This is a modified copy/paste from Logos Bible Software. – Ger
Historical Setting and Literary Notes
Title Information
The individual after whom this gospel is named is Mark, who, according to a number of church fathers, was a close companion of the Apostle Peter. Most of the theological world seems to agree that this is the man who accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey to Perga, where he freaked out after a confrontation with Elymas the magician and real demonic powers trying to prevent consul Sergius Paulus from coming to faith in Christ (see Acts 13:4–12, “So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus. When they reached Salamis, they began to proclaim the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and they also had John as their helper. When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they found a magician, a Jewish false prophet whose name was Bar-Jesus, who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence. This man summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the magician (for so his name is translated) was opposing them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze on him, and said, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord? “Now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you will be blind and not see the sun for a time.” And immediately a mist and a darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking those who would lead him by the hand. Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching of the Lord.”).
Author
His name was John also known as Mark in Scripture; it was John Mark’s mother’s home to which Peter went when released from prison (Acts 12:12, “And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.”)
He was Barnabas’ cousin (Col. 4:10), and because of his desertion on the first missionary journey, Paul would not allow him on his second missionary journey, and this caused a split between Barnabas and Paul, and that split was the last we read of Barnabas in Scripture. Paul continued after that with Silas.
The church father Papias attributes to Mark the authorship of the gospel. He is recorded by Eusebius, in Ecclesiastical History 3:39, as saying, “Mark, becoming the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, though not in order, whatevedr he remembered was either said or done by Christ; for he was neither a hearer of the Lord nor a follower of Him, but afterwards, as I said, [he was a follower] of Peter, who arranged the discourses for use, but not according to the orderin which they were uttered by the Lord.” Irenaeus of Lyon, in Against Heresies 3.1, also recorded, “Matthew published a gospel while Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the Church at Rome; and after their departure (or decease), Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, he [sic] also gave forth to us in writing the things which were preached by Peter.” Clement of Alexandria is also recorded by Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, 6.14) as saying, “Peter having publicly preached the word at Rome, and spoken forth the Gospel by the Spirit, many of those present exhorted Mark, as having long been a follower of his, and remembering what he had said, to write what had been spoken; and that having prepared the Gospel, he delivered it to those who had asked him for it; which, when Peter came to the knowledge of, he neither decidedly forbade nor encouraged him.
Interestingly, Eusebius differs from other accounts. Apparently, his thought was that after Peter’s death in Rome, his hearers’ hearts were so affected by his preaching that they basically nagged this Gospel out of Mark, giving him no rest until it was complete. He said (Ecclesiastical History, 2.15), “that the apostle, when he knew by the revelation of the Spirit what had been done, was delighted with the zeal of those men, and sanctioned the reading of the writing (that is, of this Gospel of Mark) in the churches…” Even Origen, whom we all have some issues with, said that Mark wrote this gospel. With all of those church fathers putting the stylus into John Mark’s hand, it is difficult for me to conclude that it was written by “Mark the Evangelist,” who was also a follower of Peter, and who also followed him to Rome, whose preaching reached Mark the Evangelist. I don’t have any documentation here, but it seems to me like this gospel was written by John Mark, who also became an evangelist in his own right. That’s a little inductive reasoning on my part, and that view is proclaimed in Matthew Henry’s Commentary. There is an army of people who will dispute this, and it doesn’t matter one bit. I didn’t ask anyone to agree, this is just what I have thought through to date.
Date
The earlier quote from Papias, according to Eusebius, was written about 140. Justin Martyr wrote in about A.D. 150 that the gospel of Mark was “the memoirs of Peter,” and suggested that they were written while in Italy. Tradition has it connected, like Paul’s beheading, to the fires that burned Rome in July of AD 64. Some early sources (not named by Wikipedia or anyone else I read, and Wikipedia is always a last resort) state that tradition has marked Peter’s death by crucifixion on Vatican Hill on October 13, 64. Others prefer AD 67 as the more likely date, and it wasn’t clear to me why, but it comes from Jerome. The critical bit here is that this gospel was potentially written as late as AD 68, but most scholars seem to prefer a much earlier date in the 50s.
That date range is important because it fits into a preterist view of the fulfillment of all biblical prophecy before AD 70. As we know, full preterism is heresy because it flatly denies the second coming of Christ, which He Himself decreed (not just predicted). It also denies bodily resurrection, which is our hope as believers and followers of Christ. For these reasons, this may be rejected as Christian core belief. This is a post-Reformation fringe view and should be ignored, and so should anyone teaching it. Dr. R. C. Sproul, near the end of his life, was flirting with partial preterism, which is NOT heretical, for a contrast.
