1. A. According to tradition, who wrote the Gospel according to Mark? Why are mo

ID: 3493274 • Letter: 1

Question

1. A. According to tradition, who wrote the Gospel according to Mark? Why are modern scholars unable to verify that tradition? What themes in the Gospel suggest that it was composed after the Jewish Revolt against Rome had already begun?

1. B. Do you think that Mark’s emphasis on Jesus’ exorcisms—his battle with cosmic evil—is an expression of the author’s eschatology, his belief that in Jesus’ activities God’s kingdom has begun and the End is near? Explain your answer.

Part 2: The Gospel of Matthew.

2. A. Even if Mark’s Gospel is an older work, what features of Matthew’s Gospel can account for its standing irst in the New Testament canon? How does Matthew connect his account with the Hebrew Bible?

2. B. Why do scholars believe it unlikely that one of the Twelve wrote Matthew’s Gospel? From the content of the Gospel, what can we infer about its author and the time and place of its composition?

2. C. Using your knowledge of Chapter 5 of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount answer the following questions.

Highlighting Jesus’ kingdom message, Matthew devotes long sections to presenting a “kingdom ethic,” which involves ending the cycle of retaliation and returning good for evil. If practiced fully today, would Jesus’ teaching about giving up all possessions and peacefully submitting to unfair treatment change modern society for the better?

Explanation / Answer

Understanding the Gospel of Mark

Introduction

Author

Like the other three gospels, Mark is anonymous. The title, ‘According to Mark’ (kata Markon), was probably added when the Gospels were collected and there was need to distinguish Mark’s version of the gospel from the others. The gospel titles are generally thought to have been added in the second century but may have been added much earlier. Certainly we may say that the title indicates that by ad125 or so an important segment of the early church thought that a person named Mark wrote the second gospel.

Mark’s connection with the second gospel is asserted or assumed by many early Christian writers. Perhaps the earliest (and certainly the most important) of the testimonies is that of Papias, who was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia of Asia Minor until about ad130. His statement about the second gospel is recorded in Eusebius’s History of the Church (Historia Ecclesiastica), written in 325.

And the presbyter used to say this, ‘Mark became Peter’s interpreter [hermëneutës] and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not indeed, in order, of the things said or done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had he followed him, but later on, as I said, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.’ (H.E. 3.39.15).

Three important claims about the second gospel emerge from this statement:

Mark wrote the gospel that, in Eusebius’s day, was identified with this name.

Mark was not an eyewitness but obtained his information from Peter.

Mark’s gospel lacks ‘order’, reflecting the occasional nature of Peter’s preaching.

The importance of these claims is magnified when we realise that the presbyter whom Papias is quoting is the presbyter John, probably the apostle John himself. If Papias is to be trusted, the identification of Mark as the author of the second gospel goes back to the first generation of Christians.

Later Christian writers confirm that Mark was the author of the second gospel and that he depended on Peter for his information: Ireneus, Adv. Haer. 3.1.2 (AD180); Tertullian, Adv. Macrc. 4–5 (c. 200); Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes (c. 200), according to Eusebius (H.E. 6.14.5–7), Origen, Comm. on Matt. (early third century), again according to Eusebius (H.E. 6.25.5); and, probably, the Muratorian Canon (a list of New Testament books drawn up
c. 190 and so named because the sole manuscript to preserve the list, an incomplete Latin manuscript of the seventh or eighth century, was discovered and published by Cardinal L.A. Muratori in 1740).[7] Some scholars dismiss these testimonies as secondhand avidence going back to Papias, believing that Papias invents his claim about Mark’s connection with Peter in order to defend the gospel against its detractors.[8] But Papias does not appear to be defending Mark’s authorship or his connection with Peter but only the reliability of the gospel, against the charge that it lacked ‘order’. Moreover, no dissenting voice from the early church regarding the authorship of the second gospel is found.

