Mark doesn't report Peter's failed waterwalk

[patrick457]

perhaps peter was marks best friend?

that could be a possibility.

Papias says that Mark was Peter’s hermeneutes or ‘interpreter’ (though the word has somewhat of a broader connotation).

 

[TimothyH]

Peter did walk on water.

Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. (Matthew 14:28:29)

Peter absolutely walked on water, and did so at the command of Jesus. I don’t see where this is a failed attempt.

I see our Lord and Savior commanding an ordinary human to accomplish an impossible act and then an ordinary human actually doing it. It is only the person’s fear and lack of trust that caused him to cease being able to do what God commanded him, but for a few brief moments Peter accomplished the impossible through Christ.

None of the other Apostles dared ask Jesus for that gift. None of the other Apostles had that level of trust to obey when Jesus commanded the impossible. Not even Moses was able to walk on water, but had to have the Red Sea parted for him. Peter alone stepped out of the boat, and Peter is the only human besides Jesus to have walked on water. It’s an amazing testimony to what an ordinary human being can do when he obeys God with absolute trust.

I wish I had that strength, that trust right now. I’ve been praying for that level of trust lately.

-Tim-

 

[gus]

The Peter in Mark takes pains not to assert himself into this gospel.
The two occassions
The transfiguration were he implies he babels be cause of his fear. What human could be rational in the such presents.
The other is his denial and ulitmate forgiveness
A profound personnel experiance.
An experience so worthy of repetetition his account is picked up in other Gospels.
In someways its the ultimate Christain Experience.
Love failure and repentence forgiveness.
This is a MAN of great humility.
The OP contention is insulting.
Whenever I read Mark I picture a sturdy weather beaten fisherman giving a Homily with the aid of the holy spirit on the things he was privalaged to witness.
Injecting himself only when necessary to aid the message.

 

[Dave_Noonan]

Dave’s point is, as has been explained earlier, that Matthew paints a more positive picture of the disciples in general and Peter in particular. Even so, he also includes many of the ‘negative’ episodes Mark has, and even makes them more ‘intense’: aside from the aforementioned episodes (walking on water and Peter’s denial), you also have Jesus’ rebuke to Peter: Matthew’s Jesus does not just call Peter “Satan,” He also adds that he is being a “stumbling-block.” At least Mark almost consistently shows the disciples as bumbling and blind; Matthew’s portrayal of them as being very capable and understanding makes their fall more jarring.

Exactly–I could not have said this better.

 

[patrick457]

Peter did walk on water.

Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. (Matthew 14:28:29)

Peter absolutely walked on water, and did so at the command of Jesus. I don’t see where this is a failed attempt.

I see our Lord and Savior commanding an ordinary human to accomplish an impossible act and then an ordinary human actually doing it. It is only the person’s fear and lack of trust that caused him to cease being able to do what God commanded him, but for a few brief moments Peter accomplished the impossible through Christ.

None of the other Apostles dared ask Jesus for that gift. None of the other Apostles had that level of trust to obey when Jesus commanded the impossible. Not even Moses was able to walk on water, but had to have the Red Sea parted for him. Peter alone stepped out of the boat, and Peter is the only human besides Jesus to have walked on water. It’s an amazing testimony to what an ordinary human being can do when he obeys God with absolute trust.

I wish I had that strength, that trust right now. I’ve been praying for that level of trust lately.

-Tim-

Trust. Yes, I need that too.

The Matthean version of the walking on water encapsulates how the disciples act in that gospel: they do the right thing, they fall away, Jesus comes and helps them.

This is yet another thematic difference Matthew has with Mark. Mark likes ambiguity and irony so much that his gospel (originally, at least) ends with a cliffhanger, with the women ultimately not relaying the news of the Resurrection to the male disciples “for they were afraid” (16:8; verses 9-20 are one of the appended endings to the gospel in antiquity). The “young man” at the tomb promises the women that they will see the resurrected Jesus in the Galilee, the place where it all began (thus hinting at a reconciliation), but their reaction to this news is to run away in terror and keep quiet about what they saw, in a reversal of the running theme of the earlier half of the gospel (Jesus tells the people He healed to keep it a secret only for the person to make it public anyway).

