Questioning What You Think You Know

INTRODUCTION

Before we start reading the text, let's take some time to look at where the text comes from.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century Matthew was considered to be the earliest Gospel. That assessment can be traced back to the leaders of the early church, and Matthew’s place at the opening of the New Testament owes much to that point of view. There is, however, a considerable historical gap between that testimony and the timeframe within which the canonical Gospels were written. In the nineteenth century most, if not all, of the judgments of the early church were called into question, and the priority of Matthew came under close scrutiny for the first time.

It had been assumed, for example, that the Matthew listed in the title of the Gospel was the disciple named in Matthew 10:3. There is no internal evidence in the Gospel to support that assumption, and the evidence of the later church was found to be questionable. Mark, on the other hand, is firmly connected to Peter in the early church, a point which will be taken up in the next section.

Matthew 10:3 NASB95

Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus;

Also important in the reassessment of Matthew’s priority were close textual studies of the material which Matthew and Mark share. If corresponding passages from these two Gospels are set next to each other, Mark’s are seen to be almost invariably longer. That observation supports the idea that Mark—not Matthew—was written first. It is easier to understand why Matthew would have shortened Mark’s material than to explain why Mark would have lengthened Matthew’s, especially since Mark’s Gospel is the shorter overall.

Furthermore, in terms of the internal and external controversies which the early church faced, the Gospel of Matthew is consistently more explicit and expansive. Mark’s engagement of Jewish opponents contains nothing like Matthew’s characteristic formula, “You have heard it said/but I tell you.” Similarly, Matthew’s presentation of Jesus’ ministry as the fulfillment of Scripture is much more explicit than Mark’s. And a comparison of Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 shows Matthew repeatedly using the word parousia, while Mark does not use it at all. Observations like these have led to the modern consensus that Mark was written before Matthew. It is easier to see why Matthew would have wanted to refine Mark’s work than to explain why Mark would have wanted to undo Matthew’s.

By the early part of the twentieth century, then, the Gospel of Mark was thought to be the most primitive of the canonical Gospels. For much of the last century the author of the Gospel of Mark was thought to be little more than an editor of questionable skill who merely cut and pasted pieces of tradition together. Willi Marxsen was the first to argue that Mark was a theologian in his own right. That assessment of Mark was accepted in principle and extended in new directions by Theodore J. Weeden, Ralph P. Martin, Ched Meyers and Rudolf Pesch among others. Today there is a great interest in understanding the nature of Mark’s theological accomplishment.

□ Authorship

According to the first church historian, Eusebius, this Gospel was written by Mark, who collected and interpreted material from Peter’s sermons (1989:49, 154). Church tradition has subsequently identified this Mark as John Mark, known to us from Acts 12:12. The reliability of Eusebius’s testimony has been challenged on several grounds (Edwards 2002:6–7). Eusebius, for example, wrote somewhere in the late third or early fourth century and named Papias, a bishop of Hierapolis in the early second century, as his source. So there is a gap of up to two hundred years between Eusebius’s record and the source he claimed. Furthermore, Eusebius stated that Matthew was the earliest Gospel, a judgment that most New Testament scholars deny. Today the Gospel of Mark is generally accepted as the first Gospel to have been written down. Thus, the gap between Eusebius and his source, coupled with the well-founded doubt about his historical judgment, leads to questions about his attribution of this Gospel to Mark.

Acts 12:12 NASB95

And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

Traditions about Mark’s authorship cannot be accepted uncritically, of course, but there are good reasons for crediting Eusebius on this point. Despite an extensive number of early manuscripts, there is no other attribution for this Gospel. Furthermore, it circulated in the first century along with other Gospel traditions, which makes it improbable that this Gospel circulated without a title. Since “According to Mark” is the only title the book has had, the tradition of Mark’s authorship may actually go back to the first century (France 2002:40).

□ Audience, Date and Place of Origin

Eusebius points to Rome as the place where the Gospel of Mark was written, and until the middle of the twentieth century most scholars accepted that Mark wrote for congregations in and around Rome. In the latter half of that century, however, newer studies, many of which were based in the social sciences, reevaluated the internal evidence in the Gospel and identified Syria or Palestine as a more likely point of origin. Most of the internal evidence from the Gospel itself can be argued either way. The use of Latin words like the name Legion in 5:9 can point in either direction. Those who argue for a Roman origin cite these Latinisms in their favor. Since Roman troops were stationed in Palestine, cities were founded in honor of the emperor in Palestine; and since Roman merchants traveled through Asia Minor, Latin words undoubtedly made their way into common speech.