This is surprising, since the tendency in the early church was to associate apostles with the writing of the New Testament books. While we must not uncritically accept everything that early Christian writers say about the origins of the New Testament, we should not reject what they say without good reason. The early and uncontested claim that Mark wrote the second gospel based on Peter’s teaching can be overturned only by rather clear indications to the contrary from the gospel itself.

But can we also accept the tradition that Mark is dependent on the preaching of Peter? Here, again, scepticism is rampant. Modern approaches to the Gospels consider the gospel material to be the product of a long and complex process of traditions-history, a view that has difficulty accommodating the direct connection between Mark and Peter suggested by Papias. While recognising this as something of a problem, two factors may mitigate its force. First, we must question whether the assuredness with which critics identify the origins and growth of traditions is always justified. In many cases the basis for such judgements does not appear to be strong, and we may well think that the derivation of a given pericope from Peter himself may satisfy the evidence equally well. Only a ‘doctrinaire form critic would insist that all the gospel tradition must have been transmitted through the faceless ‘community’. Second, we must probably allow for Mark to have used sources other than Peter. As long as the apostle was a central source for the gospel, Papias’s claim stands.

On the other side of the ledger are factors that could be taken to point to Peter’s connection with the gospel. The vividness and detail of the second gospel is said to point to an eyewitness.Only Mark, for instance, mentions that the grass on which the five thousand sat was green (6:39). But even if valid (and some scholars insist that there was a tendency to add such detail to the tradition), this feature could do no more than show that there was some eyewitness testimony behind Mark’s gospel.

This focus may be narrowed by another feature of the gospel: the especially critical light in which the Twelve are displayed. While found in all four gospels, the picture of the disciples as cowardly, spiritually blind, and hard of heart is particularly vivid in Mark.

This, it is held, points to an apostolic viewpoint, for only an apostle would have been able to criticise the Twelve so harshly. Two other factors suggest that this apostolic witness may be Peter’s. First, Peter figures prominently in Mark, and some of the references are most naturally explained as coming from Peter himself (e.g. the references to Peter ‘remembering’ [11:21; 14: 72]). Second, C.H. Dodd has pointed out that Mark’s gospel follows a pattern very similar to that found in Peter’s rehearsal of the basic kerygma, the evangelistically oriented recitation of key events in Jesus’ life, found in Acts 10:36–41.

We might add, finally, that Peter’s reference to Mark as ‘my son’ in his first letter fits nicely with the relationship between Peter and Mark mentioned by Papias; it discourages one from thinking Papias simply invented such a relationship.

Each of these factors is commensurate with the tradition that Mark is based on Peter’s preaching, and one or two of them may even point slightly in that direction, but none of them, nor all of them together, is sufficient to establish the connection. Again, however, there seems to be no compelling reason to reject the common opinion of the early church on this matter.

Audience and Purpose

Mark is a self-effacing narrator. He tells his story with a minimum of editorial comments and says nothing about his purpose or his intended audience. We must, depend, then, on the early testimonies about Mark and on the character of the gospel itself for information about his readers and his purpose.

Audience

The extrabiblical sources point to a Gentile Christian audience, probably in Rome. The Roman destination of Mark’s gospel is simply an inference from its Roman provenance. If Mark wrote in Rome, he probably wrote to Romans. This is either stated or implied in the early traditions about the gospel, which have Mark recording the preaching of Peter for those who had heard the great apostle in Rome. As we have noted above, the many Latinisms of the gospel are incompatible with, if not conclusive for, a Roman audience. That Mark writes to Gentiles seems clear from his translation of Aramaic expressions, his explanation of Jewish customs (such as the washing of hands before eating [7:3–4]), and, in the few texts he includes on the subject, his interest in the cessation of the ritual elements in the Mosaic law (see 7:1–23, esp. v. 19; 12:32–34).

