I apologize for not having an episode for you last week. I needed a rest, so I took my own advice and took a nap and had a snack! This commercial-free podcast is made possible by the generosity of paid subscribers. Thank you for your support.

What would you do if a filthy stranger came up to you shouting. Would you run away? Would you yell back? Would you be disgusted? Join me, Rev Darcy (she/hers), a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, as we learn what Jesus did in just such a situation as we journey together through the Gospel of Mark. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Gospel of Mark:

Jesus and his followers went into Capernaum. Immediately on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and started teaching. The people were amazed by his teaching, for he was teaching them with authority, not like the legal experts. 23 Suddenly, there in the synagogue, a person with an evil spirit screamed, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are. You are the holy one from God.” “Silence!” Jesus said, speaking harshly to the demon. “Come out of him!” The unclean spirit shook him and screamed, then it came out. Everyone was shaken and questioned among themselves, “What’s this? A new teaching with authority! He even commands unclean spirits and they obey him!” Right away the news about him spread throughout the entire region of Galilee. After leaving the synagogue, Jesus, James, and John went home with Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed, sick with a fever, and they told Jesus about her at once. He went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up. The fever left her, and she served them. That evening, at sunset, people brought to Jesus those who were sick or demon-possessed. The whole town gathered near the door. He healed many who were sick with all kinds of diseases, and he threw out many demons. But he didn’t let the demons speak, because they recognized him. Early in the morning, well before sunrise, Jesus rose and went to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer. Simon and those with him tracked him down. When they found him, they told him, “Everyone’s looking for you!” He replied, “Let’s head in the other direction, to the nearby villages, so that I can preach there too. That’s why I’ve come.” He traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and throwing out demons. A man with a skin disease approached Jesus, fell to his knees, and begged, “If you want, you can make me clean.” Incensed, Jesus reached out his hand, touched him, and said, “I do want to. Be clean.” Instantly, the skin disease left him, and he was clean. Sternly, Jesus sent him away, saying, “Don’t say anything to anyone. Instead, go and show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifice for your cleansing that Moses commanded. This will be a testimony to them.” Instead, he went out and started talking freely and spreading the news so that Jesus wasn’t able to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, but people came to him from everywhere. (Mark 1:21-45, CEB)

Welcome back to another episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven where we journey through the Bible together taking note of all the Biblical drama without engaging in spiritual trauma. Last week, we saw Jesus’ ministry start with a sermon and the calling of his disciples. This week see Jesus provide free healthcare to a lot of people.

Sermon Note: Want to dig deeper and/or check my claims? Here are the books I’m using and recommend to get a deeper understanding of Mark.

Marcus J. Borg’s The Gospel of Mark from Morehouse (ISBN: 978-0-8192--2339-5)

Jerry L. Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN: 978-1506466781).

Ben Witherington III’s The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary from Eerdmans (ISBN: 978-0802845030).

The World Behind the Text

To better understand the cultural context, I want to introduce you to four different types of people we meet in this sacred word or who are referenced in it. The first are scribes. Scribes made up a minority of Jewish society able to read and write in Hebrew and were well-versed in the law because they copied the Torah as a means of preserving it. Thus, they were considered “experts in the law.” Now, let’s talk about rabbis. Jesus is widely recognized as a rabbi, but the word rabbi, or teacher, had a different connotation then than it does now. At the time of Jesus, the Jewish clergy were the priestly class. They served in the Temple where all of the religious rites of Judaism took place. Rabbis were Jewish men who were considered to be wise teachers well-versed in the law.

Sermon Notes: Only Jewish men were given a formal education in the Torah, and every Jewish boy attended a school to learn the Torah.

After the destruction of the Temple, Jewish religious rites as they were known then ended, and rabbis, overtime, became the Jewish professional clergy who taught the Torah and helped create new Jewish religious rites that didn’t involve the Temple rites mandated by the Torah.

Sermon Notes: While you may have heard it said that Rabbis weren’t really itinerate, and that Jesus was unique because he was an itinerate Rabbi, that’s not entirely true. Oxford English Dictionary defines itinerate as” “(especially of a church minister or a judge) travel from place to place to perform one's professional duty.” Rabbis were not fixed to synagogues, but they also weren’t circuit riders so it was a characteristic of rabbis that they traveled around. However, there were plenty of famous rabbis, contemporary to Jesus, who taught publicly who did travel and teach in different places. So Jesus wasn’t really unique in that way.

Now let’s talk about marginalized members of society. They are represented here by Simon’s mother-in-law, a woman, and by a score of sickly or demon-possessed people. Remember, there are two different cultural audiences to this Gospel story. The first are Jews and the second are Greco-Romans. While both cultures had a lot of differences, there were some things they had in common. While Jewish social ethics teach the equality of people and created a society were people were equal, in practice this wasn’t always the case.

Sermon Note: The nation God envisioned through Moses in the Torah was one where the people were governed through their relationship with God. The grumbling for a king was answered with the curse of having a king who would lord his authority over them. This, according to the priests who wrote the “historical books” of the Hebrew Scriptures, is the cause of the inequality of persons that is actually contrary to the Torah.

Women ranked lower than men, and foreigners, often called “strangers” or “aliens” in the Bible, were even lower than women. People who were ill were considered “unclean” by Torah law, and interacting with them made that person unclean as well. There were a lot of complicated rituals that one had to complete in order to be made ritually clean again. Greco-Roman culture was also highly stratified, meaning there were varying levels of hierarchy, and one’s gender, social class, and citizenship status determined where you fell in that hierarchy. And illness was seen as a mark of disgrace…you were ill because you were a bad person. Hold onto these ideas.

The World of the Text

Now let’s look at some of the astounding word choices that Mark uses in this sacred word. The first phrase we will look at is found in verse 22. Mark says that the people were amazed at Jesus because he taught the law like someone “with authority” and not like the legal experts. Remember, the legal experts, or scribes, knew the law backward and forward. The word used here for authority, exousia, is most often used to describe the authority of a king or ruler. Mark is saying people heard Jesus speak as if he had ownership of the law and was not merely repeating it.

Sermon Note: In general, people who taught the Torah would recite it and then provide a commentary pulling from the rich interpretative tradition of Judaism. Based on other examples of Jesus’ teaching, he most likely said “you’ve heard it said…but I say” in such a manner that came across like a king giving directions to his subjects.

While Jesus is teaching we see a man with a demon or unclean spirit who was causing a disturbance. The word Mark uses here is akathartos which means impure, unclean, lewd, or foul. Interestingly this is the only place Mark uses this word in this chapter. Instead, Mark uses the word daimonizomai which means “to be possessed, afflicted, vexed, by a demon or evil spirit” according to Mounce’s Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament when referencing the other people Jesus heals of “demon possession or unclean spirits” in verses 32, 33, and 39. While I’m not going to conjecture on why Mark made these two different word choices or what the demon or unclean spirit was— whether actual demon, a euphemism for a severe mental illness, or just someone who was really unpleasant— I think it’s safe to say that these were people who were not in a great place and were shunned by their communities. These are people who are unhappy and miserable and its not their fault.

Sermon Note: There have been a lot of people who have made a career out of speculating or “proving” what the Bible means by demon possession, and I think it is really irresponsible to do so because it often stigmatizes mental illness. We don’t know what is meant here, and thinking too deeply about it is unproductive. Its a red herring in the search for faith. The point is that these are outcasts who Jesus welcomes and heals without stigmatizing or blaming them.

We also see Jesus heal Simon’s mother-in-law, who was suffering from a fever, and a man suffering from leprosy, and leprosy is a favorite Biblical unclean illness. I love the word the Common English Bible uses here to describe Jesus’ reaction to this man asking for help. They say that Jesus was “incensed” when the man begged Jesus to heal him. The word Mark uses is splanchnizomai which literally means “moved with compassion. I liked incensed, though, because I think it gets at what Jesus is feeling. He’s morally outraged that this person feels he needs to beg for healing. I think this word accurately captures the spirit of the text if not the letter of the text because what Jesus does each time some “unclean” person comes to him for help is astounding to his audience. Rather than ignoring or shunning or rebuking these people, Jesus heals them.

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The World in Front of the Text

Phew! Well this was Jesus’ first two days on the job! And how do we think people assessed his work? Well the text tells us that word about him spread around Galilee to the point that people were seeking him out for help and he needed to take a break! Of course the traditional interpretation of these healing miracles is that “well Jesus is God, so obviously he healed people.” Okay, that is a plausible interpretation. But I think we can all agree is that the point Mark is trying to make here is that Jesus is practicing what he preached in verses 14 and 15. He is demonstrating what the Kin-dom of God looks like…a compassionate community where people’s dignity is respected and no one needing help is turned away. Remember, Mark spent a lot of time in the first part of chapter 1 contrasting Jesus with the Emperor, and the kingdom, or kin-dom, of God with Empire. So, in providing us with a picture of a day in the life of Jesus’ ministry, Mark is strengthening that comparison by showing what the kin-dom looks like. And people flock to Jesus because we all deep down are longing for community that respects our dignity and meets our basic needs. How much better would our world be if, like Jesus, we were incensed by the idea that people feel the need to beg us for help?

Last Things

Next week on Eleven Minutes in Heaven we will dive deep into scandal as Jesus’ ministry begins to ruffle feathers.

If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to join me on Zoom on Mondays at 7pm central time for guided meditation. This is open to both free and paid subscribers during the month of February, so subscribe to get that link at www.revdarcy.com/subscribe

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

This episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven was written and produced by Rev. Darcy Corbitt and is © Copyright 2025 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

This commercial-free podcast is made possible by the generosity of paid subscribers. Thank you for your support.

