Jul 17 2020 - Introduction to the Gospel according to Mark

Who wrote this Gospel? 

This book that we know as the Gospel according to Mark, does not explicitly identify its author. However, Papias, writing at the beginning of the second century, quotes 'the Elder' (whom some consider to have been the apostle John). Papias writes: 

"This is what the Elder used to say: Mark became Peter's interpreter and wrote accurately, though not in order, all that he remembered of the things said or done by the Lord. For he had not himself heard the Lord or been his follower, but later, as I said, he followed Peter. Peter delivered teachings as occasion required, rather than compiling a sort of orderly presentation of the traditions about the Lord. So Mark was not wrong in recording in this way the individual items as he remembered them. His one concern was to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in reporting them."

R T France, a contemporary commentator on Mark's Gospel, adds, "If Papias's information is correct, Peter, even if not 'systematic' enough for some tastes, must have been a lively preacher. The vivid narrative style and content of the Marcan stories may well derive as much from the way Peter used to tell them as from Mark's own skill as a raconteur. The events are told and the teaching heard mainly from within the experience of the disciple group. This means that Mark's book reflects … the … experience of one of those who shared most closely in the stirring and yet profoundly disturbing events of Jesus' public ministry and his confrontation with the Jerusalem establishment. And it reflects those experiences as they were passed on in the day-to-day teaching ministry, 'as occasion required', of a living community of followers of Jesus (within which Mark no doubt himself also followed Peter as a recognised teller of the stories of Jesus). It is, perhaps, this grounding in the active life of the church which gives much of the special flavour (and 'feeling of otherness') to the 'good news' as told by Mark."

France makes the further point that Mark's Gospel was written to be read out loud; it has the character of storytelling and of drama. "Whether by exploiting Peter's memory or by exercising his own imagination, Mark has contrived to give his readers the feeling of 'being there', and that is in large part what makes his story so easy and rewarding to read."

There is really no reason to doubt that the Mark who appears in Acts as an assistant to Barnabas and Paul was the author this Gospel. It was probably written in Rome in the latter half of the 60s of the first century – after the persecution under Nero that followed the great fire in Rome in AD 64 and after the death of Peter, but before the other Synoptic Gospels and before the Jewish war of 70 AD.

Structure

Mark's Gospel is a 'drama in three acts.' The initial heading (Mark 1:1) and Prologue (1:2-13) are followed by: Act One – Galilee (1:14-8:21); Act Two – On the Way to Jerusalem, Learning about the Cross (8:22-10:52); Act Three – Jerusalem (11:1-16:8). "The two discourses of chapters 4 and 13 thus allow the reader a pause in the otherwise rapid pace of the narrative to think through the implications of the story so far, and provide a theological framework for understanding the new thing that is happening with the coming of Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that each occurs roughly halfway through what I have termed Acts One and Three of the drama suggests that there may be a literary as well as a theological purpose in the discourses, to provide a narrative pause which gives the reader time to reflect on the events as they unfold." (R T France)

Peter Misselbrook