Product Description

Using both his background in interpreting biblical research and his interest in word-puzzles, nationally known journalist John Dart "decodes" the "Gospel of Mark", with explosive results that will shake the foundation of New Testament studies. Dart uses ancient, puzzle-like writing devices called "chiasms," which are found throughout "Mark", to reconstruct the original Gospel. By the presence or absence of these chiasms, he identifies sections of the Gospel that were added by a later editor, and he recovers passages from the "Secret Gospel of Mark" (a work discovered in 1958) that the pattern of chiasms indicates had been deleted from canonical "Mark". The results are stunning and certain to be controversial.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1225509 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 213 pages

About the Author
Nationally known journalist John Dart, news editor of Christian Century magazine and a religion writer at the Los Angeles Times for 30 years, has written extensively about New Testament research. His books include The Laughing Savior: The Discovery and Significance of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library; The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus, and Deities & Deadlines. Dart has won numerous reporting awards.

Customer Reviews

Lots of Good and Interesting Ideas Well Presented
As a journalist, John Dart has a nice, easy to understand and charming style. He presents a hypothesis that he's obviously excited about, and it is a hypothesis well worth considering.
He suggests that the gospel writer Mark organized his work around a series of chiasms (basically words and ideas arranged in a mirrored form: A, B, C, B', A').
Using this concept, he finds evidence that Morton's Smith's "Secret Gospel of Mark" along with a number of passages from Luke were in the original Gospel of Mark, while a section in the middle of Mark 6:47-8:26 was added later.
Another important hypothesis is that the original writer put in 16 miracles for Jesus to match the number of miracles done by the Jewish prophet Elisha. A later editor added 8 more to have him outdo Elisha.
I would have liked to have seen a bit more references to the gospels of Matthew and John, for example can you find these chiasms or other chiastic patterns in them? And it would have been nice to have more speculation about the author Mark and why he hated the disciples and Jesus' family so much, although there are a few paragraphs on this.
Altogether a fascinating, pleasant and enjoyable book for anyone interested in the gospels or any serious students of ancient literature and history.