Background and Setting
He either omitted or simply did not make a big deal out of Jewish customs. It has been well said that each gospel has a specific target audience and theme. Matthew’s gospel, for instance, is written primarily to a Jewish audience, and its major theme is to show Jesus as the promised King to sit on the throne of David continually. Mark’s audience seems to be more toward the Roman converts, and Gentiles in particular. When Mark used an Aramaic word, he took care to translate it for his readers. He preferred Latin phrases or their Greek equivalents. There was no big genealogy as we find in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels. It makes fewer references to the Old Testament. He includes less content regarding things that would have more interest culturally to Jewish audiences, like references or criticisms of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Herodians. Sadducees are mentioned only once in 12:18, for example. When he mentions things that would interest Gentile audiences, he goes into more detail, like naming the son of Simon the Cyrene, Rufus, who became a member of the church at Rome. The Apostle Paul mentions him at the end of his letter to the church at Rome in Romans 16:13, which says, “Greet Rufus, a choice man in the Lord, also his mother and mine.” All of this seems like a very good argument for this being written for a primarily Gentile audience, perhaps initially in Rome.Historical and Theological themes
The main thing I can see in a reading of this gospel is Jesus, the suffering servant of the Lord (Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”). This theme is best seen in the Old Testament in Isaiah 53:1–5, which says, “Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed.”
The view of Jesus as the suffering servant of God is emphasized in the deeds of Jesus more so than His teachings. It gives particular emphasis to His service, and particularly to His sacrifice. As most of us realize, that sacrifice was more than just His death on the cross; it was every moment He was here as one of us.
He begins his gospel with the beginning of His public ministry instead of a lengthly genealogical table of ancestry. Matthew and Luke record those things for us, and they are important, but personally, I appreciate the bare-bones approach Mark takes. I do a lot of reading to begin with, and I’m always grateful for something that just gets to the point, as Mark does. It lessens the physical headache that eyestrain brings, and I don’t feel like things are leaking out of my ears, if you know what I mean. It’s like cramming for my exams all over again. Funny, when I graduated, I thought I was done with this, but no, I had to develop a passion for studying. It’s funny, really, and I do love the studying itself. And yes, I was a bookish kid, but I also had fun with my friends and liked girls and cars as a teenager, not that those things went together often.
Have you heard that each of the gospels is represented by the face of a creature that is matched by the four living creatures around the throne of God? In order, they have the faces of a lion, a bull, a man, and an eagle. The symbolic connection that is made with the gospel of Mark is that of the bull. The bull is seen as the servant because it does the hard work of plowing the field, but it is also a sacrifice. It is to make atonement so that the Lord will accept the one making the sacrifice. Leviticus 1:1–5 tells us, “Then the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, ‘Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, “When any man of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of animals from the herd or the flock.”‘ If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer it, a male without defect; he shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the Lord.‘ He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf.‘ He shall slay the young bull before the Lord; and Aaron’s sons the priests shall offer up the blood and sprinkle the blood around on the altar that is at the doorway of the tent of meeting.”
What other symbol represents the Lord Jesus so clearly apart from the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, which is the one we will see next time?
These things fit perfectly with the themes seen in Mark; serving the Lord with the whole being regardless of cost, and the sacrifice of the suffering servant to atone for our sins and make us acceptable to God.
Interpretive Issues
There are three questions about Mark that are key to its interpretation: 1. What is the relationship of Mark’s gospel to that of Matthew and Luke? We will discuss this momentarily. Dr. John MacArthur calls this “The Synoptic Problem.” We will borrow his term. 2. How should we interpret the eschatological passages? (We will deal with that in part in chapter 4 and particularly in chapter 13 of the text) 3: Were the last 12 verses of chapter 16 originally part of Mark’s gospel? As you might expect, we will talk about that when we come to that text at the end of the book.
The Synoptic Problem
Just a quick skim of the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke demonstrates that there is some kind of relationship between the texts. There are striking similarities, and there are significant differences between all of them. It isn’t a surprise, I know, because all of the data being observed is the same. Matthew was there, Mark got his account from Peter (who was there), and Luke fully researched the subject like a historian (from eyewitnesses who were there). (John, as we will see when we ultimately get there, had a different point, which was to show the divinity of Christ, that He was indeed the eternal God of the Old Testament.) The three accounts are an attempt to give the gist of the life and times of Yeshua bar YHVH. All of these things originated from eyewitness accounts. Doctor MacArthur points out that the challenges of explaining those differences and similarities are what give rise to the synoptic problem.
The theory in modern evangelifishism that “scholars” (please note the use of the quotes, the word is being used ironically) have been to imagine that some form of literary dependence exists between the books, and this is labelled the “Two-Source Theory.” The short version of the theory is that Mark wrote his gospel first and that Matthew and Luke both used Mark’s gospel as a source for their own. Those who argue in favour of this non-Holy-Spirit-involved writing imagine what Dr. MacArthur calls a “non-existent second source,” they call Q (from the German for source, Quell) and argue that this is the source for the things that are not in Mark but are in their own gospels. They advance some evidence, it isn’t completely braindead, just mostly.
