The Memoirs of St. Peter

A New Translation of the Gospel According to Mark

Michael Pakaluk

• Publisher: Regnery Gateway
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781621578345
• eBook ISBN: 9781621578352
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

"A fresh, vigorous new translation of the Gospel of Mark."— The American Conservative "Professor Pakaluk provides not only a thrilling new rendering of the ancient Greek text but also provides lively scholarship in the commentary that follows his translation of Mark's sixteen chapters."— The Catholic Thing "This is a very rewarding version of Mark, and even those who have made long study of the text will find a wise and sensitive guide in Michael Pakaluk."— National Catholic Register "Pakaluk's translation and commentary offers us a wonderful way to immerse ourselves anew..."— The B.C. Catholic "Like his translation, Pakaluk's notes do a lot to bring St. Mark and his gospel alive for us."— Aleteia The Gospel as You Have Never Heard It Before... At a distance of twenty centuries, the figure of Jesus of Nazareth can seem impossibly obscure—indeed, some skeptics even question whether he existed. And yet we have an eyewitness account of his life, death, and resurrection from one of his closest companions, the sherman Simon Bar-Jona, better known as the Apostle Peter. Writers from the earliest days of the Church tell us that Peter's disciple Mark wrote down the apostle's account of the life of Jesus as he told it to the first Christians in Rome. The vivid, detailed, unadorned prose of the Gospel of Mark conveys the unmistakable immediacy of a first-hand account. For most readers, however, this immediacy is hidden behind a veil of Greek, the language of the New Testament writers. Four centuries of English translations have achieved nobility of cadence or, more recently, idiomatic accessibility, but the voice of Peter himself has never fully emerged. Until now. In this strikingly original translation, atten- tive to Peter's concern to show what it was like to be there, Michael Pakaluk captures the tone and texture of the sherman's evocative account, leading the reader to a bracing new encounter with Jesus. The accompanying verse-by-verse commentary—less theological than historical—will equip you to experience Mark's Gospel as the narrative of an eyewitness, drawing you into its scenes, where you will come to know Jesus of Nazareth with new intimacy. A stunning work of scholarship readily accessible to the layman, The Memoirs of St. Peter belongs on the bookshelf of every serious Christian.

CHAPTER 1

1 This is how it began, the good news of Jesus, Anointed One of God, Son of God.

2 Exactly as is written in Isaiah the prophet (Behold, I am sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way. . . . ³“A voice of one crying in the desert, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, make straight his paths!’ ”), ⁴there arose someone baptizing in the desert, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins—John.

5 And so the whole district of Judea, and residents of Jerusalem from every walk of life, came out to him. And they were baptized by him in the Jordan river as they confessed their sins.

6 Well, as for John, he was clothed in camel hair, with a leather belt around his waist. And for food he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷And he cried out, “Right behind me comes someone greater than I! I am not worthy to stoop down and loosen the tie on his sandals. ⁸I baptize you with water, but he himself will baptize you in the Holy Spirit.”

9 So it was in this setting that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John. ¹⁰And immediately, as he was emerging from the water, he saw heaven opened up and the Spirit coming down upon him as a dove. ¹¹And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my son, my beloved one. I delight in you.”

12 So right away, the Spirit carries him out into the desert. ¹³And he was in the desert for forty days, where he was put to the test by Satan. He faced dangerous animals. And the angels ministered to him.

14 Well, after John was handed over, Jesus went to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying that “It is the crucial moment: the Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the good news.”

16 And as he was walking along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon, and Andrew, the brother of Simon, in the sea casting. (They were fishermen, after all.) ¹⁷So Jesus said to them: “Come, follow me, and I will turn you into fishers of men.” ¹⁸And so they, dropping their nets, followed him.

19 So continuing on his way a little bit more, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother. They were mending their nets in a boat. ²⁰So he called them right then and there. And so they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired hands, and, taking a place behind him, they walked away.