How would you feel if you were at work and some random stranger walked up and invited you to follow him to a world where justice, mercy, and communion with the sacred and holy was the norm not the exception? Join me, Rev Darcy (she/hers), a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, on a journey with me through the Gospel of Mark. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Gospel of Mark:

After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” As Jesus passed alongside the Galilee Sea, he saw two brothers, Simon and Andrew, throwing fishing nets into the sea, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” he said, “and I’ll show you how to fish for people.” Right away, they left their nets and followed him. After going a little farther, he saw James and John, Zebedee’s sons, in their boat repairing the fishing nets. At that very moment he called them. They followed him, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired workers. (Mark 1:14-20, CEB)

Welcome back to another episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven where we journey through the Bible together taking note of all the Biblical drama without engaging in spiritual trauma. This week, we are back in the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark where we see the start of Jesus’ public ministry. Last week we talked about the impact John the Baptizer’s public ministry had on Jesus, Jesus’ baptism, and his wilderness time where he wrestled with what it mean to be God’s beloved son. This week we see John’s arrest as the catalyzing event that puts Jesus’ public ministry on the map.

Sermon Note: Want to dig deeper and/or check my claims? Here are the books I’m using and recommend to get a deeper understanding of Mark.

Marcus J. Borg’s The Gospel of Mark from Morehouse (ISBN: 978-0-8192--2339-5)

Jerry L. Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN: 978-1506466781).

Ben Witherington III’s The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary from Eerdmans (ISBN: 978-0802845030).

The World Behind the Text

Let’s jump into the cultural context. At the time of the Gospel story, absolute monarchy was the primary political structure of the day. Sure Rome was technically a “Republic” but it was ruled by oligarchs from the aristocratic class who were dominated by an Emperor. The Emperor had absolute power that increased with every passing year. Roman colonies were governed by appointed governors, and some regions were granted limited home rule through their own kingly rulers who were still subject to the Emperor through the governor of the Roman province where the region was located with each level holding absolute power over the level beneath them.

Sermon Note: The Jewish homeland was divided between two governors— Judea, whose governor at the time of Jesus’ ministry was Pontius Pilate, and Galilee, which was ruled by Herod Antipas under the watchful eye of the Proconsul of Syria—

If your experience of Roman rule was pleasant it was either because you were of the aristocracy, or less likely, because you had a wise and merciful ruler over you. Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was the ruler of the region of Galilee— the northern part of modern-day Israel and part of the West Bank— and Perea— the region along the east bank of the Jordan River in the modern-day Kingdom of Jordan. He was a client ruler of these regions which meant he depended upon the sanction of the Roman Emperor, not the will of his people, for his authority.

Sermon Note: Remember, Herod the Great’s kingdom, which included all of the ancestral homeland of the Jews, was broken up upon his death into four quarters by the Roman Emperor to diffuse the power of the Jewish nation. If they did not have one state, and one leader, then it would be harder to organize a revolt.

Herod Antipas was a controversial figure. He divorced his own wife and married his ex-sister in law— spicy— and was known for pretty raucous and loose living— double spicy. He’s best known for the construction of his capital, Tiberias, which he named in honor of his benefactor the Emperor— suck-up— which would later become the center of Rabbinic learning after the Roman-Jewish wars that were taking place when Mark was written.

Sermon Note: Herod Antipas was later deposed and sent into exile in Gaul by the Emperor Caligula after his nephew, and successor, accused him of plotting against the emperor. So spicy.

Herod is best known in the Gospel narrative as the king who had John the Baptizer arrested and executed— traditionally because John publicly criticized him for his scandalous divorce and remarriage in defiance of Torah law…so spicy— and for the role he played in Jesus’ execution.

Sermon Note: Because Jesus was Galilean, he was Herod Antipas’ subject. Pilate, the Roman Governor, attempted to wash his hands of Jesus by sending him for judgement to Herod Antipas who he argued had primary jurisdiction over him. Herod Antipas sent him right back.

The World of the Text

Onto the linguistic and narrative structure of today’s passage. Let’s start with verse 15a: “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom!” Kingdom to the readers of this first gospel represented rule by might not right, but cruelty not mercy. What Jesus describes as the Kingdom of God, therefore, is a stark contrast to what they perceive as kingdom. It is a kingdom ruled by righteousness not the threat of violence, of merciful, abundant grace not “my way or the highway.” What Jesus describes is heaven on earth, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. The Greek here could mean “coming soon” or “now’s the time,” and the translators of the Common English Bible we are using choose the latter interpretation. Jesus says “now is the time” this kingdom is literally “here.”

Sermon Note: The word used here is ἐγγίζω (engizō): “to cause to approach.”

Why do they make this selection? Well the idea that what Jesus is preaching is about is the afterlife simply is not supported by the textual evidence. Jesus is literally telling us that heaven can exist on earth, proceeds to show us what that kingdom looks like through his earthly ministry, and empowers his disciples to imitate him in that work.

So how do we, twenty centuries later, bring this heaven to earth? Well, in the same way that they did in the first century. Verse 15b holds the key. Jesus says, “change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news” which is often translated as “repent and believe.” The Greek word often translated as repent really is talking about going beyond where you are now.

Sermon Note: The word translated here as “change your hearts and lives” or commonly as “repent” is μετανοέω (metanoeō): Literal beyond (meta) understanding, comprehension, or understanding (noeō) “To undergo a change in frame of mind and feeling.”

In keeping with Mark’s theme of “the Way” and the larger narrative of the Bible about the transition from exile to homecoming, bondage to liberation, we can interpret this word as “follow me into a new way of thinking and living. Then we get to what is commonly translated as “believe” but in the Common English Bible is rendered “trust.”

Sermon Note: The word translated here as “trust” or commonly as “believe” is πιστεύω (pisteuō):“To believe, give credit to, trust.” According to Marcus Borg, until the 1600s the verb for believe was not conceptualized in the Bible as an adherence to any particular set of beliefs but rather with an allegiance to something.

What Jesus is saying is “trust me, put your faith in what I’m telling you and showing you to be the kingdom.” This interpretation of the verbs “repent and believe” is supported by textual evidence the verses 16-20 as Jesus journeys back to Galilee and invites one-by-one Simon (Peter), Andrew, James, and John to follow him. His ministry opens with a proclamation of God’s kingdom, instructions as to how to get there, and moves forward with people doing just that.

Is this podcast helping with your faith formation? Bless others by sharing widely!

The World in Front of the Text

So how was this alternative view of reality— a world transformed as a kingdom of God where that done on earth is as is done in heaven— received? Basically at this time every Jew longed for a world transformed by God, a kingdom of God as it were. Some thought the world would be transformed through God’s work alone, while others saw human agency as the key either by living the Torah faithfully or through a revolution against Rome. Then there were those who look to a messiah to bring the kingdom of God. Lastly, there were those who hoped for a transformed world without any real convictions on how it would come about.

Sermon Note: According to Borg, some Jews looked to two messiahs— a priestly messiah and a royal messiah— to bring the kingdom of God.

The earliest Christians saw Jesus as the messiah who is a prophet who proclaims God’s truths, a priest who mediates between us and God, and a king who leads us in living the kingdom of God in this life so that we may enter the next life as faithful subjects of God. Like Peter, Andrew, James, and John they left the life they knew for a new life centered on community-building by inviting people to follow the Way of the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus. Over time, however, this Christ-centered view of the Kingdom and how to get there would become perverted by Empire. After the council of Nicaea defined “orthodox Christianity” in the Nicene Creed in the late fourth century, the marriage of church and state sought to bring about a literal kingdom of God that looked more like Rome than Christ.

Sermon Note: The Nicene Creed, in the words used in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church of the United States states: “We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For us and for our salvation he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic [universal not Roman] and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

This is where we are today. Our invitation as we re-discover the Bible together is to co-create the kindom of God through the imitation of Christ.

Sermon Note: I say kin-dom, not kingdom, because what Jesus describes us as is one big family where he is our elder brother and God is our holy parent.

In a time where we hope kingdoms are no longer relevant and human beings long for genuine and meaningful and mutually affirming intimate relationships, reimagining the kingdom of God as a family provides a much better picture of that which Jesus proclaimed two thousand years ago.

Last Things

Next week on Eleven Minutes in Heaven we will watch Jesus astonish the people of Galilee as he provides free healthcare to the sick and suffering.

If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to join me on Zoom on Monday at 7pm central time for guided meditation. This is open to both free and paid subscribers during the month of January, so subscribe to get that link at www.revdarcy.com/subscribe

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

This episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven was written and produced by Rev. Darcy Corbitt and is © Copyright 2025 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

How would you feel if a voice from heaven called you its beloved child? When it happened to Jesus, he was completely overwhelmed by it and spent forty days wresting with his calling in the wilderness. Join me, Rev Darcy (she/hers), a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, on a journey with me through the Gospel of Mark where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Gospel of Mark:

John the Baptist was in the wilderness calling for people to be baptized to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. Everyone in Judea and all the people of Jerusalem went out to the Jordan River and were being baptized by John as they confessed their sins. John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. He announced, “One stronger than I am is coming after me. I’m not even worthy to bend over and loosen the strap of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” About that time, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. While he was coming up out of the water, Jesus saw heaven splitting open and the Spirit, like a dove, coming down on him. And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.” At once the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild animals, and the angels took care of him. (Mark 1:4-13, CEB)

Welcome back to another episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven where we journey through the Bible together taking note of all the Biblical drama without engaging in spiritual trauma. This week, we are back in the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark where we get our first glimpse of Jesus himself in the Gospel narrative. Remember, last week we talked about the big claims the Evangelist makes about Jesus: That he’s the anointed (read king) son of God who comes to show us a new way of living in contrast to the emperor who is a fake son of God who only looks out for himself. Spicy.

