Jehanne

Moving to BC&H.

Decypher

I think the verses at the end of Mark may not be genuine?

Toto

They are not trying to avoid "what Jesus actually said." They are trying to reconcile the unreconcilable - the Bible with various parts of itself, and the Biblical statements with reality, where good people who drink poison die. I think they should be applauded for at least avoiding the perils of the sects that handle snakes, where people routinely die from snake bites.

Note that Paul was said to be bitten by a snake on the island of Malta - which does not have, and never has had, poisonous snakes.

We haven't discussed the ending of Mark here in some time, it seems. There is an old thread here which tries to reconstruct a different ending.

It is generally agreed by most sober Biblical scholars that Mark 16 and beyond seems to have been tacked on, due to differences in language and viewpoint. There has been some discussion of an original ending that was lost, since the story ends abruptly with the women going away and not telling anyone that Jesus had risen, making the subsequent growth of Christianity hard to explain, but the literary critics point out that the ending fits the entire theme of the gospel.

Apostate1970

I think that this is pretty clearly the intended message of Mark 6:17-18. The verse doesn't say "they will drink poison", it says "if they drink poision". Of course on the other hand it does say "they will pick up serpents" not "they will accidentally step on serpents" or whatever. However, in light of the conditional wording of the immediately following passage about drinking, and in good common sense, it seems reasonable to think that what was intended was something like "if they have to pick up serpents then..."... as if they had to move them for some reason or whatever.

Similarly, the immediately preceding passage which says "they will speak new languages" can only refer to a sudden, unexplained, miraculous ability to do so, not an imperative to do so in circumstances that don't call for it... that would just be absurd.

Finally, as you said, there's the "thou shalt not test" issue of Matthew 4:7 and Luke 4:12, not to mention Deuteronomy 6:16, legislate against the reading of Mark as a command to pick up serpents.

But the real issue is this: Is it true? Will believers be immune to poison or even exhibit significantly less vulnerability to it at all? The answer is just very clearly "No, and anyone who thinks so is a lunatic.".