Likewise, mining the text for information about the socioeconomic conditions of Mark’s audience is inconclusive. The stories that Mark records reflect patterns of life in an advanced agrarian society (Waetjen 1989:5). Yet much of the Mediterranean world in the first century could be described as an advanced agrarian society both before and after the fall of Jerusalem. Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 1:26 suggests that the gospel appealed to the underclasses throughout the Mediterranean world, a point supported by the frequent appeals to slaves in Pauline literature. A sympathetic portrait of the underclasses would have had an appeal throughout the Roman Empire, and that portrait may have been grounded in Mark’s sources, irrespective of where the Gospel was written.

Mark’s emphasis on the suffering of Jesus has often been seen as indirect support for a Roman origin. The suffering of early Christians in Rome under Nero was horrific, and this Gospel’s call to stand firm to the end (13:13) would have both warned and encouraged them. Yet believing communities throughout the empire must also have been alarmed as the stories of martyrdom spread, and the same word of encouragement could have applied almost anywhere. If there is a case to be made here, it is that the suffering of Christians in Rome was worse than it was elsewhere in the empire, and their need for encouragement was greater.

One remaining piece of evidence favors a Roman origin: the presence of Aramaic expressions that Mark translates into Greek with one exception. The exception is the name Barabbas in 15:7. All other Aramaisms, including the name Bartimaeus in 10:46, are translated. That Mark translates the Aramaic words but not the Latin ones suggests that the Gospel was not written for a Palestinian or Syrian audience, because Aramaic was widely spoken in those areas. The translated Aramaic words support a Roman origin. On balance, more is to be said for a Roman origin, but much of the evidence is ambiguous, and there is certainly room for caution. It is quite possible that Mark was acquainted with more than one Christian community and wrote for a wider audience (Bauckham 1998:44).

Three other pieces of internal evidence offer clues about the date of composition. The first is the editorial comment in 7:19: “In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.” Here is a point where the Evangelist steps out of his role as narrator to speak directly to the audience. For the narrator to move out of character in this way suggests that arguments about what was clean or unclean were a matter of considerable concern for the Evangelist and his church. And that in turn suggests that the Gospel was written before the final rift between church and synagogue.

Similarly, the narrator steps out of his normal role again in 13:14: “Let the reader understand.” The reader in this case is probably the person who read the Gospel aloud to the congregation. The surrounding verses are a summons to flee when the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was imminent. The reader is to watch for the sign of the figure that stood where he or it should not be and then to warn the congregation to flee the disaster that was coming. The community that would have been most directly endangered by the temple’s destruction would have been the church in Jerusalem, but there is no evidence that Mark wrote for them. The destruction of the temple would have been a matter of grave concern to followers of Jesus throughout the empire, particularly those who were still in synagogues or had come out of them. This warning would have been compelling if it were given before Jerusalem was sacked. It makes little sense after the fact.

Finally, one other notable feature of the prophecy against the temple points to an earlier rather than a later date of composition: neither the prophecy nor the rest of the Gospel contains any reference to ruins of the temple being burned. After the Roman troops pulled the temple down, they burned its ruins—and Mark makes no mention of this event. This Gospel was probably written, then, with the fate of the temple still unresolved (Dodd 1961:44 n. 2). Mark 13 does not have the character of a prophecy composed after the fact, and there is no internal evidence in the rest of the Gospel to contradict that observation. Taken together, these three Markan features support an early date of composition, sometime before the destruction of the temple. Whether the date can be pinned down any more precisely to a point before or after Peter’s death in Rome is problematic. There is no internal evidence either way, and the witness of later Christian writers is mixed.

