At first sight this might seem a simple question, but it is far from that, as a study of the brief and helpful summaries in Johnson, Schweizer and Anderson, among other modern commentators, will at once show. All that we can do is to give a tentative answer based on such evidence as we have.
In one sense, the answer given does not matter greatly, although of course it is interesting to us today. The gospel itself does not claim to be written by Mark: no person named Mark is mentioned anywhere in the book, and the attribution to Mark in the title, although contained in all manuscripts, is probably a later, though still primitive, addition to the gospel. Indeed, the book contains no internal reference to any author at all, and is certainly not ‘personalized’ in the way that Luke’s Gospel is (Luke 1:3) or Paul’s letters (Rom: 1:1). Mark’s Gospel does not even insist that it is directly dependent on the testimony of some particular, well-known and trusted eyewitness, as John’s Gospel does (John 21:24), nor does it claim that it is based on a careful second-hand compilation of all available first-hand evidence, as Luke’s Gospel does (Luke 1:3).
Perhaps indeed both of these are self-conscious aspects that would not have occurred naturally to an earlier evangelist; they are a sign that the truth of the gospel is somehow already being challenged, either by critics or by false gospels. Indeed, earlier scholars went so far as to say that the reason for this ‘anonymity of Mark’ is that he is simply recording either the preaching of Peter or the common and generally held tradition of one particular church; he is not writing as an individual at all (e.g. Dibelius). Most modern scholars since Marxsen would reject this view, however, and allow Mark a strongly individual role, whether as editor or author.
True, it is sometimes held that the account of the young man who fled naked in Gethsemane to escape arrest (14:51–52) is a concealed ‘personal touch’ added by the author, who in this way was identifying himself anonymously. This may well be correct: but, if so, since no such identification is specifically made (unlike John 21:24), the secret would be plain only to those already ‘in the know’. The anonymity of the youth himself would, however, be explicable enough on other grounds. No identification is made in Mark either of the wounded servant of the high priest or of the disciple who struck the blow which wounded him (14:47) and presumably for exactly the same reason; it was not safe at the time. Not until John’s Gospel, probably written long afterwards (with apologies to those who believe in an early date for John) will it be safe to identify both servant and disciple (John 18:10). Unfortunately John does not mention the incident of the young man in the garden, or the mystery might be solved by the giving of a name.
All that this proves is early dating for Mark’s Gospel, irrespective of whoever wrote it. The detail certainly shows that the author of the gospel had access to genuine eye-witness accounts of these last days in Jerusalem; but even so, it is more likely to be accidental rather than deliberate witness; a vivid and inconsequential memory of an insignificant fact is a hallmark of truth. Nevertheless, even if it were proved that this young man in the garden was Mark (which is uncertain), it still would not prove that he had written the gospel now associated with his name: it would prove only that he had been present during the events.
As far as any solid proof goes, we are therefore left with an ‘orphan gospel’. But then, a first gospel does not need an author’s name to distinguish it and guarantee it, if there are as yet no other gospels, whether orthodox or heretical. Of course, if we are part of the dwindling group who still reject Marcan priority (e.g. Butler and Farmer) the problem still remains, for we must assume that other gospels like Matthew were already in existence.
We shall later consider the relationship of this gospel to the other gospels, and also consider in detail the evidence of tradition, for what it is worth. Enough here to say briefly that internal comparison suggests to most scholars that this was the first of the gospels to be written, and that tradition unanimously ascribes this gospel to Mark. Tradition is also unanimous that this Mark was the John Mark mentioned in several places in the New Testament (e.g. Acts 12:25) – perhaps not surprisingly since no other Mark is mentioned in Scripture, although the name was fairly common. Now, in view of the comparative unimportance of this particular Mark, it is hard to see why an ‘orphan gospel’ should be fathered on him in the absence of any internal evidence pointing to him. Had it been fathered on a well-known apostolic figure like Peter, that would have been another matter, and good reason could be seen for it. Since (as we shall see) the same church tradition, rightly or wrongly, considered Peter to be the ultimate source of information contained in Mark’s Gospel, the failure to credit the gospel directly to Peter is even more remarkable. Later apocryphal gospel-writers had no such scruples and cheerfully attributed another gospel to Peter. The only explanation of the failure to do the same here must be a strong early tradition to the contrary, and this should therefore not be rejected lightly.
Leaving this aside for the moment, however, if the gospel was written or compiled by Mark, what do we know of him? Barnabas, his cousin (Col. 4:10, see BAGD and MM for the meaning of anepsios), was a ‘Hellenist’, a wealthy Greek-speaking Jew from Cyprus, of Levitical family (Acts 4:36), so it is highly likely that Mark had shared this Greek-speaking overseas background too. Admittedly, Mary, John Mark’s mother (probably a widow, since in charge of a household), appears as living in Jerusalem, where sometimes at least the church gathers at her home (Acts 12:12). But it was not unusual for wealthy and pious Hellenist widows to move to Jerusalem in the later years of life, in order to die in the holy city. For the presence of numerous ‘Hellenist’ widows in Jerusalem we may also compare the account of the rift between two groups of widows, Hebrews and ‘Hellenists’, in the early church (Acts 6:1). Barnabas of Cyprus also appears as living at Jerusalem (Acts 4:36; 11:22), like Simon of Cyrene (Matt. 27:32), showing that overseas Jews were not uncommon residents of the city. John Mark may therefore have actually grown up in Jerusalem; in any case, he would have been familiar with the city and the apostolic figures of the church there, although he was not apparently a direct disciple of Jesus. The seeming lack of close knowledge of Palestinian geography in the gospel is, however, a problem here.
Barnabas had apparently donated all his property to the infant church (Acts 4:37). It is possible that Mary had done the same, and that may be why we find the church meeting in her house; but it is a pure assumption to suggest that therefore this home must have held the ‘upper room’ where the Last Supper had taken place (14:15). Like several other events recorded in Mark, the supper is anonymous in point of place, and possibly for the same reason – the secrecy necessary in days of persecution. Of course it is more probable that Mark’s ‘reading public’ did not share our modern interest in location, rather than an indication that Mark did not know the place himself.
Cypriots had been among the first evangelists of Gentile Antioch (Acts 11:20), a type of work to which they had perhaps become accustomed long before, through Jewish proselytization of Gentiles in Cyprus. Barnabas and Mark had both already shared in Gentile missionary outreach at Antioch in any case, (Acts 12:25), Barnabas from early days (Acts 11:22), and Mark from much later, when Barnabas fetched him from Jerusalem (Acts 12:25). Mark had even shared with Barnabas and Saul one ‘leg’ of the first missionary journey (Acts 13:2–5, to Cyprus) until he turned back in Cilicia (Acts 13:13) and returned to Jerusalem, where he presumably remained. After the split between Barnabas and Paul over Mark, Barnabas took Mark back with him to Cyprus (Acts 15:39) and possibly elsewhere, on his own ‘second missionary journey’. Whatever Paul felt about Mark’s departure at the time (Acts 15:38), in much later years Mark appears as associated with Paul (Col. 4:10 and 2 Tim. 4:11), and also as a close junior colleague of Peter (1 Pet. 5:13), presumably in both cases at Rome.
John Mark, whether or not he wrote this gospel, was therefore closely linked with at least three major apostolic figures (Paul, Barnabas and Peter), and also associated with several early centres of Christian tradition (Jerusalem, Antioch and Rome), while from the start he had been involved in missionary work among Gentiles. John Mark therefore would have had ready access to much early gospel material, and an obvious interest in producing a ‘Gentile gospel’.
So much we can say with safety about John Mark from the evidence of the New Testament; for anything more definitely linking him with the gospel that now bears his name, we must turn to traditions of the early church.
The evidence here is clearly, if briefly, summarized by Taylor in his commentary and also by Cranfield in IDB. Early traditions may or may not be correct, but it is always wise to examine and evaluate them. Certainly they should not be rejected out of hand, for, even if they do not reproduce the truth in detail, they may point to it in broad outline. Alternatively, if we can see the reasons why these traditions arose, we may learn as much as if they were true, at least concerning the questions that they were designed to explain. This is doubly so in any area where there are no variants, but only one consistent tradition, for, had there been major problems left unsolved by this first explanation, other traditions would certainly have survived or been invented. Again, while the existence of a unified tradition does not necessarily mean that it is correct, it does mean that this tradition was generally accepted as a satisfactory explanation of the known phenomena. The other side to this is that, if some tradition survives which cannot be deduced from the facts, or even poses problems when confronted with the facts, it is all the more likely to be true; for why should such a tradition have been invented? The same, of course, is true of the preservation of picturesque but irrelevant details; why should anyone bother to invent details if they are irrelevant? A modern novelist might deliberately insert fictitious ‘local colour’, but hardly a first-century evangelist – certainly not one as matter of fact as Mark seems to have been.
In the case of Mark’s Gospel, there is remarkable unanimity of tradition as far as the broad outline is concerned. That may well be so simply because there seems to have been only one basic source of the tradition: Papias (c. 60–130), a second-century Bishop of Hierapolis. Various snippets of a lost work of his composed in five books and entitled An Account of the Lord’s Sayings, have been preserved, especially by Eusebius in his History of the Church. As these and various other patristic references are conveniently to be found in appendix 2 of Aland, they will be quoted from there in a free translation, using the paragraph or line numbers of Aland for reference purposes. Seeing that Papias, however, is the only primary authority for the origins of Mark’s Gospel, it may be helpful to quote him in full, whether we believe him or not. Eusebius, who preserves him, does not apparently have a high intellectual opinion of him.
This also the presbyter used to say: Mark indeed, who became the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, as far as he remembered them, the things said or done by the Lord, but not however in order. For he had neither heard the Lord nor been his personal follower, but at a later stage, as I said, he had followed Peter, who used to adapt his teachings to the needs of the moment, but not as though he were drawing up a connected account of the oracles of the Lord: so that Mark committed no error in writing certain matters just as he remembered them. For he had one object only in view, viz to leave out nothing of the things which he had heard, and to include no false statement among them.
Papias refers to someone whom he calls ‘the Elder’, probably ‘John the Elder’ (Aland 3), who is described as being a ‘disciple of the Lord’, but who is apparently not the same as the apostle John, since the latter seems to be mentioned quite separately, although not all scholars would agree on this. ‘The Elder’ is quoted as saying that Mark was the ‘interpreter’ of Peter (Aland 15). Papias is here clearly dealing with the source of Mark’s tradition. ‘Interpreter’ can hardly mean ‘translator’ of an Aramaic original, for it is most unlikely that Peter was unable to speak Greek and, if he had done any Gentile preaching whether in Rome or elsewhere, it would have required the use of Greek. The word should rather be understood in the sense of ‘explainer’, the sense in which the same root is used by Papias in his foreword, also preserved by Eusebius (Aland 2). Here Papias talks of setting down all he himself had learnt from the Elders, ‘along with the interpretations’ which, in the context, must mean something like ‘along with the explanations’. It is, however, true that just below (Aland 16), when speaking of the origins of Matthew’s Gospel, the Elder, again as quoted by Papias, uses the same verb ‘interpret’ in a more literal and restricted sense. Matthew, he says, drew up his ‘sayings’ in Hebrew, by which he presumably means ‘Aramaic’, and everybody ‘interpreted’ them as best he could. But here there has been a specific reference to the involvement of another language, a factor which is nowhere implied in the case of Peter’s preaching. Therefore, if there is anything in this traditional link between Mark and Peter, Mark is portrayed not as a translator of Peter from Aramaic to Greek, but as an explainer of Peter. If the Petrine authorship of 1 Peter is accepted, then the relationship between Silvanus (Silas) and Peter there may have been somewhat similar to that assumed between Mark and Peter here (1 Pet. 5:12), for Peter is not likely to have used such polished Greek as we now find in the Epistle. There is little polish in Mark’s Greek, however, so that any ‘editorial’ activity performed on Petrine material by Mark must have been of another nature.
Papias, or rather John the Elder as quoted by Papias, goes on to say that Mark wrote down (Aland, 15) ‘carefully, but not in order, as many of the sayings and doings of Jesus as he (? Peter) remembered’ (or possibly ‘related’). This may be a defence of Mark against current charges of inaccuracy, or of paucity of material, or of lack of strict chronological sequence. It is interesting that most of these very criticisms are still made today. They were, however, not likely to arise initially in the ancient world, until after the production of other gospels, when Mark might well suffer by comparison.
The reason for these apparent ‘deficiencies’ is next given by Papias very simply, by pointing out that Mark had neither heard nor followed the Lord himself, but had simply followed Peter, at a later date (Aland 15). The implication therefore is that, if Mark was deficient, it was purely through a lack of direct personal knowledge of the events. Of course, we must remember that Papias is trying to prove a point in all this – that written documents like the gospels are not really as valuable as first hand oral tradition, which Papias championed.
The question could still be raised, however, if Peter was indeed Mark’s source, and if Mark was following him, as to why these same three criticisms could not be applied more properly to Peter. The answer given by the Elder is that even Peter was not simply listing the Lord’s sayings (Aland 15) but that he was adapting his teaching material according to the needs of his hearers – exactly as ‘redaction criticism’ says that every evangelist did later. So, says John the Elder, Mark should not be blamed; his only concern was neither to omit material deliberately nor to falsify it; Mark simply ‘wrote down some things as he’ (presumably Peter) ‘remembered (or mentioned) them’. Whether the Elder was correct in his view or not is, of course, quite another matter.
The later Patristic traditions add little to this, except some refinements in detail. The old Latin prologue to Mark (Aland p. 532), however, does add that the gospel itself was written in Italy, after the death of Peter. It also adds the irrelevant (and therefore probably true) detail that Mark was nicknamed ‘stumpy-fingered’ because of a physical peculiarity. The foolish story that he cut his own thumb off, which is to be found in the Monarchian Prologue to Mark (Aland p. 539) may safely be rejected as a late explanation of the nickname. Whether the original nickname was ever meant to be taken in a literal sense at all is another question. Various minor additions or corrections to the main tradition are made by other Fathers: some say that the work was written during the lifetime of Peter and not after his death; some say that Peter approved it; others say that he neither opposed nor commended it, and so on (Clement of Alexandria, Aland p. 539). These variants, however, do not affect the main tradition as to the Petrine source and Roman origin of the gospel. The only major departure (a suggestion that the work was produced in Alexandria) is late, and is probably connected with the tradition that Mark later became Bishop of Alexandria (Monarchian Prologue, Aland p. 539), or even that he was finally martyred there. We may have only some confusion of names here.
There is therefore a general consistent view in the early church that Mark’s Gospel was produced in Italy (almost certainly in Rome), and that it was dependent in some sense on a Petrine source, being written towards the end, or shortly after the end, of Peter’s life, which came presumably in the AD 64 persecution (see Guarducci and Kirschbaum). This comes with a full recognition by the early church of the ‘flaws’ in the gospel, which were therefore as clearly perceived by ancient as by modern critics, and allows for selection of material and adaptation to teaching needs on the part of both Peter and Mark.
Nevertheless, there still remain two questions. The first is whether the evidence contained within Mark’s Gospel itself is consistent with the explanation of a Petrine source. The second is whether the evidence for a Petrine source is so compelling as to demand this explanation and no other. Here, every thoughtful reader must make up his or her own mind. Most would agree that the answer to the first question is ‘yes’, while the answer to the second question is ‘no’. So, while we may cautiously use the possibility of a Petrine source and a Roman origin (though the two do not necessarily hang together) to aid our understanding and exegesis of the gospel, we must not make them essential factors in its interpretation. However possible, and even tempting they are, either or both may be incorrect, and exegesis must never be made to depend on an unprovable hypothesis. Besides, even if Mark is partially dependent on a Petrine source, he must also have used other sources, so that this possible Petrine source cannot be exclusive. It may also be worth noting that, even if the source of Mark’s Gospel was only the general teaching tradition of the early Roman church, this almost certainly depended in no small part on Petrine tradition also. Therefore, if direct dependence on Peter is ruled out as incapable of proof, some indirect dependence on Peter may be granted as not only possible but probable, for none other of the twelve (so far as we know) had direct contact with the west. Obviously, to judge from the Fathers, such a living source of tradition would be highly valued. Nevertheless, most modern scholars prefer the view that Mark is dependent, not on Peter, but on common early tradition. As to the question of who the evangelist was, it is not unfair to say that interest has simply shifted from that to the question as to how he handled his materials. The battle has not been won: it is the battleline that has shifted.
This view, so far as we know, was never held in the ancient world: but the question, in this particular form, was not one which would have greatly interested ancient scholars. It is therefore a comparatively modern view, still not universally held. For a useful modern summary of evidence in its favour, see Styler’s article in Moule and also see Neirynck in IDB Sup.: for the grounds for the opposing view, see Butler and Farmer.
Augustine was probably the first to actually write in detail about the literary relationships of the four gospels (‘On the Harmony of the Evangelists’, quoted in Kümmel). He maintains that the four gospels were actually produced and written in the order in which they usually appear in our manuscripts today (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), which is a view that may seem simplistic to us. He further maintains that each evangelist knew of, and used, his literary predecessors, which is a view that in principle most scholars today would hold, except possibly with reference to John. On Mark, Augustine is particularly scathing: ‘Mark comes tagging along behind him (Matthew) like a servant, and seems to be his abbreviator.’ Of course, if Mark had really been written after Matthew, that would be a perfectly reasonable viewpoint to take, and indeed has been taken (although not so crudely), by scholars like Butler and Farmer. Such modern scholars would of course agree that at times Mark amplified as well as abbreviated the material that he found in other gospels, but it cannot be denied that Mark contains much less material in all.