21 So they make their way into Capernaum. And right away he began teaching in the synagogue there, on the Sabbath. ²²Well, they were overwhelmed by his teaching, because he taught them as someone who had authority, and not as the scribes.

23 And right then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit. He cried out ²⁴saying, “What business do you have with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” ²⁵So Jesus admonished him saying, “Be silent and come out of him.” ²⁶Well, the unclean spirit convulsed him and, producing a tremendous sound, came out of him. ²⁷And the people there were all so deeply affected that they began to say to one another, “What is this? A new teaching. With authority. He tells even unclean spirits what to do, and they obey him.” ²⁸And so this report about him traveled straightway throughout the entire region of Galilee.

29 Well, after they left the synagogue, they went directly to Simon and Andrew’s home, with James and John. ³⁰Simon’s mother-in-law was lying down with a fever. So the first thing, they speak with him about her. ³¹And so, going to her, he raised her up by taking her hand. Well, the fever left her. So she began taking care of them.

32 In the evening, when the sun set, they brought to him everyone who had something wrong, and everyone afflicted by devils. ³³In fact, the entire town gathered at their door. ³⁴So he healed the many townspeople who were sick—suffering from diseases of every description. He cast out many devils. He did not permit the devils to say anything, because they knew him.

35 Well, the following morning, so early that it was still dark, he got up, left the house, and went out to a desolate spot. He remained there to pray. ³⁶So Simon and the others in Jesus’ group went searching for him. ³⁷And they found him. So they say to him, “They all want to know where you are.” ³⁸So he says to them, “Let’s go somewhere else, to the neighboring villages, so that I can preach there as well. That is why I left.”

39 So he went throughout the whole of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues there, and expelling devils. ⁴⁰So a leper comes up to him, and, beseeching him and falling to his knees, he says to him, “If you so will, you can make me clean.” ⁴¹Well, Jesus was keenly affected, and, reaching out his hand, touched him. So he says to him, “I do so will. Be clean.” ⁴²Well, his leprosy was gone immediately. He became clean. ⁴³And so Jesus was stern with him and sent him right off on his way. ⁴⁴And he says to him, “See that you say nothing about this to anyone. But go immediately, present yourself to a priest, and bring with you, for the fact that you are now clean, the offering which Moses set down as public evidence.” ⁴⁵But as soon as he left, he began to proclaim it loudly, spreading his story far and wide. Well, that is why it was no longer feasible for Jesus to enter villages openly. Instead, he stayed outside, in desolate places. And people everywhere came to him.

Commentary

1–8

1 This is how it began.

Literally, “The beginning” (Greek: archē). Yes, there are deliberate echoes here of Genesis, “In the beginning.” John likewise opens, “In the beginning [Greek: en archē] was the Word.”

But Mark is telling Peter’s story of what it was like to live with Jesus for three years. So the “beginning” that concerns Mark is the public life of Christ, and the “good news” he is recounting is displayed in the public life and death and resurrection of Christ as witnessed by Peter.

good news

This renders the Greek word eu-anggelion. The root of the word is the same as in the word “angel,” a messenger. The prefix indicates something good. It is a good message. A message is a communication conveyed from someone to someone by someone. Walker Percy, in Message in a Bottle, distinguishes a “message” from “knowledge.” A man stranded on a desert island, he says, is looking for a message, not knowledge. An encyclopedia washing ashore won’t help him much. But any scrap with news about how he can be rescued—this he yearns to acquire. Likewise, in this book you will find news, as received and conveyed by Peter, not systematic knowledge.

of Jesus

The message which Peter wishes to convey is not news involving a fact or thing but the person Jesus, just as the preaching of Jesus was mainly about himself.

The Church Fathers¹ used to argue that Jesus “is either God or a bad man—there is no alternative” (aut Deus aut homo malus). Jesus taught that he is the way of salvation for everyone—or rather, that he is that salvation. But he would need to be God to be that. If he were not that but claimed to be, he would be self-deceived or a deceiver.

