Frank Spencer Mead (1898–1982)

Short biographies of figures named in the Christian Bible.

Citing only the Scripture itself, without archeology, exegetes, or socio-historians. The little biographies are delights, and are drawn accurately from literature. {Reminds me of the description: "The Bible is all true; and some of it may have happened.} Here are four notes on synoptic "authors", Mead does not mention could not have been alive at the time of Christ. Then again, my notes do not do his charming "biographies" the justice they deserve!

MARK. Describes Mark as a youngster hiding in the street, and then as the soldiers grab him, "loosing his sheet" and escaping naked. That figure is not named in Scripture, and may even be a Markan expression for one who lost his life during a street brawl. He appears with Barnabas and Paul on their first missionary journey and then deserts them. Paul never forgives him. The author says "His is the oldest, most vivid and authentic Life of Christ. Matthew, Luke and John copied from him liberally." [219]

MATTHEW. "He sold himself twice, once to Mammon and once to God." He began as a publican tax-collector. "Rome despised him; Jewry hated him. Matthew was rich and wretched." [201 It is Matthew who says "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." That thing about the camels and the eye of a needle, comes from Matthew.

LUKE. "Luke was a doctor and a gentile. He may once have been a slave; slaves were often physicians." [227] Mead notes that science and theology were joined in Luke, even globe-trotting with Paul as a missionary and personal physician. At the end of a long trail, Paul says "Only Luke is with me!" Only Luke.

JOHN. "He moved about in a charmed circle of love." The only disciple at the foot of the Cross, heard Jesus commend Mother Mary to his care. "Wrote the loveliest and most popular Life of Jesus Christ."

Foreword: "The Bible is a portrait-gallery. Down through its pages from Adam walking the mists of the cooling earth to the last dreaming seer of Revelation, moves a deathless procession of the most interesting men and women in the history of the world."… (more)