Before, however, we simply dismiss the views of Augustine as naive and based on the mere fact of the order of the gospels, it would be interesting to speculate why the gospels were originally arranged in their present order. Perhaps it was because there were others in the early church besides Augustine, and indeed before him, who shared his belief, rightly or wrongly, as to the primacy of Matthew. Indeed, as we shall see, there are some who still hold this view today. But in any case, in view of the increasing conservatism of the Roman Church, it is not surprising that Augustine’s view, once expressed, gradually became universal and indeed ultimately mandatory in the Roman Catholic Church until the present century. Nevertheless, in Protestantism since the eighteenth century, the view has steadily gained ground that both Matthew and Luke knew and used Mark’s Gospel, whatever other sources, written or oral, they may have used as well. With various modifications, this is almost universally held today. Usually (but not always), the view is held as part of the ‘two-document hypothesis’, one document being Mark and the other a collection of Sayings of Jesus, often known as ‘Q’. These two documents, with the addition of special material in either case, are seen as the basic sources of Matthew and Luke. Naturally, this involves the priority of Mark as a corollary.
The reasons for this view are simple and attractive. Both Matthew and Luke follow the general order of Mark. Where they differ from Mark in order, it is only one of the two who differs, but never both at the same time. The material of all three gospels is very similar in wording, often strikingly so. Wherever this wording is altered in Matthew or Luke from the wording of Mark, there is usually an obvious reason – to remove a difficulty, or to smooth over something felt to be crude or theologically offensive to later and more sophisticated Christian ears. The theology of Matthew and Luke, for example, is more reflective and developed as compared with the somewhat curt statements of Mark. As regards contents, over 90% of the material in Mark appears in either Matthew or Luke: to be exact, about 90% of Mark has parallels in Matthew, and 50% has parallels in Luke. Since both these other gospels are much longer than Mark, they obviously contain much additional material, sometimes in great blocks, drawn from a source common to both (the so-called ‘Q’) and other sources independent to each; but this does not affect their general dependence on Mark wherever he is available to them.
Nor can it be seriously maintained, with Augustine, that Mark is a mere abbreviator of Matthew, although he certainly contains much less material than Matthew, if considered as a whole. If he was an abbreviator, how could we explain the fact that, where Mark and Matthew do tell a common story, Mark often contains far more detail than Matthew? He would in these cases be an amplifier, not an abbreviator; and Mark’s crisp story-telling style seems to make that an impossibility. Now, while these statistics can be presented from another perspective (as by Butler and Farmer), and it would be most unwise to over-simplify the relationship between the gospels (as Styler, in Moule, shows), there seems to most scholars little doubt that Matthew and Luke are partially dependent on Mark, or upon some other source so close to our Mark in form that it would be hair-splitting to deny it the name. We may therefore safely consider Mark in isolation from the other Synoptics, for he did not use them as sources. Of course this does not mean that Mark may not himself have used earlier sources, whether written or oral or both, and some of these may have equally been known to and used by Matthew and Luke. Mark seems nevertheless to have been the earliest written gospel, in our sense of the word; and this view seems so firmly established today that longer discussion is unnecessary here.
For a fuller treatment of the synoptic problem, readers are directed to Morris on Luke, in this series of commentaries, or to Kümmel or to any other of the standard New Testament introductions. For a spirited defence of Matthaean priority, see, among modern scholars, Butler and Farmer. Their main arguments are that Matthew’s Gospel, which is of course far longer than Mark, contains all of Mark’s material but for some forty verses, in addition to much extra material: that Matthew and Luke share numerous agreements as against Mark: that Matthew retains Palestinian touches, as against Mark’s alleged signs of Pauline influence, and his adaptations of the tradition to Graeco-Roman readers. None of these are convincing arguments, however, and most can be turned in the other way. For a useful discussion, see ‘Excursus IV’ in Moule. There has also been some revival in recent years of the much earlier ‘Griesbach hypothesis’, a theory which postulates a direct relationship between Matthew and Luke, with Mark conflating the two (see conveniently Neirynck and Furnish in IDB Sup. and Styler in Moule), but this has not commended itself widely. The fact that it has been revived at all, however, is of some significance. It had been the dominant view before the rise of the two document hypothesis. If it has reappeared, it is because not all scholars believe that the two document hypothesis has solved all the problems.
This section is, like the section above, presented with apologies to the professional New Testament scholar. Its sole purpose is to present to the general reader of this book the bare essentials forunderstanding the general position, of which Lane and Anderson both contain short and clear summaries.
The early approach to the study of the New Testament documents (in this case, the gospels) is usually described as ‘precritical’, or, more unfairly ‘uncritical’. This is not altogether true, for many of the church Fathers were, in their way and up to their lights, acute and observant biblical scholars dealing with the facts that they had, although their interests were usually very different from ours today. For centuries this ‘non-critical’ approach (as it is fairer to call it), persisted, dealing with the text that lay immediately and obviously before it, a type of study which, as has been pointed out (Anderson) led to just as deep spirituality, even if it is not equally possible to us today. Then came the gradual development of ‘textual’ (or ‘lower’) criticism, the attempt to establish the ‘original’ text of the New Testament by rigorous comparison of all available early manuscripts and translations. This laudable but impossible quest led naturally in due course to ‘literary’ (or ‘higher’) criticism. It had been realized long before that ‘manuscripts must be weighed, not counted’. This judicial ‘weighing’ involved also the comparison, not only of whole manuscripts, but of literary units, like the gospels, with attempts to explain their similarities, differences and possible relationships. Attempts were also made to suggest how the gospels came into being, and what different sources were used. This is turn led to ‘form criticism’ – the isolation, study and classification of the numerous separate ‘forms’ or ‘units of tradition’ found embedded in the gospels and therefore presumed to lie behind them. Each saying or story was carefully considered in the light of the assumed ‘real-life situation’ from which it had come, or for use in which it had been preserved. Like every type of study, this had value. It lay in the intense scrutiny given to each individual unit, but it tended by doing so, to atomize the gospels. Each gospel became a mere ‘bag of marbles’, containing many such disconnected units, each unit smooth and well-worn with use, but rattling together in hopeless and haphazard disunity, while the gospel-writer became a mere collector and recorder of units preserved and already moulded by the tradition of the church.
It is not therefore surprising that the next step was ‘redaction criticism’, based on the belief that these isolated units must have been somehow collected, shaped and arranged for a particular purpose by a final author or ‘redactor’. Along with this there goes the attempt to find out what changes (if any) the redactor may have made to the raw material in the course of the process and, if so, for what reasons. From this, attempts are made to pin-point the ‘life situation’ of the final redactor, his hearers, or his local church. Of the three modern scholars whose contribution to the study of Mark’s Gospel will be considered briefly, Marxsen belonged to this school. Indeed, it could be argued that he pioneered it, for he is credited with the invention of the term. Trocmé, whose contribution we shall also try to assess, followed broadly speaking in his footsteps, though without totally agreeing with Marxsen, and indeed with considerable further development of the theory.
It is not surprising that, as a reaction to this over-analysis, with the original narrative receding further and further from sight, a socalled ‘new literary criticism’ arose. This saw the Bible primarily as literature, not as history or theology, and sought to treat it accordingly, by the rules of literature. Scholars of this school owe a great deal to modern theories of linguistics, semantics and sociology – which means that, at times, their work is very complex and difficult. One major branch of this ‘new literary criticism’ (although not the only one) is ‘structuralism’, and of this, Fernando Belo, whose work will be considered briefly, is an example. Put briefly and baldly, ‘structuralists’ consider any text as a whole, and as it is in its final form. The parts to them have meaning and significance only in relation to the whole. But, deep beneath this unified text before us also lie hidden ‘structures’ (hence the name of the school) that alone can explain the text. These ‘structures’ are expressed in ‘codes’. Structuralism is continually interested in moving to larger and larger wholes: the isolated instance is therefore only valuable as illustrating this whole. It is not necessary to master this forbidding theory (or even to accept its validity), however, in order to appreciate some of its insights.
Form criticism as has been said, when carried out rigorously, had left to biblical scholars only an infinity of isolated pieces of tradition, totally unrelated. It was therefore left to redaction criticism, as introduced by Marxsen, to explain how these isolated units were welded together into a whole. This could be done (as mentioned) only by a definite author with a definite purpose. Even if the existing isolated units of tradition had been deliberately strung together consecutively by them like ‘pearls on a string’ (instead of chance ‘marbles in a bag’ recorded at random with no connection whatsoever between them) then the evangelists would still have been only collectors and mechanical reproducers of the units of tradition, and so indeed earlier scholars had seen them (e.g. Dibelius). Some even assumed that the evangelists found their raw material already assembled in small complexes: they were thus faced with strings of ‘pre-strung pearls’, and were even less innovative. But if redaction criticism is correct even in broad outline, the evangelists were authors in the full modern sense of the word. Units, Marxsen held, were not only collected and carefully arranged by them; they were reshaped and moulded (some even said, created), for a special purpose that the author had in view. Collection and arrangement of sayings by an author, for a particular purpose, posed no problem to conservative scholars; further than this, they were usually reluctant to go, since they certainly could not agree that material had been created with this aim. Particular interest is directed by scholars towards any supposed changes made to the tradition by the redactors, and the possible reasons for them, in terms of a ‘life situation’ that can explain and justify these changes. Marxsen was a pioneer in this area of redaction criticism, although the idea itself was not totally new. His book, ‘Mark the Evangelist’, represented for this reason a turningpoint in Marcan studies. For a convenient, if brief, summary of his views see Lane, and also Perrin in IDB Sup. Previously, Mark had been considered to be a somewhat pedestrian composition, woodenly reproducing early traditions, whether they were Petrine or not; not so however, according to Marxsen.
Marxsen sees in Mark an elaborate mosaic, not a bag of unrelated marbles nor even a string of connected pearls, and for him this mosaic forms a picture, difficult though some of the individual pieces may still be to fit in. The authors of the original units may be faceless, but not the final redactor: he becomes a real person with real views, aims and even prejudices. His aims, according to Marxsen, arise from a particular situation at a particular place and time.
Whether this situation can be reconstructed with any more certainty than the background of the isolated units is a very good question. Marxsen believes that it can be done, however, because of the larger body of continuous evidence available. This is aided by careful comparison with the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke. If from this comparison we can establish Mark’s particular interests, we may be able to turn, in Marxsen’s view at least, to find out what the ‘original’ form of the material was, on which Mark worked.
It will be obvious that the situation is becoming more and more hypothetical. Redaction criticism is certainly valuable in the sense that it looks at the gospel as a whole, not merely as a chance collection of isolated units. It is helpful too in asking the question as to why a gospel was written in its particular form and in allowing to the author a personality, but it seems to tend inevitably to the ‘dehistoricization’ of the facts of the gospel. If the gospel cannot really tell us of what Jesus did or said, what value has it for us today?
After all, we may be studying only the mind of the author, or the mind of his church. We may not be studying Jesus and his gospel at all, but only the proclamation of Jesus by others, in the case of extreme exponents of this view. For Marxsen accepts not one but three levels of ‘real-life situations’ as determinative of the presentation – the original time of Jesus, the time when the oral tradition was still circulating and the actual time of the evangelist himself. So we are at best two removes from reality, unless we are prepared to postulate (with conservative scholars) that it is throughout all these shifts one and the same gospel, even if told against the background of different situations, as is quite possible. Otherwise, the original narrative disappears further and further over the horizon.
Nevertheless, a rejection of Marxsen’s views does not necessarily mean the rejection of all forms of redaction criticism. By examining the way in which Mark assembles and puts together sayings and doings of Jesus (which we accept as genuine), we can form some idea of his purpose in writing the gospel, and this can be very helpful. This is roughly the position of Lane, for instance, who uses redaction criticism in a more positive, as well as a more conservative way, to understand the text before us.
There are many interesting (though not necessarily convincing) suggestions made by Marxsen. He sees the gospel as composed not in Rome, but in Galilee, probably before AD 70; it is to him an exhortation to local Christians to hold fast, during the persecution and troubles of the Jewish wars of AD 66–70. At least this has the merit of setting an early date and a Palestinian background for the gospel. He sees Mark as influenced directly by Paul, as shown by his use of the word ‘euangelion’ or ‘gospel’, as compared with other evangelists; this is possible but not necessary. Less convincing in his view that the absence in Mark’s Gospel of the standard synoptic gospel conclusion, with record of resurrection appearances, shows that the Lord’s promise to precede his disciples to Galilee and meet them there (14:28) is merely a prophecy of his second coming or ‘parousia’. This, to Marxsen, is only one part of a stress on Galilee and Galileans, which he sees throughout the whole book: but, as he interprets ‘Galilee’ theologically rather than geographically (as meaning ‘ministry among Gentiles’ opposed to ‘ministry among Jews’), this does not have the significance which we might expect.
Marxsen was not of course writing a full-blown commentary on Mark: his aim was only to show how in his view the evangelist shaped and edited the traditional material that had come down to him from others. To illustrate this thesis, he isolated and studied the Marcan account of John the Baptist; the significance of the geographical references in the book; Mark’s use of the word ‘euangelion’; and the Marcan treatment of the apocalyptic matter in chapter 13. From the different manner in which all this material was handled in other gospels, Marxsen drew his own conclusions; although not every scholar would share them. Nor is he convincing when he assumes that Mark confuses the ‘past’ and ‘present’ Jesus, reading back into the lifetime of the earthly Jesus aspects which were actually ‘post resurrection’ in the faith of the church. Nevertheless, this is an important book, perhaps more for the questions raised about Mark than for the answers given, and for its introduction of redaction criticism as a tool for the study of Mark, a tool which has been used consistently since his time by most commentators. Lightfoot, Nineham and Lane, in different ways, show his influence, as does Anderson, but with several penetrating criticisms.
Trocmé’s influence on Marcan studies can be seen by the number of references to him in modern commentaries. It is tempting, and not altogether unfair, to say that, if Marxsen is Germanic and ‘thorough’ (if uninspiring) in his approach to Mark, Trocmé is French and imaginative. In one sense, Trocmé is a follower of Marxsen, since, in his eyes too, Mark’s Gospel is a closely constructed work, highly individualistic, and indeed to him essentially controversial. He, like Marxsen, sees the author as the creator of the gospel-form. But he goes further, for he sees Mark as an ‘audacious Christian, prompted to confront tradition, and those who transmitted it, with a statement of the real ecclesiological intentions of Jesus’ (p. 85). Belo, as we shall see, objects violently to this definition. The question before the thoughtful reader is: Is this really a true picture of Mark or only a picture of Trocmé? The reconstruction made by Trocmé is undoubtedly imaginative and brilliant, but not convincing. When he says that Mark is ‘an appeal to history against the institution’, he may well be projecting the ideas of a later age. He sees Mark as highly critical of the traditions of the Jerusalem church and as the writer of a polemic against some individuals at Jerusalem (such as Peter and James) in support of the mission of the church, especially of its Gentile mission, which he thinks Jerusalem ignored. But we can admit Marcan enthusiasm for the Gentile mission without necessarily importing the idea of a polemic against Jerusalem. Otherwise, we shall be left with a new version of the old Tübingen theory of a conflict between Peter and Paul, and a theory just as unwarranted from the biblical evidence. It may be true that the Jerusalem church was not as active in the Gentile mission as ‘Hellenist’ Christians were, but there is no biblical data to suggest that Jerusalem as a whole opposed the Gentile mission (see Acts ch. 15), though the ‘Judaizers’ may have desired to limit its effects.
Trocmé sees Mark chapters 1 – 13 as a ‘little ecclesiological treatise’ (a phrase which again particularly irritates scholars like Belo), rather than as a strict biography of Jesus, which it manifestly is not, in our sense of the word. He therefore sees this section of Mark as being in itself the earliest gospel; but we may well ask what function it could possibly have had as a gospel in such a truncated form. The passion narrative, so far from being the climax of the gospel, is to Trocmé only a later addition by a ‘humdrum Roman ecclesiastic’, using an existing Holy Week lectionary. If this ‘Roman ecclesiastic’ were to prove to be Mark himself (certainly not ‘humdrum’), would Trocmé be satisfied? For the gospel certainly was produced in some such Latinized milieu as Rome, and most scholars would agree that a Passion narrative in some form or other already existed before Mark’s Gospel. In that case, we could accept that chapters 1 – 13 of Mark were Palestinian in origin, possibly even Galilean (especially if Peter was one source), and 14 – 16:8 a Roman addition, without necessarily drawing from this all of Trocmé’s conclusions. We may well agree with Trocmé that there is a strong missionary interest in Mark, even an interest in a full Gentile mission, without necessarily postulating his cleavage on the matter between the Christians of Galilee and the church at Jerusalem.
The ‘downplaying’ of Peter in the gospel, on which Trocmé lays great stress, need not be a deliberate theological attack on Peter, made at a later date. It is not something in isolation but is part of the general ‘downplaying’ of the twelve which characterizes the whole gospel. It could either be Petrine modesty (if we hold to a Petrine source) or primitive frankness (if we do not). Apostles, it has been well said, did not acquire haloes or superhuman stature until well after the first century. Mark or his source may simply have described the apostles as they really were, to the horror of later Christians, who tried to soften the hard facts here too, as they did in other areas of Mark’s Gospel. Some editors hold that Mark was motivated by a strongly ‘paraenetic’ or instructional interest in portraying the apostles in this light (Schweizer); he wanted to warn us of the dangers that face all Christians. This may well be so: but how could he do this better than by showing the apostles as they actually were in all their weakness?
