The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, [the Son of God].
a beginning
an announcement
seems auspicious
particularly promising
good news about
a person
presented as
claimed to be
good news embodiedagain communally
old promises renewed
and new practiced
beyond old paradigms
for good news
is not reducible
to any defined deity
but carries
its own authority
Yes, a beginning is in order as we are caught in serial exiles and a current occupation with no end in sight but a final solution dissolving all promises. Hope is further away than simply being unseen.
Mark employs then-common usage of language to announce a new reality to be lived before its time.
Our tendency is to sacralize language to keep it safe from a secular, judged unholy, world. So, ἀρχή (archē, “beginning”) echoes a big-bang rather than a comforting and inviting, “Once upon a time” that can walk with us. Likewise, εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion, “good message”) comes with an extra burden of our latter-day “gospel”. In its time it was used by a new ruler to claim victory over a previous regime. Such an announcement was understood to carry with it an absolution of past wrongs, a new start, and a promise of a reordered life together.
We have caught on that this sort of political promise can’t be trusted. Time and again we take cultural memes such as specifics of “general welfare” and tweak them a bit at a time until we are confused and then redefine them to mean their opposite. For instance, a Save the Forest Act can give license to harvest old-growth trees for a moment of profit. This is standard political propaganda 101. George Orwell, Jacques Ellul, George Lakoff, and others have tried to tell us about this but it seems to be a lesson always too late for the learning.
It is important to note that the last phrase, “the Son of God” does not have a trustworthy textual pedigree. A question: Does this get us into unhelpful debates about divine/human relationships, moving Jesus too quickly from Messiah or Christ here on earth to a holy being projected into everyday life and thus beyond us? What gets lost in an addendum of Heaven to an experience of Paradise in a new earth, new Jerusalem, and a new relationship with G*D? Bottom-line, keep this phrase as a footnote, but do not read it aloud.