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It’s almost here! We are looking forward to our first meeting tomorrow in room 210 in the Pharmacy building at 144 College Street at the corner of College and University Avenue. Jonathan has made a guided tour video (embedded below) for those of you who have never been to the Pharmacy building to show you exactly where our meeting room is.
If you would like a headstart on tomorrow’s first session, then you can get started reading the New Testament Gospel of Mark. As the name of our study implies, we’re really interested in the biblical study of Christianity and so it makes sense to start with Jesus Christ. After all, Christianity literally means to be a follower of Christ. So, our goal in this study is to get back to the basics and we’re starting with the Gospel of Mark which is one of four biographies of Jesus Christ in the Bible (typically known collectively as the Gospels or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Mark is the shortest Gospel and is very much focused on the action. If you don’t have a copy of the Bible, we’ll have some for you to use tomorrow but until then there’s lots of free options:
1. The ESV Online. For the study we will be using the English Standard Version of the Bible which is one of the most popular English translations of the Bible which was originally written in Hebrew, Greek, mainly, as well as some Aramaic. The ESV also has an excellent Study Bible that you can get in print or (much cheaper) electronically.
2. If you have an iPhone, Android Phone, or Blackberry (or tablet like the Kindle) you can get the ESV Bible free! YouVersion is another cool and free app that works on all of these platforms or just online in your browser and as a bonus if you have a data plan you can listen to the Bible in streaming audio on your phone.
3. A neat way to get the overview of Mark is to read or listen to the whole book at once. It’s a short read – 16 chapters. A totally different way of looking at the book is to watch it performed as a one-man show. I should point out that when its being performed, there are certain interpretations that the actor makes that are his own, but, the neat thing about this performance below is that all that the actor uses is the Biblical text. There was a similar one performed a number of years ago at the Hart House Theatre. Recently, Max Mclean, a British actor, did a one-man performance of the Gospel of Mark a few years ago in Chicago. You can watch the whole book in one sitting (which takes about 90 minutes) or just take 6 minutes to watch the first chapter we will look at tomorrow below.
See you then!
