AUTHOR

The second Gospel is anonymous, but its only association has been with the Mark of the New Testament. The earliest existing Greek manuscripts including the title “According to Mark” come from the third century, though the title was probably added when the Gospels were first being collected, sometime between AD 100–130. The earliest mention of Mark as the author of a Gospel comes from Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, writing circa AD 130. The early church historian Eusebius quoted Papias’s words to the effect that Mark, as a follower of Peter, recorded stories about Jesus that Peter used in his preaching and that the stories were accurate but not in proper order. Papias added that he received this information from “the elder,” by which he possibly meant the apostle John.

Critical scholars have challenged Papias’s claims, either suggesting that Papias was not referring to our second Gospel or that Papias was merely conjecturing about its authorship. These objections are weak. Not long after Papias (ca AD 150), Justin Martyr was quoting the second Gospel as “the memoirs of Peter,” indicating at least that the Papias tradition was associated with Mark’s Gospel. Why should Papias or another invent as its author the rather obscure character Mark? Why not identify Peter as the direct author, or at least Silas, who arguably was much more important in the early church than Mark and is mentioned in 1 Peter 5:12 as Peter’s secretary?

Because there are no competing traditions, and because Papias’s testimony is early and apparently well-informed, it seems best to accept the traditional authorship of Mark based on the external evidence. But many critics also point to internal evidence to question whether the Mark of the New Testament authored the second Gospel. How strong is this evidence?

A John Mark is mentioned ten times in the New Testament—in Acts as a young man in whose house the church in Jerusalem met (Ac 12:12) and who accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey (Ac 12:25; 13:5,13; 15:37-39). In Colossians and Philemon, Mark is mentioned as someone with Paul during his first Roman imprisonment (Col 4:10; Phm 24) and in 2 Timothy as someone Paul desired to have with him during his second Roman imprisonment (2Tm 4:11). First Peter indicates that Mark was someone beloved by Peter and with him in Rome (1Pt 5:13). There is little doubt these four personages are one and the same. It is highly unlikely, despite the popularity of the name Mark in the first century, that more than one Mark could be mentioned in such close proximity to the ministries of Peter and Paul (and Barnabas, Silas, and Luke) without any distinction between them being indicated. That means that the Mark who presumably wrote the second Gospel grew up in Judea in a wealthy, urban family, that he was raised under the teaching of the twelve apostles, that he knew well the movers and shakers of the early church, and that he was relatively well traveled. And yet some scholars believe that this cannot be the sort of person who wrote the second Gospel. They note two points especially: (1) the Gospel was written in Greek, not Aramaic, the primary language of Palestinian Jews in the first century; and (2) the author seems not to have been well acquainted with the geography and customs of Palestine.

For specific responses to these charges, see the notes included with the Bible text. It is sufficient here to note, first, that even though it would virtually be expected of a wealthy urbanite in Palestine to know Greek, the Greek of Mark’s Gospel has a distinctly Semitic tinge, a fact that makes it much more likely that its author was a Semite who spoke Greek as a second language. Second, the alleged erroneous references to the customs and geography of Palestine appear as such only on a skeptical reading of the text. On the other hand, the Gospel of Mark appears to have a familiarity with Paul’s theology and an apostolic (Peter’s?) eyewitness version of the events of the life of Christ. Some scholars have suggested that the rather negative portrayal of the disciples in Mark could only have had apostolic sanction. Others say that the outline of Mark bears resemblance to the preaching outline of Peter in Acts.

In the final analysis, the internal evidence does not weigh against traditional authorship any more than does the external evidence, and the best conclusion is that the second Gospel was indeed written by John Mark. The second Gospel must thus be treated as a highly reliable source on the historical Jesus.

DATE

There are various traditions for the dating of the Gospel. According to Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, France (ca AD 180), Mark was written after the “departure” of Peter and Paul from Rome. Scholars are divided over whether Irenaeus meant that Mark wrote after Peter and Paul left Rome or after they died. But in either case, that would place the writing of Mark perhaps in the early 60s. Later church fathers place the writing during the life of Peter. If, as most scholars believe, the Gospel of Mark was used, at least in some form, by Luke in the writing of his Gospel, the date of Mark could be pushed back to the 50s, since the earliest date for Luke is around AD 60. Thus Mark could have recorded his information only twenty to thirty years after the actual events of Christ’s life, well within the lifespan of eyewitnesses. Even critical scholars tend to date Mark no later than AD 69, since he does not seem to have been aware of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, which occurred in AD 70.

PROBLEMS

The greatest problem in studying the historicity of Mark is its relation to the other Gospels, particularly to Matthew and Luke. It is generally agreed there is a literary relationship among the first three Gospels, that one or another of the Gospels was used by the others. The theory that deals best with the data (though by no means with all of it) is that Mark was used by Matthew and Luke. Nevertheless, there are striking dissimilarities in how these three Gospels report the same events, especially between Mark and Luke. The words of Jesus are often reported with slight variations among the three Gospels, and the order of the events varies at times. Some of these dissimilarities may be due to Jesus saying and doing similar things on multiple occasions, but we cannot plausibly account for all, or indeed for most, of them this way. Instead, the differences are best attributed to a Gospel’s genre, or kind of writing.

The Gospels are most like Greco-Roman popular biographies, and they follow similar conventions of reporting speech and events. Ancient biographers were not as interested in giving the precise details of a person’s life as are modern biographers. They were more interested in presenting a sympathetic picture of their subject and in recording the hero’s words and deeds in such a way that it would present him or her as worthy of honor or emulation. This is not to say they wantonly presented false information but rather that they aimed at only a general degree of precision. Thus the Gospels don’t give us the exact words (often called the ipsissima verba) of Jesus on every occasion but instead his genuine teaching (the ipsissima vox, or “exact voice”). The Gospels make virtually no claims to chronological reporting (until the Passion narratives), and thus the events of Jesus’s life are often arranged on other principles, thematic or geographical, or even merely within the broad chronological framework. Inerrancy is compromised in these cases only if Jesus never said or did the things attributed to him or if the author made false chronological claims.

Unlike Greco-Roman biographies, the Gospels are concerned less to showcase Jesus’s character than to explain his significance within God’s program as the long-awaited Messiah, and each Gospel emphasizes a different aspect of this significance. Mark’s emphasis is on Jesus as the suffering Son of God. Jesus is presented as fully aware of his messianic identity and calling, while everyone else (except God and the demons) is baffled by him. He is at once supernaturally powerful and authoritative and yet also humble, servant-like, and committed to the cross. Mark moves the reader quickly through the teaching and miracle-working ministry of Jesus to the climactic events of his death and resurrection. The Gospel reaches its high point with the confession of the centurion at the cross, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (15:39).