Join us as we delve into the Gospel of Mark, exploring its rise to prominence among modern scholars and its unique position in telling the story of Jesus Christ. Though often overshadowed by Matthew and Luke in early Christianity, Mark’s Gospel offers a vivid narrative and insightful observations about Jesus and His teachings. This episode unpacks Mark’s role as Peter’s interpreter and the distinctive features that make this gospel stand out.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Among the earliest Christians, the Gospel of Mark did not command the attention of the fathers in the way that Matthew and Luke did. According to Everett Harrison, they placed Matthew and Luke in the most prominent positions. But he also notes that in modern times, Mark has surged to the fore, to the place of chief consideration among the first three Gospels. Now, when I look at that, I think, okay, fine, the guys who were closest to it didn’t get it. It takes modern scholarship to sort it all out. Well, I think there are two factors at work here. For one, the early fathers found a lot more meat in Luke and Matthew than they found in Mark. And after all, Matthew was an apostle. Mark was not. But there’s another reason. Scholars, you know, make their bones by finding out stuff. And sometimes they find stuff that never was really lost. It’s a funny thing about scholarship. They have to publish or else. And so they publish. The earliest historical recognition of Mark comes from a man named Papias, who was bishop of Hierapolis. He wrote right after the turn of the first century. I think Eusebius says about 115 A.D., I quoted him in the previous program, but I think it’s worth, since he’s talking about Mark, putting this citation in this program right here. Here’s what Papias had to say. He’s quoting the Presbyter John. The Presbyter used to say this. Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ, for he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities of his hearers. but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord’s sayings. Wherefore, Mark made no mistake in writing this way some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took special care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. Now, it’s pretty easy to visualize what’s going on here. As Peter travels around from place to place, he gives sermons. He preaches. He tells the story. And he gets questions from the people who are sitting there listening to him. And over a period of time, I can see Mark sitting on the right-hand side here and taking notes about what Peter is saying. and then finally putting it all down, not necessarily in some order of intent, not historically in order, but just to be sure he didn’t leave out anything that he had heard. There are two important things to note in Prester John’s remarks. One, Mark was at some pains to write down accurately what Peter said, and two, Mark did not write these things down in order. Now, the chances are there were a number of other gospel accounts in existence at this time. Luke tells us, first verse, first chapter. Writing to Theophilus, he says, many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us. Who these people are, we don’t know. And as far as we know, we have found none of the early Gospels apart from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Harrison thinks that Presbyter John’s explanation was intended to explain Mark’s variance from all these other stories that are going around. He wrote stuff down as occasion and topic presented itself and with no attempt at any particular order. Irenaeus is another witness to an early Mark. He attributes Mark’s source as the preaching of Peter. When Papias cites John as saying that Mark interpreted Peter, his usages, the way Papias normally uses the word interpreted, suggest that he meant he translated Peter. Now, this would suggest that Peter spoke primarily in Aramaic, and the gospel had to be translated into Greek. It’s an interesting idea, though it’s hardly conclusive. It’s also worth noting that scholars conclude that Mark is the most Aramaic of the Gospels. Now, what this essentially means is that even when you do a translation from one language to another, the original influence, both social and linguistic, tends to find its way through. I used to have a friend who worked in Paris as a translator. He translated English into French for various and sundry sources there. His French, of course, was impeccable. His English was good. He had an accent like Maurice Chevalier. But there were so many times when he was translating things that he really didn’t quite know how to put it because of various ideas that are in English. But I think you would be able to tell from things that he translated from German – And things that he translated from English, a person who was careful in reading them could probably sort out which item was from German and which was from English because of the way the original language finds its way through in various characteristics. And so scholars conclude that Mark is the most Aramaic of the Gospels. That is, it’s plain that there was an Aramaic influence in his writing. Now, the sum of all this is that we have in hand the testimony of an eyewitness once removed. Mark never puts himself into the story. There is one possible exception to this. It’s found in Mark 14, verse 50. It’s on that occasion in the Garden of Gethsemane when the soldiers came to arrest him, when Judas had kissed him, that everyone forsook Jesus and fled. There happened, though, to be following him a certain young man