning of that is gonna blow your mind and it’s so, so excited to talk more about it. But it’s like I, that’s why it’s so important to do this work and to really dig into this because it totally changes how you read and frankly for me it, it makes it so much more exciting and, and I’m excited to, to keep, to keep diving into this.

1 (33m 41s):
Yeah. So I think like when I think about sort of like my journey through faith, I think the, the way that I first approached the Bible was to take just like everything at face value and usually face value was also like the face value that the pastor told me was face value and just sort of like accept it all as like this is like literal history actually happened. This is who the, Jesus was. Like we have this like divinely inspired book great. Like we can know exactly who Jesus was. And then that I like started to look at the bible and scripture and translation and sort of how it was passed along and like copied and recreated over the years. I like started to bring a more sort of, you know, critical eye to it.

1 (34m 24s):
And like one of the things that we did when we, when I was stu like studying Jesus and in the undergraduate was like, this is the work of the Jesus seminar is sort of like trying to figure out, like trying to get at like the historical Jesus. So I don’t know if for folks are familiar, Matthew, mark and Luke are sometimes called the synaptic gospels. We, there’s a lot to that. But so we like look at like what stories are in Matthew, mark, and Luke. I’m like, that means something that they’re like in all three as opposed to just two or just in one or trying to compare the sayings of Jesus to other sayings of Jesus to try and figure out like what did Jesus most likely say versus like maybe Mark added this or maybe Matthew embellish that.

1 (35m 8s):
I think you can get a Bible written by the Jesus seminar that has like varying shades of red letters from like black to dark red to light pink or whatever. That’s sort of like there sort of this Jesus seminars assessment of like, Jesus almost certainly actually said this. Jesus almost certainly didn’t say this to try and like get at the real quote unquote Jesus. And I think I’ve like since moved a little bit beyond that. So like we can never know for sure what this person named Jesus in 30 CE did, said, went if he existed, like I guess maybe, probably, but like we can’t ever know for sure that.

1 (35m 56s):
And so all of Christianity is like based on what these earliest Christians thought and believed about Jesus and what they felt was important and what they passed on to us. And so not that it like, doesn’t matter like what Jesus actually did, but that like what Mark was saying about Jesus and the claims that Mark was making, just like the claims that Paul was making, just like the claims that Luke and John, all these folks that are writing those claims about Jesus in their context, I think is like just as important as whoever this person was that we can’t ever really know.

1 (36m 40s):
’cause there weren’t video cameras back then. And so like wrestling with what we do have is like super, super important.

3 (36m 47s):
The Queer Theology podcast is just one of many things that we do@queertheology.com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for LGBTQ Christians and straight cisgender supporters.

4 (36m 56s):
To dive into more of the action, visit us@queertheology.com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram.

3 (37m 4s):
We’ll see you next week.

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