Purpose

Mark’s purpose is much harder to determine. Interest in this question has been high because of its importance in redaction criticism, the most popular contemporary method of interpreting the Gospels. Redaction criticism of Mark is hampered by our inability to isolate the sources Mark has used, but this has not stood in the way of the quest for Mark’s purpose. Redaction critics typically stress theological purposes in the writing of the Gospels, and this has certainly been the case with respect to Mark. The large number of specific proposals forbids our giving anything close to a complete survey. We mention here three representative interpretations, the first focusing on eschatology, the second on Christology, and the third on apologetics.

Willi Marxsen, who initiated the modern redactional study of Mark, thought that Mark wanted to prepare Christians for Jesus’ imminent parousia in Galilee.[40] He argued that Mark focuses on Galilee, as the place where Jesus meets with his disciples, at the expense of Jerusalem, where Jesus is rejected and killed. Jesus’ command to his disciples to meet him in Galilee (14:28; cf. 16: 7) was taken by Marxsen as a prediction to Mark’s community of Jesus’ glorious return to them. But the meeting with Jesus to which these verses refer is clearly a postresurrection meeting, not the parousia.[41] Moreover, the geographic contrast that Marxsen (and some before him) discerns is much better explained as a reflection of the actual course of Jesus’ ministry than as a theologically motivated invention of Mark’s.

Theodore Weeden found in Mark a polemic against a ‘divine man’ (theios anër) Christology, a way of viewing Jesus that saw him as a wonder-working hero but denied or neglected his suffering and death.[42] To counter this tendency, Mark wrote a gospel that emphasised the humanity and suffering of Jesus. Weeden is correct to see in Mark a focus on Jesus’ suffering, but he goes too far in identifying Mark’s opponents as people who held to a divine-man Christology. For one thing, evidence for a polemical stance in Mark is not at all clear he probably does not have any opponents in view at all.[43] For another, the very existence of a Hellenistic divine-man concept as a category into which early Christians would have put Jesus is open to question.[44]

A specific kind of apologetic was discerned in Mark by S.G.F. Brandon. He thought that Mark had attempted to mask the political implications of Jesus’ life and, especially, his death. According to Brandon, Jesus was a sympathiser with the Jewish revolutionaries, the Zealots. For this reason he was crucified by the Romans, a method of execution generally reserved for political criminals. By branding Jesus as a rebel against Rome, his crucifixion made it very difficult for Christians to win a hearing from the Roman public particularly in the aftermath of the Jewish revolt in Palestine, when, according to Brandon, Mark wrote his gospel. To overcome this difficulty, Mark transferred as much of the blame for Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews as he could, a process revealed by the many manifestly unhistorical features in the Sanhedrin and Roman trials.[45] But there is no need to follow Brandon in finding these trials to contain unhistorical fabrications.[46] In general, Brandon’s theory can be sustained only by arguing, without any evidence, that Mark (and all other writers who have come after him) has eliminated the political element from Jesus’ teaching and ministry.

These three specific suggestions about Mark’s purpose represent only a sampling of recent proposals, but they share with many others the fault of being overly specific and based on only a selection of the data. Any attempt to determine Mark’s purpose must take into account the gospel as a whole and refrain from arguing beyond the evidence.

Certain features of Mark’s gospel are especially relevant to an investigation into its purpose: its focus on the activity of Jesus, especially his working of miracles; its interest in the passion of Jesus (Mark, claimed Martin Kähler in a famous aphorism, is ‘a passion narrative with an extended introduction’); its repeated correlation of Jesus’ predicted sufferings and the ‘cost of discipleship’ in 8:26—10:52. As Ralph Martin has shown, two general concerns emerge from these characteristics: Christology and discipleship.[47]Mark presents a balanced Christology in which Jesus’ miracle-working power (the focus in 1:16—8:26) is set beside his suffering and death (the focus in 8:27—16:8). The one who is identified as the Son of God in the opening verse of the gospel[48] is confessed to be the Son of by the Roman centurion as Jesus dies, humiliated and in agony, on the cross (15:39). Mark wants his readers to understand that Jesus is the Son of God, but especially the suffering Son of God. Moreover, believers are to be followers of Jesus. Mark also shows that Christians must walk the same road as Jesus – the way of humility, of suffering, and even, should it be necessary, of death. Mark wants to impress on his readers the famous words of the Lord: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’ (8:34).