Sermon Note: Want to dig deeper and/or check my claims? Here are the books I’m using and recommend to get a deeper understanding of Mark.

Marcus J. Borg’s The Gospel of Mark from Morehouse (ISBN: 978-0-8192--2339-5)

Jerry L. Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN: 978-1506466781).

Ben Witherington III’s The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary from Eerdmans (ISBN: 978-0802845030).

The World Behind the Text

Let’s talk about the world behind the text. In Jesus’ day there were a lot of rabbis who were preaching repentance. Remember, a key question on everyone’s mind during this time of resistance against empire was “what does it mean to be a distinctly Jewish nation in the midst of occupation by this European and pagan empire. Remember also that prophetic witness is a key feature of Jewish life in times of conflict and strife…just look at the last third of the Hebrew Bible. So what John the Baptizer was doing in verses 4-8 of today’s sacred word wasn’t all that strange.

Sermon Note: Jewish ritualistic cleansing with water, as we will go a little deeper into in a minute, pun fully intended, was common.

However, how John conducted his ministry was strange even to his contemporaries. He dressed rough and ate bugs and hung out on the literal edge of Jewish civilization preaching to the margins of society. He also clearly had an impact on Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus lived in Nazareth, according to Mark and the other Gospels, and Mark says he traveled to where John was baptizing on the banks of the Jordan River from Nazareth. That’s a seven days’ journey of around 100 miles. Jesus had clearly heard about John all the way up in Nazareth and was curious. We have to imagine he stayed with John for a while, having travelled all that way.

Sermon Note: While we know John was a real person because he’s mentioned by the Jewish historian, Josephus, the relationship between Jesus and John, and John’s knowledge of who Jesus was destined to be is more lore than fact. If you’ve been to Sunday School you’ve probably heard John and Jesus were cousins. Luke, and Luke alone, makes that claim. Matthew, Luke, and John also have John the Baptizer affirm Jesus as the son of God and as the one he foretold. However, Mark does not have any of this. He simply presents Jesus as one John baptized. Whatever the true relationship between them was all the Gospels agree that John initiates the ministry of Jesus and that there was a special bond between them for that reason.

The World of the Text

Now onto the world of the text. These nine verses contain some pretty important language and narrative symbolism, knowledge of which will aid in our interpretation. We’ll start with baptism. Baptism, from the Greek verb baptizo, “to immerse,” has three meanings in Greek. The first is “to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge (of vessels sunk).” The second is “to cleanse by dipping or submerging, to wash, to make clean with water, to wash one's self, bathe.” The third is “to overwhelm.” To understand the appropriate meaning to assign here, we need to take a brief side quest back to the world behind the text. In Jewish culture, immersion of people in water was associated with two rituals. The first, was ritual cleansing such as that a woman did after her menstrual cycle. The second, was a ritual cleansing gentiles did when they converted to Judaism. What John is doing here is closer to the second ritual but different in that he was baptizing Jews not gentiles. The second usage of baptizo seems to work with both of these rituals, but I am not so sure they work for what John was doing here in Mark. Okay, on a superficial reading it does, but not so much if you suspend your interpretation until you read what happens next. Hold that thought.

That John baptized in the Jordan River is also significant. The Jordan River is the border of modern-day Israel and Jordan and the West Bank and Jordan. In Exodus, it was the boundary between the “Wilderness” and the “Promised Land.” It was also the line the Jews crossed on the way to exile in Babylon and on their way back home to rebuild. So for Jews, the Jordan River represented the boundary between bondage and liberation, humiliation and glory. John’s baptism, combined with his message of repentance and of a coming “new way” fits nicely into the prophetic witness tradition of say “hey! We’ve been here before, turn around before it’s too late.” But I still don’t think baptizo is talking about cleansing oneself of filth. Keep holding that thought.

Then, we have the narrative symbolism of the vision. Visions in Jewish narratives are important markers of God’s participation in human life. Visions nearly always come before a calling or mission from God, and they nearly always happen to significant figures in the Jewish national story. What makes Jesus’ vision in Mark different than the other Gospels is that he, and he alone, hears the voice of God and sees the Spirit descend like a dove. It’s also important to note that only Jesus is told he is God’s son…no one else hears the voice, and John the Baptizer doesn’t tell the crowd Jesus is God’s son like he does in the other Gospels. The next time Jesus is identified as God’s son is after he is dead. Then, Mark tells us the Spirit immediately drives Jesus out into the wilderness to be tested by Satan.

Sermon Note: Satan in Jewish narratives is not a horned red man who rules hell. Satan is simply an adversary, like a prosecutor, that tempts us. I see the concept of Satan as the antithesis of what we want to be. A literal devil’s advocate we struggle with to come to terms with what we believe, what we want, etc.

Unlike the other Gospels, Mark doesn’t tell us what this involves. Perhaps Jesus spent those forty days wrestling with his calling and trying to understand what it means to be God’s beloved son. This is why I think the third meaning of baptizo is what is applies here. While I acknowledge that, yes John literally immersed people in water, I think the theological meaning is that of being overwhelmed by the presence of God in your life. Of being completely filled with God’s Spirit and dependent upon God for your needs. Of being so overcome by the presence of the Divine that you have to wrestle with it as you come to terms with your new life. Once completed, you enter that new life by crossing the Jordan into the promised land from the wilderness…just like Jesus will do next week in verse 14.

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The World in Front of the Text

There is a lot of theology attached to the story of Jesus’ baptism as you’ll see as we examine the world in front of the text. So much so that I’m only going to focus on a few theologies that I’m really interested in. First, these verses from Mark inform our Christology or our beliefs about the nature of Jesus. Trinitarians, that is people who believe God exists in three distinct persons— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit— who are somehow one being called God, point to these verses as a proof text. The voice of God as Father “this is my son,” Jesus the half God/half man as the son claimed by God, and the Spirit in her form as a dove descending on Jesus make all three persons present. The problem I have with this interpretation is that it only works if you have the virgin birth story, which Mark doesn’t have and won’t make an appearance in the Gospels for another couple decades. Conversely, Unitarians, that is people who believe God is one being/person made known in the world in Spirit form whom Jesus— a fully human man— called father, say this proves their interpretation. God adopts Jesus, a human man, as God’s son by the indwelling of God’s Spirit in Jesus. The thing I like about this interpretation, and I’m partial because I am a unitarian, is that if Jesus, a fully human person, can be made one with God by allowing himself to be overwhelmed by God’s Spirit, then I, a fully human person, can as well if I do the same. No problematic, spiritually abusive atonement theology required.

Sermon Note: The use of the word baptizo has created a lot of debate on baptismal theology. Is baptism properly administered by full immersion in water, or is it just the application of water that matters and immersion by the Spirit that is important? Does baptism require water at all? Do we even need to be baptized? These are the big questions theologians argue about. Personally, I think we are already God’s beloved children, and baptism is just an outward sign of inward faith. In fact, when I baptize people after applying water to their head or immersing them— their choice— I anoint them with blessed oil and say to them “you are God’s beloved child in whom God delights (Luke 3:22). God has called you by name, you are God’s forever (Isaiah 43:1). Nothing above or below the earth nor any created thing can separate you from God’s love as revealed in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).” This is my baptismal theology derived from my reading of the Gospels, Isaiah 43, and Roman 8.

Theological questions aside, one things Christians can agree on is that we are God’s beloved children. This is an overwhelming theology. What does it mean to be God’s beloved child? What does it mean to be led— immediately— by the Spirit? These are wilderness questions, beloved, and the answers to them will take a lifetime to sort out.

Last Things

Next week on Eleven Minutes in Heaven we will read about the catalyzing event that launches Jesus in to public ministry. We will say goodbye to one friend and meet twelve new ones.

If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to join me on Zoom on Monday at 7pm central time for guided meditation. This is open to both free and paid subscribers during the month of January, so subscribe to get that link at www.revdarcy.com/subscribe

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

This episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven was written and produced by Rev. Darcy Corbitt and is © Copyright 2025 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

How would you feel if everything you believed came crumbling down around you like the destruction of a majestic cathedral? What if I told you that’s what the original audience of the Gospel of Mark felt? I’m Rev Darcy (she/hers), a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Gospel of Mark:

The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son, happened just as it was written about in the prophecy of Isaiah: “Look, I am sending my messenger before you. He will prepare your way, a voice shouting in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.’” (Mark 1:1-3, CEB)

Beloved, welcome back to another Eleven Minutes in Heaven. I am so excited about jumping straight into the Gospel of Mark with you today. Over the next few episodes we will be exploring the first chapter of Mark, what scholars call “the overture” of the Gospel. This overture unpacks the main themes of Mark’s gospel. In this episode, we will look at the first three verses of Mark and the startling claims they make about Jesus and the implications these have for Jesus’ identity. As we unpack the remainder of chapter one, you’ll come to see, I hope, that these implications extend to you and me.

Sermon Note: Want to dig deeper and/or check my claims? Here are the books I’m using and recommend to get a deeper understanding of Mark.

Marcus J. Borg’s The Gospel of Mark from Morehouse (ISBN: 978-0-8192--2339-5)

Jerry L. Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN: 978-1506466781).

Ben Witherington III’s The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary from Eerdmans (ISBN: 978-0802845030).

