I know we’re talking about a text from the gospel of Mark, but forgive me if I begin by quoting from the Acts of the Apostles because it makes a point about childhood in that era. In Acts 22:3, the apostle Paul begins to make his defense before a hostile crowd of his countrymen. He had been falsely accused of bringing a Gentile into the inner court of the temple in Jerusalem, and it was his intention to show that he had been diligent in his practice of the faith his whole life.

So he began: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today.”

His point was that he had a foot in two worlds. Because he was born in Tarsus he was part of the dispersi…