On the Saturday, 24th February 2024, Manningham Uniting Church is having a Workshop to introduce the Gospel of Mark.
This year we have invited Rev Dr Robyn Whitaker, the Coordinator of Studies – New Testament at Pilgrim Theological College and Associate Professor within the University of Divinity.
She specialises in the Book of Revelation with particular attention to the visual culture in which the text emerged and the visual rhetoric of biblical literature. She has published on Revelation, Luke, and Mark’s gospel.
After morning tea, Robyn Whitaker will be introducing her latest book, ‘Even the Devil Quotes Scripture: Reading the Bible on Its Own Terms’.
She looks to the Bible as a guide to interpreting the Bible, and her findings breathe new life into our understanding and use of Scripture. As it turns out, the uses of Scripture within Scripture are flexible, open to frequent reinterpretation, and rarely literal.
For instance, Ezra and Nehemiah reinterpret laws about whether Jews can marry foreigners in the wake of the Babylonian exile. Their contradiction of earlier traditions found in Deuteronomic law do not invalidate Scripture but rather represent its diverse applications for the prophets’ specific situations.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus presents a more demanding interpretation of Mosaic law in the Sermon on the Mount, while in Mark’s Gospel he all but ignores its prohibition of working on the Sabbath. Yet the common ethos of the two gospels prioritizes compassion over legalism.
Ultimately, Whitaker ascertains one definitive characteristic of inner-biblical interpretation: love. After all, the Old Testament passage most frequently quoted in the New Testament is Leviticus 19:18: “Love thy neighbour.” Thus, Whitaker proposes a hermeneutic of love—a litmus test for the validity of a scriptural interpretation measured in charity.
Don’t miss this great opportunity to listen to Rev Dr Robyn Whitaker.
Her book will be on sale on that day.