Mark Introduction

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.

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.

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).