Ship of Fools: This is Verrry Interesting

Thread: This is Verrry Interesting - Mark 5:21-43 Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

A number of years ago, there was a TV series, Laugh-In, in which one of the comedians would peer through some reeds in a Nazi uniform and react to something that had happened with the line: "Verrry interesting."

Here is the story of the healing of a woman and the raising of Jarius' daughter.

Besides both of the people being healed were female, what else did they have in common?

A: The woman had been having a blood issue for twelve years. The girl was twelve years old.

Verry Interesting.

I wonder what the significance is---why did Mark include this specific detail?

[Thread title edited for searchability.
Mamacita, Keryg Host]

[ 06. January 2016, 22:12: Message edited by: Mamacita ]

Posted by Hedgehog (# 14125) on :

One can hardly doubt that, as a number, twelve has great significance in the Bible, what with the tribes of Israel and the Apostles. And, for that matter, Jesus' earliest recorded utterance, in Luke 2:41-52 is also when Jesus is twelve.

All of which makes me wonder whether Mark used 12 for both the years of the woman's illness and the years of the daughter's life more for symbolic value than strict factual reporting?

Although, the precise symbolism he was trying to convey eludes me.

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

Mother and daughter?

Posted by An die Freude (# 14794) on :

Reading it a few years back in a bible study with some friends, we noticed several ways in which these lives are woven together and contrasted with one another. The woman tried to hide, Jairus' daughter had a posse of criers around her that Jesus had to send out. Jairus was at the top socially, the woman was as unclean as they come. Their healing seem to involve a restoration not only of their physical functions, but also of reasonable places in society, as Jesus makes sure that everybody knows that the woman is healed... The woman has faith - Jairus the temple leader almost doubts (or at least his friends sure do).

I am not sure what purpose the figure twelve years serves in this context, but the stories are definitely tied together to describe different sides of a coin, IMO.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

The dead girl was aged 12.

The woman with the haemorrhage had suffered with it for 12 years.

12 was the age when you couold get married.

So it was a dangerous number - the onset of puberty when you could suffer merely because of being female.

Purity laws about who is in and nit in the 12 tribes.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Gramps wrote:

quote:
A number of years ago, there was a TV series, Laugh-In, in which one of the comedians would peer through some reeds in a Nazi uniform and react to something that had happened with the line: "Verrry interesting."

Arte Johnson, who specialized in comic renditions of accents. Wikipedia seems to credit him with originating the Russian Reversal Joke, but doesn't provide a source.

It occurs to me that, like Saturday Night Live in the next generation, a lot of Laugh-In was taken up with trying to create catchphrases for the sake of creating catchphrases.

[ 24. June 2015, 15:07: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

I have just read that the two stories seem to have different grammatical constructs and so Mark seems to have 'collected' them from 2 separate sources.

Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I have just read that the two stories seem to have different grammatical constructs and so Mark seems to have 'collected' them from 2 separate sources.

That is interesting. It has always seemed reasonable to me that the stories were originally separate and that Mark wove them together. Great storytelling, at least.

quote:
Originally posted by An die Freude:
I am not sure what purpose the figure twelve years serves in this context, but the stories are definitely tied together to describe different sides of a coin, IMO.

The notes in my copy of the Oxford Annotated Bible point out that at age 12, the daughter is now marriageable and, by being brought back to life, is now herself capable of bringing new life.

That could stand in juxtaposition to the older woman, who was probably nearing menopause. [Her symptoms being not unusual for a woman in perimenopause, although you have to read "12 years" as "a long time." I mean, she'd be dead if she had been bleeding for 12 years straight.] So they are like bookends in the female life cycle.

In any case, as women, they are among "the least of these" - especially moving since Jesus does not flinch at making physical contact with a bleeding woman and then a dead body.

[ 25. June 2015, 00:03: Message edited by: Mamacita ]

Posted by Waw consecutivum (# 18120) on :

quote:
Besides both of the people being healed were female, what else did they have in common?

A: The woman had been having a blood issue for twelve years.

The girl was twelve years old. Verry Interesting.

I wonder what the significance is---why did Mark include this specific detail?

## Might there be a reference to the Death & Resurrection of Christ?

1. He becomes unclean, in a way involving. blood

2. He is marginalised

3. He is dead

4. ...then raised from death

St Mark uses the number 12 15 times - more than any other Evangelist:

11 times for "the 12"
2 times in this passage
2 time for 12 baskets left over from the multiplication of food.
Maybe the two episodes are related in some way ?