The two editorial comments at 7:19 and 13:14 are not the only places where Mark’s interaction with his audience is instructive. Throughout the Gospel, Mark’s style is open-ended and interactive. At the beginning of the Gospel (1:1) and near its ending (15:39), Jesus is declared to be the Son of God. In between these affirmations, though, Jesus is presented indirectly for the most part. For example, in 1:2–14 Mark does not identify John the Baptist as the voice crying in the wilderness, nor does he specify that Jesus was the one about whom John prophesied. Those meanings have to be inferred by those who hear the Gospel. The testimony of the unclean spirits about Jesus is direct, but its value is suspect since it culminates in the charge that Jesus himself was possessed and cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub (3:22). Peter’s confession (8:29) leads to an argument, a command to be silent and a rebuke. And although Jesus claims the title Messiah before the Sanhedrin (14:62), he is reticent on the same subject before Pilate (15:2–5). Throughout the Gospel the Evangelist treats the identity of Jesus as an open question about which the audience has to make a decision. Mark tells the story of Jesus not simply to instruct but to elicit a response.

At times the audience is placed in the position of the first disciples. Nowhere is this way of addressing his readers and hearers clearer than in the parables of Mark 4. We are told that Jesus spoke many things in parables and explained everything privately to his disciples. The first parable in this section is explained, and we can see or hear the explanation. The next four parables, however, are reproduced in the Gospel without explanation. This narrative device leaves the audience as people who themselves hear the parable but must ask Jesus what it means. The unstated assumption is that Jesus still speaks to his followers. Their questions, their lack of understanding, can be addressed in the same way that the first disciples’ lack of understanding was addressed because Jesus still speaks.

Mark presents the resurrection of Jesus in similar terms. In this Gospel no one sees the risen Lord without going to Galilee, “where you will see him, just as he told you” (16:7). Here the original followers of Jesus are placed in the same position as his later ones. The assumption, clearly stated here, is that Jesus will appear to those who hear his words and act upon them. Mark invites his audience to encounter Jesus not only as a figure in a story they hear, but as a living presence who still speaks and appears to them.

In this interaction there are no hints of a particular audience. This dynamic is set up without reference to any specific group of people. The people who encounter Jesus in this way might be Romans, Jews, Athenians, Ephesians or the residents of Spain for that matter. Ultimately for Mark the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not the property of any one group of people. It is to be proclaimed to the whole world, a theme that is underscored in the prophecy about the temple (13:10) and in the story of the unnamed woman who anointed Jesus (14:9). If Mark had one eye fixed on a particular audience like Roman Christians as he wrote, he had the other eye focused on the whole world. We might call Mark a bifocal Gospel. It can be read through one lens as speaking to a limited group of disciples, but it also invites a larger audience to meet the risen Jesus just as his early followers did. Mark was after all an evangelist.

□ The Gospel as Parable

In this commentary the shorter ending of the Gospel is accepted as original and intentional. There is no compelling evidence of any other original ending, and the longer endings are demonstrably later. Kähler’s observation that Mark was a passion story with a long introduction (1988:80) leads to the thought that this Gospel was written backward. In other words, this so-called long introduction serves the purpose of preparing us for the ending. As Martin suggests, the shadow of the cross falls across the entire Gospel (1972:117). Yet it is not just the cross that interprets the rest of the Gospel. Mark’s treatment of the resurrection is also woven into the fabric of his account of the ministry of Jesus.

Mark treats the resurrection as a parable. It comes to us as a word—but even so, not as the report of an event that ties up all the loose ends that the preceding stories have introduced. It is open-ended. At the end of this Gospel none of the disciples has seen the risen Jesus. Peter in all his bitter remorse has yet to meet him. Not even the women who went to the tomb have seen him. Instead of joy there is fear, and the good news that does not need to be kept secret is not told. The narrative simply stops, but that is not the end of the Gospel. If it were, there would be no Gospel.

Several recent commentators argue that Mark is a self-referential story much like a modern novel (Waetjen 1989:1). Unlike a modern novel, though, that reaches its conclusion when the conflicts generated in the story are resolved, Mark does not resolve the conflicts. Instead, 16:8 highlights the biggest conflict of all, the one Jesus introduced when he said, “Whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (8:35). In this Gospel the resolutions for Peter, the two women and the audience are postponed indefinitely.

Mark’s Gospel lacks what might be called a proper ending. It does not conform to the canons of modern literary criticism, and it is only self-referential to a degree. The allusion to Alexander and Rufus (15:21), who play absolutely no part in the narrative, moves the horizon of the narrative far beyond the stopping point of the story. There would be no point in mentioning them if they were not known to Mark’s audience. They must have been connected in some unspecified way to the early church. In mentioning them so late in the story, Mark offers a picture of the community of faith after the resurrection. Mark’s Gospel then does not stand apart from history. It begins even before the appearance of Jesus with the covenant theology of Isaiah, and as the story stops the Evangelist provides glimpses of the way it shapes history.