The World Behind the Text

Each week we will be reading our sacred word using three different lenses or contexts— the world behind, of, and in front of the text. Our first lens is the historical and cultural context…what we call the world behind the text. As I covered last week in the introduction to season one, the historical and cultural context of the events that took place in the Gospel of Mark is one of political unrest and turmoil and a fast-changing world. Listen again if you need a refresher. In this world, the Jewish nation is a people occupied by Imperial Rome. While they have some autonomy, they are increasingly seeing that autonomy eroded as Rome inserts itself more and more into their political and even religious affairs. Rome maintained control over their colonies through a process called Hellenization or the forced assimilation of Greco-Roman culture. Jews resisted this process and were constantly rebelling against Roman rule. One way that the Jewish people resisted Hellenization was by diligently working to be a distinct nation…a goal completely opposite that of Hellenization which worked to make all of Rome’s empire Roman.

Jews at this time generally aligned themselves with one of three broad groups each exploring what it meant to be a distinct Jewish nation. Some of these names may be familiar to you if you grew up in Sunday school. The first group were the Sadducees. This group was comprised mostly of the wealthier classes of Jewish society including many of the priests. Their Bible comprised only the Torah, and they denied most of the supernatural aspects of religion including the idea of the resurrection of the dead and the afterlife. Because of their wealth and standing, the Sadducees were often hand in glove with the Romans, and they often capitulated to Empire. You could say their method of being a distinct nation was maintaining power. In the middle were the Pharisees. The Pharisees are the ancestors of modern-day Rabbinic Judaism. They accepted the whole Hebrew Scripture as their Bible and believed in the supernatural aspects of religion the Sadducees rejected. Appealing mostly to the common folk and the laity of the Jewish faith, the Sadducees were very concerned about following the instructions of the Law and Prophets faithfully as their means of being a distinct nation. They way that they did this was by debating and talking about what did the Torah or what did the Prophets mean when they said this specific thing which is what we see them doing often with Jesus in the Gospels. The last major group was the Essenes. They don’t get much press in the Gospels, mostly because they lived cloistered away from the world, studying the Bible, not participating in Temple worship, and waiting for the coming Messiah. We have the Essenes to thank for the Dead Sea Scrolls. Go back and listen to Part 5 of the podcast introduction to learn more about the Dead Sea Scrolls! You could say the Essenes tried to be a distinct nation by literally closing themselves off from the rest of the world!

The World of the Text

The narrative context, or the world of the text, is equally rich in these first three verses of Mark. Let’s unpack four different and powerful words used in these three verses. The first is “beginning.” The way this word is used in Mark can convey three possible meanings. First, Mark could simply mean “hey, here’s the start of my Gospel.” Alternatively, the Evangelist could mean that the story of Jesus begins with John the Baptizer— the story of which literally follows in verse four. However, the Evangelist could have also meant, and this is my favorite interpretation, “hey, this gospel of Jesus is merely the beginning of something beyond your wildest dreams.

Next, we have the word “Christ.” Christ comes from the Greek word christos which means “anointed.” The Hebrew word would be, in English, messiah. Now, in most contexts, christos would simply refer to the placement of oil on a ruler or priest as a symbol of the divine approval or ordination of that person to the office. However, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the term messiah refers to a king of Israel, and except in only one case, would not be the noun used to describe other kings or rulers or the anointing of priests. The one exception to this rule was Cyrus of Persia who is described as “God’s anointed” because he allowed the Jews to return to their homeland from their exile in Babylon and Persia. In other words, the messiah is one who God ordains to benefit God’s people, and in the time of Jesus the messiah was seen as one who would come to liberate God’s people from oppression.

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Then, there’s the bombshell “son of God.” In these days of Roman imperialism, only the Emperor was called “son of God.” He also had the additional title of “prince of peace.” Sound familiar? The Bible is so much more political than we realize…it’s an entire narrative about God’s liberation of God’s people from oppression! By calling Jesus the “son of God,” who has been anointed like a Jewish king, Mark is saying “hey, this is a different kind of ruler.” In the Hebrew scriptures, the term “son of God” is used to describe people who have an intimate relationship with God, not necessarily someone who was begat by God.

Lastly, we have the expression “the way.” In Greek, the word used means road or path. Mark uses “the way” differently throughout this Gospel. Narratively, Mark uses “the way” to describe Jesus’ journey from baptism in Judea to journey back to Galilee to do his ministry to his journey back to Judea to die in Jerusalem. The Evangelist uses it theologically to describe the new way of life Jesus was bringing as heralded by John the Baptizer— which is the way…no pun intended…the Evangelist is using it in these verses. Lastly, the Evangelist uses “the way” to describe the spiritual journey one takes with Jesus as we join him in baptism, ministry, and in taking up our cross.

The World in Front of the Text

But what about the world in front of the text. How was this sacred word received in 70 CE when it was first proclaimed, and how we can receive it now in 2025 CE? There are not a lot of differences between 70 CE and 2025 CE. A cruel emperor has destroyed Jewish life as they knew it, the little autonomy the Jewish nation had was gone, and people are looking at their faith wondering if they were tricked into following this Jesus guy. Today, a cruel wannabe dictator is about to be inaugurated, the democracy we love and thought was secure is in a tenuous position, and we are looking at our faith and wondering if this Jesus movement is a load of unholy excrement. The time was ripe then, as it is now, for a re-examination of who Jesus was, is, and will be through his followers.

Last Things

In our next episode we continue with the overture of the Gospel of Mark and will unpack the story of John the Baptizer and the baptism of Jesus. The implications of that baptism on Jesus’ identity, and on your identity, may surprise you.

If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to subscribe to my Substack. There, you will find my sermon notes for Eleven Minutes in Heaven, other sermons I’ve preached, and my spicy takes on current events in my blog, Tea and Scandal. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you gain access to additional features and content and ensure that I can continue my public, parish, and community ministries. Don’t forget to join me on Zoom on Monday at 7pm central time for guided meditation. This is open to both free and paid subscribers during the month of January, so subscribe to get that link.

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

This episode of Eleven Minutes in Heaven was written and produced by Rev. Darcy Corbitt and is © Copyright 2025 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

How would you feel if everything you believed came crumbling down around you like the destruction of a majestic cathedral? What if I told you that’s what the original audience of the Gospel of Mark felt? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Gospel of Mark:

As Jesus left the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Teacher, look! What awesome stones and buildings!” Jesus responded, “Do you see these enormous buildings? Not even one stone will be left upon another. All will be demolished.” (Mark 13:1-2, CEB)

Beloved, this is Rev Darcy (she/hers), and I am incredibly excited about this new first season of Eleven Minutes in Heaven. The Gospel of Mark is my favorite Gospel, and Mark’s Jesus is my favorite Jesus. It’s also special to me because Mark was the topic of my first Bible study as a pastor. So, it’s only fitting that this will be our first Bible study together.

Before we go in further, if you’ve not listened to the five part introduction to this podcast, I recommend you do so before you start this episode. In the introduction, I lay the foundation for our journey through the Bible together.

In this episode, I am going to cover some of the most important background information about the time Jesus lived and the time when Mark’s Gospel was written so that you have a firm foundation as we enter the first chapter of Mark to discover the world behind, of, and in front of the text.

Sermon Note: Want to dig deeper and/or check my claims? Here are the books I’m using and recommend to get a deeper understanding of Mark.

Marcus J. Borg’s The Gospel of Mark from Morehouse (ISBN: 978-0-8192--2339-5)

Jerry L. Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN: 978-1506466781).

Ben Witherington III’s The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary from Eerdmans (ISBN: 978-0802845030).

The World Behind the Text

Mark was written around 70 CE.This is a very significant date in Judeo-Christian history because this is the year that the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, forever altering Jewish life as they knew it. It would be some six decades later in the 130s CE that the Roman Empire would wipe Judea— the region around Jerusalem— off the face of map in the aftermath of one final Jewish rebellion, with a massive Jewish depopulation of the region scattering Jews across the Roman Empire and the area’s renaming as Syria-Palestine. All of this political unrest had its roots in the Maccabean Revolts between 167–141 BCE as the Jewish people, returned from captivity in Babylon and Persia, attempted to regain their independence from the Grecian Seleucid Empire.

Sermon Note: The Jewish Festival of the Dedication, or Hanukkah, originates from these Maccabbean Revolts when the Temple was re-taken and rededicated to God and is recounted in 1st and 2nd Maccabees (part of the Apocrypha).

The outcome of these revolts was the formation of the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom which ultimately became a client state of the Roman Empire under King Herod the Great in 37 BCE.

Sermon Note: Herod the Great is the Herod mentioned in the classic nativity story, but his son, Herod Antipas, is the Herod referenced in the rest of the Gospel stories. Herod Antipas is the Herod we will encounter in Mark.

Unlike many other nations conquered by the Romans, the Jewish people resisted assimilation into Roman social and religious norms, and there was constant unrest and threat of revolt in and around Jerusalem. At the time of the Gospel narrative, Rome had divided the Jewish nation into a Tetrarchy— a state with four rulers. In the Gospel of Mark, the action starts in Galilee— a region in the northern part of modern-day Israel and the West Bank— and Judea, the region around Jerusalem. At the time of Jesus, the Roman government was increasingly involving itself in the internal affairs of the Jewish nation and its religion. It’s safe to say that Jesus’ story opens on a powder keg that was about to explode.