who had a linen cloth cast about his naked body. When the young man laid hold on him, they grabbed him along with Jesus, he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked. Most commentators look at this, and they think that is John Mark who fled naked into the dark, the man whose gospel we have in our hands. Harrison lists 12 characteristics of this gospel, according to Mark, which I think are worth examining, work our way through it, because these are things which are particularly characteristic of Mark’s gospel, as opposed to some of the others. Number one, the gospel is dominant. Jesus is presented as giving it first place in all of his teaching. Very early in the book of Mark, we find in chapter 1, verse 14, this statement. After John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent you and believe the gospel. So this is the dominant theme all the way through the gospel according to Mark. The second characteristic of it, as Harrison lists them, Mark, in presenting Jesus’ healings and exorcism, puts great emphasis on the necessity of secrecy. The disciples, as well as the people he healed, were told to stay mum about his Messiahship, about all the things that he did, his healings, and also even about what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration. Why? Well, one reason may be to avoid the endless crowds that followed Jesus everywhere he went. For example, in the very first chapter of Mark, in verse 40, a leper came to Jesus and begging him and kneeling down to him and saying, If you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand and touched him and said, I will. Be thou clean. This is sometimes cited as a particular example of Jesus’ compassion in that he was willing to touch the leper, something that most people simply would not do. He touched him, and he also said, It is my will. I’m afraid a lot of us, when we pray, asking for God’s healing and his mercy, we say, Well, no, Lord, if it is your will. And Jesus said to this fellow, I will. It is my will. And he healed him. As soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy left the man. He was cleansed, and he straightly charged him, strictly charged him, and sent him away and said to him, See, you say nothing to any man. But go your way, show yourself to the priest, the law required this. Offer for your cleansing those things that Moses commanded for a testimony to them. But don’t spread what I have done here. Well, the evident reason for this was to avoid the endless crowds that Jesus tended to get anyway. But some things like this would only have made it worse. The third characteristic of the gospel, according to Mark, is that repeatedly Mark lays emphasis on these crowds that follow Jesus. Mark 1, verse 32. At evening, when the sun was going down, they brought to Jesus all that were diseased and them that were possessed with demons, and all the city was gathered together at the door. The whole town was there. He healed many that were sick of various diseases and cast out many demons and did not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. And so you can sort of begin to see the problem as it’s presented to us. Stay with me. I’ll be right back. But grab a pencil and a piece of paper. I want to give you some information you’ll need.
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Harrison points out another curious feature of Mark’s narrative that I’ve read through the section, but I completely overlooked what was there. It’s in Mark, the fifth chapter. It’s an example of the way Mark sometimes nests one episode inside another. There came a ruler of the synagogue. His name was Jairus, and when he saw him, he fell at Jesus’ feet, and he begged him, saying, My little daughter lies at the point of death. Please come and lay hands on her that she may be healed and she shall live. And Jesus went with him and the people thronged him. Okay, this is the beginning of one episode. But in the middle of it, a certain woman who had an issue of blood for 12 years, she had suffered many things of the physicians, had spent every dime she had and was no way better but got worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came in the press behind and touched his garment. She said, If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be whole. And immediately she touched him. The fountain of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the plague. It’s really an astonishing healing. But what’s just as amazing is that Jesus, even though he did not see her and did not know she had touched his clothes… immediately knew in himself that virtue had gone out of him. How did he know that? What happened here? As something like a kind of power drain that happened to him? I don’t know. But he knew. He turned around in the press and said, Who touched my clothes? The disciples said, Well, you see this crowd, and you say, Who’s touched me? And he kept looking to see her who had done this thing. And the woman was frightened and trembling, and she knew what had happened inside herself because she could feel it. Came and fell down before him and told him all the truth. And he said, Daughter, your faith has made you whole. Go in peace and be whole of your plague. What a wonderful thing to happen. Now, we return to the original narrative. While he was talking to her… There came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house some servant that said, Your daughter’s dead. There’s no point in troubling the master any further. And as soon as Jesus heard that word, he said to the ruler of the synagogue, Don’t be