‘The beginning’: as in Genesis, God is about to begin a new creative work (Minear). The first clause, as well as being the title of the book (which, it should be noted, is the gospel of Jesus Christ, not ‘the Gospel of Mark’, as we tend to say), is also a summary of its contents. The gospel is the ‘news’ or the ‘tidings’. How far the first-century reader was conscious of the meaning ‘good’ as being involved in the Greek word euangelion is uncertain. There is some Old Testament evidence to suggest that the word ought usually to be translated ‘reward for bringing good tidings’ at an earlier date. But, in any case, from the very nature of its content, the gospel soon took on this meaning of ‘good news’, an example of how the early church moulded its own vocabulary to express new concepts.2
The subject of this good news is a person named Jesus, a common enough name both in its Hebrew form of Joshua, in Old Testament days, and in this Hellenized form, derived from the Aramaic Jeshua, in the New Testament world.3 Both by common etymology and by historic precedent, the name meant ‘Yahweh is salvation’, the name given to the divinely appointed leader, sent to save God’s people in their hour of need (Josh. 1:1–2). What Moses could not do, Joshua would accomplish: that would make the name ‘Jesus’ even more appropriate for the coming saviour.
Not alone, however, is Jesus to be Saviour; he is also to be God’s appointed agent upon earth. This singling out for a particular task is described in terms of being ‘anointed’, as any king or priest of Old Testament days would have been. Both the concept and the word are very common in the New Testament, occasionally in the Semitic form of Messiah, but more commonly as Christ, or ‘the Christ’, using a word derived from the Greek root chriowhich has the same meaning as the Hebrew root māsaḥ, ‘to anoint’.
Whether or not in this verse the clause the son of God should be included is doubtful; the manuscript evidence is inconclusive.4 But in any case, it is a title of Jesus that has abundant testimony elsewhere in Mark (e.g. 3:11), and was indeed the very claim for which Jesus was condemned to death by the Sanhedrin (14:61–62). This Sonship, to the early Christians, was no spiritualized metaphor, nor did it simply mean the adoption of a mortal man into the Godhead. A fitting expression, though not the origin, of divine sonship is to be found in the account of the virgin birth of Jesus, though this is not specifically mentioned by Mark. It may be that this was a doctrine taken for granted by Mark rather than something explicitly propounded. It is not likely that he was ignorant of it, but he may well not have considered it as fundamental to primary gospel preaching. Another notable gap in Mark is the absence of any statement of the pre-existence of Jesus (Anderson); but a clear statement of this doctrine will not come until John (John 1:1). Again, it was perhaps assumed by Mark rather than stated. ‘Abstract’ questions of this nature do not seem to have exercised the mind of the earliest Christians as greatly as did God’s manifest activity in Jesus. If Mark is primarily an evangelist, concerned with the Gentile mission of the church, such an omission is even more understandable: except perhaps when dealing with Moslems, the pre-existence of Christ is not usually an element in primary evangelism even today.
2–3. Furthermore, this good news stands in direct relation to God’s whole revelation to his people in the past. The New Testament is to Mark not a breach with the Old Testament, but a fulfilment of it (2), although he does not quote the Old Testament as frequently as other evangelists do. This may be because, probably unlike Matthew, he was not writing for a Christian group who had a Jewish background.
Yet, strangely enough, the scriptural prophecy quoted here5 to provide the necessary ‘link’ has primary reference not to Jesus, but to John the Baptist. It is as if Mark wants us to realize that the gospel era was ushered in by John. Mark does not have as full an account of the Baptist as that contained in the other gospels, but John’s importance is equally clear, as this verse makes plain. The Baptist is God’s messenger and the Messiah’s forerunner; his status, unrecognized by Jewish officialdom, is unequivocally stated here. His task is to make a road for God, and his method is by preaching; the content of his preaching is a stern uncompromising call to all to prepare themselves for the divine coming by turning from their evil ways and turning back to God.
4. John’s baptism was not in the name of Jesus, nor was it directly associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit (8), as baptism by the Messiah was to be. Disciples of John are therefore re-baptized by Paul, as being ignorant of the coming of the Spirit, and as not having been baptized ‘in the name’ of Jesus. (Acts 19:5). But note that there is no evidence in Mark for the re-baptism of those disciples of Jesus who had previously been John’s disciples, and who may thus be presumed to have received John’s baptism already. John’s baptism was therefore only one of the initiatory and purificatory rites of later Judaism, and was an outward sign and symbol of the message that he preached. He called his hearers to a change of heart and purpose, which would result in a forgiveness of their sins by God; and it is clear from the common gospel tradition that John also demanded a changed life as proof of this truly changed heart. So far, there was little new in his preaching, powerful though it was.
