Drama. Irony. Betrayal. Miracles. A holy war with the whole world at stake. And it’s all packed into the shortest of the four Gospels. Written in an engaging, lively, oral style, Loosing the Lion tells us how, despite being misunderstood and neglected throughout most of history, the Gospel of Mark has recently been experiencing a scholarly revival. Theologians are beginning to see how it is actually an intense, wild, impossible story told at a breakneck pace with twists and turns that shock and surprise those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Readers will be captivated by the Gospel’s literary brilliance, which brings us to the threshold of an encounter with the living Jesus, who reveals his mysteries, and ultimately himself, to those who approach him and dwell in his presence. And when we do encounter him, “The proper response is repentance, joining God’s army to be liberated, and once liberated, advancing the liberation of the whole cosmos, which, ultimately, is the content of the Gospel Jesus calls us to believe in. Liberation is coming. Join the resistance.”
About the Author
LEROY A. HUIZENGA is Administrative Chair of Human and Divine Sciences at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND. He holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in New Testament from Duke University. During his doctoral studies he received a Fulbright Grant to study and teach at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Huizenga is the author of The New Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew (Brill, 2012), co-editor of Reading the Bible Intertextually (Baylor, 2009), and is currently writing a major theological commentary on the Gospel of Mark for Bloomsbury T&T Clark’s International Theological Commentary series.
