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A CAMEO FROM GENESIS IN MARK: BIBLICAL GUEST-APPEARANCE?

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:58 pm
by Beverly Devry-Smith
A CAMEO FROM GENESIS IN MARK: BIBLICAL GUEST-APPEARANCE?
-An unnamed man in Mark 14 shows Jesus' disciples a 'guest-room' where they shall observe and eat the Passover. Is this anonymous person meant, in some way, to be Laban from the book of Genesis? Note the following:
The disciples are instructed to follow a certain described figure:
-Mark 14:14-15= "Wherever he should enter [οπου εαν εισελθη], say to the head-of-household [οικοδεσποτη] thus: 'Where is the room [που εστι καταλυμα] that [οτι] we can rest up... that is prepared [ετοιμον]?"
-Gen 24:31-32= Laban asks the stranger who turns out to be Abraham's servant: "Why stand outside? For I prepared [εγω δε ητοιμασα] the house [την οικιαν] (=for guests)." And the man (then) entered into the residence [εισελθη δε ο ανθρωπος εις την οικιαν]."
-Gen 24:2= "Abraham said to the eldest servant of his household, the one in charge of all (his property/affairs)..."
-Gen 24:11= "He rested the camels... at the Well of Water [υδατος] towards late afternoon/evening [το προς οψε]." (=the servant then prays that he is able to find here the prophesied predestined wife,—who later turns out to be Rebekah, the woman "prepared" [ητοιμασα] by Providence/fate to marry Isaac. In verses 16-17, she appears carrying a "water-jug" [υδριαν] as the servant "ran to meet [συναντησιν] her.")
=the evangelist Mark literarily transforms Abraham's 'foretelling of events' to his servant into Jesus 'predicting' what'' happen to his students=
-Mark 14:13= Jesus says: "You will meet [απαντησει] a man [ανθρωπος] carrying a jug of water [υδατος]..."
-See how even the time of day has been borrowed by the evangelist:
-Mark 14:17 = "And evening it having become" [οψιας γενομενης]
-These references have been all quite compressed into a small section of Marks gospel, but this truly seems to be a Biblical cameo, a guest-star appearance of Abraham's relative Laban leading Jesus disciples to a guest-room to celebrate Passover.
Once the reader opens their mind to the possibility of these kinds of allusions occuring in New Testament texts, it becomes obvious they are omnipresent— far more often than has been previously acknowledged. One wonders what other persons might be right in plain sight yet cloaked behind the anonymity given them by the evangelists, whatever their (literary? enigmatic?) reason. Mark specifically is more ingenious and eccentric than has been suspected.