5–8. The initial response to John’s message showed him to be in the true Old Testament prophetic succession; he was recognized at once as bringing a word from the Lord. Dress and food6 and living-place alike marked him out as being in the rugged tradition of Elijah and the other desert prophets (cf. 2 Kgs 1:8), as did his eschatological and ‘forward-looking’ preaching. But in John’s case there was an urgency and imminence about the messianic preaching that had been lacking of old; God’s intervention, which all the prophets had promised and which was to result in the establishment of his rule upon earth, was now at the very doors. All this was accompanied in John by an overwhelming consciousness of the relative unimportance of his own work and ministry, compared with that of the ‘Coming One’ of whom he spoke.
9. Jesus came to receive John’s baptism: Mark does not give the reason for this act on the part of Jesus. It was not, of course, through any consciousness of sin (a difficulty seen by the heretical ‘Gospel of the Hebrews’), but according to Matthew, through a desire to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ (Matt. 3:15), i.e. to fulfil every ordinance of God for his people. That John himself protested against any idea that Jesus had need of such baptism of repentance is also made clear from the previous verse in Matthew’s account. Both of these explanations, however, are omitted from Mark’s more clipped version: such theological misunderstandings had perhaps not yet arisen. Jesus’ acceptance of baptism may well have been part of his total identification with humanity, but, if so, Mark does not make a point of it: he simply records the bare fact without explanation, as his custom is. Kline thinks the baptism was an ‘ordeal sign’: in that case, the baptism of Jesus would be an acceptance by him of God’s general judgment on human sin. This is possible, but there is no hint of it in the context.
10–11. This is one of the great ‘trinitarian’ passages of the New Testament. Here the Spirit and the Father both bear witness to the Son. As in the book of Genesis God created by his word and through the Spirit (Gen. 1:2–3), so it was fitting that, at the very commencement of God’s new work of re-creation, there would be the same operation of the whole Godhead. Here, on Jordan’s banks, God speaks his word again, and again the Spirit is brooding over the waters,7 as in Genesis (Gen. 1:2). Mark does not say that the Spirit descended on Jesus only at his baptism, however, still less that he only then became the Son of God. Mark is clear that Jesus is already Messiah and God’s Son (1:1): what he is describing here is a vision that either Jesus or John had, after the baptism, as a sign confirming the existing reality of the person and status of Jesus.
The voice from heaven (11) is a combination of Psalm 2:7, which deals with the Messiah, and Isaiah 42:1, which deals with the suffering Servant. This creative fusion of two concepts is a perfect expression of the double nature of the work of Jesus. The Greek word agapētos, translated beloved, has also the nuance of ‘only’ when applied to a child, and so was particularly appropriate here. The other word for son in Greek, pais, can mean both son and ‘servant’, so would have been doubly appropriate when describing Jesus, but although used of Jesus in Matthew (12:18) and Acts (3:13), Mark does not use the word at all, for whatever reason.
Anderson well says, with Lightfoot, that the text does not invite us to a clinical or psychological investigation, either of the phenomena described or of the inner mental processes of Jesus: these are strictly modern interests. Mark is solely concerned with the reality of what happened at the baptism, and the witness borne to Jesus there, a witness the truth of which will be gradually confirmed in subsequent chapters.
12. The Spirit is seen here in two lights. He is the gentle ‘dove’ (10) hovering over the waters of baptism, as Noah’s dove had hovered over the ark of salvation and the waters of judgment (Gen. 8:8ff.);8 but he is also the mighty Spirit of creation, hovering over the baptismal waters, out of which God will call his new creation, in terms of new-made men and women (2 Cor. 5:17). It is this Spirit of power who irresistibly impels Jesus into the wilderness, the place where so many of the Old Testament prophets received their initial commission and revelation, far from human habitation. For an Australian, ‘the bush’ would have the same connotation today. For Mark’s hearers, in the midst of persecution, the sequence of baptism, Spirit, and immediate testing would have relevance to their own case, as often for converts today.
13. In the loneliness of the wilderness, Jesus remained for forty days, the length probably corresponding to the forty years of testing that Israel, God’s child, also endured in the wilderness (Ps. 95:10). The wilderness was, to the Hebrew, a gloomy place of terror, the abode of devils and unclean beasts. To be with the wild beasts had therefore no such romantic associations for Mark’s hearers as it has for a world of jaded city dwellers today. There may be the further thought here of divine protection; as God shut the lion’s mouth to save his servant Daniel (Dan. 6:22), so he would preserve his servant Jesus from the wild beasts. Again, like Israel in the desert (especially to the eyes of late Jewish orthodoxy), the angels ministered to him.9 In the fuller account of the temptation in the other gospels (Matt. ch. 4, and Luke ch. 4), it is made clear that the purpose of this wilderness period was that Jesus might face and conquer the peculiar temptations involved in his calling as Messiah before commencing his task. Again, Mark is clipped and direct. He records the bare fact of the temptation itself, without any comment or explanation of its content, but it is certainly not true (with Lightfoot) to say that Mark’s account is ‘so brief as to be barely intelligible’. The meaning is quite clear, especially from the narrative which follows: while Israel, God’s child, had failed in the desert, Jesus, God’s Son, triumphed. That Mark knew the basic content of the temptations seems clear (8:33).