The World of the Text

The Gospel of Mark’s literary context is, of course, a Gospel. According to the late Marcus Borg, one of my favorite theologians, Mark defines the genre of Gospel. We get the word Gospel from the Greek word euaggelion or a proclamation of good news. This is where we get the word evangelism from. The Gospels are really a testimony about Jesus. Remember from our podcast introduction that we aren’t meant to take anything in the Bible as a factual restatement of what actually happened. The Gospel of Mark, like all the Gospels and the entire Bible, is a theological narrative that strings together stories about Jesus with eyewitness interpretation of what those stories mean. Mark, like all the Gospels, uses a lot of metaphor. So some of the really big claims of the Gospel stories that are too hard to believe because of how outlandish they are may actually be metaphoric. This doesn’t mean they are untrue or inferior to factual narratives. Twentieth century Biblical scholar Paul Ricoeur says the metaphor language of the Bible, particularly the Gospels, is “a surplus of meaning.” In other words, the Evangelist, which is what I’ll call the author of Mark, uses metaphor to emphasis the magnitude of the experience of knowing Jesus. The Gospel’s narrative structure follows the journey of Jesus from his baptism to his native Galilee where the bulk of his ministry occurs and ends in Jerusalem with his death…perhaps a metaphor of our Christian journey from baptism to picking up our cross and following the Way? A quick word about the author. We don’t know who the author of Mark is, but it’s safe to assume the author might have been a person named Mark who either knew Jesus or knew an apostle or was a person who was disciple of this person named Mark. We don’t know.

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The World in Front of the Text

The Gospel of Mark was most likely written to Galilean or Syrian Christians, mostly Jewish, who were reeling from the destruction of the Second Temple and the end of Jewish life as they knew it. The Temple was the center of Jewish social and religious life, and without it Jews were facing a cultural catastrophe not experienced since the Babylonian Captivity. Jewish Christians saw Jesus as the Messiah, the son of David who was coming to liberate God’s people. The destruction of the Temple, and their oppressor’s gleeful triumph, undoubtedly shook their faith. The Gospel of Mark is an attempt to remind them of who Jesus is and what liberation he promised.

Sermon Note: The Second Temple was the replacement built by the Jewish people upon their return to Judea following the Babylonian Captivity. It replaced the First Temple, commonly called Solomon’s Temple because King Solomon built it. Herod the Great did considerable rebuilding to the Second Temple prior to the events recounted in the Gospels. The Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine, sits adjacent to the site of the Second Temple.

Fast-forward to January 2025 when this episode was written and recorded. We are in a place not unlike that of those first readers of Mark. For many of us, the world as we know it appears to be coming to an end. Everything we’ve believed about democracy, human decency, the rule of law, and even the church is fractured…maybe never to be repaired. Like those early readers we are scared, confused, and maybe even questioning everything. If you keep your ears, minds, and hearts opened, these 1,955 year old words of Mark may also remind us of who Jesus is and what liberation he promised.

Because it is so important that support our spiritual health and wellbeing in the days, months, and years ahead, I am beginning a weekly Zoom-based guided meditation circle called the Monday Circle. We will gather on Zoom every Monday at 7pm CST, starting January 13. If you can’t make it to the live meditation, the recording will be available for thirty days for you to complete at your own pace. To join, please subscribe. The first three Monday Circles are free, and after January 27, 2025, they will only be available to paid subscribers. A subscription is only $5 a month, so I hope everyone who wishes to participate will be able to. Let me know if this is a problem.

Last Things

In our next episode we open the Gospel of Mark and will journey together through the Gospel’s “overture,” Mark 1:1-20.

If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to subscribe to my Substack. There, you will find my sermon notes for Eleven Minutes in Heaven, other sermons I’ve preached, and my spicy takes on current events in my blog, Tea and Scandal. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you gain access to additional features and content and ensure that I can continue my public, parish, and community ministries.

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2025 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

What if I told you that you can take the Bible seriously but not literally? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Acts of the Apostles:

There was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 8:27-31, CEB)

Beloved, I’m Rev Darcy (she/hers), and I am blessed to be with you once again for another Eleven Minutes in Heaven. I am sorry this episode is a couple days late! I’ve been recovering from a bout of bronchitis, but am feeling much better. We are coming to the end of the preparation for our journey through the Bible. We’ve discussed our basic framework for interpretation (the world behind, of, and in front of the text), we’ve explored how the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament became the written text we have today, and we’ve uncovered who decided which books made it into the Biblical canon. Today, we will finish our preparation by tracing the path the Bible took to make it into your hands here in the 21st century by examining several— but not all— of the key historical moments that form the foundation of today’s Bible.

Sermon Note: As always, I encourage you to do your own studying from a reputable source. I recommend Jerry L Sumney’s The Bible: An Introduction (3rd ed.) from Fortress Press (ISBN13: 978-1506466781).

The Septuagint

The first key historical moment we will discuss today is the translation of the Septuagint. The Septuagint— or the translation of the seventy— is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was composed between 285–247 BCE at the order of Pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt.

Sermon Notes: The legend behind it’s translation— recorded in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud— is this:

King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one's room and said: ‘Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher.’ God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.

The creation of the Septuagint was a significant moment in the history of the Bible because most Jews didn’t speak or read Biblical Hebrew in the 2nd Temple Period, but almost everyone spoke koine Greek. This made the Bible, as it existed before the life of Jesus, accessible to pretty much everyone in the Roman Empire. It’s also important to note that when the New Testament refers to “the scriptures” it is referring to the Septuagint. So the prophet Isaiah the Ethiopian Eunuch, traditionally called Simeon Bachos, was reading in our sacred word was most likely from the Septuagint!

Vulgate

Until the end of the 4th century CE, the Christian Church primarily read the Bible in Greek using a combination of the Septuagint and assorted collections of manuscripts of New Testament books. Over time, they were translated into Latin, the official language of the Roman government and church. In 382 CE Jerome of Stridon was commissioned by Pope Damascus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels, the Latin translation of the Gospels. Jerome expanded this project into his Vulgate, or common Bible, which was a Latin translation of the entire Christian Biblical canon— the first of its kind. What was ground-breaking about this translation is that the Hebrew Scriptures were translated directly from the original Hebrew rather than the Septuagint, meaning the Vulgate was a widely-used translation where there was only one-degree of language separation from the reader to the original text. While generally seen as the official Bible of the church, the Vulgate was formally made the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent between 1545–1563 CE.

Sermon Note: The Vulgate was the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church until 1979 when it was replaced by the Nova Vulgata.

The Printing Press

Remember, until very recently if a word was written down it was literally written! There was no mass production of text like there is today until about 580 years ago. You could not take a piece of paper and make 500 copies in a couple of minutes like you can today. Before the 1400s CE, if you wanted to copy something it was literally hand copied. Thus, owning any written word, like the Bible, meant spending a lot of money. Until this point, most people received the scripture by hearing it read to them, and even then it was only read to them in Latin, so if they didn’t speak Latin— which the ordinary person didn’t— they didn’t know what it meant. The sermon or homily in a church service was meant to explain the meaning of the scripture to ordinary people in their own language. Thus, the Bible was not accessible to most people, and what they were told it said was influenced by the interpretation of the preacher. All of this changed around 1440 CE when the printing press was invented in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing press revolutionized the exchange of knowledge by allowing the mass production of written text. It could produce 3,600 pages per workday as opposed to the 40 pages hand copying could produce in the same amount of time. This spurred on the Protestant Reformation which had as a goal, among others, to put the Bible in the hands of the ordinary people in their own language.

Make like Gutenberg and help me mass produce this podcast!

Textus Receptus

After the Vulgate, the second major translation that influenced the Bible you have today is the Textus Receptus or the received text. Textus Receptus is the translation of the New Testament into a Latin and Greek print edition by Erasmus starting in 1516 CE. It was the foundation for the Luther, Tyndale, and King James translations of the Bible. While Erasmus’ work was considered top scholarship in the 16th century, it is now considered an inferior translation. Why? Because there are several additions or variants in the Textus Receptus that were present in the Vulgate but not Greek manuscripts. This renders the Luther, Tyndale, and King James translations less reliable translations than more modern versions.

Dead Sea Scrolls

More than anything, the Bible you hold in your hand today was influenced by a holy accident that occurred after World War II. In Qumran, on the west bank of the Jordan River in modern-day Palestinian territories Jewish manuscripts were found between 1946-1956 CE. These manuscripts date from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE and are the oldest surviving manuscripts of many Biblical books in the Biblical canon. Of these manuscripts— most written in either Hebrew or Aramaic— 40% are from the Hebrew Scriptures, 30% are from the Apocryphal Scriptures, and the remaining 30% are manuscripts relating to sectarian rules and beliefs which give us an exciting look into second Temple Jewish life. By providing us with older copies of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls allow for the Bible you are holding today to have the closest text to the original Hebrew Scripture narratives than any previous generation.

Your Bible Today

Unlike the Vulgate, Textus Receptus, Tyndale, Luther, and King James Bibles which were composed by one person or a small committee of theologically similar scholars, today’s gold star translations tend to be composed of large cross-denominational committees. These committees assign sub-committees to translate portions and hammer out differences in translation until they find consensus. However, this process isn’t fool-proof. In 1946 the word arsenokoitai— a word with no clear English counterpart but probably references sexual intercourse between older men and young boys— was first translated as “homosexual” in the Bible, a decision that was even controversial then.

Sermon Note: I recommend checking out the film 1946 to learn more about the controversial decision to translate arsenokoitai as “homosexual.”

Translations are never finished, with many being revised and republished periodically like the NRSVue in 2021. There is no perfect translation. The work of understanding the Bible is never complete, so be weary of people who claim the Bible is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That’s a claim only Jesus— and by extension God— can live up to.

