I read somewhere that Mark 16:18 in Bible says that Christians don't get harmed even if they drink deadly poison. Did some searching on internet and found this:

Mark 16:18
“They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” (NIV)

“They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (KJV)

Few questions:
1. Is this true or is there some misinterpretation/misrepresentation?
2. If it is true, why can't this be used as a qualifying test for any Christian before they are allowed to preach? Is it too much to ask to be preached about Christianity only by true Christians?

There are some pentacostal sects that take this very seriously:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_handling

Isn't Mark allowing woo to enter the tiny Xtian mind, with this passage? Venom is a protein, this would be digested in the gut.
Did Mark amaze a crowd with his antics, one wonders.

amateur wrote:I read somewhere that Mark 16:18 in Bible says that Christians don't get harmed even if they drink deadly poison. Did some searching on internet and found this:

Mark 16:18
“They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” (NIV)

“They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (KJV)

Few questions:
1. Is this true or is there some misinterpretation/misrepresentation?

It is the second half of a list of signs; the first half is casting out demons and speaking in new tongues. It is very unlikely that the author of those verses thought that all Christians did all of these things. He probably has a story in mind of a particular person who did not die or even get particularly sick when given poison, and had another story in mind of someone who survived an encounter with a deadly snake. The casting out demons and speaking new tongues would have been much more common.

Just parenthetically, the ending of Mark is bogus. The earliest texts end Mark at 16:8, "for they were afraid." It may be a defective ending with a section having fallen off the end, but what we have past 16:8 has no early support.

spin wrote:Just parenthetically, the ending of Mark is bogus. The earliest texts end Mark at 16:8, "for they were afraid." It may be a defective ending with a section having fallen off the end, but what we have past 16:8 has no early support.

I hear this a lot from Christians.

Kind of blows the 'innerency' of the 'word of god' out of the water in my opinion. "The bible's the innerent word of god, except the bits I find ridiculous" I suppose they're doing the same as me, except don't take it quite as far...

Mark 16:16-17 wrote:16 Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;

Just remember, that if you do die by doing these things it's because you didn't believe enough.

John

We don't know that it's not true, do we?

We have no choice but to engage in ... human experimentation. Well, okay. We do have a choice but I think we should proceed anyway.

There is no apparent shortage of people who believe that the Bible is true. Line them up for a shot of Taipan venom and we can sort this motherfucker out. We'll let them pray first and everything.

ljundhammer wrote:

spin wrote:Just parenthetically, the ending of Mark is bogus. The earliest texts end Mark at 16:8, "for they were afraid." It may be a defective ending with a section having fallen off the end, but what we have past 16:8 has no early support.

I hear this a lot from Christians.

Kind of blows the 'innerency' of the 'word of god' out of the water in my opinion. "The bible's the innerent word of god, except the bits I find ridiculous" I suppose they're doing the same as me, except don't take it quite as far...

Quite right. Inerrancy is more of an American belief than a Christian one, though. It's a belief far more common in the American churches than in others, but it goes wider. Just look at how often Hollywood has dealt with biblical stories without ever an ounce of critical thought or even commonsense being displayed.

There seem to be two extra endings of Mark. They appear not to be part of the original Gospel on the grounds (amongst others) that they are missing from some of the best old manuscripts (Sinaiticus, for instance), that their content is wacky, and that their language is different. They refer to Jesus as 'the Lord Jesus', something Mark's Gospel never does.

Venom & poison aren't the same thing. So I suggest they get to handle Black Mambas whilst drinking a large cup of Hemlock tea. Those that survive get to preach, and anyone who wants to join the Christian club, has to do the snakes & poison bit too. SHould help get rid of those damned church schools.

Ah, but the bible is obviously referring to the survival of the soul. Physically, they suffer as much as anyone else.

Infidels!

Doesn't the soul survive whether you drink poison or not?

John

I remember a TV documentary in which Ruby Wax visited a congregation of snake handlers (in America, naturally). She clearly didn't feel entirely relaxed in their worship (once they got the rattlesnakes out, at least), and was a bit alarmed by the number of fingers the people were missing. On the other hand she did seem to warm to the folk eventually. Being bored during worship didn't seem a problem for them.

z8000783 wrote:Doesn't the soul survive whether you drink poison or not?

John

Yes, but don't let the christians know that.

Remember that this Mark 16 was added many years later, probably by Christians who couldn't just let the book end at Jesus' death and had to add in a whole ressurection bit which is why the whole thing is at odds with the rest of Mark.

We don't know when it was added. It does exist in old MSS. There's a theory that the ends of scrolls and codexes can break off or come loose and get lost. Also, that small additions might be copied onto the blank papyrus at the end of a book or scroll. Subsequent re-copyings might not make it clear that this extra bit wasn't part of the original.

And what appears to be the original end of Mark (actually Ch. 16:8) does include an empty tomb and the announcement that 'he is not here' among the dead, but they had better go and look for him in Galilee. So it does have a resurrection, though not any appearances. I agree that some people might have found this unsatisfactory and wanted to add the alternative endings, but we can't really tell how we ended up with what we've got.

But is it not true that scholars agree that the end of Mark is written by a completely different person with a different style?

chairman bill wrote:Venom & poison aren't the same thing. So I suggest they get to handle Black Mambas whilst drinking a large cup of Hemlock tea.

Good point.

Black Mambas are about an equivalent choice to Taipans. In order for the experiment to be capable of falsifying the hypothesis we need a snake with a bite that has a 0% survivability record (sans vaccine of course). If people could survive the bite without vaccine or divine intervention, then the experiment would be pointless.

I know that my, and am certain that your, choice of serpent is not motivated at all by any opinions to the effect that those who promote biblical literalism are either mendacious frauds of the worst kind or gullible fools who have abrogated their basic human responsibilities and would therefore would not be missed.

Really.

Animavore wrote:But is it not true that scholars agree that the end of Mark is written by a completely different person with a different style?

Yes, the verses after chapter 16 verse 8 are considered not to be original. And scholars are (mostly, always mostly) agreed that there seem to be two separate endings. They're a bit short to get much feel for the style, and much too short to do word count analysis, but they don't fit with the rest of Mark because of some unusual vocabulary.