Mark thus wants to help his readers understand who Jesus is and what real discipleship involves. But we must recognise that Mark has many other things to say that cannot easily be placed into these categories. Recent study has stressed the theological purposes behind the writing of the Gospels, and we may agree that the evangelists were writing with some specific points to make to the Christian communities in their day. But we should not ignore two other, more general purposes, that were probably at work in the production of Mark: historical interest, and evangelism.

In addition to encouraging certain beliefs and actions in his Christian readers, Mark was providing them with a record of Jesus’ deeds and words. This was becoming a great need in Mark’s day, as the original eyewitnesses such as Peter, were beginning to pass from the scene. While it is unlikely that Mark was written for non-Christians directly, the focus in the gospel on Jesus’ actions, the similarity between the gospel’s structure and the early Christian evangelistic preaching, and Mark’s armounced intention to write a book about ‘the gospel’ (1:1) all suggest that Mark wanted to arm his Christian readers with a knowledge of the ‘good news of salvation’.

Sources

Our ability to identify the sources Mark has used in composing his gospel depends on our solution to the synoptic problem. If the Griesbach, or two-gospel, solution is correct, then both Matthew and Luke are sources for Mark, and we could seek to identify the ways in which he has ‘epitomized’ these two major sources. If, however, the two-source solution is correct, then both Matthew and Luke have depended on Mark, and we would possess no written source that Mark has used. As we argue in chapter l of An Introduction to the New Testament, the two-source theory is much more likely to be correct. Any knowledge of Mark’s sources, then, will be based on extrapolations from his gospel itself. And this, as the many conflicting reconstructions demonstrate, is a highly dubious procedure.

The most persistent theory is that there existed a written pre-Markan passion narrative, but even this idea now meets with less favour than it used to. We must admit that we have no certain knowledge of the written sources, if any, Mark has used in putting his gospel together.

His material may have come to him in small pieces of tradition, as the classic form critics thought, in both small pieces of tradition and longer oral summaries, or in a combination of these along with some written sources. In any case, if, as we have argued, the traditions about the Petrine origin of Mark are correct, then Peter himself is the immediate source of much of Mark’s material.

Text

The two most important textual problems in Mark’s gospel concern its beginning and its end. The words "Son of God" (greek [huiou theou]) in 1:1 are omitted in a few important early manuscripts (the original hand of the uncial x, the uncial O, and a few minuscules). But the words could have been accidentally omitted; they are found in the majority of early and significant manuscripts (the uncials A, B, D, L, W), as well as in the mass of later manuscripts; and the inclusion of the phrase fits well with Mark’s Christology. With most modern commentators, then, we think the words belong in Mark’s text.

The ending of Mark’s gospel poses quite a different, and more severe, problem. The majority of manuscripts include the so-called long ending, in which are narrated several resurrection appearances of Jesus, Jesus’ commissioning of the disciples, and his ascension. This long ending is printed as verses 9–20 in the KJV, in modern English versions, it usually appears in the margin or with a notation. Since it is found in the bulk of the manuscripts and can be traced to as early as the first half of the second century, this long ending can lay some claim to be considered as the original ending of Mark’s gospel.

But the arguments against this ending being original are very strong. First, it is missing from what are generally considered the two most important manuscripts (the: uncials Greek and greek), as well as several others. Second, Jerome and Eusebius both state that the best manuscripts available to them did not contain this longer ending. Third, two other endings to the gospel exist: a shorter ending (attested in the uncials L, 099, 0112, and some other witnesses), and the longer ending combined with an interpolation (attested in the uncial W and mentioned by Jerome).