As we journey together through the Bible, I pledge to be like Philip in today’s sacred word. I will come and sit beside you and guide you through the Bible using my advanced training and knowledge as a pastor. I will do my best to intersect my interpretation with cutting-edge human science knowledge so that we can best determine, together, what the Spirit is telling us through the sacred word here and now.

If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to subscribe to my Substack. There, you will find my sermon notes for Eleven Minutes in Heaven, other sermons I’ve preached, and my spicy takes on current events in my blog, Tea and Scandal. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you gain access to additional features and content and ensure that I can continue my public, parish, and community ministries.

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2024 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. All rights reserved. Support Rev. Darcy and gain access to even more content by becoming a paid subscriber at revdarcy.substack.com/subscribe.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

What if I told you that you can take the Bible seriously but not literally? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from the Gospel of John 21:24-25 (CEB): “This is the disciple who testifies concerning these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. Jesus did many other things as well. If all of them were recorded, I imagine the world itself wouldn’t have enough room for the scrolls that would be written.”

Welcome to another Eleven Minutes in Heaven with me, Rev Darcy (she/hers), as we continue our introduction to the Bible today by discussing how all 66 books common to the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christian Bibles became part of those Bibles. As you can surmise from the claims of today’s sacred word, there are were a lot of contenders. How ever did we chose?

Sermon Note: Want to dive even deeper or check my claims? I recommend The Bible: An Introduction (3rd Edition) by Jerry L. Sumney (ISBN-13: 978-1506466781). Available at your local bookseller and online.

What is a Canon?

The 66 books considered by Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians to be authoritative are called the Biblical canon. While we might hear the term Biblical canon and think of a medieval instrument of war used in Crusades past and present, that is not what this term means. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

The term canon, from a Hebrew-Greek word meaning “cane” or “measuring rod,” passed into Christian usage to mean “norm” or “rule of faith.” The Church Fathers of the 4th century CE first employed it in reference to the definitive, authoritative nature of the body of sacred Christian scripture.

In general, a writing is included in the New Testament Biblical canon because some committee of the church at some point decided that there was enough evidence that it was written by an apostle or a close known associate. They relied upon writings by early church fathers who referenced the work as evidence of such association. However, as you’ll find in my sermon notes from our last episode found on my Substack, claims of authorship may not be that accurate. The canon of what the Christian Church considers the authoritative Hebrew Scriptures was really determined by whether or not the work was included in the Septuagint— if you are Catholic or Orthodox— and if the you are Protestant then the criteria is if the Septuagint work has a corresponding Hebrew manuscript. More on that next week. Throughout this episode we will be exploring, briefly and by no means thoroughly, how a collection of related texts were determined to be canon.

Fixing the Canon

The process of determining what books were to be included in the Bible is called “fixing the canon” by Biblical scholars. For the Hebrew Bible, most scholars agree the canon of 24 books— by Rabbinical Judaism’ ordering— or 39 books— by Christianity’s ordering— was fixed between 140 and 40 BCE. For the Christian Bible, this process began as early as 130 CE and was definitely complete by 1546 (though small additions to the Gospels were approved by the Roman Catholic Church in 1870). It was Augustine of Hippo, who convened three councils between 393-419 CE, who formally declared the canon of the Christian Bible closed.

Sermon Note: Minor editions to the Bible are made when new manuscripts are discovered. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided older manuscripts than those widely used in translations like the Vulgate and the King James Bible. Translations usually include an explanatory note.

The First Canon

The earliest known authoritative canon of the Christian Bible was drawn up by Marcion of Sinope between 130 and 140 CE. His canon included the Gospel of Marcion (loosely based on Luke) and the Pauline Epistles of Galatians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Romans, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st Laodiceans, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon. Marcion was not a Jewish Christian, and he rejected the Hebrew Scriptures’ portrayal of God. He said that there was no resemblance between the God of Moses and the God of Jesus. This view is often mirrored, intentionally antisemitic or not, by twenty-first century Christians who read the Hebrew Scriptures superficially without knowing anything of the context of when they were written, by whom they were written, and why they were written. Remember from part 2 of this introductory series that the Hebrew Scriptures are a theological narrative written by the Jewish priests in captivity in Babylon and Persia and meant to convey the cause of their captivity— their faithlessness and exploitation of the vulnerable—, the faithfulness of God to God’s people and the eventual liberation of them from bondage by God. It is impossible to accurately read and understand the New Testament without a deep reading of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Knowledge this good must be shared!

The Canon We Know

The Biblical canon Christians know today has its origins the the patristic era of the church. Early fathers and mothers, the immediate successors to the Apostles, such as Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Athanasius accepted the Hebrew Scriptures in the Septuagint and most of what we know as the New Testament today. Origen did not include 2nd or 3rd John, and neither he nor Cyril of Jerusalem included Revelation in their canon. While Augustine of Hippo and his Synod of Hippo in North Africa (393 CE), the Synod of Carthage (397 CE), and Council of Carthage (419 CE) were the first official church bodies to fix the New Testament canon to the 27 books we know today, there was no church-wide declaration until the Protestant Reformation. While the Protestants were divided on whether to include the Apocrypha or not, they generally accepted the 27 New Testament books we have today (though Martin Luther was not convinced of the canonicity of Jude, James, Hebrews, and Revelation). In response to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church’s Council of Trent established the official canon of that Church in 1546. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox canons include Apocryphal books, and certain protestant churches include them as optional lectionary readings. But what are they?

Sermon Note: A key guiding principle of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura (“scripture alone”), is the reason for the uncertainty about the Apocrypha among Protestants. The fact that they were in the Septuagint, but not Hebrew manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, made them weary that they were actually authoritative scripture.

Sermon Note: I tend to agree with Martin Luther on Revelation, but I’d hate to lose some really great verses about the peace and joy of God experienced by the beloved when they die, as well as, images of animals in heaven that are found in that problematic text.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha get their name from the Greek word for “hidden.” Believed to be written between 200 BCE and 100 CE, the consensus about these fourteen books throughout the history of the Christian church has been that they are useful for instruction. Seven of them are included in the Hebrew Scriptures as deuterocanonical (i.e., second canon) by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Interestingly, the original protestant Bible included all fourteen in an inter-testament section called “Apocrypha” because they were useful for instruction if not canonical. It was until the Puritan movement in England that the apocrypha was removed from the Protestant Bible. Today, versions of the Protestant Bible are published both with and without the Apocrypha.

Sermon Note: Some of the Apocrypha are additional verses or chapters of canonical books.

From Scarcity to Abundance

What do we do with this knowledge that what we know as the Bible is the result of committee work? Well, first, I think we should take comfort in the fact that— in spite of all the arguments that probably took place— there is a common narrative to the whole work. I also take comfort in the fact that from the early days of the Christian Church, there was pretty strong consensus on what was and was not canon. I don’t personally think there was some grand conspiracy. The list of what we consider canon today is very similar to that authored by church fathers and mothers who were part of the Christian church before it was married to Empire. But what about what didn’t make the cut? Well, beloved, I think the Spirit speaks to us in any way she can, so if there is a sacred word from the Apocryphal books or Gospels or epistles that didn’t make the list, I think you can still learn a lot about God and God’s faithfulness to all people through them. As long as you approach the discovery of truth freely and responsibly, I think you’ll be fine.

The transition of the Bible from oral to written tradition with a fixed canon created a new problem…one of access. How can you have access to the sacred word without a widely available technology of mass communication? Next week, we will continue our introduction to the Bible by discussing how the invention of the printing press changed the Bible forever by placing it in the hands of the common person in their own mother tongue. You might be shocked to learn that some of what we consider to be authoritative teachings of the church are based on translation errors.

If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to subscribe to my Substack. There, you will find my sermon notes for Eleven Minutes in Heaven, other sermons I’ve preached, and my spicy takes on current events in my blog, Tea and Scandal. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you gain access to additional features and content and ensure that I can continue my public, parish, and community ministries.

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2024 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. Support Rev. Darcy and gain access to even more content by becoming a paid subscriber at revdarcy.substack.com/subscribe.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

What if I told you that you can take the Bible seriously but not literally? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from 1 John 4:7-8, “Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love” (CEB).

Hello Beloved, I’m Rev. Darcy (she/hers), and I am so pleased you’ve decided to spend another eleven minutes in heaven with me. Today, we will begin the third part of our brief introduction to the Bible that is laying the foundation for our time together each week. Let’s dive in to the three worlds of the New Testament text to see how the New Testament writers wove together Jesus’ teachings of love, rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures’ narrative of God’s liberation of and faithfulness to God’s people, to become the New Testament.

Sermon Note: Want to dive even deeper or check my claims? I recommend The Bible: An Introduction (3rd Edition) by Jerry L. Sumney (ISBN-13: 978-1506466781). Available at your local bookseller and online.

The World Behind the Text: A Lot of Letters Based on an Oral Tradition

Okay, let’s look at the world behind the text, that is, its cultural context. The written New Testament is written primarily to a Greco-Roman audience largely by Jewish Christians to explain the Jewishness of Jesus’ teachings and translate them into livable truths for Greco-Roman Christians. It makes sense, therefore, that the earliest books of the New Testament are the epistles— most written between 48 and 70 CE— which explain the significance of the stories about Jesus and his teachings shared orally by his followers. The Gospels were written later— between 70 and 110 CE— once first generation Christians started to die, allowing for concrete Gospel narratives for future generations of Christians. Each Gospel tells the stories in a slightly different way because they are written by and two different cultural sub-groups of Christians. Like the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels should not be read as historically or scientifically accurate narratives but rather as theological narratives containing deep spiritual meaning and lasting truths. Similarly, the epistles should not be read as universal instructions but culturally-specific applications of Jesus’ teachings that can still be useful— if not binding— today.

