AUTOMATICALLY, OF ITSELF — the word behind the English 'automatic', and one of only two uses in the whole New Testament (the other, Acts 12:10, a prison gate that opens by itself). ⚠ In the Parable of the Growing Seed, unique to Mark, it describes what the earth does: 'the earth bears fruit automatē' (Mark 4:28), with no verb of human effort attached to the growing itself — the farmer sows, sleeps, rises, and reaps, but the word for what happens in between belongs to the ground, not to him. → first discussed at Mark 4:28