The presence of these alternative endings suggests that there was uncertainty about the ending of Mark for some time. Fourth, the longer ending contains several non-Markan words and expressions. Fifth, the longer ending does not flow naturally after 16:8: Jesus is presumed to be the subject in verse 9 (the Greek does not have an expressed subject), although ‘the women’ was the subject in verse 8; Mary is introduced in verse 9 as if she has not been mentioned in verse 1; and ‘when Jesus rose early on the first day of the week’ (v. 9) sounds strange after ‘very early on the first day of the week’ (v. 2). With the great majority of contemporary commentators and textual critics, then, we do not think that verses 9–20 were written by Mark as the ending for his gospel. The resemblances between what is narrated in these verses and the narrative of Jesus’ resurrection appearances in the other gospels suggest that this longer ending was composed on the basis of these other narratives to supplement what was felt to be an inadequate ending to the gospels.

If verses 9–20 were not the original ending to Mark’s gospel, what was? Three main possibilities exist. First, Mark may have intended to write more but been prevented from doing so (by his death or arrest?).

Second, Mark may have written a longer ending to his gospel, including one or more resurrection appearances, and this ending may have been lost in the course of transmission. It has been suggested, for instance, that the last leaf of Mark’s gospel – presuming the gospel was in the form not of a scroll but of a codex, or many-paged book – may have been accidentally torn off.

Third, Mark may have intended to end his gospel with verse 8. This third possibility is becoming more popular and is perhaps the most likely. Mark’s gospel is typified by a degree of secrecy and understatement. For him to conclude his gospel with a plain announcement of the fact of the resurrection (v. 7) and the resulting astonishment and fear (perhaps to be understood in the biblical sense as reverential awe) of the women would not be out of keeping with his purposes.

Recent Study

For many centuries, little attention was paid to Mark’s gospel. The early church quickly saw Matthew come to pride of place among the Gospels, with Mark considered to be a rather inferior and inconsequential extract from Matthew. It was only in the nineteenth century that Mark came into a position of prominence. The liberal school of interpretation, pioneered by scholars such as H.J. Holtzmann, found in Mark’s simplicity of style and relative paucity of theological embellishment evidence of an earlier and more factual account of the life of Jesus than was presented in the other gospels. This isolation of Mark was destroyed by the work of W. Wrede. Specifically, Wrede argued that Mark had imposed on the tradition the notion of the messianic secret. Jesus’ many commands for silence about his status in the gospel, argued Wrede, were invented by Mark in order to explain how it was that Jesus was not recognised to be the Messiah during his lifetime.

Today few hold to this notion of the messianic secret.The motif itself is more likely to reflect the actual situation in the life of Jesus than it does a later invention.But at the time, Wrede’s work was taken to indicate that Mark wrote with just as much theological interest and bias as did the other evangelists.

The dominance of the form-critical approach during most of the first half of the twentieth century resulted in little interest in Mark as a gospel as such attention was focused on the tradition before Mark. With the advent of redaction criticism in the 1950s, this changed, and the last three decades have witnessed an avalanche of studies on Mark’s theology, purposes, and community. The contributions of Willi Marxsen, Theodore Weeden, S.G.F. Brandon, and Ralph Martin have been described above. To these could be added numerous other studies, devoted either to the gospel as a whole or to specific themes within the gospel. Two themes that receive considerable attention in recent studies are Mark’s Christology and his portrait of the disciples.

The methodology of interpreting the Gospels, and Mark in particular, has also been the subject of debate. Some scholars are attempting to refine the technique of redaction criticism as it may be applied to Mark, while at least one recent study questions the fruitfulness of the whole approach for the study of Mark. In this respect we might mention two other methods that are being used in recent study of Mark. The first is sociological analysis, exhibited in Howard Clark Kee’s Community of the New Age.

