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Spring Class Forming "Portraits of Jesus from the Original Gospel" by The Rev. Richard Peace The first extensive account of the life of Jesus is found in the Gospel of Mark. In this day and age when we are confronted with various renderings of the Jesus story such as American Jesus by Stephen Prothero, the less successful Jesus in America by Richard Fox and the not-to-be-missed (I am being ironic) Touchdown Jesus by R. Lawrence Moore and Jesus CEO by Laurie Beth Jones, it is important to go back to the first portrait we have. Driven by necessity (the eyewitnesses had begun to die off), Mark collected together in written form the various stories about Jesus that had been kept alive by the oral tradition. In so doing he created a new literary genre: part biography, part hero story, part theological interpretation. I find Mark's Gospel to be absolutely fascinating even though it is a nearly 2000-year-old manuscript. What I propose to do in the three Adult Education classes that I will teach this spring is look at some of the Jesus stories. We will examine the text inductively to get a sense of how Mark went about describing Jesus. Then we will reflect on the connections between these stories and our lives in the twenty-first century. I am grateful to Hartshorn for allowing me to do these three classes. It will give me the chance to try out some of the material I am working on for a new book. So if you attend you get to be a guinea pig! (Actually the invitation to be a guinea pig does not sound too inviting but nevertheless this is the case.) The three classes will take place on April 22, 29, and May 6th at 9:00 in the Francis & Clare room. Copyright © 2007 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
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