BEN: While I am quite dubious in regard to claims of large chiastic structures in Mark, not least because that is a ‘visual’ device, one that has to be seen by a reader of a text, and Mark’s Gospel is largely meant to be heard by the majority audience, I think you have a good point about the use of synkrisis in Mark. This makes good rhetorical sense of various passages. What do you see as the main thing Mark… Read more

BEN: Granting that ancient biographies sometime involve fiction (e.g. in the Gospel parables are clear examples), I wonder what you see as the dangers of using a methodology applied to novels to analyze ancient biographies. I am referring, among other things, to complaints about lack of character development, or even calling the persons mentioned in the narratives characters, as though they were actors in a play or created characters in a work of fiction? It does not seem to me… Read more

BEN: I am one of those utterly unconvinced that Mark 16.8 was the original ending of Mark’s Gospel. ‘Ephobounto gar’ certainly doesn’t work as the ending of a book, or even a normal Greek paragraph. And to judge from the 3 different endings added to the text in the 2nd-3rd century, early Christians who knew about ancient biographies didn’t think so either. What sort of evangelist would want to end the story of Jesus with fright and flight of disciples… Read more

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After his first major book The Unseen Realm went viral and then he gave us ‘Angels’ now we get a full length treatment of demons, Satan, unclean spirits— all things dark and dangerous. I was beginning to feel like I was in a Dan Brown novel (cf. Angels and Demons) there for a while. This study, like his previous ones, is in many ways excellent— it’s well written, very well researched, Mike plays to his strengths which is his detailed… Read more

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https://www.dropbox.com/sh/r1ypzxbb6398p7o/AABjXiOuFmkDbo08Be98Yb5ta?dl=0&preview=2.mp4 Read more

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