Kee analyses Mark’s community, suggesting that it was moulded by an apocalyptic perspective and that Mark was seeking to redefine and encourage the community in light of God’s purposes in history. Another direction is determined by the recent interest in the application of modern literary techniques to the Gospels. These studies focus on the way in which Mark, as a narrative, is put together and how it may be understood by the contemporary reader. Mark’s significance is then often seen to lie not in what he actually says but in the deeper structures created by his ‘narrative world’. Older questions and methods continue to crop up in the recent literature as well. Notable in this respect is the series of articles by Martin Hengel, which show that Mark must be taken seriously as a historian of early Christianity and that his obvious theological interests do not force us to abandon his material as historically worthless.[69]

The Contribution of Mark

One might be tempted to mimic the early church and wonder why one should bother with Mark at all. Those who do not consider the gospel an inferior extract of Matthew and/or Luke may well find Mark’s significance to lie almost entirely in his supplying to these more verbose evangelists the basic raw material of their own gospels. On this view, Mark’s significance could be considered mainly historical: he was the first to compose a gospel, the first to set forth an account of the ministry of Jesus in this peculiar and largely unparalleled genre.

But that accomplishment in itself should not be underrated. Mark is the creator of the gospel in its literary form an interweaving of biographical and kerygmatic themes that perfectly conveys the sense of meaning of that unique figure in human history, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. Furthermore, by tying the significance of Jesus for the church so tightly to a specific series of historical occurrences in Palestine in the third decade of the first century, Mark has ensured that the church, if it is to be true to its canonical documents, never abandons the real humanity of the Christ whom it worships. By reminding Christians that their salvation depends on the death and resurrection of Christ, Mark has inextricably tied Christian faith to the reality of historical events.

Mark’s very organisation of this history makes a point in this regard. The structure of the gospel has been understood in various ways. Philip Carrington suggested that a synagogue lectionary sequence lies at the basis of its structure,

Parallels between Peter's Preaching and Mark

Acts 10

Mark

‘good news’ (v. 36)

‘the beginning of the gospel’ (1:1)

‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit’ (38)

the coming of the Spirit on Jesus (1:10)

‘beginning in Galilee’ (37)

The Galilean ministry
(1:16—8:26)

‘He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil’ (38)

Jesus’ ministry focuses on healings and exorcisms

‘we are witnesses of everything he did … Jerusalem’ (39)

in the ministry in Jerusalem
(chs. 11–14)

‘They killed him by hanging him on a tree’ (39)

Focus on the death of Christ
(ch. 15)

‘God raised him from the dead on the third day’ (40)

‘He has risen! He is not here.’ (16:6)

but this is most unlikely. Equally improbable is the complicated series of Old Testament correspondences discerned by Austin Farrer. Most think that geography plays a significant role in the gospel’s structure, and there is truth to this. But the significance of the geography lies not in some particular theological scheme of Mark’s but in the actual sequence of the ministry of Jesus. As C.H. Dodd has noted, the sequence of Mark’s gospel follows the same sequence revealed in the early church’s preaching. In the table note the parallels between the preaching of Peter in Acts 10:36–40 and the structure of Mark.

While the sequence in the table is to a considerable extent dictated by the actual course of events, Mark’s straightforward, action-oriented account preserves the sequence more clearly than do the other gospels. The kerymatic structure of Mark helps the readers of the gospel understand the basic salvation events and prepares them to recite those events in their own evangelism.

This same bare-bones narrative sequence also throws into prominence the structural divide of Caesarea Philippi. Though often differing on the structure of Mark, commentators find in this incident the hinge on which the gospel turns. The material in 1:1—8:26, with its stress on Jesus’ miracles, leads up to Peter’s divinely given insight into the true nature of the man Jesus of Nazareth. But immediately after the confession, and dominating the remainder of the gospel, is the focus on the suffering and death of Jesus. As we have noted, this combination of emphases reveals a major Christological purpose of Mark’s: Jesus is the suffering Son of God and can truly be understood only in terms of this suffering.

