2 Samuel 11:1-15

I've been talking about how history was rewritten to put David in a better light over the last few Lections, but this one exposes some weakness. This is one of those passages that fundamentalists refer to, usually indirectly, when confronted with poor morals being portrayed in the Bible. Their response is that God later punishes David for his wickedness. So this is a case of bad behavior in the Bible being shown so we can see what God thinks is wrong. That would be great, except it's not shown that way consistently. It would also be great if some fundamentalists didn't also abuse the Bible to justify statutory rape.

In case you're having trouble following the Biblical language. The second half of this passage is David trying to trick the young woman's husband into sleeping with his own wife so he will think the child is his own. But being a man of honor, he doesn't want to do that while his soldiers are in battle. The last verse is an order to make sure he dies in his next battle. This is the legacy that Jews and Christians speak of with pride.

2 Kings 4:42-44

This brief story is the view of God that Bible believers more typically prefer. God provides, and is better than other gods. The "other" god is Baal, represented by someone from the area where Baal is worshipped. That person doesn't get how you can feed 100 people with so little bread, but Elisha does because the LORD says so. Today's Psalm also talks about God providing. These are ancient ideas that food comes from God. The Loaves and Fishes story that was skipped in last week's Mark passage and appears today in the John passage is an expansion of this. We see it today in soup kitchens and charitable organizations, but we can look at the receipts and know exactly how that food got there.

Ephesians 3:14-21

A nice little prayer from Paul here, or whoever wrote this. This is one of those time it's better to read the full chapter. If you've ever tried to get someone to explain what Jesus is all about, you may recognize this:

3 that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. 4 By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ,

Paul tells us many times that he received his information via revelation. He never met Jesus, he was working for the Romans against Christians when he had his vision and converted. He specifically claims he started preaching and had this knowledge before meeting Peter and others who had known Jesus (their direct knowledge of Jesus is also questionable, but that's too much to go into). The point is Paul looked at this knowledge thus:

5 which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit;

So David, who we've been following in the Samuel books, had no idea he was going to be the many greats grandpa of Jesus. In fact there were a lot of things he didn't know, like don't screw your neighbor's wife. It gets worse the farther back you go. Christians today don't even argue the truth of this. They accept it as how the Bible story works. They use this line from Paul, that it was a mystery, it gets revealed to special people, then they tell us, but only in brief, but we should be able to figure it out from that, and he's the "minister" and it's part of the "eternal purpose" and on and on. I really wouldn't mind, if they would focus a little more on those brief things he says that are actually things you're supposed to do, like:

6 to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel,

Gentiles are non-Jews, not part of the tribe. Today that would mean Mexicans, who, FYI are Catholics, Muslims, (and of course you can defend yourself against aggression, don't be stupid), women, children, even those who don't own guns, people from Iowa or Vermont, pretty much everybody.

John 6:1-21

Since we are going through the entire book of Mark, this is a good opportunity to compare the 11 verses in Mark 6:33-44 to these. Note how this author adds more of Jesus' thoughts and a few more details to the story. Jesus thinks the crowd wants to make him King. In Mark, Jesus looks on the crowd with pity, or feels sorry, or with compassion, depending on which translation you use. The Johannine author avoids this altogether and doesn't say anything about them being sheep either.

The book of John was written decades later, some say even into the early 2nd century. It did not feel the need to copy from the earlier gospels, instead following the tradition of taking the ideas from existing stories and making them completely your own.

Also, for comparison, the Matthew version.