The Christian Praxis Group met this weekend and we studied this week's lectionary reading Mark 1: 1 - 8 in the Greek.
Arche means beginning and indicates in verse 1 this is about Jesus. But there are preliminaries before we get onto Jesus. The story of Jesus begins with Isaiah (chapter 40) vv 2,3 and then John the Baptiser vv 4-8. John in particular goes before Jesus calling attention to him.
Idou in v2 means behold, and is a word often used by Jesus in Mark - it means look here or get focused, pay attention.
Prepare the way of the Lord - the word for way is hodos which means a paved way. I had a couple of thoughts about this - first is the word an example of onomatopoeia? For a paved route the remarkable thing would be the sound of horses' hooves. This might be an allusion to the Roman occupiers as the straightening is not done to the hodos but to the paths - tribous. Staying with hodos - the first Christians were known as 'the people of the way'.
The Greek word translated as straight is eutheias which is derived from eutheos which is usually translated as immediately. See verse 10 for the first use of this word in Mark and note the King James version translates it as straightway!
Tribous means paths and its origins are with the verb 'to rub'. In contrast to the paved route; these are the beaten paths. And note the plural, make straight the paths, all paths are to be prepared not just the one paved road. There is no equivalent to this in Isaiah 40. This implies a wide range of people not just those who travel by the established route.
So, what can we make of all this? The Good News that is to come is for all - not just those who travel on the main roads but by many small paths will come together (we were not sure whether tribous has any connection with tributary). Attention is drawn to this at the outset as people familiar with Isaiah 40 would note the difference. The people of the way are invited to recognise the many small paths onto the way.
Comments