Sermon Note: Not all of the epistles, or letters, attributed to Paul were actually written by him! Scholars generally agree he wrote Galatians, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians. Many scholars see the epistles of 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus as pseudepigraphic, meaning they were written by Paul’s students and attributed to him— a common practice in the first century Roman world. Scholars disagree on whether or not Paul wrote 2nd Thessalonians, Ephesians and Colossians. While widely attributed to Paul, most scholars agree Paul did not write Hebrews. Of the general epistles, those not attributed to Paul, it is generally agreed that James the brother of Jesus wrote James, Peter wrote 1st Peter, and a man named John wrote 1st John. The remaining Epistles— 2nd Peter and 2nd and 3rd John are probably pseudepigraphic. John of Patmos is believed to have written Revelation, but as you’ll hear next week Revelation almost didn’t make it into the Bible (and probably shouldn’t have in my humble opinion).

The World of The Text: One World Ends, Another World Begins

Now onto the world of the text, or the linguistic and grammatical context. Just as the Hebrew Scriptures were written during a period of intense sociopolitical conflict, the New Testament was written during a time when the world of its characters was ending and another world was beginning. The Christian tradition is grounded in Judaism, and the earliest followers of Jesus were Jews who primarily spoke Aramaic in common speech. So the original words of Jesus and stories told about Jesus were spoken in Aramaic. As Christianity spread outside of the regions around Jerusalem— the epicenter of the first century Jewish world— these stories were translated from Aramaic into Koine Greek which was the common language of the Roman Empire. This was the language that New Testament was ultimately written in. The Jewish World, as Jews knew it, ended in 70 CE when the Roman Empire destroyed the Jerusalem Temple and scattered the Jewish people across Europe, Asia, and Africa to diffuse their power to resist Roman rule. Concurrent with this the New Testament story became more infused with Greco-Roman culture. Regardless, the theme of liberation and faithfulness of the Hebrew Scriptures, amplified in the teachings of Jesus and the interpretation of those teachings by Paul, remains infused in the language of the New Testament.

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The World in Front of the Text: Rogue and Countercultural to White Christian Nationalism

The world in front of the text, the way in which the text has been received across the last two thousand years, is a fascinating, yet painful, arc from rogue and countercultural to White Christian nationalism. Early readers of the New Testament would have been astounded by two key themes which undermined everything Greco-Roman society was built on. The first most astounding thing about the language of the New Testament is the personal, compassionate, consistent, and paternal relationship between God and humankind— a stark contrast to the distant, selfish, chaotic, and cold relationship between the Greek pantheon and humankind. The second most astounding thing about the language of the New Testament is the equality of humankind before one another and before God. While not always apparent because of the sarcastic language of Paul lost on twenty-first century audiences, the fact that Christianity remained an outlawed religion until the late fourth century is a testament to how subversive it, and its scriptures, was to the strict hierarchy of Roman religion, politics, and society. The shift from rogue to ruin began when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine embarked on a policy of Hellenization, consistent with what Rome had done with the Greek religion and culture, and appropriated the Christian narrative and tradition into Greek religion and society. Thus, the interpretation of the New Testament, from the late fourth century until today, has been one for empire, not against. For rigid distinction between class, gender, and ethnicity, not against. For violent enforcement of Christian beliefs and norms, against it.

Sermon Note: For an excellent socio-rhetorical commentary on Paul’s writing, I recommend the work of Dr. Ben Witherington, III.

Conclusion

Beloved, if you are still listening I am going to assume that you are as concerned as I am about how the sacred words the Judeo-Christian tradition have been hijacked and used to reinforce and protect everything Jesus opposed. I know its disheartening and scary to see something that is so meaningful to us be used in such a bad way. I am going to cling to our sacred word for today: “God is love” (1 John 4:8b, CEB). God loves us, and if we would know who God is all we need to do is love. Love God, love ourselves, and love one another if Jesus is to be believed. We love God by doing our utmost to understand who God is, and a great way to do that is dive below the surface of the scriptures to look for the sacred and timeless truths contained within. We love ourselves and our neighbors by embracing those truths— that God loves us just as we are, God is faithful to us no matter what, and that God will liberate us from the power of evil that is constantly telling us to look at our spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and relational nakedness and feel ashamed because we are not perfect. This is how we bring Christianity back to its roots. Thank you for loving God, yourself, and your neighbor enough to join me on this journey. Thank you for trusting me. I love you.

Next week on Eleven Minutes in Heaven we will uncover how committees of the church over several centuries decided which books were and were not legit. You might be shocked to learn that there is no unified Bible across Christian traditions. If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to subscribe to my Substack. There, you will find my sermon notes for Eleven Minutes in Heaven, other sermons I’ve preached, and my spicy takes on current events in my blog, Tea and Scandal. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you gain access to additional features and content and ensure that I can continue my public, parish, and community ministries.

Subscribe as a free or paid subscriber.

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Above all, dwell in peace. May it be.

Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2024 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. Support Rev. Darcy and gain access to even more content by becoming a paid subscriber at revdarcy.substack.com/subscribe.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

What if I told you that you can take the Bible seriously but not literally? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22: “Don’t suppress the Spirit. Don’t brush off Spirit-inspired messages, but examine everything carefully and hang on to what is good. Avoid every kind of evil” (CEB).

Hello Beloved, I’m Rev. Darcy (she/hers), and I am so pleased you’ve decided to spend another eleven minutes in heaven with me today. Today, we will begin the second part of our brief introduction to the Bible that is laying the foundation for our time together each week. The Biblical stories as we know them today in the twenty-first century have their origin in an oral tradition. What do I mean by this? I mean that people told the stories, they didn’t read them. The stories we have were literally passed down through telling not by writing them on scrolls and binding them into books. In fact, while we do have written versions of the Bible— both physical and digital— most of us know the stories because we’ve heard someone tell them not because we’ve actually read the Bible. According to Lifeway Research, a evangelical organization, only half of Americans have read significant amounts of the Bible, with the other half reading select passages and stories, a few sentences, or none of it. According to Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization that conducts survey research in the United States, only 45% of American Christians read the Bible at least once per week, with 33% reading it seldom or never. Yet, so many of us know or have a good outline of what the Bible is about and of many of the important stories. Why? Because someone told them to us. As we continue our journey through the Bible, we will look at the transition from oral to written tradition in what Christians called the “Old Testament” but what is more appropriately called the Hebrew Scriptures.

Sermon Note: Want to dive even deeper or check my claims? I recommend The Bible: An Introduction (3rd Edition) by Jerry L. Sumney (ISBN-13: 978-1506466781). Available at your local bookseller and online.

The World Behind the Text: Oral Tradition to Written Text

Okay, let’s look at the world behind the text. The writing down of the Hebrew Scriptures started just before the exile to Babylon of the Judean Israelites, the Jews, from Judah, or the region around Jerusalem, between 597-587 BCE and continued during their return to Jerusalem and Judah around 538 BCE as well as during the development of second temple Judaism as late as 164 BCE (so roughly two hundred years before Jesus was born). Remember, the Biblical stories had existed for thousands of years, but they were finally being written down. The first books to be written were the prophetic books, or what would be the last seventeen books of the Old Testament in the protestant Bible, which were warnings to the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah that they would fall if they didn’t stop their social injustices. They were written between 750 BCE and 450 BCE. Then the Torah, or the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures were written down during the Judean captivity in Persia between 539-333 BCE or even later between 333–164 BCE according to some scholars. So no, Moses didn’t write the Torah. Any guesses of when the “historical books,” or the books falling between the Torah and the prophets which tell the national story of the people of Israel, were written? Most scholars agree they were also written during the captivity. And the Psalms, or the hymnal used in Temple worship? Well they evolved from the 10th century BCE to the 5th century BCE, meaning King David could have written some of them, since he reigned between the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, but some of them were actually written during the captivity!

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The World of The Text: Liberation and Faithfulness

To recap, the Biblical narrative of the Hebrew scriptures spans a period of what most scholars agree represents about 4,000 years but was written down during a very specific 586 years of intense sociopolitical conflict. These stories developed over thousands of years from different semitic dialects and cultures as the people of Israel developed from a loose confederacy of tribes into a single nation and then two separate nations and then as a series of puppet states of various Asian and European Empires. But remember, with the exception of the prophetic books that were written contemporaneously with their authors, these Biblical editors, the priests in captivity who took the oral traditions and wrote them down in Biblical Hebrew, infused them with their own editorial agenda. So the language infused in the Hebrew Scriptures is one of a people enslaved by a foreign power longing for and praying for liberation. It is no accident that there is a common theme in the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures. God is our benevolent creator who loves us, has made covenant with us, and is with us even as we fall short (sometimes spectacularly) of our part of the covenant, and God will liberate us eventually when we return to right covenantal relations.