Matthew, however, as mentioned, has a penchant for spelling things out clearly and so has a happy ending. Jesus Himself appears to confirm what the angel says to the women, who were afraid “yet filled with joy”; the women do relay the news to the disciples; the disciples do make it to the Galilee. There Matthew shows us what Mark only hints at: Jesus is reconciled to His disciples, reassures them and gives them a fresh start, promising to be with them “always until the end of the age” (Emmanuel ‘God-with-us’).

 

[Neithan]

Trust. Yes, I need that too.

The Matthean version of the walking on water encapsulates how the disciples act in that gospel: they do the right thing, they fall away, Jesus comes and helps them.

This is yet another thematic difference Matthew has with Mark. Mark likes ambiguity and irony so much that his gospel (originally, at least) ends with a cliffhanger, with the women ultimately not relaying the news of the Resurrection to the male disciples “for they were afraid” (16:8; verses 9-20 are one of the appended endings to the gospel in antiquity). The “young man” at the tomb promises the women that they will see the resurrected Jesus in the Galilee, the place where it all began (thus hinting at a reconciliation), but their reaction to this news is to run away in terror and keep quiet about what they saw, in a reversal of the running theme of the earlier half of the gospel (Jesus tells the people He healed to keep it a secret only for the person to make it public anyway).

Matthew, however, as mentioned, has a penchant for spelling things out clearly and so has a happy ending. Jesus Himself appears to confirm what the angel says to the women, who were afraid “yet filled with joy”; the women do relay the news to the disciples; the disciples do make it to the Galilee. There Matthew shows us what Mark only hints at: Jesus is reconciled to His disciples, reassures them and gives them a fresh start, promising to be with them “always until the end of the age” (Emmanuel ‘God-with-us’).

I love the cliffhanger ending. Mark seems to me to be the best “introductory” Evangelist. It’s not just what he writes, but what he doesn’t write (but we know from the whole Gospel) that makes him so powerful.

Mark’s method strikes me as an approach I believe would be especially effective now, in our culture, for the New Evangelization, when the culture has inoculated itself to the presence of Christ. Hints and shadows of hope to entice the unbeliever, but not overwhelm; rather than those bright rays of clarity that the secular world shuns and turns away from as too incredible to be true.

 

[Neithan]

Peter did walk on water.
Peter said to him in reply, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. (Matthew 14:28:29)Peter absolutely walked on water, and did so at the command of Jesus. I don’t see where this is a failed attempt.

I see our Lord and Savior commanding an ordinary human to accomplish an impossible act and then an ordinary human actually doing it. It is only the person’s fear and lack of trust that caused him to cease being able to do what God commanded him, but for a few brief moments Peter accomplished the impossible through Christ.

None of the other Apostles dared ask Jesus for that gift. None of the other Apostles had that level of trust to obey when Jesus commanded the impossible. Not even Moses was able to walk on water, but had to have the Red Sea parted for him. Peter alone stepped out of the boat, and Peter is the only human besides Jesus to have walked on water. It’s an amazing testimony to what an ordinary human being can do when he obeys God with absolute trust.

I wish I had that strength, that trust right now. I’ve been praying for that level of trust lately.

-Tim-

Yes you’re right of course he did walk on water, so maybe “failed” is too harsh a description. Maybe he never even told Mark about it. But Matthew would have known anyway.

 

[patrick457]

I love the cliffhanger ending. Mark seems to me to be the best “introductory” Evangelist. It’s not just what he writes, but what he doesn’t write (but we know from the whole Gospel) that makes him so powerful.

Mark’s method strikes me as an approach I believe would be especially effective now, in our culture, for the New Evangelization, when the culture has inoculated itself to the presence of Christ. Hints and shadows of hope to entice the unbeliever, but not overwhelm; rather than those bright rays of clarity that the secular world shuns and turns away from as too incredible to be true.

This is why I love Mark’s gospel: it’s very challenging for believers just as it is for unbelievers. Jesus in Mark is an extremely vague and complicated figure: it’s very hard to figure out how Jesus wants to present Himself to the world, almost no one around Him could grasp who He is, and even His exact relationship with God (His ‘sonship’) is left unexplained. It leaves the audience with a lot of questions which the author leaves for them to figure out by themselves.