To say, with Trocmé, that the gospel is ‘deficient in ethical teaching’ is quite unfair, while it is true that long continuous collections of the ethical teaching of Jesus do not appear in Mark, as they do in other synoptists. Perhaps such collections were preserved separately in early days in ‘teaching collections’. We should, however, be grateful to Trocmé for setting the gospel material early in date, and therefore closer to the events it describes, even if at the same time he somewhat downgrades the historical and biographical value of the Marcan narratives. His concept of Mark as a rugged individualist rather than as a gifted literary figure is interesting and provocative, but could he not have been merely a typical early Christian? Few would agree with him when he describes Mark as ‘neither an ordinary nor a peaceable Christian’, even if we were to accept his picture of a Marcan divergence from Jerusalem views. We should of course have to ask – which of the Jerusalem views? Acts makes plain that there were at least three different groups at Jerusalem – James’ supporters (Gal. 2:12), the Pharisees (Acts 15:5), and the Hellenists (Acts 6:1). These last were represented by Stephen, who certainly would have had much sympathy with Mark; and Peter’s views were very close to Mark’s too (Acts 15:7–11). Trocmé’s general emphasis on the conservatism of Mark shown by his preservation of early titles for Jesus (like ‘Master’ or ‘Son of Man’) rather than the use of later and more developed Christological titles, however, is both true and welcome. This means only that Mark is preserving faithfully the usage of his sources, not that he is ignorant of later usage – how could he be? Trocmé’s basic thesis that the ‘real life background’ of Mark was a church with major problems, both in the form of persecution and in the form of those who had lapsed and denied their Lord, may well be true, even if the place of origin should prove not to be Rome. Such problems were almost universal in the first century, before Christianity had won toleration and even acceptance in the Empire.
To sum up, Trocmé’s imaginative historical reconstructions are always interesting and challenging, and always bear consideration. Perhaps his chief contribution has been to develop still further Marxsen’s concept of the individuality of the author of Mark’s Gospel, and his activity as an editor of his traditional material, even if the motives suggested by Trocmé do not always commend themselves.
For a third Marcan commentator, Belo has been chosen, not because he is well known (comparatively few traditional New Testament scholars will have even heard of him, let alone read his book), but because he is typical of a widespread modern movement. He does gain passing mention in a footnote in Telford, but this is unusual: nevertheless, Belo and his group should be taken seriously, even if we reject their viewpoint and interpretations.
Just as Marxsen and Trocmé were typical of new approaches to Mark’s Gospel, so is Fernando Belo, although in his case, typical of an approach new not only in one particular direction (the socio-political), but in several others also. Increasingly today the whole structure of traditional ‘western’ biblical exegesis is coming under attack, particularly in countries of the so-called ‘eastern bloc’ and China. Outside these areas, the pressure comes primarily from third world theologians, especially in South and Central America, and secondarily from an increasing group of younger western scholars who are influenced by their views. Starting from the truism that all biblical exegesis is unconsciously coloured by the background and culture of the exegetes, they dismiss traditional western exegesis as wrong-headed. A firm belief of this school is that the Bible was written for and by the poor and the oppressed, and therefore that it can be understood and interpreted only from their viewpoint. This, to them, rules out virtually all past exegesis, and demands a fresh start.
To complicate this, Belo is also a ‘structuralist’, as well as being a sociologist. All this combines to make his commentary extraordinarily difficult, yet at the same time challenging, with flashes of insight into matters to which more traditional scholars may have been blind. One does not have to accept his political or philosophical terms of reference to appreciate these insights, which may well preserve us from ‘pietistic’ and ‘over-spiritualized’ interpretations of Mark. Of course, Belo, just as much as the ‘traditional scholars’ whom he attacks, is working from his own fixed (and fallible) presuppositions, as future generations of scholars will no doubt be quick to see.
But, for Belo, his terms of reference are fundamental. He scourges those who are preoccupied in exegesis of Mark with the metaphysical problems of evil and suffering (about which he says that we can do nothing) and ignore the practical problems of poverty and oppression (where he says that we could and should do so much). Study of ‘forms’ and ‘redaction history’ alike are rejected by him as ‘bourgeois’, his ultimate adjective of abuse. His ‘structuralist’ views, as well as his political background, show clearly here. He is more concerned with the finished product in the text before us than with its past history. This is a healthy emphasis, but not when it leads him to be equally impatient with scholarly concern about the ‘historicity’ of any incident or saying of Jesus. He has no patience with a ‘kingdom not of this world’, a kingdom which ignores what he calls the ‘economic component’ of the gospel. The ‘interiorizing’ and ‘personalizing’ of salvation are unpardonable sins to him; and ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ scholars in his eyes have been equally guilty of these sins in the past. Exegetical erudition he says, quite correctly, can easily miss the plain meaning of the text. Trocmé and other commentators therefore come in for stern words of criticism on these grounds. Belo rightly stresses the physical nature of many of Christ’s ‘deeds of power’ as recorded in Mark’s Gospel – healings, feedings and so on. We can, he maintains, too easily ignore or ‘spiritualize away’ these in a commentary, looking only at some presumed ‘metaphysical significance’ of the text. He will have nothing of the common theological understanding of the word ‘poor’ in Scripture as meaning ‘not only a social class, but also those whose submissive, trusting, joyous faith is summed up in an attitude of religious expectation’. This, to him, is the ultimate extreme of ‘bourgeois exegesis’ and totally mistaken, although to many scholars it may seem the plain biblical meaning. Here, as often, Belo reacts too strongly to a perceived abuse, and is creating a false antithesis.
What are we to make of all this, and what are the positive values of Belo’s approach? Evangelical scholars of recent years would gladly agree with Belo that there is always a danger of divorcing the gospel, whether in Mark or the other evangelists, from its practical this-worldly consequences (in this case, a danger of evacuating the word ‘poor’ of any real meaning), although it is also true that the danger was far greater in former years than it is today. We can also recognize, with Belo, the primarily physical nature of many of Christ’s miracles as recorded in Mark, without necessarily restricting either the miracles or salvation to the physical, as he seems tempted to do at times.
This same ‘earthiness’, however, also leads Belo steadfastly to refuse to ‘demythologize’ and explain away either the miracles of Jesus, or even the resurrection, although he cautiously regards this as an ‘open ended’ question. This is certainly a healthy reaction to the scepticism of some other scholars. Less happy is his distinction between a supposed original ‘Messianism’ of Jesus, and later ‘theologizing’ about Jesus, of which, to Belo, the other Evangelists and Paul, if not the editor Mark himself, are examples. The doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of salvation are both involved in this, and no conservative scholar could agree with him here. In any case, if Paul was converted within a year or two of the crucifixion of Jesus (so both Ogg and Hengel), and was writing his letter to the churches within twenty years of it, he can hardly be accused of ‘late’ views. There are, however, many other insights in Belo which are also valuable and refreshing. He rightly stresses the small first-century ‘ecclesial communities’ as being Mark’s background, rather than the great formal ‘Ecclesia’ of later days. This is important when considering the origins of Mark’s Gospel in and for such small groups or ‘house churches’. Too many modern commentators are anachronistic in their concept of the early church, which must have been more like the church of China today than a highly organized western church. When he recalls us to the study of the ‘Messianic narrative of Jesus’, and calls us, as exegetes, to situate ourselves within the texts and not outside them, we would all agree, even if ‘Messiah’ for him does not always mean all that ‘Christ’ means for us. He is, in addition a ‘structuralist’, and therefore calls us to deal with the text of Mark as a whole, and as it now is. This is a welcome move away from the piecemeal approach of the past, with its engrossment in questions of origins and development of material.
Above all, the conservative scholar will be grateful to Belo for his warning against a selfish and personalized pietism, which ignores the practical demands of Jesus as presented in Mark, and smoothes over his plain teaching on wealth and poverty, although few of us could agree with Belo that Jesus preached ‘class struggle’ or had no place for the rich. If Fernando Belo has passionately over-reacted to error, none of us can blame him, for he speaks with faith, passion and naivety, out of his own agonized experience.
If a study of modern views of, and approaches to, Mark is to be anything other than an interesting form of theological archaeology, it must affect our approach and exegesis today. What then have these three scholars to teach us? Many of the positive insights of Marxsen and those redaction critics who followed him will be found embodied in Lane, Anderson and Schweizer. Redaction criticism has rightly taught us to consider the personality and situation of the evangelist as well as of his sources and hearers. Of course every new theory tends to ‘over compensate’, and redaction criticism is no exception to this rule. Nevertheless, the concept of an individual moulder of the gospel material, with a particular purpose in view, is the abiding legacy of redaction criticism. We may take this thought further, and accept that the author selected and arranged, and perhaps even himself explained, already existing material in order to achieve this purpose. But as we have no gospel material earlier in date than Mark, this would be difficult to prove, and comparisons with Matthew and Luke may only be misleading. That Mark edited his work with reference to the needs of some local church also seems reasonable enough, although it would be dangerous to draw from the Marcan material anything more than tentative and general conclusions about the locale, circumstances and problems of that local church.
There is good reason, however, for not being prepared to go any further; there is certainly no need to accept any theory of the creation of material by the redactor to further his supposed theological purposes. But, having said all this, it is only fair to point out that this process of ‘redaction’ is, in broad outline, only what the early church had always held (perhaps in a somewhat simplistic form) about Mark and his Gospel, or even about Peter, Mark’s assumed source. We do not have to accept Marxsen’s more extreme views to agree with this type of redaction.
As regards Trocmé, if Marxsen made the author of Mark a person for us, then Trocmé individualized him still further by what may seem to some to be an over-subjective and over-imaginative exegesis. His theories are fascinating, but intellectually and theologically unconvincing. His mistake is to import a level of sophistication into first-century Christendom which is most unlikely to have existed in the case of Mark, whatever of Paul. That Mark and Paul were contemporaries or even colleagues by no means proves that they were of equal theological stature. It may well be that (as Trocmé claims) the place and mission of the church and of its ‘shepherds’ are in fact the two great themes of Mark. But if so, these themes may simply have been unselfconsciously adopted by Mark as being two themes that arose naturally in the life of the early Gentile church. There is no hint in Mark’s Gospel that either of them were controversial topics. Trocmé, in spite of all his presentation of Mark as an ‘audacious Christian, boldly confronting Jerusalem church tradition’, rightly says that we must not yield to the modern romantic notion of an individual standing alone against the whole. He sees Mark rather as spokesman of a minority group. But why can he not be a spokesman of the whole group, in early days, especially since his approach is so similar to that to be found in the pre-Pauline Jerusalem speeches of the early chapters of Acts? Trocmé, to prove his point, must first prove that, at an early date, there were ideas circulating at Jerusalem which conflicted with those expressed in Mark. True, some of Paul’s letters were circulating before Mark’s Gospel, but, while perhaps more developed theologically, they in no sense conflict with Mark. Nevertheless, while Trocmé’s hope that his ‘cautious circling around the problem’ (of Jesus) ‘has prepared the ground for a frontal attack’ may be vain, yet we can learn from him the need for a sensitive and imaginative probing of the gospel materials contained in Mark, even if Trocmé’s own particular conclusions seem at times far-fetched and unlikely. His influence can be seen in the careful consideration given to his views by later commentators, even by those who reject them.
With Fernando Belo, it is very different, although, because he is less known to orthodox scholarship, his influence has been more limited. His challenge is probably the deepest of all. At the moment when we most disagree with him, he has most to teach us, though not perhaps in the way that he intends. He represents a serious, if perhaps at times mistaken, attempt to escape from modern western presuppositions and assumptions, and to look at the gospel material through new eyes and in a fresh way. We can all learn from this, even if we do not necessarily agree with him when he insists that his was the way in which the early Christians saw and interpreted gospel events. After all, his frame of reference is just as ‘modern’ and ‘western’ as any other form of twentieth-century thought, as indeed Belo himself admits, when turning to analyse first-century Palestinian society. To that extent, we are both of us alike applying alien and external ‘grids’ to the gospel material; but at least we have been well and truly warned by him of the dangers of our own particular ‘grid’. When he urges us to use the gospel itself as a ‘grid’ to read the events of the gospel, we can only add our hearty amen. Above all, we must attempt, in our exegesis as well as in our Christian living, to be fair to the gospel, and to avoid ‘spiritualizing’ it to the extent where we evacuate it of any concrete this-worldly demands. Belo may have over-tipped the balance to one side; that does not excuse us from over-tipping it to the other side, as we have sometimes done in the past.
In a world where thousands of millions perish for want of Christians to preach the love of God that alone can bring eternal life, and yet where, as well, millions still starve and suffer for want of Christians to show the same love of God in action, this biblical balance between faith and loving action may well be for Christians today ‘the article of a standing or falling church’, as our ancestors centuries ago described the doctrine of justification by faith. Belo, even if by overemphasis, shows us that this is the balance maintained by Mark, the first and greatest of the missionary gospels of the early church. We may not ‘spiritualize away’ the miracles or the practical implications of the teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospel, any more than we may ‘materialize away’ (or ‘politicize away’) salvation and the gospel. This is the balance that we must maintain today at all costs, without allowing any polarization between the two.
Older commentators, like Turner, took this for granted, presumably on the basis of the patristic tradition. Now, it is not seen by most commentators to be so obvious; indeed, as the Jerusalem Bible says, it is now ‘widely maintained that the tradition radically oversimplifies the relationship of Mark’s Gospel to Peter’s preaching; at most, the connection is remote and tenuous.’ It has been already noted that there are basically two questions involved here: the first is whether the material found in Mark’s Gospel allows the possibility that it had a Petrine source; the second is whether the evidence is so compelling as to demand such a conclusion. The answer to the first question was given as ‘yes’ and the answer to the second question as ‘no’. Certainly we should not assume Petrine influence too widely, as perhaps the first edition of this commentary did: that would be unwarranted. But in view of the universal early tradition of a Petrine source, and the fact that internal evidence certainly does not rule it out, we should not reject it out of hand in every instance.
Lane makes a good point in demonstrating that the outline of Mark’s Gospel follows fairly closely the ‘skeleton’ of the Petrine preaching, as preserved in Acts 10:36–41. But Dodd was probably more correct in describing this as the general apostolic preaching, rather than merely Petrine, for we have no reason to suppose that Peter’s preaching was in any significant way different from that of the other apostles. All that has been proved in fact is that Marcan theology is thoroughly consistent with that of the early apostolic community at Jerusalem, of which Peter is a representative. That we would have already expected, on other grounds, especially if Mark had lived in Jerusalem in early days (Acts 12:12). But it does refute Trocmé’s view that there was a deep theological rift between two groups, the Marcan (presumably Trocmé means ‘Galilean’), and Jerusalem churches. Nevertheless, to this limited extent at least, the evidence is consistent with the tradition of a Petrine source, although we must distinguish between broad outline and detail.
When we come to the material actually contained in the gospel, the evidence is equally general rather than specific. Certainly there are stories in Mark in which Peter plays a prominent part (e.g. 8:29); but then, if we accept Matthew’s evidence (Matt. 16:18), Peter played a leading role among the disciples in any case. Whoever wrote the gospel would have to acknowledge this leading position of Peter, whatever his own particular source or sources, if he was to hold to the truth. There are also accounts of incidents like the transfiguration (9:2), or the prayer in Gethsemane (14:33), where only the ‘inner three’ were present (Peter, James and John) and where any account of these incidents must have come from one of the three, initially at least. It need not have come directly, however; the three must surely have told their fellow-apostles (but see 9:9–10). One might just as well argue that the source behind Mark’s Gospel was Jesus himself because the gospel contained accounts of incidents like the temptation, for instance (1:13), of which only Jesus initially had first hand knowledge. Nevertheless, none of these aspects are at all inconsistent with a Petrine source, and may well indicate it.
We are on far more uncertain ground when we attribute vivid details in Mark (found in descriptions of events at which Mark could not himself have been present) to Peter. Such details are certainly attributable to some eyewitness present on the occasion, but not necessarily to Peter. Also somewhat subjective is the view that, if Peter is shown in a very human light in this gospel, it is a necessary sign that Peter himself stands behind the story. It may well be so; but it may be only another sign of early date, when any idealization was still far from the thoughts of the disciples. This is strengthened when we remember that many of these realistic aspects are either omitted or ‘softened down’ in later gospels, when veneration of the apostles was presumably increasing. The position is therefore identical here; the argument for a Petrine source is possible, perhaps even attractive, but not compelling.
Perhaps, as many commentators have noted, the most likely of all the stories in Mark to be ‘Petrine’ in origin is the account of the healing by Jesus of Peter’s mother-in-law (1:29–31). But even here, it seems a total mistake to try (with Lane) to recast the anecdote into the first person, as being an example of Peter’s preaching. After all, we could equally well do this with any incident in which Peter appears, particularly if he appears prominently. This does not mean that Mark may not rely here, either in part or largely, on a Petrine source; it does, however, mean that we should not make our exegesis dependent upon the hypothesis. It is more likely that here, as elsewhere, Mark is recording a local church tradition that took its origins largely but not exclusively from the preaching of Peter. If the gospel was indeed written in Rome, this would be very natural, but this again is an unproved assumption.
For those who accept the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, it is clear that he was intending to make some attempt to record his line of tradition in writing before his own death (2 Pet. 1:15). Whether he ever did so record it, we do not know: even if he did, we have no proof that Mark was the agent, although this was obviously the belief of the early church, perhaps drawn from this very verse in 2 Peter. Nevertheless, while this may not be a proof, it is at least another ‘pointer’ in the same general direction.
We must not think that Mark was universally and highly esteemed by the early church as a gospel. On the contrary, Mark was often either criticized or neglected on several clearly stated grounds, which still remain valid today. For a spirited defence of Mark in some of these areas, see Johnson and Andersen: yet the questions still remain, and should therefore be considered briefly.
Why should anyone want to read Mark’s Gospel? That was certainly the reaction of many in the early centuries, as can be seen from the almost total lack of commentaries on Mark, as compared with the number of commentaries written on other Synoptic Gospels. The reason for this neglect was simple; Mark’s material was largely repeated in the other longer gospels, which also contained much additional matter. Augustine, it will be remembered, had crushingly said that Mark was only a follower and an abbreviator of Matthew, so it was natural that Matthew rapidly became the favourite church gospel, to judge from its use in early church lectionaries. Modern scholars would not take this low view of the value of Mark’s Gospel. Indeed, they would value Mark highly as a primary synoptic source, but they too would be the first to admit that he is limited in certain areas, often those to which attention was drawn by the early church.
