Mike's musings

Jobs

Moo's on the job-hunt, and good for her. She's looked at a couple of different possibilities which haven't quite worked out, but she's now started to follow up with some consultants that she'd spoken to a while ago. Immediately, a few options have opened up, so she's off to see someone on Tuesday in Cambridge, and tomorrow she's going to meet one of the consultants who, in fact, I met a while ago, when I was looking for a job. She (the consultant) specialised is in jobs in the Cambridge, and is the person who found the Tuesday interview. I think Moo's got a much better chance from this kind of opportunity than "cold" ones from the Health Service Journal or the Guardian (though that's always the case). So, I get the chance to meet her and Jo in Cambridge over lunchtime, and to llok after the Jo for a while, which is a lovely treat in the middle of the day.

In fact, I dind't get to see much of Jo this morning, because we didn't wake up till 0810. As I tend to leave for work at 0815, this meant that I really needed to get moving. She'd not got to sleep until around 2045, but had only woken once in the morning - and then at 0415, which meant that she just wanted a quick feed before going to bed. And I had a tutorial tonight, so I didn't see her before she went to bed (down and asleep by 1815, in marked contrast to last night). So, a bit of time tomorrow will be lovely.

A tutorial tonight, as mentioned above. This on Mark's Gospel (and, tangentially on form criticism, which, though I'm not hugely convinced, has been an important tool for biblical criticism in the past), and the theology therein. We looked in particular at the use of rhetorical criticism, which tends to concentrate on how the rhetoric - or at least story-telling devices - of texts can help in its understanding. For instance, in Mark's gospel, there's a lot of language around seeing, looking, and watching. There are also lots of occurences of stories about the healing of the blind. One of the key issues in Mark's gospel is how the disciples take a very long time to realise Jesus' role as Christ. Jesus gets quite exasperated by their taking of time to understand, and often has to explain parables (and their significance to them), and these parables are quite often juxtaposed with the stories of the healing of the blind men (I think it's always men, though there are some important mentions of women, including that of the Syrophoenician woman). Another example where rhetorical criticism can provide some interesting insights is in looking at the juxtaposition of the large-scale and small-scale. Jesus' example of the woman giving two small coins to the temple fund occurs just before the prophecy of the destruction of the temple (which is, of course, a parable for Jesus' death and resurrection).

The upshot, then, is that Mark's Gospel, which has historically been seen as either a simple summary or (if you follow the four-source, two-source or Q hypothesis of gospel sources (which I favour), rather than the Griesbach hypothesis) an unsophisticated source, has a lot of interesting theology to offer us.