Much the same thing can be said about the role of the women who first appear as followers of Jesus in 15:40–41. The word followers is not used lightly there. It is the same language that describes Jesus’ male adherents as disciples. In the patriarchal world of first-century Palestine it is not surprising to find men as apostles, but to meet women described as disciples is. How that tension is to be resolved is left as a mystery in 16:8, and yet the women receive the same invitation to follow Jesus to Galilee that the men receive. This, too, is a conflict that the Gospel resolves after the story stops.

Mark’s treatment of the resurrection has implications for the broader question of the relationship between the four canonical Gospels. Given Mark’s preference for the open-ended story, any argument from silence about the relationship between this Gospel and other Gospel traditions must be regarded with suspicion. If Mark is content to bring the story to an end without telling all he knows, what justification is there for assuming that he tells all he knows about its beginning or for that matter about any particular episode?

The resurrection is not the only miracle that Mark treats as a parable. In fact, all of the other miracle stories in this Gospel have a parabolic quality to them. They are all open-ended. They appear at points in the narrative to raise or underscore conflicts of value, and they are interwoven with secrecy motifs. All the secrecy motifs have a hint of irony about them, but in two cases the irony is inescapable. The healing of the deaf man (7:31–37) was an impossible secret to keep, just as the resurrection of Jesus was a story that somehow got out despite the women’s silence. It would not be going too far to describe the entire Gospel as a parable. It is a compelling story, unfolding in an open-ended fashion, engaging its audience intentionally about the most fundamental values in life and inviting us to make a decision of enormous consequence.

Outline of Mark

1:1–3:6 Promise, Fulfillment and Conflict

1:1–15 The Time Is Fulfilled

1:16–39 An Exposition of Authority

1:40–2:17 Three Healings

2:18–22 Parables About the New and Old

2:23–28 The Son of Man Is Lord of the Sabbath

3:1–6 Conflict in the Synagogue

3:7–6:6 The Power of God in Parable and Miracle

3:7–35 Jesus and the People of God

4:1–34 Parables of the Kingdom of God

4:35–41 Jesus Rebukes the Wind

5:1–20 Jesus Casts Out a Legion

5:21–43 Jesus Heals Two Daughters

6:1–6 Jesus Goes Home

6:6–8:26 Miracles as Parables About Faith

6:6–30 Repenting and Believing

6:31–44 Five Loaves and Two Fish

6:45–52 Walking on Water

6:53–7:23 Clean and Unclean

7:24–30 Someone Speaks His Language

7:31–37 Hearing and Speaking

8:1–13 Jesus Feeds a Mixed Crowd

8:14–21 A Little Yeast Goes a Long Way

8:22–26 Healing a Blind Man

8:27–10:52 The Way to New Life

8:27–9:1 Messiah and Son of Man

9:2–13 The Transfiguration

9:14–29 A Near-Resurrection Experience

9:30–50 The Second Prediction of Jesus’ Passion

10:1–12 Creation, Marriage and Divorce

10:13–16 Jesus Blesses the Children

10:17–31 Entitlement and Wealth

10:32–45 The Third Passion Prediction

10:46–52 The Blind Man Who Saw

11:1–13:37 Faith in the City

11:1–11 The Entry into Jerusalem

11:12–25 Jesus Condemns the Temple

11:27–12:12 A Question of Authority

12:13–17 Land and Loyalty

12:18–27 The God of the Living

12:28–34 The Greatest Commandment

12:35–44 David’s Lord and the House of God

13:1–37 A Prophecy About the Temple

14:1–16:8 The Cross as the Gateway to the Future

14:1–11 At the Home of Simon the Leper

14:12–31 Jesus and God’s Covenant

14:32–42 The Son of Man in the Hands of Sinners

14:43–52 Judas’s Betrayal of Jesus

14:53–72 Jesus’ Trial Before the Elders of Israel

15:1–15 Jesus, Pilate and the Crowd

15:16–39 Jesus’ Humiliation and Death

15:40–16:8 The Empty Tomb

Kernaghan, R. J. (2007). Mark (pp. 15–25). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.