It is not until Mark is directly compared with the other gospels, however, that the extent of his so-called limitations, whatever their explanation may be, can be seen. For instance, Mark has no birth stories and no record of resurrection appearances; in that sense, Mark’s is a gospel with neither beginning nor ending. There may well be good theological reasons for the apparent total omission of the resurrection appearances; but either Mark did not know of the virgin birth (which seems strange to us) or he did not think it necessary to record it in his gospel, as both Matthew and Luke did. Unlike Luke, Mark has no elaborate cross-dating of important events; indeed, in the whole gospel, there are only the vaguest and most general references to time. His geographical references are often equally vague. He does not seem therefore to have been concerned to set Jesus firmly in history, as Luke was. Further, although Mark frequently mentions Jesus as teaching (1:21), and must surely have known the content, he nowhere gives a long connected account of Christ’s teaching, like Matthew’s sermon on the mountain (Matt. 5 – 7) or Luke’s parallel sermon on the plain (Luke 6:17–49), or even John’s ‘discourses’ (John 14 – 16). Was the content of Jesus’ teaching not so important to Mark as it was to other evangelists, or is there some other explanation for its omission in the gospel?
If we turn to doctrine, the Holy Spirit is mentioned only half a dozen times in the whole of the gospel, and then usually in connection with Jesus himself (1:10, 12 etc.) and more in the sense of a divine power than of a divine person (13:11). It almost seems as if the doctrine of the personality of the Holy Spirit is not fully expressed in the material recorded in Mark.
When we come to the titles of Jesus, they seem very restricted in Mark, compared with the wider range found in later gospels. For instance, in Mark Jesus accepts the title of ‘prophet’ for himself (6:4, 15). He is often called ‘rabbi’ or ‘teacher’ by others (9:5 NIV; 10:17), and frequently he uses the title ‘Son of man’ to describe himself (2:10; 8:38). But he is not called ‘Lord’, the great New Testament title for Christ, except in polite address by others (e.g. 7:28) where the word probably means only ‘sir’, as in modern Greek (11:3 should perhaps be translated ‘the owner’, not ‘the Lord’). As for the title ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’, in Mark’s Gospel it seems as if Jesus deliberately avoided using it of himself and discouraged its use on the part of others (8:29–30), until his trial before the high priest (14:61–62). There may well be good reason for this ‘messianic secret’, as theologians of the past have called it; but the stubborn fact still remains. The same is true of a title like ‘Son of God’, in the body of the gospel. Demons (3:11) and Gentiles (15:39) might use it of Jesus, but not disciples; indeed it seems as if Jesus himself actively discouraged its use (1:34). Again, there may well be a good reason, but the facts remain the same: what is the explanation?
All this proved somewhat of an embarrassment, to say the least of it, to the early Fathers, but there was worse still to come. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus openly proclaims his ignorance of the exact date of the last days (13:32), although aware that they are to come soon (13:30). In some manuscripts of Mark, Jesus is described, admittedly by Galileans who do not believe in him, as ‘the carpenter’s son’ (6:3), a phrase which later orthodoxy would never have tolerated: indeed, perhaps that is why other manuscripts read at this point ‘the carpenter’. Mary herself, in Mark, seems to have been as unbelieving as the brothers of Jesus (3:21, 31); certainly, she is never held up in this gospel as an example of faith. Jesus himself, in Mark, displays strong and very human emotions, such as anger (1:43; 3:5) and grief (14:33–34). The Samaritans, who appear frequently in other gospels, might as well not have existed, as far as Mark is concerned; he also records much less of Jesus’ concern for Gentiles, women, or children. As for the disciples, they all make a poor show in Mark: their faults are obvious, including Peter’s (8:33; 14:37). They take only a minor share in the preaching activity of Jesus (6:7–13) when compared with Luke’s account (Luke 10:1–12). Indeed, apart from 6:30, Mark does not even call them by the honoured name of ‘apostles’, used frequently later in the New Testament, though he does describe them as ‘the twelve’ (6:7 etc.). True, in Mark, Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God (1:15), but he never defines it at all, let alone in terms of Jesus’ concern for the poor and oppressed, as recorded in Luke (6:20–21). Mark does mention John the Baptist (1:4–8), but only in the briefest terms, from which one would hardly guess John’s true greatness. Mark rarely quotes from the Old Testament to show how Jesus fulfilled it as, say, Matthew does. Contrariwise, when Mark records Jesus’ description of the last days (ch. 13), all is put in general terms, and couched in Old Testament apocalyptic imagery; there is none of the allusion to later historical events which we find in Luke’s version (Luke 21).
When Mark talks about ‘faith’ and ‘salvation’, he usually means, by the first word, trust in an earthly Jesus, and, by the second, healing from some physical illness (5:34), or rescue from some physical danger (13:13), just as, to Mark, ‘following’ Jesus means a literal following (2:14). There are as yet no immediate and obvious theological overtones to these words, as in later gospels. In Mark, baptism is nowhere clearly enjoined (except in the late non-Marcan ending, 16:16); the Last Supper seems portrayed as a Passover meal (14:14), and the disciples are not specifically told to re-enact it. Although Jesus is certainly shown in Mark’s Gospel as engaging in prayer (e.g. 1:35), there is no ‘pattern prayer’ given for disciples to follow. Yet Mark certainly lived in a church where baptism and the Lord’s Supper were observed, and where such prayer was practised.
How are we to understand all this? Mark cannot have been ignorant of these facts. Was he not greatly concerned with them? Did he deliberately omit them for some purpose of his own? All these seem unlikely, but there may still be an explanation. The picture of Jesus given by Mark is not a popular one today, for the simple reason that many of the theological interests of modern Christianity do not appear in it. But that does not in itself prove that it is an untrue picture, although it may well be an incomplete picture, without the additions found in the later gospels. A Christian social activist, for example, would search in vain here for evidence that God’s rule means a restructured society: where in Mark is the cry for justice for the poor? On these grounds, it might be seen as a ‘privatized’ gospel. At least it cannot be accused of being a ‘spiritualized’ gospel; it is too ‘earthy’ for that – too ‘earthy’ for the taste of those who see John as a truly ‘spiritual’ gospel. A Christian feminist might seek in vain for the deep concern for women that we find shown by Christ in Luke; does Mark then accept the ‘status quo’ of a patriarchal society? A charismatic Christian will miss the stress on the person and work of the Spirit and the stress on signs and wonders (except in the disputed verses of chapter 16) which is to be found in Acts; a theologian may see a limited Christology in Mark (where is Christ’s preexistence?), as compared with Paul; a mystic will miss the sacramental overtones to be found in John. But, even admitting all of this, the explanation may still be found in Mark’s concept of a gospel.
What was Mark attempting to do when he wrote his gospel? What aims had he in view? Mark may not have seen any of these omitted factors as being necessarily part of a gospel at all. Seeing that he was probably the first to write a gospel, there were no existing criteria, either to aid him or by which to judge him. He may have believed that the function of a gospel was simply to record the doings and sayings of Jesus in the actual language of their time, without the later and quite legitimate theological interpretations which he must surely have known. In that case, Mark’s treatment of his material would be analogous to Luke’s treatment of early material in the opening chapter of Acts. We may therefore have been asking Mark the wrong questions. Perhaps Mark was right; perhaps he correctly saw the essential scope and function of a gospel, and especially of a missionary gospel. It may also be that he, from his situation, assumes considerable knowledge of some facts in his hearers, much of which a later gospel would be compelled to spell out in detail, because by then the living sources of tradition would have begun to dry up: for Papias shows us that oral sources were more highly valued than written records in his estimation at least.
Mark is the earliest surviving written gospel, probably the first real gospel to be written, as distinct from various shorter collections of sayings or doings of Jesus (cf. Luke 1:1), and possibly a passion story. It is therefore hardly fair to contrast Mark adversely with his own successors, just because they have refined and modified Mark’s gospel-form, a fact which seems undeniable. For instance, Mark apparently saw that a gospel must be ‘a Passion story with an extended introduction’, but he was probably the first to see this. It is possible, and often assumed, that because of its centrality and importance, Mark’s unknown predecessors had seen only the necessity of writing a passion story by itself, without any introduction (although no such isolated passion narrative has survived). All else could be taught verbally, and so was not recorded in writing. In that case, Mark would have ‘worked backwards’ from this ‘set story’ to his full ‘set gospel’. Apparently he did not see any reason to preface this gospel by birth or infancy narratives; but then neither did John, writing much later. For Mark, the ‘good news of Jesus Christ’ clearly began with the public preaching of Jesus (1:14) and culminated with the cross (ch. 15). The question of the somewhat abrupt ending of Mark’s Gospel and the lack of resurrection appearances is more difficult, and discussion of it belongs more properly to the Commentary. But even assuming that originally the Gospel did end with 16:8 (‘they were afraid’), it still would have contained an angelic proclamation of the resurrection (16:6), admittedly without a full resurrection appearance, although this was promised to come in Galilee later (16:7, cf. the promise of Jesus in 14:28). It may be that in the first Christian generation, witness to the resurrection was felt to be more appropriately delivered orally by the apostles themselves. They, after all, had been chosen to be the primary witnesses of that event (Acts 1:22; 2:32, and especially 10:41). Not every ordinary Christian had actually seen the risen Lord, even in the early days. Possibly not even Mark had done so himself, although Paul records a ‘mass appearance’ to five hundred disciples at once, perhaps in Galilee (1 Cor. 15:6).
As to the teachings of Jesus, Mark may well have omitted any extended record of them in his gospel because he assumed that they were already well known to the church of his day, in the form of the codes of instruction for catechumens, usually delivered orally in the ancient world, even if of a set form (see Carrington, and compare the very similar lists of ‘family duties’ to be found in most epistles). After all, in Mark’s Gospel, we stand at the transition point between the oral and the written. It would be strange if at such a time all types of oral tradition were written down initially and simultaneously. We may hazard the guess that it was owing to the subsequent appearance of ‘secret teachings’ of Jesus, like the so-called ‘Secret Gospel of Mark’ (for which see Furnish, in IDB Sup. who considers it a version of Mark, not an earlier work), usually of a heretical if not a gnostic nature, that it was felt necessary to record in writing the genuine teachings of Jesus, as distinct from narrative, in a fuller, and therefore definitive, form. The second reason for the fuller nature of the record in later gospels is obvious: it was the drying-up of the apostolic sources of living oral tradition, and indeed their total unavailability in many Gentile churches overseas. Even those who do not accept 2 Peter as truly Petrine must agree that it states this point as a known principle (2 Pet. 1:15), and shows a clear knowledge of the need. If, however, the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter is accepted, then Mark’s Gospel may be itself the first step in this codifying process.
As regards many other of the omitted topics, Mark may not have regarded them as relevant to his main missionary purpose. This is particularly true if his gospel was indeed somehow (directly or indirectly,) based on the preaching of Peter, which was presumably, in early days at least, preaching of an evangelistic nature. If Mark’s Gospel is an ‘evangelist’s gospel’, many questions resolve themselves at once. An evangelist is rarely a careful dogmatic theologian, although Paul is a striking exception. The task of the evangelist is to present the ‘bones’ of the gospel clearly and compellingly, not necessarily fully or in exact chronological sequence. An evangelist, in short, assumes much, without necessarily spelling it out in detail, an operation which would only confuse his audience at that stage. The time for teaching and theologizing would be later, as we can see from the other gospels.
Let us return to what we have postulated – that Mark is designed to give a simple factual account of such events as were necessary for his purpose, within the loosest possible of chronological and geographic frameworks. He knew that John’s baptism, Jesus’ temptation, and the call of the twelve came at the beginning of the ministry, and that the passion narrative came at the end; all else has been roughly grouped between them. He knew of a Galilean ministry, and of a Jerusalem ministry, culminating in the cross. This is not to say that in so doing, he has adopted a conscious position, in opposition to others; there were as yet no others to oppose and his choice is probably quite instinctive and unselfconscious, under (if we will) the Spirit’s guidance. Indeed, it probably never entered his head to do otherwise. But, precisely because of this, Mark’s evidence is invaluable. He gives us an insight into the still unreflective, perhaps at times almost simplistic, mind of the first generation of Christians, and, through that, into the oral tradition that reaches back to the days of the earthly ministry of Jesus. The same can be said, as Dodd acutely saw, of the outline of apostolic preaching recorded in the early chapters of Acts. Luke has faithfully preserved this in Acts, as he has preserved other early Jewish-Christian material in this section, although his own understanding of the gospel is much more developed, thanks to the theological depth brought out of the gospel by Paul. If Mark’s Gospel was written by John Mark of Jerusalem, then of course he too cannot have been ignorant of Paul’s theologizing, but, true to his editorial principles, it does not appear in his earlier material. Marxsen finds evidence of it in Mark’s use of euangelion, ‘gospel’: others find it in his use of lytron ‘ransom’ (10:45): but there is no reason to suppose that both of these words do not go back to Jesus himself.
If Mark restricted himself to using a few simple titles for Jesus, it may well have been because these were the only titles actually in use during the earthly ministry of Jesus. It is also possible that they were, in the main, the titles still used by the small ‘ecclesial communities’ (Belo) for which and from which Mark wrote, as we can see from the still simple though richer terminology of the early chapters of Acts. Later evangelists would, in their gospels, quite naturally use the later titles of Christ that were current in their own day, even when describing the life and times of Jesus, just as they would ‘smooth out’ what they regarded as careless theological statements made by Mark. Their usage may be slightly anachronistic, but it is very natural. There is therefore no problem here, nor any reason to criticize Mark on the grounds of a supposed ‘limited Christology’. If Mark speaks less directly of the Holy Spirit in personal terms than other gospels do, particularly in reference to the life of the disciples, it is because Mark’s Gospel, in material if not in date of writing, is clearly ‘pre-Pentecostal’ as surely as John’s Gospel is ‘post-Pentecostal’. Again, this is not to say that the later evangelists invented sayings about the Spirit that were of a ‘post-Pentecostal’ nature, and inserted them in their Gospels, in contrast to Mark. But it may well be that, in the light of Pentecost, later evangelists both understood and explained old sayings in post-Pentecostal language, so as to bring out their full meaning. There were doubtless many utterances of Jesus about the Spirit, the true meaning of which could be recognized only after Pentecost (cf. John 7:39, and, in a different context, John 12:16). Mark is certainly not culpable here; he is merely acting as a faithful transmitter of early material. After all, apart from John, none of the evangelists have much to say of the Spirit: the watershed in New Testament theology is Acts chapter 2, after which a rich vocabulary is developed, especially in the Pauline Epistles.
If the ‘apocalypse’ of Mark chapter 13 is general in expression and couched entirely in the language of Old Testament apocalyptic, that may well be because the material was originally handed down either in written form (cf. 13:14) or orally, in this format, a generation before its partial fulfilment in the Jewish War of AD 65–70. If this is so, it is reasonable to believe that it preserves the original discourse format used by Jesus (so originally Beasley-Murray, although Beasley-Murray has now modified his position considerably: see NTS, 29, July 1983, pp. 414–420, ‘Second thoughts on the composition of Mark 13’). If Luke chapter 21 interprets the same symbolism in terms of Roman armies attacking Jerusalem, the reason may lie in Luke’s desire to explain the meaning more clearly to the reader after the event (but see Morris). This probably springs from Luke’s concern to set events in their historical context, not a major interest in Mark. If we like, we can assume that Jesus gave an ‘inner explanation’ of the apocalypse to the apostles either at the time or later, just as he gave an explanation of the parable of the sower to the disciples (4:10–20), although it is not necessary to assume this. In any case, it is certainly not fair to blame Mark for giving an ‘attenuated version’ of the apocalypse if his is in fact an accurate account of Jesus’ actual teaching on the occasion.
Seen therefore in the light of Mark’s concept of what a gospel was, most of the supposed difficulties disappear, especially if we allow that Mark was reproducing his material in its original form, not as interpreted by later and fuller Christian knowledge, and choosing his material selectively, to fit his particular restricted concerns.
In this context, ‘Aramaisms’ refers not to points of style or even possible ambiguities of translation, but the actual preservation in the Greek text of Mark’s Gospel of Aramaic words and phrases such as talitha cumi (5:41), ephphatha (7:34), rabbi (9:5 NIV), rabboni (10:5 RV), abba (14:36), and the cry from the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthāni (15:34). If Mark’s is a missionary gospel written for Gentiles, circulating in some Gentile church centre such as Rome, is not this preservation of Aramaic words a contradiction in terms, even allowing that the words are also translated in every case? Of course, if we accept a direct Petrine source for Mark, we can argue that these words were vivid Petrine memories, carried over from the original Aramaic tradition into the later gospel in Greek. But even without this possible assumption, their preservation is explicable in terms of unselfconscious reproduction of words which already were ‘fossilized’ in the Greek tradition as it came to Mark. The evangelist, even if writing for Gentiles, was not at the stage of sophistication where he would have felt it necessary to remove uncouth ‘foreign’ words, as later evangelists might do, while he might well think it necessary to translate them. ‘Foreign’ they certainly might be to most of his readers, but not to him, and assuredly not to the first generation of Jewish Christians who had handed down the tradition to him. Some Hebrew or Aramaic words or phrases actually became so embedded in the substratum of the gospel that they passed into the ordinary vocabulary of worship of Gentile Christianity, as witness our use in worship of ‘hallelujah’ and ‘amen’ and ‘hosanna’ even today. Paul shows that ‘abba’ and ‘maranatha’ were equally familiar to Gentile Christians in his day (Rom. 8:15; 1 Cor. 16:22, see footnote in Bible text).
Mark’s retention of these Aramaisms is therefore neither a contradiction in terms nor a conscious attempt to retain an archaic flavour (as perhaps it might have been had it appeared in Luke) but an unselfconscious retention of a genuinely early feature, whether derived directly from Peter himself or indirectly through the general tradition. It is therefore in this sense not incongruous with the whole nature of his gospel, but thoroughly consistent with it. It in no sense supports the theory, however, that an earlier draft of Mark’s Gospel was written in Aramaic, although it is reasonable to suppose that much, if not all, of Jesus’ teaching had been given originally in Aramaic, and that there had at least been cycles of Aramaic oral tradition in Palestine itself, certainly in Galilee and perhaps in Jerusalem. If Mark had been a ‘translated gospel’, then these phrases too would surely have been translated initially into Greek, like all the rest, for (with the possible exception of the cry from the cross) they have no special theological importance or interest. In fact, it is hard to see any logical reason why they were specially preserved in Aramaic rather than a dozen other sayings, delivered in similar circumstances; but, as has been said, the indiscriminate (almost chance) nature of the memories is typical of genuine oral tradition in all languages. Once again, the very conservatism and simplicity of Mark’s Gospel is the strongest guarantee of the early nature of its material, and therefore presumably of its early date of writing.
