Mark (Paperback)

Chapter One

1. The Place of Mark's Gospel in Biblical Studies 2. Authorship 3. Date 4. Origin and Destination 5. Life Setting 6. Literary Form 7. Language and Style S. Bibliography 9. Outline

The Gospel of Mark is a succinct, unadorned yet vivid account of the ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Mark presents the narrative in an appealing way, for he tells the Good News about Jesus Christ so simply that a child can understand it. Nevertheless his Gospel, as Peter said of Paul's letters, also contains "some things that are hard to understand" (2 Peter 3:16). Like a pool of pure water, it is far deeper than it looks. Therefore one ought to approach the study of this book humbly and with due recognition of the need for wisdom from almighty God and enlightenment from the Holy Spirit.

1. The Place of Mark's Gospel in Biblical Studies

Today the Gospel of Mark occupies a prominent place in biblical studies. It was not always so. Even though early tradition associated this Gospel with the apostle Peter, it soon was relegated to a position inferior to that of the other Gospels. In MSS of the Gospels, Mark never occupies the first position (with the one exception of Codex Bobiensis), and sometimes it occupies the last (e.g., codices Bezae and Washington). There are few quotations from Mark in the writings of either the apostolic fathers or the second-century Apologists. Augustine thought it was an abridgement of Matthew's Gospel, despite the fact that-though Matthew is longer -in almost every case where there are parallels, Mark's treatment is more extensive. The first commentary on Mark we have any record of is the one by Victor of Antioch in the fifth century. He sought in vain to find other commentaries on it and finally had to resort to gleaning incidental remarks on the text of Mark he found in commentaries on the other Gospels. From the time of Victor till the rise of modern biblical criticism, little attention was paid to Mark's Gospel. It is not difficult to explain this. Mark was not written by an apostle (as were Matthew and John); its language was rough and ungrammatical; and it was generally believed to be an abridgement of Matthew. So for centuries Mark remained in the shadows.

In the nineteenth century a dramatic change came. When as a result of modern biblical studies scholars concluded that Mark was the first Gospel to be written and that both Matthew and Luke used Mark in some form as a major source for writing their Gospels, interest in Mark's Gospel skyrocketed. The theory of "the priority of Mark" became one of the "sure results" of nineteenth-century biblical scholarship. This theory is usually credited to H.J. Holtzmann's Die synoptischen Evangelien (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmanns, 1863). Much work on the synoptic problem pointing in the direction of the priority of Mark had been done in Germany before Holtzmann's time, especially by Koppe, Lachman, Lessing, Reimarus, and Weisse; but it was Holtzmann who put it all together and popularized the theory.

The immediate response to Holtzmann's work brought Mark's Gospel to a place of prominence, especially in the Life-of-Jesus movement of the nineteenth century. Mark was seen as the original Gospel, containing the uninterpreted historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth. Whereas Matthew and Luke represented expansions and interpretations of the story of Jesus, Mark was considered to be pure gospel. And since this Gospel, with its emphasis on the humanity of Jesus lent itself in such a remarkable way to the preconceived christological notions of the nineteenth-century liberal theologians, they warmly embraced it. Martin (Mark, p. 37) observes that "with the Life-of-Jesus movement Mark's gospel came into its own, after centuries of neglect. Studies in literary criticism, gospel order and theological implicates all contrived to push this gospel into a prominent place."

The critical study of Mark's Gospel was in full swing. Martin Kähler (The So-called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964; German ed., 1896]) raised serious doubts about the Life-of-Jesus movement's understanding of Mark's Gospel by pointing out the kerygmatic nature of the Markan material (i.e., it contains essentially preaching rather than historical materials). Even more devastating was W. Wrede's The Messianic Secret (Greenwood, S.C.: Attic, 1971; German ed., 1901). Mark, Wrede argued, is far from being a simple, historical account of the life of Jesus. The truth is, the author had a theological axe to grind. Before the Resurrection, belief in Jesus as the Messiah never occurred to anyone. When, however, that belief did arise, there was an attempt to read it back into the accounts of Jesus. The messianic secret in Mark is such an attempt. Wrede's theory was so radical that it did not receive widespread acceptance. Nonetheless it succeeded in undermining further the assumption that Mark was a straightforward historical account of the life of Jesus.

The next stage in the history of Mark's Gospel in the church is form criticism-a school of Gospel criticism that dominated Markan studies from about 1919 to 1954. Its chief architects were the German scholars R. Bultmann, M. Dibelius, and K. L. Schmidt. The main assumption of form criticism is that the units of Gospel tradition circulated orally before they were written down and that in the oral period these units were shaped, even created, by the Sitz im Leben (life setting) of the early Christian community. This tradition, already formed and shaped, was collected and pieced together into our Gospels. Thus the Gospel writers were essentially scissors-and-paste men, collectors, vehicles of tradition, editors. The Gospels themselves are more the products of the community than of the individual authors they are ascribed to. Furthermore, they record the history of the church more than the history of Jesus.

This approach to the Gospels completely ruled out the possibility of an account of Jesus in any truly historical sense. Schmidt insisted that there were only separate units of tradition artificially put together, usually on a topical rather than a chronological basis; and since these units reflect more the life of the church than that of Jesus, they have little historical value.

Form criticism also undercut the tradition that Mark is based on the eyewitness reminiscences of Peter. It held that the Gospel is not to be regarded as a factual apostolic account of Jesus' life but is rather a community product, evoked and shaped by the vicissitudes of early Christianity.

