I loved The Incredible Hulk TV series (the one with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno). “Dr. David Banner, physician, scientist—searching for a way to tap into the hidden strength that all humans have. Then, an accidental overdose of gamma radiation alters his body chemistry. And now, when David Banner grows angry or outraged, a startling metamorphosis occurs.” Let’s be honest here; startling doesn’t come close. Here David Banner is—nice guy, talented, smart, and generally soft-spoken. He is a guy you would want as a next-door neighbor unless your dog loves to get into your neighbors’ trash. If that’s the case, look out. You don’t want to make David Banner green. True, the Hulk may be incredible, but the reality is that he can only do one thing well. He smashes things. And yet, in the morning, he will have forgotten all about it. He will wake up wearing ugly purple

Last week, we looked at the likely possibility that Mark’s ending is lost and gone forever. I would agree with the lost part, but what if it was (and here’s the important part) not gone forever? That’s what we want discuss today, but in order for it to make any sense, we have to reiterate what we said two weeks ago in the script. Matthew “used” Mark’s gospel and oftentimes imported Mark’s exact wording so that if you compare the parallel accounts in Mark and Matthew, you will see a huge amount of similarity. And while I agree that “copied” is such a strong word to describe what Matthew (and Luke) often did to Mark’s gospel, it is awfully close. Let me give you a few examples. Here’s a case where Matthew follows Mark almost word for word. Mark 13:5-7 – “And Jesus began to say to them, ‘See to it

I’m sure you remember the song, “Clementine.” Who could forget that chorus: “Oh, my darling. Oh, my darling. Oh, my darling Clementine. You are lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorry, Clementine.” Of course, you remember it. It is one of the top 100 western songs of all time—all time! “In a cavern, in a canyon; excavating for a mine, dwelt a miner, a forty-niner, and his daughter, Clementine.” Huckleberry Hound introduced the song to me (the Huckleberry Hound Show also introduced us to Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo!). “Light she was and like a feather, and her shoes were number nine. Herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.” It was those size-nine feet in sandals that did Clementine in. One morning, she got a splinter in her toe (if only she had footwear that had topses!), tripped, fell into the river, and drowned. “Ruby lips above the water, blowing bubbles

We all know that Alexander had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It was so bad that, according to Judith Viorst, Alexander wanted to move to Australia. But that is not all we know. We also know that Mark had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ending. Unfortunately, we can’t ship Mark 16 off to the Land Down Under and hope that all our problems go away. No, we have to do something. We already know the extended version (vv. 9-20) is not authentic, and we made a pretty good case that verse 8 is not as bad of an ending as we might have thought at first blush (just like calling our favorite country to the south, “Straya,” is not as bad of a name as we originally thought). But there are two other options that we have not yet considered. But to grasp those arguments,

Horrible endings. We’ve all read them, watched them and experienced them. Agatha Christie made us endure page after page on a train, trying to figure out who did it, only to discover that everyone did it. We saved Private Ryan only for him to be consumed at the end of the movie, not with gratitude, but with a deep fear that he hadn’t earned the right to be saved (don’t you think he should have worried about that decades ago?). Tony Soprano was sitting at a booth enjoying a nice meal and then it all went black; and by “all,” I mean the whole series. And we won’t even bring up my time with my first girlfriend which indeed ended very badly. Maybe even horribly. And that is the point: We’ve all encountered bad endings. The question is, do we encounter one at the end of Mark? Let’s admit it

Quick, name one of the absolute worst movies ever made. If your list included any of the following three classics, you win. Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) or They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968). Why? In Plan 9, Bela Lugosi (the star of the movie) died midmovie and was replaced by his body-double who didn’t look anything like him, but he “fooled” the audience by covering his face in every scene with his cape. Classic! The name of the movie alone should land Santa and the Martians on this list; and if that is not enough, the plot is also horrific. And any movie where Hitler’s dead, severed head hopes to rule over a new Third Reich from South America can’t, by definition alone, be any good. All of these could qualify as the worst movie ever. Quicker, name one of the