What we cannot assert is that Jesus was a “great moral teacher.” No great moral teacher makes himself the message. Right from the start Peter makes it clear that this way of interpreting Jesus is closed off to us.

Anointed One of God,

That is, he is the “Christ” (Greek Christos, Hebrew Messiah). The Anointed One is someone who is shown to have been selected by God, by an anointing, to occupy in a preeminent way the roles of Priest, Prophet, and King—as those were the roles in the Jewish tradition that specifically required anointing.

Son of God

The manuscripts are almost equally divided as to whether Mark originally included this phrase or not. Given this division, we must turn to considerations of a higher level to settle the matter. There are many considerations in favor of including it, but perhaps the most important are the following. First, there are numerous signs that Mark wants to appeal both to Jews and to Gentiles; the title “Anointed One” answers to the traditions of the former, and “Son of God” corresponds to those of the latter. Second, the Gospel just about ends with the confession of a Gentile—the centurion assigned with guarding the cross—that Jesus was truly the “son of God” (15:39). It makes sense that Mark would begin his narrative with that confession as a kind of confirmation of the title and office ascribed to Jesus.

2 written in Isaiah

Only the line which begins “A voice of one crying in the desert” is from Isaiah. The line before that—“Behold, I am sending my messenger”—is taken from the prophet Malachi (3:1). So has Mark made a mistake? Or was the phrase “written in Isaiah” added by a later editor who did not know what he was doing? Because of the perceived difficulty here, the phrase is changed in various later manuscript traditions from “written in Isaiah” to “written in the prophets.”

And yet there is no real problem. It turns out that the line from Isaiah is an exact quotation of the Septuagint.² The line from Malachi is a paraphrase. So we can take Mark to be principally concerned with the verse from Isaiah, which he quotes exactly, and introducing the quotation with the line from Malachi as a kind of gloss. There are no quotation marks in ancient Greek, but in English the difference can easily be indicated by putting only the verse from Isaiah in quotation marks, as I have done.

So the apparent difficulty in verses 1–2 can be dealt with easily enough. But what can be said about their meaning? Peter seems to have been struck by the fulfillment in his own day of the Scriptural prophecy that someone would arise in the desert and cry out there to herald the Messiah—for lo and behold, John the Baptist had done exactly that. Peter believed that the coincidence between Isaiah and John was too remarkable to be an accident: it was the fulfillment of the prophecy.

2–3 “I am sending . . .”

If “I” is God and the “messenger” is John, who in this paraphrase of Malachi is this “you” whose way is prepared? The verse from Isaiah supplies the answer

It is the way of the Lord. It tells us, then, that the “you” whose way is being prepared and who ostensibly is distinct from God is also God, as he is the Lord. These verses, then, implicitly introduce the doctrine of the Trinity: the Father, who is Lord, sends the Son, who is Lord—at least two persons, then, in one God.

The Trinitarian implications of the passage are not clear without the verse from Malachi. It seems, therefore, that an inspired Mark joined the two verses from the prophets to imply the divinity of Christ, and we find the seeds of the doctrine of the Trinity right at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark.

4 someone baptizing in the desert, proclaiming

Consider the parallelism here:

someone baptizing in the desert

proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins

Mark asserts a parallelism between action and word: John does something, and at the same time he preaches about what he is doing, because he proclaims that his baptism, if accompanied by repentance, effects the forgiveness of sins. In describing John in this way, Mark (or Peter) is suggesting that John prefigures what is known as “the sacramental system”—God’s free use of material signs to effect his purposes and confer graces, through his ministers, in a reliable and repeatable way. These signs accomplish what they signify. In a sacrament, an action signifies something, and the words clarify and effect what is done in the action.

The verb “baptize” is a transliteration of a Greek verb, baptizo, which means the action of immersing in a liquid, generally water. Usually, the thing immersed is drawn out again. The phrase baptizing in the desert is therefore paradoxical. A desert by definition lacks water for dipping.

Imagine someone encountering water in the desert and being immersed in it....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Index
• Copyright