53 And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret, and moored to the shore.
Leaving Capernaum on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee, they arrived on the more southern western side at Gennesaret. Whilst on the sea, Jesus did his famous miracle of walking on the water and initially charged his apostles with taking them to the western shore of Bethsaida. The reason they do not actually go to Bethsaida is up for debate and a lot of scholars provide various reasons but there is no concrete answer. My own personal take is that Jesus didn’t mean for them to go to Bethsaida at all but if he told them to go that way, they would go into the storm and wind ridden areas of the lake, providing Jesus the opportunity to do his miracle in a more profound environment.
54 And when they got out of the boat, immediately the people recognized him,
55 and ran about the whole neighborhood and began to bring sick people on their pallets to any place where they heard he was.
Gennesaret is not that far from Capernaum and Jesus is already massively famous in there so it is of no surprise that the people of Gennesaret also recognise him. They start running around the neighbourhood telling everyone they can that the miraculous rabbi is in there town. They start gathering their sick, even those who cannot move by their own, place them on pallets to carry them and take them to any of the locations that Jesus was at. This language continues to cement the summarisation nature of Mark’s writing, verse 55 is covering what could be weeks or even months of ministry work.
56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or country, they laid the sick in the market places, and besought him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched it were made well.
The summary of Jesus ministry continues, Mark makes note of wherever Jesus ends up, villages, cities or out in the countryside, all the sick were brought to him even if they can only touch the fringe of his garment, referencing the story of the Woman with the haemorrhage perhaps. All who touched his garments were also made healthy again. This means that although we only have the specific story of the Woman with the haemorrhage touching Jesus’ clothing to be healed, Mark tells us in summary form that this happened on many occasions and like the previous verse this appears to only be a summary of a long standing high point of Jesus’ ministry. We should keep in mind that Mark’s Gospel is the shortest and a lot of time can be condensed in a few verses.
Marks Gospel has 16 chapters with 11,304 words in the original Greek text. Considering the writing materials used at the time, this was a comfortable fit for a single scroll of parchment or papyrus. It’s true that sizes varied, the wealthy obviously being able to afford longer and more in quantity but it appears that Mark made use of the most common affordable size of parchment, early Christians were not wealthy. Mark’s writing style with his use of these summaries enables him to fit his Gospel on a single piece.
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