For the purpose of this discussion, we shall simply take the gospel at its face value, as it lies before us, as indeed all its early readers would have had to do, without going behind the text, and without the benefit of later theological definition.
Let us suppose that we are the first readers of Mark, and that we have no other written sources of Christian knowledge about Jesus open to us apart from perhaps a passion story and possibly a few collections of sayings or miracles. Our church might possibly have received an early Pauline epistle, but that is not likely, and, even if we had, it would have told us very little of the earthly life of Jesus. To restrict ourselves to the gospel alone may well be an unfair limitation, for we would first have come into contact with a community of believers in Jesus. Otherwise we would scarcely have been reading the gospel in the first place, or, more probably, hearing it read to us, for ‘private copies’ would have existed only for very wealthy people (Luke 1:3). Most Christians would have to depend upon a ‘church copy’. Indeed, it is most likely that some other Christian would have introduced the gospel to us (cf. Luke 1:3–4). So in fact we would be reading the gospel within the broad continuum of early Christian tradition, which is for us today contained in writing in the New Testament. Obviously, not all of this additional material would be available to the first-century enquirer, but parts of it would be known, whether orally or in writing. Admittedly, several of the Pauline epistles, and perhaps the Book of Acts already existed, but it is unlikely that they circulated widely so early. Let us therefore approach the question on the basis of Mark’s Gospel alone, as his first readers probably did. The answer will be both interesting and revealing, if we still think that Mark’s Gospel contains a ‘minimal’ presentation of Christianity. Theological definition may well be lacking as yet, but all the raw bones of Christology are present already, as we can see by examining even the limited number of titles which Mark applies to Jesus in the gospel.
Mark begins by describing his book as ‘the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (1:1). We may therefore take ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’ as the first title for examination. Although ‘Christ’ does not have the definite article before it here, nevertheless in spite of that, it does not yet seem to have become merely a personal name or surname (as it virtually becomes in the Epistles). It is therefore still a title, and so, even without the article, equivalent to the Hebrew ‘Messiah’, ‘God’s Anointed’, whether or not Mark’s Gentile readers understood the full meaning of this word. Indeed, it was probably an early Gentile failure to understand the distinctively Jewish meaning of the title ‘Christ’ that led to its later use as a virtual synonym (if not an honorific) for ‘Jesus’. It is true that Jesus is never called ‘Christ’ during the main narrative of Mark, a fact that has led to the hypothesis of the ‘messianic secret’, whether in its extreme form (as that of Wrede) or in more moderate modern forms. It seems as if Jesus, before passion week, deliberately avoided using this title of himself or allowing others to use it of him. Nevertheless, Jesus accepts the title of Christ-Messiah when Peter gives it to him (8:29), even if he immediately orders his disciples not to tell others. So Jesus in Mark is the Messiah, however this term is to be understood. Mark’s Gospel certainly suggests that ‘Messiah’ is to be understood in a very different sense from the popular ‘triumphalist’ view of nationalistic Judaism, a view which has been recently challenged, but on seemingly inadequate grounds. Jesus, in fact, was not to be a political Messiah at all, though a claim to be ‘the Messiah’ was one of the incriminating semi-political charges brought forward at the trial of Jesus by the high priest (14:61). The title ‘Son of David’ may also imply Messiahship (10:47), as mentioned below, although not necessarily or universally so. Although Jesus does not actually say that the Messiah must suffer, yet, as soon as Jesus is hailed by Peter as the Christ (8:29), he immediately tells his disciples of his coming rejection, death and rising again (8:31), using the term ‘Son of Man’ (not Messiah) to describe himself in this context. But this Messiah is also ‘the Son of the Blessed One’ (14:61), and ‘the King of Israel’ (15:32), possessed of supernatural powers (see 13:21–22), for whose coming at the end of time all wait (13:5–6, 21–22), so there is always a certain ambiguity in this title, between suffering and glory.
The phrase ‘Son of God’ is omitted by some manuscripts in 1:1, but, even if it ought to be omitted here, it makes little difference, for the title is given to Jesus later in the gospel (e.g. 5:7, and cf. 1:24 ‘God’s Holy One’), culminating in the declaration by the Gentile centurion at the cross (15:39), in many ways the ‘high point’ of this ‘gospel for the Gentiles’. Whatever the centurion himself meant by this confession, it is clear that Mark understood it in the fullest theological sense. ‘Son of God’ is the title conferred on Jesus by the voice from heaven, both at baptism (1:11) and at transfiguration (9:7). It is also the title uttered by the demon-possessed (3:11), who recognize the true nature of the Messiah, even if they are forbidden by Jesus to reveal it (3:12). It is the title put forward as a theological trap by the high priest at the trial of Jesus (14:61), and accepted by Jesus as true (14:62), though he must have known that such acceptance would bring an instant charge of blasphemy (14:64), as indeed it did. Also, while in 13:32 Jesus confesses his own ignorance of the exact time of the end of the age, yet the clear juxtaposition in this verse of the words ‘the Son’ and ‘the Father’ points to this same unique relationship of sonship with God. No Jew would ever have understood ‘Son of God’ in the loose Hellenistic sense of ‘semi-divine human’ (theios anēr), as sometimes claimed. A Jew might have thought of the term as applying to Israel (Exod. 4:22), or to Israel’s king (Ps. 2:7), or to angelic beings (Job 1:6), but, as applied to Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel, it is obvious that the title goes far beyond this, and conveys full divine status. Judaism did not apparently use ‘Son of God’ as a title for the Messiah: this is a distinctively Christian usage (see Morris, New Testament Theology, page 101).
Son of man: This is not the place to enter into lengthy discussions about the antecedents of this term, for which Cullmann and others may be consulted. Initially we may note, with many commentators, that there seem to be three distinct usages known to the early Christians, whatever their origins. The first is that of an apocalyptic figure, returning at the end of time: the second is a suffering figure: the third is purely descriptive of Jesus himself. Some scholars have tried to separate these figures, especially the first, from the historic figure of Jesus. Here we are concerned with the narrower question of actual usage within the gospel, and what impression a reader or hearer would gain from that alone, since in Mark, ‘Son of man’ is the only title that Jesus actually employs of himself. It is therefore all the more reasonable (and doubtless historically correct) that there is no reference to anybody else using it of him in the gospels (see, however, Acts 7:56). But this very usage of ‘Son of man’ by Jesus as a self-description poses a difficulty for us. When Jesus says that ‘the Son of man’ must suffer, die and be raised from the dead (8:31 etc.), does he mean that death and resurrection are inherent in the actual concept of ‘Son of man’, or simply that he, Jesus, who calls himself the Son of man, must die and rise? As there is no hint in the Jewish background that a ‘Son of man’ was ever previously thought of in terms of suffering, the second alternative must be correct. In that case, we must assume that the thought of suffering and subsequent vindication springs rather from the ‘suffering Servant’ concept, which will be treated separately. When Jesus speaks of the Son of man as having power to forgive sins on earth (2:10) or as being Lord of the Sabbath (2:28), the assumption is therefore that he possesses these powers in his own person, rather than as Son of man, since again there is no Jewish evidence that the Son of man was ever regarded as having such powers.
There is of course the possibility that ‘Son of man’ simply means ‘human’ in general, and that Jesus is a representative human, as though he said ‘humanity has power to forgive sins’, and ‘humanity is master of the Sabbath’. This, however, seems banal, unless the reference is again strictly to himself, as humanity’s unique representative. Admittedly, this understanding of the phrase would do more justice to its Semitic background, which seems to support the general meaning rather than a specific one.
There remains a whole class of passages in Mark where the Son of man is portrayed as coming with power and glory, to be God’s agent in judging the earth. This is clearly derived directly from Daniel 7:13, quite irrespective of any further intertestamental developments of thought on the subject. ‘Son of man’ here denotes a supernatural and mysterious figure (whether individual or collective), in special relationship to God, whose agent he is. Whatever of Daniel or other literature, there is no hint in Mark that the phrase ‘Son of man’ is a collective term, rather than an individual figure. But it is this Son of man, coming with the angels and in all the Father’s glory, who will be ashamed on the last day to acknowledge those who were ashamed of Jesus in this life (8:38). It seems therefore perverse, in such a closeknit context, to attempt to separate the two figures of ‘Jesus’ and ‘Son of man’ here, especially as elsewhere in Mark ‘Son of man’ is such a consistently self-chosen title for Jesus. If Jesus is the ‘Son of man’ who will rise from the dead (9:9), then he must also be the ‘Son of man’ who will come in glory in the clouds, in all the terrors of the last day (13:26), where the resemblance to Daniel is particularly close, and whose angels will gather his chosen people from the four quarters. In view of the direct personal reference by Jesus in 13:6 to those who will come ‘using my name’, any separation into two separate figures is again perverse. It is this Son of man whom the corrupt high priests will see enthroned and vindicated at God’s right hand (14:62). This is a highly significant passage, for ‘Son of man’ is set in the context of the two other titles ‘Messiah’ and ‘Son of God’. Therefore we are justified in seeing in this title ‘Son of man’ a supernatural connotation, firmly predicated of Jesus by Mark. While we cannot claim a specifically divine sense for the title in itself, yet this ‘Son of man’ stands in a peculiarly close relationship to the ‘Ancient One’ (Dan. 7:13) in Daniel, and therefore presumably in Mark too.
Son of David: to the Jews, this seems to have been in the main a Messianic title, though not necessarily involving more than earthly kingship. When a blind beggar uses it of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, we cannot be sure of its force for the beggar, but we can be sure of its force for Mark (10:47). If the crowds used it at the triumphal entry (11:9), it certainly has its full sense, for the Messiah was specifically connected, in Hebrew thought, with the introduction of God’s kingdom, which was to be a restored Davidic kingdom. But although Matthew has ‘Son of David’ here (Matt. 21:9), Mark does not actually make the attribution directly (11:10). The Jews may have thought only of an earthly and human Son of David, but, to Jesus, the position as ‘Son of David’ clearly involved supernatural status, as we can see from the famous controversy story (12:35–37), and was specifically equated by him with that of Messiah. This evidence is all the more compelling, since the subject was deliberately introduced by Jesus on this occasion: it did not simply arise in controversy, nor was it introduced as a ‘trick question’ by his enemies. It was therefore a point of importance which he wished to make, to correct their limited and humanistic understanding of the title ‘Son of David’.
Servant: while in Mark’s Gospel Jesus does not ever actually call himself ‘the Servant’ in the exact sense of Isaiah 52:13, he does say that the Son of man has come to serve, and to give up his life as a ransom for many (10:45). This is clearly a double self-identification with the Servant of the servant songs, as portrayed in Isaiah 53:10–11 (verse 10, the reference to giving of life for others: verse 11, references to both the ‘servant’ and the ‘many’). While the Servant is a mysterious figure, and certainly a divine agent, there is no suggestion in Isaiah of the divinity of the Servant himself, nor indeed is it always clear whether the Servant is seen as an individual or as a collective figure. Since in Mark, however, Jesus takes the suffering and triumphs predicted of the Servant in Isaiah, and uses them to explain the work of the Messiah (8:31), whom he certainly sees as a divine individual (12:37), and since he accepts this title for himself, the gap is bridged.
This brief study of the titles of Jesus in Mark leaves us with a clear picture of Jesus as a supernatural figure, although Mark is not interested in how such a figure came into our world, nor does Mark speculate about any pre-existence. This depiction as supernatural is all the more remarkable in view of Mark’s simultaneous picture of Jesus as an intensely human figure, with fully human emotions (e.g. 14:33–34). If John the Baptist is seen by Mark to be the messenger and forerunner prophesied by Isaiah (1:2–3), then Jesus must be directly equated with God, for what was originally described by Isaiah as the coming of Yahweh is in Mark transferred to the coming of Jesus. In conformity with this, John describes Jesus as ‘one more powerful than I’ (1:7), and claims, prophet though he is, to be unworthy to do him even the slave’s service of undoing his sandals. While not necessarily indicating divine status, this certainly points to it. The so-called ‘nature miracles’, such as the calming of the storm (4:41) and the walking on the water (6:48), confirm this divine status, since they show Jesus acting as the Creator-God. Perhaps the same could be said of the feeding of the five thousand (6:30–44) and of the four thousand (8:1–10), for it was God’s task (not that of Moses) to feed his people with bread in the desert (Ps. 78:20). As far as his enemies were concerned, Jesus’ claim to forgive sins (2:7), to override the Sabbath (2:28; 3:4), and to be the Messiah and God’s Son (14:61–62) were quite sufficient to indicate that Jesus claimed to be divine. The fact that they rejected these claims so vehemently is the strongest proof that they actually involved a claim to deity. They would never have dared to invent such a ‘blasphemous’ claim, though they were ready enough to seize on it and use it for their own purposes.
In no sense therefore can Mark be accused of holding a defective Christology, although it may well still be an unreflective Christology. Perhaps deep theological reflection would come only with Paul or John. Mark’s theology may have been influenced by Paul (although this is disputed), who was writing within twenty years of the crucifixion, and therefore presumably before Mark, but Mark’s ‘raw material’ certainly was not influenced, and he was preserving it faithfully.
John the Baptist, whose witness is recorded briefly in Mark’s Gospel, sees the work of Jesus as springing directly from his person and position (1:7) and defines it as the giving of the Spirit, which is described under the metaphor of a ‘baptism’ (1:8). It seems perverse to understand (with Brown) this ‘baptism with the Spirit’ as referring to Jesus’ works of love and power towards the needy, although of course they (like all his words and works), were done in the power of the Spirit. Since this metaphor of ‘baptizing with the Spirit’ is used in the context of John’s baptism, which accompanied the preaching of repentance with a view to forgiveness (1:4), Jesus’ work must also have been seen in a similar context of repentance and forgiveness of sins. In Mark, this phrase ‘baptism with the Spirit’ is not used to describe any higher level of spiritual life, but the commencement of spiritual life in reality, as opposed to the symbolism of John’s baptism. Certainly both these aspects are mentioned repeatedly elsewhere in Mark as part of the message of Jesus (1:5 and 2:5).
The major task of Jesus, and indeed his self-declared calling, was to proclaim the good news of the near approach (some would say: the arrival) of God’s rule (1:14–15, 38), a concept which is not further defined in Mark, presumably because its content was already familiar from the Old Testament to all his original hearers. The response demanded on the part of all was repentance and belief in the good news (1:15), which meant belief in Jesus, and a following of him (1:17). He taught with a ring of authority (1:22); he expelled demons at a word (1:27); he healed the sick (1:31); he cleansed the leper (1:42); he raised the dead (5:42), all as signs of the coming of the kingdom and the defeat of Satan (3:27). To the horror of the orthodox, Jesus forgave sins (2:7), indeed he maintained that he had come to call sinners, not the righteous (2:17). Presumably, this is all part of the ‘good news’ of the kingdom that he proclaimed. He proclaimed that to do God’s will created the closest possible of relationships, far surpassing ties of family and blood (3:35). He therefore summoned all people to do this will of God, as subjects of God’s kingdom. Although this ‘rule of God’ is nowhere defined in Mark, it is described in metaphors. The kingdom grows slowly, silently, imperceptibly, as a crop grows in a field, until the harvest is ready for reaping (4:26–29). It seems from the context that the task of Jesus, in preaching the kingdom, is only to sow the seed (4:14). It will be for God to reap the harvest at the end of all time (4:29). For Mark, therefore, this rule of God is at one and the same time already present in Jesus and in those who respond to him, and yet in another sense it is still future, to be brought in by God. To that extent, the kingdom is eschatological and apocalyptic (as in Revelation): it will never be fully realized in this world, although some of its fruits and signs may be seen and enjoyed already. All this is part of the good news of the kingdom.
There is, however, a cost involved for Jesus, in order to make the good news of the kingdom available to all. When Peter greets him as Messiah (8:29), a title which Jesus accepts, he at once begins to tell his disciples of the divine inevitability of his rejection, death and rising from the dead (8:31). This is clearly shown in Mark to be God’s path for Jesus, for although the exact reason for it is not made plain here, a hint will be given in the ransom metaphor used later (10:45), for Christ’s death is the ransom price to redeem God’s people. That it is not an easy path for him to tread is shown by his words to James and John (10:38) and by his prayer in Gethsemane (14:36). But it is only in the context of this prophecy of his death and rising again (8:31) that he tells his followers of the coming of God’s kingdom ‘with power’ (9:1). Therefore it is not unfair to say that, in Mark, the purpose of the death of Jesus is to introduce God’s rule ‘with power’, and that this reign can be introduced only by the path to the cross.