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

The parallels are interesting but so are the contrasts. Jairus is a powerful man, the ruler of the synagogue. Yes, it's just a twelve-year-old girl Jesus is going to heal -- in herself a person of low status -- but she's important because of her father's high status. Jairus would presumably have the power and authority to demand the sources of an itinerant healer like Jesus, and Jesus does indeed go to do his bidding.

But on the way there, he is stopped by a person of incredibly low status -- a woman with no man to speak on her behalf, a woman who is probably ritually unclean because of her "issue of blood," a woman of so little position and power she doesn't even dare approach Jesus with a request for healing but just wants to brush her fingers against the hem of his garment to get a little of his healing power.

And Jesus stops -- he delays his visit to the home of the powerful man, risks the life of Jairus's daughter to stop and speak to this woman at the very bottom of the social scale.

If these were originally two quite separate stories, Mark made a very powerful statement by weaving them together like this. Most of the miracles in the gospels are just bang-bang-bang, one healing after another. But this -- one healing story nested within another -- that's no accident. Either it really happened that way, or it's written that way to make some very specific points about both the similarities and the differences between the two women Jesus healed that day.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Thank you all for sharing the nuggets you have found in the story. Probably more. It is fun to unpack stories you think you know.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

Interestingly, the preacher this morning downplayed the status of Jairus as ruler of the synagogue, comparing him to the president of the worshop committee in a smallish present-day congregation. His message was that Jesus heals ordinary people, like both Jairus and the woman were.

A thing that I leaned in the sermon is that both of Jesus's actions, being touched by an impure woman and touching a dead girl, would require Him to undergo ritual cleansing under Jewish law. The preacher made a connection with the Christian sacrament of baptism (although I'm not really sure what this connection was [Smile]

)

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

I've heard that he wasn't made ritually unclean, as the woman touched his garment not him. I have read different opinions (some by Jewish academics) on the 'unclean' thing, so maybe it's not quite certain what it was like in the 1st century.

Posted by Adam. (# 4991) on :

Some Jews would have seen her as unclean (eg. the covenanters at Qumran). But all, or even most, Jews? The jury seems to be out on that one. Just looking at the footnotes in Adela Yarbro Collins's commentary, you can line up Meier and Grundman in the "yes" column vs. Shane Cohen and Amy-Jill Levine in the "no" column.

Regardless, purity does not seem to be a major concern of the story.

An intriguing suggestions of Collins (that she marks as only a possibility) is that the statement that she "dried up" may mean that the healing made her prematurely menopausal. If so, there may be eschatological connotations: the human body of the new age is beyond sexual procreation.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

Originally posted by Adam:

quote:
there may be eschatological connotations: the human body of the new age is beyond sexual procreation

Surely that's a given. Jesus is quoted as stating this very clearly Matthew 22:30

No procreation in heaven, folks. Unless you interpret Jesus as meaning that the little children of heaven are all bastards?

Posted by Adam. (# 4991) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Surely that's a given.

That verse* lends credence to this interpretation, but the claim that the healing story under discussion has anything to do with this is still only an intriguing possibility.

--
* More relevantly, Mark 12:25 ("When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven." NAB)

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Originally posted by Adam:

quote:
there may be eschatological connotations: the human body of the new age is beyond sexual procreation
Surely that's a given. Jesus is quoted as stating this very clearly Matthew 22:30

No procreation in heaven, folks. Unless you interpret Jesus as meaning that the little children of heaven are all bastards?

I also believe there is no procreation in heaven, but I don't think Matthew 22:30 or Mark 12:25 offer indisputable support for that idea. I know that's the traditional understanding, but it seems to me that both passages go out of their way (so to speak) to avoid saying that there is no marriage and only say that there is no act of getting married. So they are both perfectly consistent with there being marriages at the resurrection / in heaven as long as the act of getting married takes place beforehand (or elsewhere).

If either passage said "there is no marriage ...", then I would accept the traditional understanding, but instead, they both use a rather awkward wording that seems to me to be designed to avoid saying that. Or can some Greek scholar set me straight that I'm basing my conclusion on nothing more than a translation issue?

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

quote:

quote:
No procreation in heaven, folks. Unless you interpret Jesus as meaning that the little children of heaven are all bastards?
...perfectly consistent with there being marriages at the resurrection / in heaven as long as the act of getting married takes place beforehand (or elsewhere).

1. I have no problem with children "out of wedlock." Humans crave certainty just who was begetted by whom, but maybe heavenly society doesn't need that detail. I have friends who are deeply committed in spite of not doing the ceremony, are their children somehow not acceptable?

2. More directly to the passage, I tentatively see it as the questioners want to know who owns the woman, which of the 7 gets a personal servant, gets exclusive right to demand she cook his meals and rub his feet, who gets to beat up anyone who looks at her too admiringly (and of course sex).

