Reading and Understanding the New Testament of the Bible.

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Is it enough to just read the Bible? Unless you understand when the Bible was written and who wrote it is impossible to really understand what the New Testament is all about. A good example of this is the Gospel of Mark, the first of the Gospels to have been written. As with all the Gospels we don't really know who wrote it. We do know that it was written about 70 CE. This is the period of time immediately following the failed Jewish revolt against Rome. By examining the contents of the gospel we can infer something about the writer and what he was attempting to accomplish. The Gospel of Mark like all the Gospels is not a biography of Jesus or an attempt to accurately reflect the history of the time. It is a gospel. A gospel is meant to spread the good news. The person who wrote Mark was writing to a Jewish audience after the failed revolt against Rome, who were experiencing the rather heavy-handed punishment of Rome. The temple had been destroyed, thousands of Jews were being crucified and the whole Jewish population was suffering severe repression. The person who wrote Mark wrote his gospel to comfort and encourage the Christian sect of the Jewish population. The Gospel of Mark is the darkest and most mysterious of the Gospels. In it there is Sermon on the Mount, no Beatitudes and no resurrection. There is no message of love but there it is a message of hope. Whoever wrote Mark their message was that the prophesied Messiah had come in the person of Jesus and he suffered just as the audience of the Gospel was suffering. The original Gospel of Mark ends with the empty tomb. This gospel was later revised to include the resurrection but in the original version there was no resurrection. The Gospel of Mark was a Jewish Gospel addressed to the Jewish population describing the life and death of a Jewish rabbi. To understand the Gospel of Mark you must read it in this light.