Jesus is in Capernaum teaching, he casts out a demon, and returns to teaching. Hidden in these few verses are pointers to concepts that will be dominant in the rest of the Gospel. Jesus speaks with Authority and not as the scribes. We struggle to figure out what the distinction is and the best I can come up with is that the scribes spoke with reflected authority, they quoted Torah. Jesus speaks with his own Authority and for Mark that is a crucial thought and it enables him to do a New Thing. The rest of the Gospel will be spent pointing out what that New Thing is and I will get to it.
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