afraid, only believe. He went with him and healed his daughter. But Harrison seems to feel that this nesting, this inserting one episode within another episode, as Mark does, is an interesting characteristic. I had never thought much about episodes like this, but what they do is they carry a note of reality. It’s a story, and the story is told as it happened. And presumably, Peter told the story this way. It carries that feeling of reality. It’s not the way stories like this are commonly told. Commonly, you’d hear the story about the centurion and how his daughter died and Jesus came and healed her. And you would hear the story about the woman who was healed as she went in the crush of people. The fifth characteristic listed by Harrison is some of the linguistic things that characterize Mark’s gospel. Harrison notes that Mark is written in a rather rough Greek. The detailed, vivid character of the narrative, as we just heard, is also unique. The presence of Latin expressions that aren’t found in the other Gospels, which is suggestive that maybe this originated in Rome. There are broken sentences. There are the mixing of tenses from the historical present. to past tenses in the same section. Now, I was struck by this last item because my proofreaders often find me doing exactly the same thing. I’m sort of using a historical present and using a past, and then they come through and mark it up, and I have to go back and rewrite the section. So that type of thing happening is quite real to me. Harrison also notes that there’s a lot of colloquial speech in this, which suggests that Mark is trying to get Peter’s speech as closely as possible. It’s not quite what one would write, but it is what one would say. And there’s a difference between the two. Characteristic number six, Mark is the gospel of action. He explains the deeds of Jesus in more detail than his words. He often remarks that Jesus taught something without telling us what Jesus actually said. I suspect this is one of the reasons why the early church leaders preferred Matthew and Luke. There we have the detailed words of Jesus himself. The seventh characteristic is one that ought to endear Mark to the modern generation. Mark often tells us how Jesus felt. Describes his feelings. His emotions are on display. His compassion. His indignation. His distress. His sorrow. He even tells us that Jesus sighed. No other gospel uses this word. You may remember it. It’s in Mark chapter 8, verse 11. The Pharisees came forth and began to question Jesus. They asked him a sign from heaven, tempting him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek after a sign? I say to you, there shall no sign be given to this generation. It’s obvious that he was exasperated and And Mark could just as easily have said, the Pharisees came and questioned him, tempting him. And he said, why are you looking after a sign? But he didn’t. He said, Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit. In the eighth characteristic, he says, some prominence in this gospel is given to the Gentiles. But, you know, I found that translators seem unaccountably to cover it up. I’ll show you what I mean. It’s in Mark 11, verse 15. They came to Jerusalem, and Jesus went to the temple. They began to throw out people who were buying and selling in the temple, kicking over tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold doves, and I presume scattering the birds to the heavens. He would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. And he taught, saying unto them, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer. All nations is the Greek ethnos, Gentiles. Now, everywhere else you find the New Testament, everywhere you find the word Gentiles, it is the Greek ethnos. But there are a couple of places in different Gospels where, for some reason, the translators use the word nations instead. But there’s one thing that’s beginning to happen. it starts showing up in the Gospels, it’s here in Mark, it will show up more in the book of Acts, is that God, that is the worship of God, the faith of God, is for everyone, not just for Jews. And His house is supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations, not just Jews. The ninth characteristic is, Mark gives special attention to Jesus’ preparation of his disciples for future ministry. His correction to them is often sharp. In Mark, the disciples are often lacking in many respects, and they seem, frankly, as I read through it, a little bit dense. I know it’s easy for us to say, looking back from all the things that we have learned from them, that we can see this. Why couldn’t they see it? But the truth is, if we’d been there, we’d have been just as dense as they are. In Mark 10, for example, verse 13, they brought young children to him that he should teach them. And his disciples rebuked those people that brought them. Says, get these kids away from here. Don’t bother Jesus with these children. And when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased. And he said to them, permit the little children to come to me. Don’t forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And verily I say unto you, whoever will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child shall not enter it. And he took the kids up in his arms and put his hands on them and blessed them. It’s interesting when you see that the disciples’ response is fairly natural. They didn’t think Jesus would be interested in these children. They were wrong. Stay with me and we’ll go through the remainder of these characteristics right after this short message.