With the emergence of redaction criticism, a more positive and constructive approach to the Gospels began. This new direction for Markan studies was initiated by Willi Marxsen. Form criticism, as we have seen, had not assigned any significant role to the Gospel writers. They were mere collectors, scissors-and-paste men. But with the coming of redaction criticism, attention turned to the editorial role of the Gospel writers. The chief concern was how these men handled the tradition, both oral and written, that came into their hands. Form criticism dealt with the individual units of tradition. Redaction criticism, however, focuses on each Gospel as a whole and on the distinctive manner in which each Evangelist wrote his Gospel. It is particularly interested in the Evangelists as theologians, i.e., as arrangers and shapers of the tradition in order to fulfill a particular theological purpose or set of purposes. Thus this approach recognizes a third life setting in the production of the Gospels. Not only is there (1) the life setting of Jesus and (2) that of the early church, but there is also (3) that of the Evangelist himself. Redaction criticism deals especially with investigating this third Sitz im Leben.

In Marxsen's hands redaction criticism does less than justice to the historicity of the Gospel of Mark. This, however, results more from his faulty presuppositions about the nature of the tradition than from his interpretive method. The insights of redaction criticism offer creative interpretive possibilities within a context of the historical reliability of Mark's Gospel. This hermeneutical approach is reflected in this commentary. (On redaction criticism, cf. also EBC 1:448-49.)

2. Authorship

a. Early Tradition

Although the Gospel of Mark is anonymous, there is a strong and clear early tradition that Mark was its author and that he was closely associated with the apostle Peter, from whom he obtained his information about Jesus. The earliest reference is found in the church historian Eusebius, who quoted from a lost work (Exegesis of the Lord's Oracles) written by Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, about A.D. 140. Papias, in turn, quotes the Elder, probably the elder John, referred to elsewhere by Eusebius. The quotation in Eusebius follows:

The Elder said this also: Mark, who became Peter's interpreter, wrote accurately, though not in order, all that he remembered of the things said or done by the Lord. For he had neither heard the Lord nor been one of his followers, but afterwards, as I said, he had followed Peter, who used to compose his discourses with a view to the needs of his hearers, but not as though he were drawing up a connected account of the Lord's sayings. So Mark made no mistake in thus recording some things just as he remembered them. For he was careful of this one thing, to omit none of the things he had heard and to make no untrue statements therein. (Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15)

This tradition suggests several important points about Mark's Gospel: (1) behind Mark is the eyewitness account and apostolic authority of Peter; (2) Mark did not write his account about Jesus in chronological sequence; (3) nevertheless Mark was careful to record accurately what Peter said.

The Papias tradition, with its insistence on the apostolic, eyewitness source of Mark's Gospel, runs counter to the form-critical understanding of the tradition. Yet to accept Mark's dependence on Peter does not rule out Mark's role as the redactor of the received tradition. There may even be a hint of this possibility in Papias's reference to Mark's nonsequential arrangement of the tradition. If the tradition he received from Peter was in the form of disconnected homilies, Mark had much work to do in transforming Peter's preaching into a Gospel. This would allow him the freedom to impress on the received tradition his own theological concerns with a view to the special needs of the community he addressed his Gospel to. There do not seem to be any compelling reasons for rejecting the Papias tradition-even though, as Martin (Mark, pp. 80-83) has recently shown, Papias's immediate concern was to establish the apostolic authority of Mark in the face of Marcion's championing of the Gospel of Luke.

Another early tradition, the Anti-Marcionite Prologue to Mark (A.D. 160-80), mentions Mark as a Gospel writer and connects him with Peter. The passage, which is fragmentary, reads: "... Mark declared, who is called 'stump-fingered' because he had short fingers in comparison with the size of the rest of his body. He was Peter's interpreter. After the death of Peter himself he wrote down this same gospel in the regions of Italy." The two items of additional information found here are (1) Mark wrote his Gospel after the death of Peter and (2) he wrote it in Italy.

Irenaeus (c. A.D. 180) adds his testimony in agreement with the Anti-Marcionite Prologue: "And after their [Peter's and Paul's] death, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself also handed down to us in writing the things preached by Peter" (Contra Haereses 3.1.2).

The first line of the Muratorian Canon (c. A.D. 200) that has been preserved reads: "at which he was present so he wrote them down." The immediate context of the line makes it clear that "he" refers to Mark and "which" refers to the preaching of Peter.

The importance of the tradition cited above is increased by its geographical spread. At least three different church centers are represented: Hierapolis (Papias), Rome (Anti-Marcionite Prologue and the Muratorian Fragment), and Lyons (Irenaeus) (Lane, p. 10). The tradition is repeated later by Tertullian of North Africa and Clement of Alexandria.

b. John Mark in the Biblical Tradition

It is generally, though by no means unanimously, agreed that the Mark who is associated with Peter in the early tradition and identified as the author of the Gospel is also the John Mark of the NT. He is first mentioned in connection with his mother, who lived in the house in Jerusalem Peter went to on his release from prison (Acts 12:12). Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas when they returned to Antioch from Jerusalem after the famine visit (Acts 12:25). Mark next appears as a "helper" (hyperetes) to Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:5). What Mark's function was is not clear; but whatever its nature, it brought him into close relationship with Paul and Barnabas.

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