It is hard to see how this thought of the coming kingdom can be separated from the thought of the covenant that will introduce the kingdom. We may therefore compare 14:24, where Jesus, at the last supper, equates his coming death with the sealing of this covenant (whether or not the manuscripts read ‘new’ makes little difference), by the usual covenant sacrifice with its sacrificial blood. This connection is confirmed by the reference to the drinking of wine in God’s coming kingdom (14:25), and may also link with the bitter play on the words ‘King of the Jews’ (15:2, 18 and 26). ‘King of the Jews’ itself is of course a Gentile and political term. Jews themselves, even if they rejected the claim in the case of Jesus, would use the religious term instead, ‘King of Israel’ (15:32). The death of Jesus on the cross must therefore be the way in which he is to ‘give his life a ransom for many’ (10:45), since at the last supper (14:24) Jesus describes his blood as ‘shed for many’, which is yet another reference to the task of the servant in Isaiah (53:11–12). However little of this argument a Gentile would understand, the connection between forgiveness of sins and the death of Jesus is clear. As goal of the good news, Jesus in Mark talks of ‘entering into life’ (9:43): he equates this with ‘entering into the kingdom of God’ (9:47). This is in contradistinction to ‘entering Gehenna’ (9:43), with its vivid picture of the traditional rubbish dump of Jerusalem (9:44), an interpretation which, although recently challenged, still seems valid. This ‘life’ of which Jesus here speaks, must be, from the context, the life of the coming age; it is the ‘eternal life’ which the rich man is seeking in vain (10:17). He goes away sadly from Jesus (10:22) and so goes away from eternal life, for he has failed to enter the kingdom of God, and is an instance of the difficulty that a rich man has in entering the kingdom (10:23, 25). But the disciples who obey Jesus, and leave all for his sake, will have ‘treasure in heaven’ (10:21) and ‘eternal life’ (10:30). Jesus therefore came to bring eternal life, the life of the age to come. This life is obtained by repentance, obedience and belief in him, though the exact nature of the connection between this belief and the death of Jesus is not made explicit in detail by Mark. That, after all, is not his immediate aim as an evangelist.
This is the ‘good news’ of a missionary gospel, as preached to early Gentile listeners: it will be left to Paul and a later Christian generation to theologize and explain it. For an evangelist, it is sufficient that he proclaims the gospel message, and sees the response.
We have seen that Mark calls his book ‘Jesus’ good news’ (1:1), which can mean both ‘the good news about Jesus’ (or ‘consisting of Jesus’), and ‘the good news preached by Jesus’. In a sense therefore the whole gospel is a preaching of this good news by word and deed. The task of Jesus as already mentioned was to proclaim this good news (1:14), and to call men and women to repentance and belief in it, which involves also belief in him (1:15). He must preach the good news as widely as possible (1:38); indeed, that was his expressed aim and whole purpose. Jesus will heal, exorcize, feed, as signs of the kingdom and proofs of authority, but also he will teach and preach this message (2:2). We have seen that it is a message concerned with the forgiveness of sins (2:5); it is addressed to confessedly sinful, not self-righteous, people (2:17); and it issues in a call to repent and follow Jesus (2:14). But it is not Jesus alone who preaches this message. He appoints the twelve specifically to do the same task (3:14). Like him, they are to expel demons and to heal sickness as well as preaching (3:15). Their preaching, like his, was therefore to have the ring of authority (1:27), an authority coming, in their case, from their calling by Christ (3:14–15), just as Christ’s authority comes from God’s appointment of him (implicit in 11:30). As to the scope of the good news, Jesus initially restricts the scope of preaching to Israel, God’s children (7:27), but he does not on that account refuse to meet the need of a Gentile woman (7:30). Others besides his own disciples may show the powers of the kingdom in their proclamation of the name of Jesus (9:38); they must not be hindered or stopped (9:39). To leave everything for Jesus’ sake is also to leave it for the sake of the good news, so closely are Christ and the gospel connected (10:29). The spreading of the good news demands costly sacrifice, calling for the abandonment of one’s nearest and dearest (10:29), but this sacrifice will be rewarded abundantly even in this present age, and in the age to come it will be requited with eternal life (10:30). Whoever loses life, for the sake of Jesus and for the sake of the good news (again, the two concepts are inextricably bound together), will ‘save’ it (8:35). At the very heart of Mark’s Gospel therefore stands the proclamation of the good news. There is no more important or more urgent task; and it warrants any sacrifice on our part, as it warranted any sacrifice on the part of Christ. The cross, after all, was the price of preaching the gospel for him: the price will not be any less for us (10:39).
The appointment of the twelve to preach the good news is in 3:13–15: later in Mark, the specifics of their mission are set out in more detail (6:7–13). They are to preach a change of heart, revulsion from sin, and turning to God (6:12), all topics that are familiar from the prophetic message of the Old Testament. They, like Jesus, will show outward signs of the powers of the kingdom by exorcising and healing (6:13). So weighty is their good news that rejection of it is to be marked by the semi-sacramental act of shaking off the dust of the unrepentant place (6:11). This means that the proclaimer of the good news is no longer responsible for the coming judgment which repentance and response would have averted. Rejection of the good news is therefore in itself a self-condemnation, for it is a rejection of Christ himself, by the rejection of his messengers (9:37).
There is, however, clearly envisaged by Jesus a time when the good news must be proclaimed, not merely to Israel but also to ‘all the nations’ (13:10). This too will cost the disciples dearly (13:9–13) with flogging, persecution and arrest. But this preaching will be done in the power of the Spirit (13:11), and it will be one of the signs of the last days, before the coming of the Son of man (13:26). Not only so, but, wherever the good news is proclaimed in all the world, the sacrificial gift of the woman of Bethany will be remembered (14:9). As this act of hers is seen as a symbolic pre-enactment of the anointing and burial of the body of Jesus (14:8), it is clear that the good news must involve at its heart the story of the death of Jesus. But there is another integral part of the good news, mentioned in all three passion predictions (8:31, 9:31 and 10:34), although Mark’s Gospel contains no actual accounts of its fulfilment. It is the news of the rising of Jesus from the dead, to which an angel bears witness (16:4–6), with the promise of a meeting with the risen Lord in Galilee. This is the good news which the women are bidden to carry to Peter and the others (16:7), although Mark, in his typically blunt, truthful way, shows that they failed to do so initially through fear or awe (16:8). There is therefore no need for Mark’s Gospel to include a separate account of a final ‘great commission’ delivered by Jesus to the disciples as a culmination of the gospel, as in Matthew (Matt. 28:18–19), although such a commission may possibly have formed part of a now lost original ending, and was soon added to Mark by an early editor (16:15). The command to preach the gospel in all the world is implicit in the whole theology of Mark and has indeed already been made abundantly explicit (13:10, 14:9). That is why Mark is first and foremost a missionary gospel, with a message for us today: to him, Christianity is above all the good news about Jesus Christ, which must be shared with all.
It is necessary to ask this question, because many modern commentaries, ranging from the scholarly to the popular, explain detailed points in the gospel with reference to the presumed ‘real life’ situation in Rome and the Roman church, in the first half of the first Christian centuries (see Lane and Minear). Some commentators, with less likelihood, had seen this background as being in Galilee (Marxsen), Antioch, Alexandria or elsewhere. Sometimes these explanations are helpful; always they are interesting; but is the basic assumption well founded? And is it necessary to prove this or any other theory to produce satisfactory exegesis? Can the same results be obtained by a more general hypothesis, or do they stand or fall with one particular hypothesis? The question has become much more important for us than for our predecessors, in that every incident and each gospel is now seen against its assumed ‘real life situation’, in which and for which it was first preserved and told (or even created, in the views of extreme liberal scholarship). This ‘real life situation’ is then, in its turn, often invoked as the reason for presumed changes in the form or content of the event or saying, as the case may be. If this is legitimate (for it may be only a circular argument), to establish the original situation is all-important: but can we really do it with any certainty? In the case of a New Testament letter, we have some hope, for we have clues, if not direct attribution. What of a gospel, particularly if it is a ‘first gospel’, and we have therefore no earlier material with which to compare it?
At first sight, however strange it seems, this task looks more promising in the case of Mark than of the other gospels. Tradition is consistent that the gospel was produced ‘in the area of Italy’, usually specified as Rome, for we have seen that the variant tradition of Alexandria as background is later, and has a ready explanation. Mark’s Gospel certainly must have been adopted at an early stage by some ‘great church’ or it would neither have survived nor become the basis for other gospels, as it evidently did. As to apostolic source, tradition, if it speaks at all, mentions Peter. We may feel that there is inadequate solid evidence to support this tradition, but, if we take it at its face value, it is at least highly probable that Peter was at Rome towards the end of his life (1 Pet. 5:13) and, from the same verse almost certain that John Mark was there also (cf. 2 Tim. 4:11). Of course there is even better evidence for Peter being at Jerusalem (Acts 1–6) and Antioch (Gal. 2:11), also ‘great churches’. We have seen that two reiterated themes of Mark’s Gospel, that of the persecution of Christians and that of betrayal of the Lord (whether repented of later, as in the case of Peter, or final, as that of Judas), would suit this particular Roman background. Wherever else in the Empire there was or was not persecution, there was sure to be persecution at Rome, since the church was directly under the eye of the emperor, and also was of such a size as to attract attention.
Linguistically, all we can say is that the Greek of Mark does contain some Latinisms but, in the judgment of most competent scholars, these are no more than might appear in the ‘legionary Greek’ anywhere in the Roman Empire, particularly in the great cities of its western or Mediterranean half (Funk). Arguments as to whether certain Roman coins (like the kodrantes of 12:42) ever circulated or were known in the eastern part of the Empire are not really compelling in themselves. For a full study of the so-called ‘Latinisms’ of Mark, see Lane, or any other of the longer commentaries.
At this point, frustratingly, the trail ends; and, if we are honest, we shall have to say that while the road may lead to Rome, again it may not. All we can safely say is that the gospel was produced in some such place as Rome, and therefore presumably with the needs of some such place in mind. After all, others, on exactly the same biblical evidence, can argue just as strongly for Galilee as the gospel’s place of origin; if such divergent views are possible, then the evidence may not be as compelling as we think. True, Mark translates any Aramaic phrases which he preserves, and explains any Jewish customs: but this indicates only a Gentile, not necessarily a Roman, audience.
Externally, if Peter was a source (even indirectly) then he was a well-known gospel preacher. Rome was certainly a major centre of such evangelistic outreach, as well as being the place where Peter traditionally spent his latter years. If Mark was writing a missionary gospel for Gentiles, he could hardly have written it in a more suitable place. But once again we must leave the question of place of origin as ‘not proven’, attractive though the hypothesis of a Roman background is: we must not make our exegesis in any way dependent on it, while we may cautiously use it for illustration.
Since the position of women in the New Testament is coming under close scrutiny today, we should examine the evidence of Mark, the earliest Christian gospel. His evidence will be all the more valuable, since it is not a question to which he expressly addressed himself, so that the evidence is not contrived or forced. What then does Jesus say about women, as recorded in Mark, for we are not merely interested in Mark’s views on the subject?
Although Mark has no account of the annunciation, the virgin birth, or the infancy stories, and therefore says next to nothing about Mary, the Lord’s mother, who is indeed named only once in the gospel (6:3), and although he does not show Luke’s deep concern for women, that is not to say that women play a small part in the gospel. For instance, the gospel begins with an account of the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (1:31), while it ends with the appearance to a group of women of the angel telling of the resurrection of Jesus (16:6), and there are numerous incidents recorded in between where women play a major role.
There is therefore a naturalness and ‘mutuality’ in the relationship between the sexes as depicted in Mark that goes far beyond both the problems and solutions of our self-conscious modern world. For example, in Mark, Jesus admittedly chose twelve named men as his associates (3:14), but he also had a group of close women followers, several of whom are named in Mark – Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James and Joses, and Salome, for instance (15:40; 15:47; 16:1). Even this inclusion of women was unusual in the ancient world, not to mention first-century Judaism. True, Jesus in Mark rejected a claim made on him by Mary because it was based purely on their natural relationship (3:33), but he also proclaimed that those who did God’s will were as mother and sister and brother to him (3:35), where the different words are equally chosen to denote, by metaphor, the closest of relationships.
It was for a young girl, daughter of Jairus, that Jesus performed his first recorded miracle of raising from the dead (5:23): it was on the way to the house of Jairus to perform it that he healed another woman of a long-standing haemorrhage (5:29). This whole passage is full of a delicacy fully equal to that of Luke: the embarrassed woman is addressed as ‘daughter’ (5:34), the girl as ‘talitha’, ‘child’ (5:41). The sick woman’s saving faith is singled out by Jesus for praise (5:34): the girl’s mother is specifically mentioned by Mark as being called in, along with the father Jairus, to witness the resurrection of her daughter (5:40). This too shows a thoughtfulness and consideration for women rarely seen in the ancient world, although Mark typically does not comment on it, but merely records it.
Jesus is, with complete naturalness, identified by the unbelieving Galileans as ‘Mary’s son’. There is no need to assume a sneering reference here to the virgin birth: if anything, it probably refers only to her position as a widowed mother. It is noted equally naturally that his sisters, like his brothers, are still living nearby (6:3). True, two women, Herodias and her daughter, are recorded in Mark as being the direct cause of John the Baptist’s death (6:24), yet the same Mark also records that it was a Phoenician woman who won the Lord’s special commendation for her humility and faith in seeking healing for her daughter (7:29). This is typical of Mark: he suppresses neither good nor bad side, in an attempt to make a point, as we might be tempted to do in such circumstances.
No-one ever spoke more strongly of the divine permanence of the marriage bond than Jesus did: he saw woman, equally with man, as being God’s creation (10:6), and demanded that women, just as much as men, should be protected in marriage, disagreeing with the current interpretation of the law of Moses (10:11), whereby many rabbis allowed a husband to divorce his wife on the most trivial of pretexts. True, on the same theological grounds, he also forbade divorce and remarriage as sternly to women as to men (10:11–12): men, like women, were to be protected. That, after all, is the other side of ‘mutuality’. Some commentators (see Anderson) claim that women did not have this assumed legal right to divorce their husbands under Jewish law at the time, but they certainly had it under Graeco-Roman law, and some may well have used it. Mark, after all, was writing a gospel for Gentile converts, and Jesus was teaching in a Palestine where not all were orthodox Jews, especially in Galilee, with its many Gentile inhabitants.
Jesus was indignant when the disciples began to rebuke and drive away the mothers who brought their children to him for blessing (10:14). He could fully understand the desire of mothers to obtain blessing for their children, even if to the apostles the whole thing seemed a waste of the Lord’s time on those whom they felt to be unimportant.
With true insight, Jesus saw the giving up of sisters, mother or wife as being as great a sacrifice for the kingdom as giving up brothers or father (10:29): neither is put at a higher level than the others. When the Sadducees came to Jesus with their coarse illustration about the woman married seven times, a story designed to pour scorn on the doctrine of the resurrection, the Lord brushed it away in one quiet sentence (12:25) which did not degrade women in the process.
Mark records that the chief crime of the hypocritical scribes, according to Jesus, was to cheat widows of their livelihood (12:40), while a poverty-stricken widow’s gift to the temple treasure was made by him a lesson to all (12:43). Jesus had a special and typical concern for those mothers with young children who would be living in the days of the eschatological woes (13:17), a fact which Mark takes the trouble to make clear.
It was a woman who anointed Jesus’ head with costly ointment at the meal held in Simon the leper’s house (14:3), a sacrifice for which, though criticized by others, she was defended by Christ (14:6). It was therefore a woman, more than any other, who understood the secret of his coming death and burial (14:8); and so it was a woman who would be remembered for her insight of love wherever in later days the gospel was preached throughout the world (14:9).
When all Christ’s other followers had fled from the cross, Mark makes plain that women disciples still stood watching, even if it was at a distance, as Asian culture demanded (15:40). These included not only the small ‘named group’ of close women disciples (15:40), but the far larger ‘anonymous group’ who had also followed Jesus from Galilee. Indeed, it is from this passage in Mark that we learn that this group had actually supported Jesus and his apostles, doubtless financially as well as otherwise (15:41). Women disciples were therefore to be among the witnesses of the death of Christ (15:40), and of his entombment (15:47): notice that, as Jewish law demanded, there were at least two witnesses recorded in either case, even if Jewish law would not accept the evidence of women.
So, fittingly, on the resurrection morning, as already mentioned, it was to a group of women bringing spices to the tomb (16:1) that the angel appeared, bringing the first news of the resurrection of Jesus (16:6). It was therefore to these same women that the first preaching of the resurrection message was entrusted (16:7), although Mark’s Gospel breaks off tantalizingly, if honestly, with the words ‘they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid’ (16:8). But even if they were afraid, and unable to grasp and share the good news at first, that is after all just what their brothers were to do initially, as recorded in the other gospels (Luke 24:41).
Herein is the whole strength of Mark, where women take their natural place as followers of Jesus alongside men, with no special comment, in this the first story of Jesus and his earliest disciples. Mark is sometimes described as a ‘primitive’ gospel, but this attitude shows true Christian maturity and naturalness of approach, to which it is hard to feel that we have attained today, in spite of all our artificial striving for it. Perhaps the simplicity of the Spirit brings more balance than all the complicated theological argument on either side, with their ‘special pleading’, that we so often hear today.
In view of present interest in ‘signs and wonders’, often seen today as an essential ongoing feature of the life of the Spirit within the church, and a particular interest in the place of such manifestations in evangelism, whether New Testament or modern, it may be relevant to study the part played by signs and wonders in the ministry of Jesus as recorded in Mark’s Gospel. Having done that, some tentative conclusions will emerge, though it should be emphasized that they will be valid only for Mark’s Gospel, not necessarily for the rest of the New Testament or for us today. Unfortunately this is not a topic to which any of the biblical commentators have as yet seriously addressed themselves: more popular studies will be found in Wimber and Brown, not of course dealing exclusively with Mark.
It is probably unfair to adduce as ‘signs’ in this sense either the baptismal experiences of Jesus (the dove and the voice, 1:10–11) or the ministry to Jesus by angels in the desert during his temptations (1:13), since, however real as signs, they seem to have been personal and private experiences, either totally unwitnessed by others, in the case of the temptations, or only witnessed by John, in the case of the baptism. The experience of vision and voice at the transfiguration (9:4–7) is clearly different, in that it was witnessed by the three apostles as well: but they were strictly forbidden to speak of it until after Christ’s resurrection (9:9). Already, some reserve in the use of signs appears.