The World in Front of the Text: Theological to Historical Narrative and Back

Jews in captivity up to the time of Jesus would have understood clearly the liberation narrative of their Bible. In fact, when the story of the New Testament opens in the Gospels, the Jewish people have not been free or truly sovereign for over 600 years. They received the text as a theological narrative that reinforced God’s faithfulness to God’s covenant with them through Abraham, and they tracked that faithfulness through their national story. Interestingly, many of those in the early days of the Common Era or Anno Domini (years AD) would have most likely read the Bible, that is the Hebrew Scriptures, through a Greek translation called the Septuagint which actually contained more books than are typically included in today’s protestant Bibles (more on that next week). This means that the national story of the people of Israel, the Jews, was available to the entire Empire. And as we will see in the New Testament, there are many instances where the Jewishness of the Gospel story has to be translated for an increasingly non-Jewish audience. As the Biblical story moved further and further away from the time in which it was formally written, we came to see it less and less of a theological narrative about God’s faithfulness to and liberation of God’s people and saw it instead as an historical narrative— something it never actually claims to be. In the twenty-first century, we tend to approach the Biblical stories with an allegedly objective skepticism. As we will discuss next week, we don’t actually have to be on our guard against illogical or factually fallacious claims in the Bible if we approach it as a theological story rather than a scientific or historically accurate narrative.

Conclusion

What do we make, then, of the Hebrew Scriptures in light of the fact that they are a compilation of an oral tradition into a written text with a theological and low-key political agenda? Are these scriptures a reliable source of truth? Are they a reliable revelation about God? I say that if you take it seriously but not literally, then it is absolutely a reliable source of truth and a reliable revelation about God. Taking it seriously involves doing what we are doing now— looking below the surface level to understand the worlds behind, of, and in front of the text. Remember our sacred word from the start of our eleven minutes: “Don’t suppress the Spirit. Don’t brush off Spirit-inspired messages, but examine everything carefully and hang on to what is good. Avoid every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, CEB). In order to do this we must approach the Bible freely, letting go of the need to control what it says or to interpret it in an orthodox manner. And we need to approach it responsibly, that is, with a clear understanding of its historical, linguistic, and cultural contexts. I hope that our time together is equipping you to do just that.

Next week on Eleven Minutes in Heaven we will uncover just how the New Testament, or the second half of the Christian Bible, came into being. If you are enjoying Eleven Minutes in Heaven I invite you to subscribe to my Substack. There, you will find my sermon notes for Eleven Minutes in Heaven, other sermons I’ve preached, and my spicy takes on current events in my blog, Tea and Scandal. If you choose to become a paid subscriber, you gain access to additional features and content and ensure that I can continue my public, parish, and community ministries.

Subscribe as a free or paid subscriber.

Beloved, go about your day knowing you are loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack, and take a nap. Dwell in peace. May it be.

Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2024 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. Support Rev. Darcy and gain access to even more content by becoming a paid subscriber at revdarcy.substack.com/subscribe.

All scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.

What if I told you that you can take the Bible seriously but not literally? I’m Rev Darcy, a Universalist pastor from rural Alabama, and I’m inviting you on a journey with me through the Bible where we’ll dive deep into all of the drama without the spiritual trauma. Come with me to learn about just how much you are loved, just as you are in this moment, as we spend the next eleven minutes in heaven.

Listen to what the Spirit is saying to you through this sacred word from 1 Timothy 3:16-17: “Every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good” (CEB)

Hello Beloved, I’m Rev. Darcy (she/hers), and I am looking forward to our journey through the Bible on this new podcast, Eleven Minutes in Heaven. Our sacred word today is a small excerpt from the first letter to Timothy, and I’m opening our time together with this scripture passage because it is often used as an “aha gotcha” scripture proof that God wrote the Bible. Which I find interesting since much of what we call the New Testament was not written when that scripture was penned. As you might have gotten from the opening of this episode, I don’t take the Bible literally, but I do take it seriously. And I think that taking it seriously means looking at it from beyond its superficial surface meaning to uncover the timeless truth contained in the words human beings, inspired by the Sacred and Holy, wrote about the relationship between humankind and the Divine. As we journey through the Bible together we will dig deep into three different contexts, or “worlds,” to help us discover these truths.

Sermon Note: If you want to dig even deeper in to the history and themes of the Bible, I recommend this introductory textbook.

The World Behind the Text

The first context we will consider as we journey through the Bible together is the world behind the text. The Bible was written over a period of approximately 1,500 years by different authors in different cultures and times. Their interpretation of the Divine and of truth was influenced by the time they lived in, their cultural norms and values, and the knowledge widely available to them. Understanding the world behind the text helps us understand the timeless truths that are contained in specific examples and narrative choices. For example, the Bible teaches that, “God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them” (Genesis 1:27, CEB). A literal reading of this scripture would imply that intersex people do not exist or that they are malformed. This scripture has also been used in a literal sense to “prove” there’s something abnormal about transgender people. However, science has demonstrated both of these interpretations to be untrue. So who is correct? When we consider the world behind the text, we can acknowledge that the Biblical author, inspired by the Divine, wrote the important truth that we are all precious and worthy of dignity and respect because we are made by God in God’s image just the way we are. We can also acknowledge that the Divinely inspired author was limited in their perspective to what knowledge the world had at the time surrounding biological sex and psychosocial gender. We are not limited in our understanding in the same way— we know that there are three broad sex categories (i.e., male, female, and intersex) and that one’s internal sense and external expression of their gender is not necessarily aligned with biological sex, so we can expand the meaning of Genesis 1:27 to say that we are made in God’s image just as we are. God makes no mistakes. This is the timeless truth.

The World of the Text

The second context we will consider on our journey is the world of the text. The Bible contains three broad literary styles. Forty-three percent of the Bible is in a narrative style, 33% is poetry, and 24% is prose discourse. Understanding the literary choice chosen by the author of the specific book helps us understand their intention. For example, let’s take a look at the “prophetic” books of the Hebrew Scriptures, commonly called the “Old” Testament. The Book of Hosea contains a lot of really problematic statements about women. The prophet Hosea’s wife, Gomer, was unfaithful to him, and his prophecy contains a lot of invectives against “w****s.” I have a lot of trouble reading this book (but this is the world in front of the text, so I need to put these feelings to one side for a second). Understanding the literary genre of this book— prose discourse in the form of a prophesy— helps with interpretation. Prophetic language is supposed to be unsettling, offensive. It’s supposed to get our attention and make us change our behavior. Hosea uses the language he does, comparing the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel to unfaithful wives, to try and turn them from the social injustice and exploitation that was tearing their nations apart.

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The World in Front of the Text

The last context we will consider on our journey is the world in front of the text. This includes the way the scripture has been received and interpreted by its readers across time and culture…including your reception and interpretation! This podcast, my interpretation, and your interpretation of what I am saying make up the world in front of the text. There is no such thing as a neutral or value-free interpretation of the text. If this were true then there would not be more than 45,000 Christian denominations world-wide! We bring our presuppositions and biases and perspectives to any reading of the Biblical text, and that’s okay. Let’s revisit the Book of Hosea. Reading something that calls an entire nation a “w***e” or “prostitute” disgusts me on a personal level as a woman and a feminist. However, some men today might approve of it or even feel justified in their disgusting attitudes toward women as a result of hearing it. This definitely has been the predominant reception of Biblical texts like this in the past. Understanding what we bring to the text (like me coming at the text as a woman and a feminist), and what others today bring to the text (like some pastors bringing their toxic masculinity and misogyny) and what others in the past have brought to the text, helps us understand, in part, why we interpret the text the way we do. Combining all of these worlds— the world behind, the world of, and the world in front of the text gives us a clearer picture of the timeless truth the Spirit is delivering through the sacred word.

Our Bible Translation

Speaking of the world in front of the text, what Bible translation will we be using during our time together? The Bible has been translated into 3,317 different versions in 2,170 languages, each bringing their own unique interpretation and perspective to the Biblical narrative. Which one will we be using? I’ve selected the Common English Bible as our common text for this podcast. The Common English Bible was translated between 2008 and 2011 by a committee formed of an alliance of mainline protestant denominations. The Common English Bible was translated using a mixture of formal and dynamic equivalence. Formal equivalence involves staying as true as possible to the semantic structure (e.g., words and sentence structure) of the original text, while dynamic equivalence involves making the language more natural to the target audience. The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, each of which have different syntax, writing styles, and narrative conventions.

A literal or direct translation of the Bible into English may or may not make sense, and usually will not read naturally to us. Let’s look a commonly known scripture verse, John 3:16 as an example. Young’s Literal Translation, which was translated using strict formal equivalence, would read like this: “For God did so love the world, that His Son -- the only begotten -- He gave, that every one who is believing in him may not perish, but may have life age-during” (John 3:16). While we understand what this translation is saying, it doesn’t read naturally to us, and after a while our minds would go numb. Now, let’s read the same passage in the the Common English Bible: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life” (John 3:16). This translation preserves the intent and message of the original while putting it in language that seems natural to English speakers. I like the Common English Bible because it is written at a level a seventh grader could read, thus making it one of the most accessible versions of the Bible available in English.

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Conclusion

I hope that you are as excited as I am about our journey through the Bible together. As your guide, I promise you that I am not infallible, and the word I’ll be bringing you is neither my final word (nor God’s final word) on any subject. I promise you that I will thoughtfully prepare for each episode and do my best to deliver an episode full of Biblical drama without spiritual trauma. I promise you that I will hold you in my heart as I practice prayer and meditation each day.

Beloved, go about your day knowing you were loved more than you could ever ask or imagine. Be kind to yourself and to one another. Have a snack and take a nap. Dwell in peace, may it be.

Eleven Minutes in Heaven is © Copyright 2024 Darcy Corbitt, LLC, PO Box 23, Camp Hill, AL 36850. Support Rev. Darcy by becoming a paid subscriber at revdarcy.substack.com/subscribe.

Unless otherwise specified, all scripture quotations come from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE which is © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (www.CommonEnglishBible.com).

Scripture quotations from the 1898 YOUNG’S LITERAL TRANSLATION are in the public domain.

Music included in this podcast is by Julius H used under the Pixabay Content License.