About the Book

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. . . And other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain. . . . And he said to them, Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? (Mark 4: 3ff.)

The Gospel of Mark, being the first-written of Biblical and apocryphal Gospels, is historically seminal. It has sown the seeds from which all subsequent narrative accounts of Jesus of Nazareth-the basis for understanding his life and teachings-have sprung. Many have also found the Gospel of Mark spiritually seminal, planting seeds of insight and affirmation.

The Seminal Gospel invites a close reading of Mark's entire text, with commentary informed by contemporary scholarship and personal reflection. Readers encounter puzzles, such as Mark's surprising assertion, "He did not speak to them without a parable" (Mark 4: 34). Is religious language itself inherently "parabolic"? Is it like seed that is scattered, prospering only when lodged in receptive minds? What does it take, in Jesus' phrase, to "have ears to hear"?

The chapter titles are a compendium of familiar but mystery-laden sentences, among them: "The time is fulfilled," "Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief," "If any man desire to be first. . . ," "My name is Legion," "But whom do you say that I am?" "And the common people heard him gladly," "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem," "He goes before you into Galilee." Mark's Jesus is the parable-teller whose life has become a multi-faceted parable.

About the Author

George Kimmich Beach is a minister and teacher who served Unitarian Universalist churches in New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Virginia and an urban ministry in his home town , Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of If Yes Is the Answer, What Is the Question?: Eight Existential Issues of Faith, and Transforming Liberalism: The Theology of James Luther Adams. He holds degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, Meadville Lombard Theological School, and Wesley Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Barbara Kres Beach, live in Madison Country, Virginia.