Jesus response is about the setting up of this dominant submissive relationship. If there is no setting up, there is no such relationship. Whatever relationship there is, it is not man owns controls dominates woman, but some other way of interacting.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Soemthing that hasn't been mentioned - Mark suggests that Jesus felt 'power go out of him.'

Maybe that is how Mark understood healing to work.

But maybe the healing was psychosomatic - the woman believed that if she could touch his cloak...

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

Originally posted by W Hyatt:

quote:
I also believe there is no procreation in heaven, but I don't think Matthew 22:30 or Mark 12:25 offer indisputable support for that idea. I know that's the traditional understanding, but it seems to me that both passages go out of their way (so to speak) to avoid saying that there is no marriage and only say that there is no act of getting married. So they are both perfectly consistent with there being marriages at the resurrection / in heaven as long as the act of getting married takes place beforehand (or elsewhere).

I can't follow this argument at all. In the passage, the Sadducees are specifically raising the case of a woman who has been married seven times. Jesus specifically says that at the resurrection this woman will NOT be the wife of any of her seven husbands. These perfectly valid seven marriages all took place "beforehand", but Jesus says that none of the marriages remain in being after the resurrection. So how can you argue that this is consistent with there being marriages in heaven as long as the act of marriage takes place beforehand? The passage definitely rules this out.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

I interpret this passage more as Jesus rolling His eyes and thinking "ask Me a stupid question and you'll get a stupid answer back".

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:

quote:
I also believe there is no procreation in heaven, but I don't think Matthew 22:30 or Mark 12:25 offer indisputable support for that idea. I know that's the traditional understanding, but it seems to me that both passages go out of their way (so to speak) to avoid saying that there is no marriage and only say that there is no act of getting married. So they are both perfectly consistent with there being marriages at the resurrection / in heaven as long as the act of getting married takes place beforehand (or elsewhere).
I can't follow this argument at all. In the passage, the Sadducees are specifically raising the case of a woman who has been married seven times. Jesus specifically says that at the resurrection this woman will NOT be the wife of any of her seven husbands. These perfectly valid seven marriages all took place "beforehand", but Jesus says that none of the marriages remain in being after the resurrection. So how can you argue that this is consistent with there being marriages in heaven as long as the act of marriage takes place beforehand? The passage definitely rules this out.

Sorry, but the only answer from Jesus about the question put to him that I see in the text is "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." I see nothing either way about the woman's status or the status of any of the seven marriages. All I see is an answer carefully worded to avoid saying that no one will be in a marriage.

The only thing the passage definitely rules out is the act of getting married.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

So if I've understood you correctly you think Jesus didn't answer the question he was asked (i.e. whose wife will this woman be after the resurrection?)?

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

I'd say he answered the question indirectly by rejecting the assumptions it was based on.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

So what do you say his answer was?

Whose wife will she be at the resurrection?

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Jesus addresses both women as "daughter".

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
So what do you say his answer was?

Whose wife will she be at the resurrection?

All we know about his answer is what the text tells us, so all we know is that she will neither marry nor be given in marriage.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

OK, so you think Jesus didn't answer the question.

In the context of the whole passage this seems a weird interpretation, but thanks for clarifying.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Chamois: OK, so you think Jesus didn't answer the question.

So do I. The disciples asked Him a question that doesn't have meaning in the realm of Heaven. Perhaps He even did His best giving something close to an answer, but like I said before, I like the idea that something like "Stupid question, stupid answer" was involved here too.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

Originally posted by Le Roc:

quote:
like I said before, I like the idea that something like "Stupid question, stupid answer" was involved here too.

But why do you consider it a stupid question? The Sadducees were actually being very complimentary to Jesus, treating him as a serious teacher of the Torah. Unlike the Pharisees who treated Jesus with ridicule. So the Sadducees were asking him to join one of their customary legal discussions by giving his opinion on a legal scenario. "Seven" brothers is clearly hyperbole - signalling that this is a discussion scenario, not a real case - but the legal issue of levirate marriage was very important in Judaism. Just look at the trouble Judah got into in Genesis 38 when he denied his twice-daughter-in-law Tamar her legal right to marry his third son.

It seems to me a very logical question, not stupid at all. And they obviously didn't consider Jesus's answer stupid, since the Bible tells us they were "silenced". These were the top authorities on the Law - they wouldn't have been silenced by a brush-off answer.

