Norman A. Beck - Sample Verses

For more information on the translation by Norman A. Beck, click here

Mark 1:4-13

⁴John the Baptizer appeared in the desolate areas of the land, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of the sins of submitting to the Romans and to Caesar as their Lord. ⁵And oppressed people ffrom all the Judean rural area and those who lived in Jerusalem were coming out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing that they had indeed been submitting to the Romans and to Caesar as their Lord.^{1 6}And John was wearing a garment made from the hairy skin of a camel and there was a leather strap around his waist, and he was eating cave crickets and honey from wild bees. ⁷And John was proclaiming his message, saying, "Someone who is much stronger than I is coming, someone of whom I am not qualified, after I have stooped down, to untie the leather straps of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the power of the Holy Spirit of God."
⁹And in those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan River by John. ¹⁰And immediately as he was coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being split open and the Spirit of God coming down upon him like a dove. ¹¹And there was a voice from the heavens, saying, "You are my beloved Son. I have been very pleased with you."
¹²And immediately the Spirit cast him out into the desolate area of Judea. ¹³And he was there for forty days being tempted by "Satan," and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to him.²

John 1:1-5

¹We believe that the Word of God existed already in the beginning. And we believe that already in the beginning the Word of God was proximate, face to face, to God, and that the word of God was God. ²This Word of God was, as we have said, proximate to God, God's way of speaking and acting. ³We believe that by means of the Word of God, all things came into being, and that apart from the Word of God not even one thing came into being. ⁴We believe that in the Word of God all Life was focused, and this Life was the Light of God for the illumination of all people. ⁵And the Light of God shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not diminished it.

1 Corinthians 15:1-8

¹I want you to have a clear understanding, fellow believers, of the gospel that I have proclaimed to you, which also you have received, in which you stand, ²and through which you are saved — for which reason I proclaimed it to you — through which you are saved if you retain it faithfully, if you have not believed in vain. ³For I delivered to you in earlier contacts with you that which I received, that Chrsit died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, ⁴that he was buried, and that he was raised from the dead on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, ⁵and that he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. ⁶Then he was seen by more than five hundred of our fellow believers at one time, of whom most remain until now, although some have died. ⁷Then he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. ⁸Last of all, he was seen also by me, by one born, as it were, with a handicap.

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Footnotes

1. (Mark 1:4-5) Although those who wrote this Gospel and the later Gospels could not mention the sins of submitting to the power of the Romans without further endangering the lives of early Christians, we can be more specific now.

2. (Mark 1:13) There may be a deeply coded anti-Roman cryptogram concealed here. It is likely that the greatest temptation faced by the Jesus of history as a public leader was the temptation to cooperate fully with the Roman rule ("Satan") and with the Roman occupational forces in the land ("the wild beasts") and to use his leadership skills to urge his fellow oppressed Jews to accept Roman rule, thereby reducing the need for large numbers of Roman soldiers and for heavy taxation to pay for the occupation forces that they detested. The price that was required for this, however, was full submission to the satanic Caesar as "Lord" and to deny the Lord God (Adonai) as Lord.