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And this may sound strange to say this, but Mark’s gospel is mainly about the passion of Christ. It’s almost as though he is in a hurry to get to the main point of Jesus’ ministry. Everything points like an arrow to that last, oh, two-fifths of the whole gospel that has to do with the last week of Jesus’ time among us before his death, his crucifixion, his resurrection. This is number 10 of the characteristics that he says of this gospel. Mark aims at the passion. In number 11, and this I thought was very interesting, Harrison says the high Christology of this gospel is literally thrust upon the reader in the very first verse. What does the very first verse say? Mark 1, verse 1. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The word Christology means the theological interpretation of the person and work of Christ. And a high Christology means that Jesus is seen as God in the flesh, not merely the Son of Man, but the Son of God. This status is attested from different sources. It’s attested by the Father himself. Mark 1, verse 9. It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized of John in the Jordan. And straightway, coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him. And there came a voice from heaven saying, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. That’s a pretty powerful attestation. But it’s also attested by demons. Mark 3, verse 10. Jesus had been healing many people, and so much that they pressed upon him to touch him, as many as had any kind of plague. And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him and cried, saying, You are the Son of God. And he straightly charged him that they would not make him known. So even the demons attest to the fact that he is the Son of God. It’s attested by Jesus himself. Mark 14, verse 60. The high priest stood up in the midst of all the people. Jesus has been arrested. He’s been questioned all night. He says, don’t you answer anything? What about all these things these people say about you? He held his peace. Wouldn’t answer them at all. And finally the high priest said to him, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven. So he confessed, Yep, I am the Christ. I am the Son of the Blessed One. It’s also attested by the centurion at the hour of his death. You probably remember it. Mark 15, 37 says, Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom. And when the centurion that stood opposite him saw that he cried out this way and died, he said, Truly, this man was the Son of God. This is a reference, as Harrison points out, to the very high Christology of the Gospel of Mark. The final characteristic, the twelfth characteristic of this gospel, is what is commonly called the abrupt ending. The first time the public really encountered this, I think, was when the publication, or with the publication, of the older Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which ended, Mark, at chapter 16, verse 8. Here is how Mark ends in the Revised Standard Version. Mark 16, verse 1. When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome had bought sweet spices that they might come and anoint him. Early in the morning on the first day of the week, they came to the sepulcher at the rising of the sun. And they were wondering, who’s going to roll away the stone from the door? But when they looked, they saw it was already rolled away. And they came in there and they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment, and they were frightened. He said, Don’t be afraid. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He’s risen. He’s not here. Look, there’s where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples, tell Peter, he goes before you into Galilee, and you’ll see him there, as he said to you. So they went out quickly and fled from the sepulcher, for they trembled and were amazed, and they didn’t say anything to anybody because they were afraid. Period. That’s all there is to the gospel according to Mark, as the Revised Standard Version had it. Now, what follows in most Bibles is a fairly ordinary conclusion to the gospel. But it’s missing in two very early manuscripts, and so modern translations seem to think it doesn’t belong. The presumption is that the last pages of Mark may have been lost. That’s doubtful. Or that Mark simply didn’t finish, and someone later finished it for him. The Revised Standard Version and later versions, they include the full ending of Mark, but with the notation that they may not have been in the original text. All this testimony to the unique character of Mark’s gospel, along with the characteristics of Matthew’s account, lead me to be highly skeptical of the critical idea that Matthew cribbed his gospel off Mark. These are quite different independent witnesses to a common event. And there’s a certain amount of pleasure to be gained from taking notice of the personalities of the men who wrote their testimony of the story of Jesus.
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