Their argument goes like this: Most of Mark is paralleled in Matthew and Luke. Because it is shorter in length than either of the others, Matthew and Luke must be expansions of Mark. Also, the three gospels follow the same chronological outline in a general sense, and when either Matthew or Luke diverges from the chronology of Mark, the other agrees with Mark, meaning it was used as a source, presumably. In other words, Matthew and Luke do not depart from Mark in the same places in the text. This is the argument they say proves that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Finally, all three gospels have common passages, but when those common passages diverge, one will agree with Mark for the sake of the historical framework. This also in their thinking confirms that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source.
That’s the theory, and I suppose it does have a logic of sorts to it, but there are some pretty big holes in my view. Doctor MacArthur points out that the weight of evidence actually strongly argues against this theory. If you have a MacArthur Study Bible, you can follow along point for point as we go through his counter-arguments, and I find them persuasive. If you’re reading along in his study bible notes, I’m in the introduction section under his heading “The Synoptic Problem.” Here we go.
- The nearly unanimous testimony of the church until the 1800s was that Matthew was the first gospel produced. You cannot just ignore that as evidence, and that is what the Two-Source theory does.
- Why would Matthew, himself an Apostle and eyewitness to the events of the life of Christ depend on Mark, who was not there, even for the account of his (Matthew’s) own conversion (which he himself speaks of in Matthew 9:9–13, “As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth; and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him. Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, “Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?” But when Jesus heard this, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
- A statistical analysis of synoptic gospels has revealed that the parallels between them are far less extensive and the differences more significant than is commonly acknowledged. (I’m not surprised.) The differences in particular argue against the idea of dependency between authors.
- Since the gospels record actual historical events, it would be surprising if they did NOT follow the same general historical sequence. A non-Biblical example of this is our own history textbooks. Three books on American history would have the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and beyond in the same chronological order. This does not prove the authors have read each other’s books. General agreement in content does not prove dependency. Having said that, I will admit that I used Dr. MacArthur’s notes and commentaries, among others, for all of this information.
- The passages in which Matthew and Luke agree against Mark amount to about 1/6th of Matthew and 1/6th of Luke. If they used Mark’s gospel as a source, there is no explanation as to why the two men would alter Mark’s words in the same way when they wrote in different places and at different times.
- The two-source theory cannot account for the important section in Mark’s Gospel (6:45-8:26) which Luke omits. That omission suggests that Luke had not seen Mark’s gospel when he wrote his own.
- There is no historical or manuscript evidence that the Q document ever existed; it is purely a fabrication of modern skepticism and possibly a way to deny the verbal inspiration of the gospels.
- Any theory of dependence between authors here overlooks the significance of their personal contacts with each other. Mark aned Luke were both companions of Paul (Philemon 24 “as do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, my fellow workers.” ); the early church including Matthew met for a time in the home of Mark’s mother (Acts 12:12 “And when he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was also called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.” ); and Luke could easily have met Matthew during Paul’s two-year imprisonment at Caesarea. MacArthur points out that such contacts make theories of mutual literary dependence unnecessary.
With the preponderance of evidence that Dr. MacArthur introduces, I am ready to concur with him that there is no actual synoptic problem. Because these “critical scholars” cannot prove a literary dependency exists, there is no need to explain it. Here, I will add my own argument, and it is the classical orthodox Christian position.
- These men were all inspired by the same source: the Holy Spirit, who is the third person of the Godhead. It is my considered opinion that because the critical scholars are not always Christians, even if they think they are, they do not have the Holy Spirit living inside them and guiding them into all truth. Yes, there is room for disagreement, but not as they present it. In fact that these men are all inspired by the same God who inspired all of Scripture, we may rely on the absolute veracity of the information being communicated. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;” and 2 Peter 1:21 says, “for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”
When these books are placed side by side, they harmonize very well. There is a book called “Harmony of the Gospels” that places the text of each gospel on the same page in a historical and chronological order. This is a great comparative tool, and I recommend this as long as we are in the gospels. It’s built into my Logos software. It’s very useful. The texts line up for the most part. Where there are differences, the Holy Spirit has allowed me to reason out with the brain that He has cleansed and preserved that there must be a reason. All I have to do is reason it out. The accounts of all the gospels never contradict each other, even when they differ in details like the number of demoniacs in the Gergesenes. One of the gospels has 2 demoniacs, the other has only one. This can be explained by simple modern eyewitness theory.
Such a theory was entered into the AI Grok for analysis, and it determined that rather than seeing those differences as contradictions, they were indicative of the kind of eyewitness testimony you would see surrounding a car accident or a crime. In fact, one of the things that detectives look for specifically is people with the same details. The presentation of two people with the exact same details is a clue that those people may be involved in the event or crime because their stories should not perfectly match. There was a lot more to that study, but that’s the relevant portion.
The gospel accounts, rather than contradicting each other, are complementary, filling in gaps to bring the reader to a more complete understanding of the significance of the actions of our Lord Jesus by the very end of it. You could read it like a crime novel, and there is crime in it, as well as an incredible story of service and sacrifice.