But the expulsion of the evil spirit in 1:26 was witnessed by a whole synagogue, and became the subject of widespread comment (1:27), so it clearly falls into a different category, that of open signs. It is important to note that, in this initial case, teaching by Jesus occurred before the miracle was performed (1:21) and this was recognized as being teaching delivered with a new note of authority (1:22). Indeed, the actual miracle itself seems to be mainly regarded as an outward sign and proof of the authority of his teaching (1:27). This may represent a general principle, and indeed account for the common use of the word ‘sign’ to describe such deeds. The ‘miracles’ therefore do not stand in isolation or in their own right; they are not unexplained magical acts, for they always point beyond themselves to Jesus.
The healing of Simon’s mother-in-law (1:13) is a miracle done for those who were already believers in Jesus and in response to a request. The evening healings (1:32–34) are on a far wider scale, while we have not enough material to answer questions as to whether they were in response to faith: but, without faith, would the people have come for healing at all? All we are told is that Jesus would not accept evidence as to his divine nature given by demonic sources during exorcisms (1:34), and that he retreated afterwards to prayer (1:35). Indeed he retreated at once to other parts of Galilee (1:38), when Peter told him that everybody was looking for him, presumably because of his new-found fame as a ‘spiritual healer’ (1:37).
Certainly we can say on the basis of this early passage that, while Jesus undoubtedly had the power to heal and exorcise, as even his enemies admitted (3:22), and while (so far as we know) he never turned away any who came to him for healing, he did not wish to be widely known as a mere healer. Indeed, he regarded widespread preaching (1:38), presumably preaching the good news of the kingdom of God (1:14), as his real mission. This is borne out by the later pattern, when he preaches in all the Galilean synagogues (1:39), though he also expels demons there. Indeed, he also heals a leper (1:41), but he cautions him to tell nobody of the healing (1:44), a caution which is immediately disregarded (1:45), with the predictable results. This now becomes part of a later widespread pattern, by which Jesus forbids the healed to tell others of their healing (5:43), as earlier he had forbidden demons to speak (1:34). Contradictions to this rule are so rare as to be specially mentioned in the text (5:19) and must therefore have special reasons.
Perhaps then another reason (apart from the priority of his main aim of gospel preaching) for the reluctance of Jesus to heal widely was the inevitable consequent gathering of crowds, whether curious or needy, making any such preaching or teaching almost impossible (2:2). Jesus never sought fame or notoriety, nor did he try to convince the unbelieving by signs and wonders (8:11–12), even when asked for them as a proof of his claims.
Yet, even so, he did not refuse to heal a paralysed man in answer to the faith of his friends (2:5), although the prior necessary ‘healing’ in this case was apparently in the heart of the man himself (‘your sins are forgiven’, 2:5). Indeed, the actual physical healing is specifically said to be a ‘sign’ that Jesus has this far greater power to forgive sins, which he has already exercised (2:10). Presumably, this prior and deeper ‘spiritual healing’ was always true in cases of demon expulsion. Whether it was also true in cases of ‘physical healing’ we cannot say, but certainly some of those healed are specifically recorded as becoming followers of Jesus (5:18; 10:52).
So far then, Mark has clearly shown us a Jesus who possesses and uses supernatural powers both of healing and of expelling demons. In most cases (perhaps in all), these acts are done in response to faith, either faith on the part of the person concerned, or on the part of others. Whether this is simply faith in Christ as a healer (as often in younger churches today), or faith at a deeper level, there is not evidence enough to say. But these healings are set mostly in the context of Jesus’ preaching or teaching, to which they are adjuncts and subordinate. They are seen as confirmation of the authority of his teaching (1:27), and they lead to the glory of God (2:12).
Apparently the ability of Jesus to do such miracles was never questioned, whether by friend or foe. The sole question raised by his enemies was as to the source of the power by which he did them (3:22), just as they would later question him as to the source of the authority with which he acted in other areas (11:28). The question as to the source of his power always aroused Jesus’ anger, as we can see from 3:29, because the answer was already self-evident to those not wilfully blind.
Chapter 3 contains the story of the healing of the man with a withered hand, but again it is not merely a healing miracle, but a ‘sign’ to illustrate the right use of the Sabbath (3:4), a fact which the Pharisees fully realized (3:5) – hence their violent reaction (3:6).
The ‘healing campaign’ which followed (3:10–11) seems involuntary and in no sense sought by Christ himself. Indeed, it would be true to say that in Mark, Jesus is never shown as initiating a healing mission, although he responds when people come in need. This time, it was the result of the coming of crowds who had heard of his earlier healings (3:8). The consequences were the same as before; first, withdrawal by Jesus to a small ship (probably in order to preach to the crowd, 3:9), and then to a mountain, presumably to pray (3:13 cf. 1:35). The next step is to choose the twelve (3:14), to share Christ’s work. A fuller account of their activities is given in 6:9–12, but essentially the picture is the same as here.
The terms of their appointment are clear: apart from accompanying Christ, they too are to preach, to heal and to expel demons (3:14–15). We should note two things: their task of preaching is put first and mentioned separately from the other two, and is therefore presumably their primary task, whatever the place of the others. Secondly, there is no hint in Mark that these powers of healing and of expulsion of demons were given at this particular time to any other than the twelve, and it is reasonable therefore to suppose that they were given only to the twelve as guarantees of their particular status as Christ’s special emissaries. That would be a strict parallel to the way in which the Lord’s miracles are equally regarded as confirming the authority with which he himself spoke (1:27). Mark has no account of a wider choice of ‘seventy’ with whom these powers were shared, as Luke has (Luke 10:1–11), who could perhaps be regarded because of their number as symbolic representatives of the whole body. It is true that elsewhere in the gospel we read of a person expelling demons in the name of Jesus, yet who is not one of the twelve, nor even one of the wider group of professed followers (9:38), and of approval by Jesus of the act. This, however, seems to be an isolated case, since it is used by Jesus as a teaching model (9:40).
Of healings or exorcisms performed by disciples outside the twelve, we read nothing in Mark, and we are warned by 9:28 that attempts by the twelve were not automatically or invariably successful. The surprise at their failure on this particular occasion, however, seems to show that it was an unusual experience.
When the Jerusalem scribes accused Jesus of expelling demons by the use of the very powers of darkness itself, we learn from Jesus’ rebuke to them the deepest purpose of his expulsion of demons: it shows the downfall of Satan’s kingdom (3:27). In that sense, every demonic expulsion, like every healing, is a ‘sign’, even if Jesus refuses to accept the verbal witness to himself that accompanies it (3:11–12).
While powers of healing and expulsion of demons were shared by Christ with the twelve, it is significant that he does not share the power to work so-called ‘nature miracles’ with them in this way. Only Jesus, not the twelve, can calm the wind and the sea (4:39 and 6:51). This is a distinction which the twelve, who are with him in the ship at the time, are quick to see, (4:41). In Mark, only Jesus walks upon the sea (6:49). Only Jesus himself multiplies bread for the crowds (6:41–43, 8:6–8), although the twelve may share in the miracle by handing the food around (6:41). Only Jesus, never the twelve, is recorded in Mark as raising the dead (5:42 etc.). Only Jesus can curse a fig-tree and see it wither (11:21), although the context certainly suggests that equally great powers, whether literal or metaphorical, are open to his followers (11:23). Finally, only Jesus himself rises from the dead (16:6); no apostle can raise himself.
There is therefore a very clear distinction in kind, not just in degree, between the powers committed to the twelve by Jesus, and the powers that were his inherently and by right. There is no hint in Mark that these powers, at either level, were to be extended to a wider group than the twelve, either at the time or later, which does at first sight present us with a problem when we consider the evidence of Acts and the apostolic letters.
Our explanation of the reason for this particular doctrinal ‘omission’ will depend on our views as to whether Mark has or has not a ‘truncated ending’ at 16:8. If we regard the present truncated ending as a mere textual accident, we can always say that some such promise of extension of spiritual powers was contained in the lost original ending as is now found in the so-called but later ‘longer ending’ (16:9–20). If we believe that the present ‘shorter’ ending of Mark was deliberate and original, we are certainly left with a problem, but perhaps no greater problem than that posed by the lack of record in the gospel of any of the resurrection appearances of Jesus. Of course Mark must have known of these resurrection appearances (16:7), as of course he must have known of the miracles recorded in the early chapters of Acts, although, curiously enough, these are recorded there as having been performed only by the eleven themselves or by other ‘apostolic persons’ – Stephen, Philip, Paul and the like – as distinct from other New Testament evidence of performance by a wider group (e.g. 1 Cor. 12). If Mark had been in contact with Paul, he must have known of this wider diffusion of spiritual gifts, although Paul himself can speak of miracles as ‘signs of a true apostle’ (2 Cor. 12:12 RSV). Mark must therefore, as before, be restricting his account to what was actually true at the time, without any reference to later developments.
Both of these points (the absence in Mark of references to resurrection appearances of Jesus, and the absence of reference to a wide performance of ‘signs and wonders’ in the Christian church) were just as great problems to the early church as they are to us. This is shown by the early editorial additions or ‘longer endings’ appended to Mark’s Gospel, of which the best known is 16:9–20, to fill these gaps. This ‘longer ending’ is not part of the text of Scripture, however, and we must be careful not to treat it as such, although much of the detail can be paralleled from elsewhere in the New Testament, and therefore stands independently. Here we find explicit reference to signs that ‘will accompany those who believe’ (16:17), in a passage which seems mainly to be made up of instances recorded in Acts and presumably therefore already known to the early church. True, we know of only one biblical instance where a disciple did ‘pick up serpents’ unharmed (16:18), in the experience of Paul at Malta (Acts 28:3), but even this, to a Semitic mind, would justify the vague generalization ‘they will’ of the text. We have no biblical instance of the drinking of poison without harm being caused (16:18), but there is one such case mentioned in tradition (see Commentary); otherwise it would hardly have been included in this early list.
We have, however, no warrant to ‘generalize’ from these two particular cases, and, in point of fact, only a few isolated Christian sects have ever done so. The other ‘signs’ mentioned here do appear frequently elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g. Acts, Corinthians, etc.), though again whether we should ‘generalize’ their occurrence as possible for all Christians at all times is a disputed point. The wording seems descriptive, not mandatory, in the context, and as a description of what happened (and may still happen), it is perfectly true. It is interesting that there is no reference in this Marcan list to the raising of the dead, although both Peter (Acts 9:41) and Paul (Acts 20:10), who are ‘apostles’ in the wider sense, are recorded as having performed this particular miracle. This probably means that no other instances were known to the early editor, and that he did not therefore regard it as a generalized or even widespread gift.
But we should notice two things. The first is that, even within this later ‘longer ending’, such miraculous activity has been set firmly in the context of a ‘great commission’ to preach the gospel (16:15), which, although not found in the canonical text of Mark has apparently been supplied by our author. The second is that the ‘signs’ are set in the context of an existing Christian faith (16:17). Indeed, such ‘signs’, whether performed widely or by selected individuals like the apostles, are seen as confirmation, illustration and vindication of the preached word (16:20), and not seen in isolation. Whatever else we may think of this early editor, he was at least a good theologian, for we have seen this to be the very emphasis of Mark himself in the gospel.
Once again, we must remind ourselves that Mark is a ‘pre-Pentecostal’ gospel, in material if not in date, and Mark is being strictly faithful to his early material. It was only after the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost that spiritual gifts were ‘generalized’ (Eph. 4:8), although not even then ‘generalized’ in the sense that every gift was given to every Christian (Eph. 4:11). Mark therefore (if we reject the longer ending), cannot help us with the question as to whether such ‘signs’ were intended by God to be performed regularly or universally at a later date. To find an answer to that, we must turn to the Acts and apostolic letters. All we can say is that the picture given here of the accompaniment of the preached and believed word by ‘signs’ is consistent with what we read of the activity of Jesus and the twelve in Mark; the picture of the performance of ‘signs’ in isolation or as an end in themselves is to be found neither in the gospel nor in the longer ending.
It has been said of all the gospels that each is basically a passion story with an extended introduction, and, while this is of course an over simplification, there is certainly some truth in it. Nowhere can the situation which led to this statement be seen more clearly than in Mark’s Gospel, where the passion narrative occupies one third of the book, and can be readily divided into four sections (the journey to Jerusalem, 8:30 – chapter 10; the ministry there, chapters 11 – 13; the passion, chapters 14 – 15; the resurrection, chapter 16), and gives every impression of being carefully constructed. By comparison, the first part of Mark’s Gospel seems at first sight to be loosely constructed, and is far less easy to analyse. Some have suggested, somewhat unkindly, that the reason for this difference is that Mark found the passion story already constructed, while the first part of the gospel was entirely his own composition from whatever material, oral or written, which was available for him to use.
Against this it should be said first that, even if a written passion narrative already existed, nobody seriously suggests that Mark simply reproduced it word for word. The actual style in the second part of the gospel is the same as that in the first part, suggesting that Mark dealt with his raw material in both parts in exactly the same way. Secondly, we do well to remember that even in the first part, Mark was dealing with material that was already highly traditional in the main (witness the ‘smooth stone’ effect of some of the stories, doubtless because used often for teaching long before). While Mark undoubtedly selected and arranged his material, he may not have felt at liberty to omit traditionally known stories and sayings, even if not directly relevant to his purpose. Thirdly, there is a plan and purpose to be seen in the first part of the gospel too, although, because of the complexity of the theme and the number of separate issues involved, it may not be as clear as in the second half of the gospel. It is therefore easier to take the second half of the gospel and work backwards from there, if we wish to see the plan: perhaps that is indeed how Mark wrote it.
The clearest statement on what we may call the ‘external structure’ is to be found in Nineham, who points out that there is a clear break in the gospel after 8:26. Up till then, there have been numerous miracle stories recorded: indeed, it has been reckoned that a third of the gospel is taken up with them, an equivalent length to the whole passion story. The action is largely set in Galilee. There is frequent reference to Jesus’ teaching, but it is usually directed to the crowds, couched in parabolic form, and mainly concerned with the coming of God’s kingdom. In this section, Jesus never claims to be Messiah, and discourages demonic witness to his position: the reason for this will be discussed under the heading of ‘The Secrecy Motif’. He seems at times to disengage himself from the crowds who come for healing by deliberate withdrawal: he does not apparently want to be known merely as a miracle worker.
But from 8:31 onwards, there is a complete change in Mark’s presentation of the teaching of Jesus. The action now moves largely out of Galilee to either Gentile areas or to largely hostile Judea: hardly any miracles are recorded and, instead of teaching the crowds, Jesus seems basically occupied with the teaching of his disciples. Commentators of a more critical frame of mind may see this as a pattern imposed by Mark on his material: a more obvious and satisfactory view is to say that it corresponds, at least in broad outline, to the plan adopted by Jesus himself. In that case, the structure of Mark’s Gospel would be dictated in general terms, as in the case of the passion narrative, by the material itself. Mark is only following the ‘flow’.
In between these two clearly defined sections, as the watershed of the whole gospel, is 8:27–30, the confession by Simon Peter of the Messiahship of Jesus. Now, while it is true that Mark nowhere directly says that this was the first recognition by his disciples of the true nature of Jesus (John for example seems to place the recognition far earlier), yet it is certainly the most obvious interpretation of the verses. In any case, once Jesus has been recognized as Messiah, there comes intensive teaching as to the true nature of that Messiahship, particularly as involving rejection, suffering, death, apparent failure and ultimate vindication by God in resurrection. Mark records this as being three times reiterated by Jesus to his disciples. There is no need to perform miracles now: the lesson as to his person has been already learned. What is now needed is intensive teaching of the disciples who have recognized him as Messiah as the pace quickens on the road to the cross, and opposition heightens all the way. Whether therefore this was or was not the first occasion upon which Jesus was recognized voluntarily as Messiah (as distinct from the involuntary confession wrung from the lips of demoniacs), the point is equally clear in either case. From the moment that he is so recognized, all is different. All teaching is ‘inward’ now, instead of ‘outward’, as it had been before. The important thing now is to understand both what Messiahship already means for Jesus, and what this path will therefore mean for those who follow him as disciples. Now the true meaning of the parables and the true nature of the kingdom of God will be apparent in a way that they could not be before, although, even before this, Mark lays stress on the fact that the disciples had ‘inside knowledge’ (4:11) given by Jesus.
But all this, though true, deals basically with the second part of Mark, where the structure is already fairly clear, and with the ‘fulcrum’ that leads from the first part to the second part: what of the first part itself? Clearly, in Mark’s mind, the whole of the first part is a ‘lead in’ to this strategic declaration by Peter. His gospel therefore begins, almost defiantly, with a proclamation of the true nature of Jesus (1:1), which will take even his disciples, slow and stupid as they appear in Mark, so long to learn, and which will remain to the last a mystery for most, even to the crowds whom he has fed and healed. The motif of John the Baptist is introduced early (1:4), not only to link the mission of Jesus with God’s plan outlined in the Old Testament (1:2–3), but also because John is in many ways a ‘prototype’ of Jesus: rejection, suffering and death were to be his path, as they were to be the path of the Messiah. In that sense, John is not only a forerunner of the Messiah, but also a pattern disciple.
That this is not to be the path for Jesus alone is shown by the way in which immediately he catches up others into the same vocation (1:16–20). At once (typically Marcan), Jesus teaches in the synagogue, and his authority impresses them (1:22). The same authority is shown in exorcism and healing (1:27): Jesus’ true nature is showing through. This indeed seems to be the purpose of the miracles of Jesus, as recorded in the early part of Mark. They are not only acts of compassion: they are also to display his divine person, and nowhere is this made more clear than in his claim to forgive sins (2:10). Opposition grows steadily (2:16): this new wine cannot be contained in the old wineskins of ceremonial Judaism (2:22). Once this is clearly realized by the religious authorities, the cross is inevitable. Demons will recognize and perforce confess him, but they will be muzzled (3:12): the healed will be warned not to speak of their healing (1:44). Even his friends think him mad (3:21): the Jerusalem scribes say that he is demon possessed (3:22): but the inner ring of those disciples who understand are to him as brother, sister, mother (3:35).