THEIR answer would have been: "Clearly the scenario leads to illogical consequences - so there is no resurrection." Jesus's answer was: "Clearly the scenario leads to illogical consequences - because marriages end at death and nobody is married in heaven." That's why the church has always said that marriage is "till death us do part" and widows of either sex are free to re-marry.

I don't understand the basis for any other view on the subject of marriage in the eschaton - it has been dissolved and no longer exists. I'd be interested to hear the reasons and Biblical justification for other opinions but so far nobody here has explained these.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Originally posted by Le Roc:

quote:
like I said before, I like the idea that something like "Stupid question, stupid answer" was involved here too.
But why do you consider it a stupid question? The Sadducees were actually being very complimentary to Jesus, treating him as a serious teacher of the Torah. Unlike the Pharisees who treated Jesus with ridicule. So the Sadducees were asking him to join one of their customary legal discussions by giving his opinion on a legal scenario.

No they weren't. The Sadducees believed there is no afterlife, and certainly no resurrection. Their question had nothing to do with marriage or legal questions and everything to do with trying to trap Jesus as a way of showing what an unbelievable idea resurrection is. Jesus's answer silences them because he in effect said "you don't know what you're talking about, and I'm not playing your game."

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

Originally posted by Nick Tamen:

quote:
The Sadducees believed there is no afterlife, and certainly no resurrection. Their question had nothing to do with marriage or legal questions and everything to do with trying to trap Jesus as a way of showing what an unbelievable idea resurrection is.

If you had read my last post you would see that this is exactly what I wrote.

quote:
Jesus's answer silences them because he in effect said "you don't know what you're talking about, and I'm not playing your game."

No, I don't agree. Jesus answers them in their own terms. He then goes on to challenge their unbelief in the afterlife by quoting the Torah. But he answers them first, and the logical consequence of his answer is that nobody is married in the afterlife (which is the point I'm actually trying to discuss here)

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Originally posted by Le Roc:

quote:
like I said before, I like the idea that something like "Stupid question, stupid answer" was involved here too.
But why do you consider it a stupid question? The Sadducees were actually being very complimentary to Jesus, treating him as a serious teacher of the Torah. Unlike the Pharisees who treated Jesus with ridicule. So the Sadducees were asking him to join one of their customary legal discussions by giving his opinion on a legal scenario.

It's the other way round - it was the Pharisees who had these debates and Jesus spoke in typical pharisaical manner.

[ 03. July 2015, 14:33: Message edited by: leo ]

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
If you had read my last post you would see that this is exactly what I wrote.

I did read your post, and yes, you acknowledged that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. That lack of belief in any afterlife is what makes the premise of your post—that they were complimenting Jesus by inviting him to engage in a serious legal discussion—implausible. They weren't engaging him in a serious legal discussion, nor were they complimenting him. They were baiting him.

Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :

Originally posted by Nick Tamen:

quote:
They weren't engaging him in a serious legal discussion, nor were they complimenting him. They were baiting him.

These things are not incompatible.

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:

quote:
They weren't engaging him in a serious legal discussion, nor were they complimenting him. They were baiting him.
These things are not incompatible.

No, they're not, but I do not believe that the text supports that it's what's happening here. Why would religious authorities who do not believe in the resurrection at all be having a serious legal discussion about who would be married to whom at the resurrection?

Matthew (and Mark) I think, clue us in at the beginning of the story that the point of the Sadducees' encounter with Jesus here is to challenge him, not to compliment him, by getting him caught in what they think are the obvious implications of the Law with regard to the idea of resurrection:

"That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question."

I'm certainly not suggesting that what Jesus says about marriage and the resurrection is wrong. But the real point of his answer is to say "you really don't have a clue what you're talking about."

And note that the story immediately follows one in which "the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words," by asking him about the legality of paying taxes to Caesar. Matthew and Mark have a theme going here, it seems to me.

[ 03. July 2015, 17:41: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
No, they're not, but I do not believe that the text supports that it's what's happening here. Why would religious authorities who do not believe in the resurrection at all be having a serious legal discussion about who would be married to whom at the resurrection?

Because perhaps it was one of their apologetic arguments 'After all, if people were resurrected then that makes a nonsense of levirate marriage, so therefore people can't possibly be resurrected".

Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on :

quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:

quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
No, they're not, but I do not believe that the text supports that it's what's happening here. Why would religious authorities who do not believe in the resurrection at all be having a serious legal discussion about who would be married to whom at the resurrection?
Because perhaps it was one of their apologetic arguments 'After all, if people were resurrected then that makes a nonsense of levirate marriage, so therefore people can't possibly be resurrected".

I think that's exactly what they were doing, which is why I don't think they were complimenting Jesus by asking him to engage in a serious legal discussion.

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