Mark the Evangelist

Mmm.

El evangelista Marcos dice: "Y se admiraban de su doctrina porque les enseñaba como quien tiene autoridad".

En 1949, yo tenía muchas dudas relacionadas con la Biblia.

Había cosas que no podía reconciliar, aparentes contradicciones que restringían mi concepto de Dios.

Ancient biographies routinely employed literary mimesis, rhetorical devices, and dramatic structures, including tragic arcs, while still focusing on historical figures' life and deeds with factual cores.

Marx's Jewish scriptural echoes and plot shape fit this flexible genre per the consensus view, Burridge, Bond, Keener.

These are authors.

Such crafting does not make the Gospels pure fiction or tragedy.

Laws punished clipping and counterfeiting.

Records tracked how much silver came in from Balkan mines, from tribute, from trade, and how much went out as coins stamped with the Doge and Saint Mark.

When gold coinage, like the famous ducat, entered the scene, its weight and fineness were guarded so fiercely that foreign merchants began to use it as a reference standard.

A ducat was not just a Venetian coin.

If Venice was married to the sea, then the conquest of Dalmatian ports, the defence of straits, the policing of pirates could all be imagined as household duties, the protection of a shared life rather than naked expansion.

step off the boat and walk toward the heart of the city and the same story repeats in stone and gold san marco the basilica that glows at the edge of its great square is not a modest parish church that grew over time it is a deliberate collage of elsewhere domes in the style of constantinople arches and capitals borrowed from islamic architecture marbles of many colours taken or reused from older buildings around the Mediterranean.

Inside, mosaics climb across the vaults, covering almost every surface in scenes from scripture, from the life of Saint Mark, from episodes of Venetian history seen through a holy lens.

Architecture here does more than shelter.

You'll see in Venice, all over Venice, this symbol of the lion holding a book.

The lion is a symbol of Mark the Evangelist.

Power, strength, courage.

The book he's holding is...

Amen.

Here beginneth the 15th chapter of the book of the Gospel according to Saint Mark.

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, Behold, he is calling Elijah.

O Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded.

Here beginneth the 15th chapter of the book of the Gospel according to Saint Mark.

And the soldiers led him away inside the palace, that is, the governor's headquarters.

And they called together the whole battalion.

Amen.

Here beginneth the 15th chapter of the book of the Gospel according to Saint Mark.

And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council.

And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.