All the basic themes of the gospel have appeared already: the hiddenness of the Messiahship of Jesus, except to the eye of faith: the path of suffering that both he and his disciples must tread: the slowness of all to apprehend it: the true person of Jesus, as Son of God (5:7). his disciples may not realize it fully as yet, but after the calming of the storm, at last even they realized something of his supernatural nature (4:41). Signs Jesus has given in plenty in the feeding of the five thousand (6:44) and of the four thousand (8:9), but the disciples still failed to understand (8:21), and the Pharisees, in unbelief, refused to accept (8:11). Finally, Jesus heals a blind man (8:25): and it cannot be an accident that in Mark’s arrangement the next incident recorded is Peter’s confession (8:29). The blind disciples have received their sight at last, but, like the blind man in the story (8:24), they do not see perfectly as yet. The verses that immediately follow are the beginning of the teaching process that will bring full spiritual vision to them, as Jesus brought it to the blind man.
Seen in this light, the first part of Mark’s Gospel is an integral part of the whole, and a necessary introduction to the second part. Here we have no haphazard collection of anecdotes, but a carefully constructed preparation for what follows. That will become even more abundantly clear when we consider some of the typical emphases of Mark, which reinforce and bind together the main themes of what proves to be a closely knit book, although not perhaps in our modern mathematical sense.
Telford (IOM) well summarizes these under seven heads (although perhaps some could have been subsumed under others) as: the secrecy motif, Mark’s interest in Jesus’ passion, the kingdom of God and the return of the Son of man, his interest in Galilee, his use of the word euangelion, ‘gospel’, his interest in the Gentile mission and his interest in persecution and suffering as the true path of discipleship. Perhaps we might add to this his interest in the failure of both disciples and crowds to understand, and indeed the plain spiritual stupidity displayed by the disciples, even by the greatest of them. While there is no space in a brief introduction to examine all of these in detail, a cursory glance at a few of the main headings will be helpful.
This is more often phrased as ‘the Messianic secret’, referring to the way in which Jesus neither himself proclaimed his Messiahship nor accepted the attribution of it to himself by others, in the first half of Mark’s Gospel. This is of course in marked contrast to the second half of Mark, where Jesus accepts and acknowledges such a confession from Peter (8:29), and henceforward devotes much of his time to explaining to his disciples the nature of this Messiahship. It is no longer a secret: it has been revealed to the few, even if the many are still blind to it. In one sentence, this explains both the apparent stupidity of his followers, who are so slow to see it, and the unremitting hostility of his enemies, who are wilfully blind to it. These two motifs are subsumed under the secrecy motif. Just as Peter’s declaration is the watershed of the gospel, so, in a sense, the declaration by the Gentile centurion at the cross is its culmination: ‘truly this man was the Son of God’ (15:39).
Some biblical critics have viewed the whole ‘Messianic secret’ as a creation of Mark to explain why it was that Jesus during most of his lifetime did not apparently claim to be the Messiah, but was universally hailed as such by the church after his death and resurrection. But this is perverse, ignoring not only the clear testimony of Mark, but of all the other evangelists, including John. Besides, it seems to have been the deliberate purpose of Jesus to lead on his disciples step by step by what he did and by what he said, so that finally they came to the point when, with blinding clarity, they realized at last who he was. The traditional reason given for this still seems the best explanation: Jewish concepts of Messiahship were so triumphalistic and ‘this worldly’ that for Jesus to simply accept the title of Messiah without also explaining the nature of his Messiahship would only have misled people into nationalist dreams, not revealed God’s plan. Even after Peter’s declaration, much care was needed to explain this to the disciples. Indeed their behaviour during passion week suggests that it was only after the resurrection that they truly understood the meaning of Messiahship for Jesus.
A further proof of its genuineness is that this secrecy motif, or the hiddenness of the gospel, reappears again and again in other contexts in Mark: it is not an isolated phenomenon, found only in the context of Jesus’ Messiahship. It corresponds to the ‘hiddenness’ of the teaching of Jesus by parable (chapter 4). It corresponds also to the hiddenness of the kingdom of God, which, at this stage, can only be described allusively, presumably for the same reason of probable popular misunderstanding. King, kingdom and Messiah were all alike explosive words at the time, full of political overtones alien to the mission and work of Jesus. Even his own self-chosen title Son of man, with its deliberate ambiguity, and depths of meaning open only to the eye of faith, is another example of ‘hiddenness’, one day to be open to all.
So it is only after the confession of Jesus as Messiah that there can come the glory of the transfiguration, when Jesus is seen in his true splendour (8:2), and only then seen by disciples who have already made the transforming discovery by faith. If, as is likely, 9:1 refers in Mark’s mind directly to the transfiguration, then the true nature of the kingdom is only then apparent. No more will Jesus use parables: he will speak openly to those who understand.
In another sense, the kingdom already present in Jesus and his followers will be ushered in by God in all its fullness, at the last day: that is the message of chapter 13. This aspect of the truth accounts for Mark’s interest in the Son of man as bringing in God’s kingdom (8:38) as God’s agent: it is again the fulfilment of the pattern of concealment finally becoming revelation (4:22), which is basic to the pattern of Mark because he sees it as basic to the plan of God. Jesus, the humble and despised earthly Son of man in this life (for it is as Son of man rather than as Messiah that Jesus says that he must suffer, 8:31), must yet return as the triumphant and transcendent Son of man that all may see and believe.
Is Mark also thinking of the small and doubtless despised Christian church of his day at Rome? Is this ‘hiddenness’ to remind them that ultimately they too will triumph in glory, as God’s chosen vessel?
This subject is closely connected with the previous topic, since the suffering, rejection and death of Jesus are all part of the ‘hiddenness’ that characterizes his whole mission. The threefold prediction of the passion by Jesus (8:31; 9:31; 10:33), tells, with rising intensity and greater and greater detail, that this suffering is not accidental but a divine necessity, inevitable to his calling. Scholars of a more critical frame of mind maintain that there is no direct connection made in Mark between this suffering and the forgiveness of sins, as there certainly is in Paul and elsewhere in the New Testament. But 10:45 clearly says that the whole purpose of the coming of the Son of man was ‘to give his life as a ransom for many’, while in 14:24, Jesus describes his death (‘my blood of the covenant’) as being ‘poured out for many’. In view of these passages, and the numerous references to, and reminiscences of Isaiah chapter 53 which they contain, it is not enough to say that there is at most a vague and unspecified connection in Mark’s mind between the death of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins. It is clearly through the suffering and death of the ‘servant of the Lord’ in Isaiah that forgiveness is achieved for ‘the many’ (Isa. 53:11–12), and, if Jesus applied this picture to his death, then the same must be true of that death too. Mark’s interest in the suffering of Jesus is therefore his interest in the gospel, for the two are inseparable. Likewise, he must end his gospel with an announcement of the resurrection even if, as we have it at least, the gospel contains no account of a resurrection appearance, but only a promise of one to come (16:7). Without the vindication and ultimate glorification of the servant, not only would the ‘hiddenness’ still remain, but the pattern of Isaiah chapter 53 would also remain unfulfilled.
So much for the suffering of the servant, and it is obvious why it is a point of central interest to Mark, since it is so central to the gospel. But Mark is also concerned to show how Jesus, from the very start, showed his followers that the path of discipleship must also be that of suffering. Already, in the parable of the sower, Jesus had warned of the ‘tribulation or persecution’ that would test the Christian (4:17). The death of John the Baptist was another warning (6:27), for, if John was not technically a follower of Jesus, he was certainly a witness to him (1:7). After Peter’s declaration, when Jesus has explained that the Son of man must suffer (8:31), he goes straight on to explain that any follower of his must also ‘deny himself and take up his cross’ (8:34). Peter’s outburst of expostulation (8:32) shows how uncongenial this doctrine was to natural humanity, even in the shape of a committed disciple, but Jesus reiterates the unwelcome message again and again. True, those who leave to follow him (as the rich man was unwilling to do, 10:22) will ‘receive a hundredfold’, but it will be ‘with persecutions’ (10:30). James and John, in spite of their misplaced ambition, will drink, says Jesus, ‘the cup that I drink’ (10:39), if they too are followers of the ‘suffering servant’. But it is in chapter 13 that we come to the clearest teaching on the subject: from verses 9 to 13, the inevitability for the Christian of persecution, suffering and even death, is pointed out. The only reason given is that it will be ‘for my name’s sake’ (13:13): to follow Jesus of necessity means to tread the way that he trod, for that is the whole meaning of following.
But why does Mark stress the inevitability of suffering for the Christian and why is it such an interest through the gospel? Basically no doubt it is because Jesus had stressed it: perhaps also it is because of the natural human reaction against such an uncongenial doctrine, and therefore there is the need to reiterate it. Yet surely another reason was the local situation of Mark’s own church, harried and persecuted at every turn, and doubtless wondering why this should be so. If, as suggested, Mark was writing in and for the Roman church, this would have been particularly appropriate. No church had suffered more from sporadic bursts of cruel persecution, culminating in AD 64, under Nero’s reign, when, after the great fire at Rome, Nero was seeking for scapegoats. Here was reassurance of the strongest and most bracing kind: this was the path which their Lord had taken, and this was their Christian calling. Mark may not say of suffering as bluntly as Peter ‘for to this you have been called’ (1 Pet. 2:21), but he puts it just as clearly in other words.
If Cranfield is right in seeing Mark’s two special purposes in writing for the Roman church as being to ‘support its faith in face of the threat of martyrdom and to provide material for missionary preachers’, then the teaching of Jesus on suffering, as recorded by Mark, certainly met the first need. This section shows how Mark attempted to meet the second of these needs, for Galilee, by its very position, surrounded as it was by Gentiles, unlike Judea, forced the missionary issue. It also, for another reason, emphasized that the call of Jesus was to the poor and despised of this world.
But having said this, it is important to realize several points. The first is that Mark did not create his material. Jesus may have been born at Bethlehem (a fact unrecorded by Mark), but he comes to be baptized from Nazareth of Galilee (1:9): his first recorded preaching was in Galilee, not Judea (1:14): his first disciples were called in Galilee (1:16). Here we are dealing with historic facts: Jesus is known, even by his enemies, as ‘the Nazarene’ (14:67), and Peter is recognized at once as a follower of his for, as the bystanders say, ‘you are a Galilean’ (14:70). This is not a mere idiosyncrasy of Mark. Acts 1:11 has an angel addressing the apostles as ‘men of Galilee’, while Acts 2:7 says, presumably of the whole of the early Christian body (1:15), before the ‘mass conversions’ in Jerusalem at Pentecost: ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?’ There is some evidence from Zealot sources that ‘Galileans’ was one probably contemptuous name for the disciples in early days, before the wits of Antioch coined the name of ‘Christians’ (Acts 11:26). Obviously Jesus must have had a large number of followers in Galilee if these things were so, and, equally obviously, that implies a considerable ministry there, thus confirming the Marcan picture. To judge from the Johannine picture, Mark may well have arranged all the Galilean material in the first part of his gospel and put most of the material with a Judean background in the second part. If this is so, we should recognize that it is purely a matter either of editorial convenience or of theology, for John certainly suggests earlier Jerusalem visits by Jesus, as indeed we would expect if the public ministry of Jesus extended over three years. But Mark is not incorrect in recording a Galilean ministry of Jesus, for it was certainly a historical fact, and undoubtedly he would have found it in his sources, particularly if they were Galilean, if not Petrine.
Why, however, did he emphasize it so? It was not as if Mark wished to contrast a supposed ‘Galilean springtime’ of acceptance and success with the increasingly bitter opposition and outward failing that awaited Jesus at Jerusalem. Scribes and Pharisees had opposed Jesus in Galilee as well as in Judea (2:7, 16, 18, 24). Indeed, it was in Galilee that his death was first determined (3:6). True, sometimes this criticism came from ‘the scribes who came down from Jerusalem’ (3:22), but this seems to be at a later date. Even ‘in his own country’ (6:1, probably Nazareth), Mark says that ‘they took offence at him’ (6:3). Mark paints no unreal rosy pictures of Galilee.
But has Mark any other reason for giving it such prominence, other than the fact that Galilee undoubtedly held a large place in the ministry of Jesus? In 14:28, Mark records Jesus as promising his disciples that, after his resurrection, he will precede them to Galilee: in 16:7 an angel reiterates this promise, all the more remarkable since the other gospels do not record a specific resurrection appearance in Galilee (though see Matt. 28:16). Apart from these two occurrences, Lightfoot points out that Galilee is mentioned nine times in Mark, four of these being in the first twenty-five verses, a very remarkable initial emphasis on Galilee.
Marxsen and those who follow him see a highly symbolic use of the word ‘Galilee’ in Mark. To them, ‘Galilee’ stands as a symbol for the wider Gentile Christian world, just as ‘Judea’ or ‘Jerusalem’ stands for the Jewish world. This links with Marxsen’s somewhat fanciful view that Mark’s Gospel was an exhortation to Jerusalem Christians to flee to Galilee in AD 70, or that it was written to meet the contemporary situation of the church in Galilee, as it was awaiting and expecting Christ’s parousia or second coming. Galilee therefore stands for Gentile mission, and what we have here is an encouragement of the largely Gentile church of Rome to engage in it. Does Jerusalem and official Judaism reject the Messiah and indeed reject Christianity? It should be no surprise: this is what they have always done. The earthly Jesus began his mission in Galilee: his first disciples were all Galileans, not Judeans. Finally, it is at the last in Galilee that he promises to manifest himself after his resurrection, for it is most unlikely that this refers to his second advent. As Lightfoot rightly says, ‘The reader’s thought is turned to the story of the ministry in the early chapters of the book’, where Galilee was equally the focus of attention.
Now, it is true that Galilee was called ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, but this seems to have been more because it was physically ringed by Gentile peoples than because of the nature of its population. No part of Palestine was more fiercely nationalistic than Galilee, as its long record in the Roman wars showed, although historically a large proportion of its population might be descended from the non-Jewish tribe of the Ituraeans, forcibly Judaized in the aftermath of the Maccabean wars. It is true that Galileans were despised by the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but that seems to have been because of their alleged simplicity and uncouthness rather than their supposedly Gentile racial origins (e.g. John 1:46; 7:52). So, in itself, a ministry in Galilee cannot encourage a church to Gentile mission, but it can reinforce the message of Jesus as being to the poor, the downtrodden, and the despised, to tax collectors and to sinners (2:16). The proud scribes of Jerusalem considered themselves as ‘those who are well’ and ‘the righteous’: they felt ‘no need of a physician’ (2:17), so could not receive the good news. Moreover, the centre of Galilean religious life was the synagogue, rather than the temple which dominated Jerusalem: in this at least, it was more akin to overseas Judaism of the dispersion. The synagogue had sometimes welcomed Jesus: the entrenched temple never did. Perhaps this thought also was in Mark’s mind as he wrote the gospel: perhaps too, the comparative receptiveness shown by Galilee compared with the stony indifference shown by Jerusalem is another aspect of the ‘hiddenness’ of the gospel (cf. Luke 10:21).
But the second aspect of Galilee certainly does speak of the Gentile mission. Surrounded by Gentiles as it was, contact with Gentiles was inevitable there. It is probably false exegesis to see the two feeding miracles recorded in Mark (chapters 6 and 8 respectively) as being one feeding of Gentiles and one of Jews, but, in the great crowds that gathered to hear Jesus (4:1; 6:56; etc.), it is hard to believe that no Gentiles were present. The healed demoniac of the Gerasenes may have been a Jew, although the title ‘Son of the Most High God’ has a Gentile ring (5:7). But certainly the population of the Decapolis, where he was commanded by Jesus to preach (5:19–20), had a strong Gentile component. Some have seen significance in the choice of Caesarea Philippi as the place of Peter’s confession (8:27), for the rabbis saw this city as the very boundary between Jew and Gentile. In 7:24, Jesus deliberately enters the territory of Tyre and Sidon, where he heals a Gentile child.
It is, however, typical of Mark that he does not distort the tradition, even in favour of his beloved Gentile mission. He records Jesus as saying ‘let the children first be fed’ (7:27): the time was not yet ripe for the Gentile mission. But in 11:17, it is the fact that mercenary trading, occupying the court of the Gentiles, has made it impossible for the temple to be as intended by God ‘a house of prayer for all the nations’, which particularly raised the anger of Jesus. So God’s vineyard will be given to others (12:9): these can hardly be other than the Gentile Christian church. Best of all, in the so-called ‘little apocalypse’ of chapter 13, Jesus tells his followers that ‘the gospel must first be preached to all nations’ (13:10): that is to be one of the signs, ushering in the end. If the cup at the last supper represented covenant blood ‘poured out for many’ (14:24), it is hard to believe that this in Mark’s mind was restricted to those within Judaism, especially in view of the context of Isaiah chapter 53. Finally, corresponding to the great confession by Peter the Jew in 8:29, comes the equally great confession by the Gentile centurion at the cross, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God’ (15:39): this is the fruit and goal of all Gentile mission.
Even if the so-called ‘longer ending’ did not come from the pen of Mark, yet it certainly expresses the mind of Christ and the message of the gospel when it records the risen Lord as giving the order, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation’ (16:15), a saying to which Mark must have set his amen. If the Gentile Christian church could find no stimulus to Gentile mission here, there was no more that could be said.
Before we begin the study of the gospel in detail, it will be helpful for us to remind ourselves of the chief motifs observable in Mark, so that we can look out for them in the text. They are well summarized in Telford (IOM) as:
The secrecy motif and the writer’s interest in the true but hidden identity of Jesus;
An interest in the passion of Jesus (his suffering, death and resurrection) and its significance for Christology;
An interest in the nature and coming of the kingdom of God and in the question of Jesus’ return as Son of man;
An interest in Galilee;
His use of the term ‘gospel’ (euangelion);
An interest in Gentiles and the Gentile mission;
An interest in persecution, suffering and martyrdom and the true nature of discipleship;
His stern treatment of the Jewish leadership groups, Jesus’ family and especially his original disciples.
Of course, as to the interpretation of these, scholars may differ, but as to their presence, there is no doubt; rightly seen, they only reinforce the message of the gospel.