Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Mark 1:1-13, John in the wilderness
John preaches and baptizes at the Jordan, dressed like Elijah. Jesus is baptized, hears the voice from heaven and is driven into the wilderness for forty days.
Mark 1:1-13, in every translation this tool compares.
Mark opens with Isaiah's promise of a voice in the desert and a prophet who fits it. Crowds go out from Judea and Jerusalem to be baptized and confess their sins. Jesus comes from Galilee, is baptized, and is at once sent into the desert to be tested.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/wilderness\/","n":"The wilderness","s":"The dry, empty country beyond the Jordan where John preached, Jesus was tested and a crowd was fed. It was hard ground, and it was where Israel's story with God began.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/proselyte-baptism\/","n":"Ritual washing and convert immersion","s":"Jews washed often for purity, but one immersion happened only once: the bath a Gentile took on becoming a Jew. John's baptism and the church's took that shape.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/elijah-expected\/","n":"Elijah expected","s":"Malachi promised Elijah would come back before the great day of the Lord. By Jesus' time many were waiting for him, and the Gospels keep raising his name.","r":""}
Josephus also remembers John's baptism, and describes it as a washing for the purification of the body, the soul having first been purified by righteousness. Garland, in the Zondervan backgrounds commentary, notes that nearly 150 private immersion pools have been found in wealthy Jerusalem houses and that people immersed themselves, so John probably supervised as they went under. An inscription from Priene calls Augustus's birthday the beginning of good tidings for the world (the Zondervan archaeology handbook), and Garland reads Mark's opening word gospel as a challenge to imperial propaganda of good tidings and a new age of peace. The book names no author. Carson, Moo and Morris trace the name to Papias, who reports the elder as saying "Mark became Peter's interpreter", and take him to be almost certainly the John Mark of Acts. Carson, Moo and Morris judge Rome, the place early tradition names, the best choice; Garland finds the choice between Rome and Palestine hard to decide. Most scholars put Mark in the sixties; Garland dates it to AD 68 to 70, reading chapter 13 as written when a Roman legion was about to sack Jerusalem or just had; Carson, Moo and Morris favor the late fifties.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Mark 1:1, 1:4, 1:5, 1:6, 1:7 and 1:13
- N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, comments on Mark 1:1-8 and Mark 1:9-13
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2, trans. William Whiston
- David E. Garland, Mark, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, Authorship and Place of Origin, Important Facts, Setting and Purpose, and on Mark 1:1, 1:4 and 1:6
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, Mark 1:1 A Tale of Two Kings
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 3, Mark, sections Author, Provenance, Date and Audience and Purpose