As we also noted above when discussing the purpose of the gospel, another central theme in Mark is discipleship. The Twelve figure very prominently in Mark and serve in general as a pattern for the disciples whom Mark addresses in his gospel. To be sure, the Twelve are not always presented as models to be emulated: their conspicuous failure, though present to some degree in the other gospels, is especially prominent in Mark. Mark portrays the disciples as hard of heart (e.g. 6:52), spiritually weak (e.g. 14:32–42), and incredibly dim-witted (e.g. 8:14–21). As Guelich puts it, Mark presents the disciples as both ‘privileged and perplexed’.[74] Perhaps in both these ways they are models for the disciples of Mark’s day and of ours: privileged to belong to the kingdom, yet perplexed about the apparent reverses suffered by that kingdom when Christians suffer. In another way Mark perhaps wants implicitly to contrast the situation of the Twelve, seeking to follow Jesus before the cross and the resurrection, with that of Christian disciples at his time of writing: the latter, however, follow Jesus with the help of the powers of the new age of salvation that has dawned.

The Identity of Jesus

‘But who do you say that I am?’ Throughout Mark’s account of the life and death of Jesus, he presents his readers with the challenge of answering this question for themselves. The gospel, from beginning to end, is about the identity of Jesus. At the opening of the gospel the author presents his account as the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. At the centre-point of the gospel, Peter’s confession at Caesarea Phillippi proclaims that ‘You are the Messiah’. And at the cross the sign and the centurion also affirm and acknowledge this same identity. Mark presents Jesus as the Messiah, the one who will come after Elijah, the one who fulfils the Old Testament prophecies, the one who will deliver his people. Jesus is the new Moses who inaugurates the new exodus, and who establishes a new covenant for the forgiveness of sins by shedding his own blood. From his own lips he forgives sinners and demonstrates power over the elements, declarations that testify to his deity. Tied up with these questions of the identity of Jesus is the death of Jesus. Of all the gospels, Mark is overwhelmed by the fact that the Messiah must suffer (a fact that Peter cannot grasp) – indeed, the majority of the text is devoted to the events of the passion. Jesus is at pains to point out that suffering and death is an intricate part of the role he must fulfil. He will die not because the authorities did not like him, but because the Messiah must suffer. In 10:45, Jesus identifies why this must be so – he must give his life as a ransom for many. His life laid down in sacrificial death will be a payment for others, alone on the cross he would be the substitute bearing the sins of many. Yet Jesus knew that the cup he was to drink was a cup of judgement, the cross would leave him forsaken by God, and willingly he submitted to his Father’s will. The staggering effect of his death would be the opening up of a way into God’s presence as the curtain in the temple was torn in two (15:38). Yet even his own disciples, initially, find this offensive; that the Son of Man must suffer is a scandal and an enigma. Jesus, however, is resolute as to the necessity of his suffering and his willingness to accomplish the Father’s plan. Before this, Jesus’ teaching, miracles and parables have provoked a reaction. The demons recognise his authority and want to flee from him. The authorities realise eventually that some of the parables are told against them (12:1–12). Ultimately, the lack of understanding by some is an indication that the parables have brought judgement. Those who have ears to hear do so, those who do not (and they are the ones who should have done) judge themselves.

Studying Mark

There is of course much more to the background and content of Mark than this short booklet could include. In many ways the gospel is multi-layered. Although John’s gospel is often viewed as a pool of water in which children can paddle but elephants can wade in, Mark also has a number of depths for different readership. On one level we have a biographical-type of literature that desires to present an accurate record of the words and work of Jesus. When we probe deeper we find that Mark has structured his material, in a very deliberate way, to make sure we clearly see the person of Jesus. But perhaps above all Mark wants us to understand the person of Jesus in close connection with his work, he is supremely the suffering Son of God. The good news that Mark announces at the start of his gospel is the in-breaking of the kingdom of God, the culmination of God’s plans for Israel and the extension of God’s grace to the whole world. Yet for all these levels the student of Mark can often miss the wood for the trees. Like the blind man who at first only sees men as trees walking, we can study the gospel, grasp some of the issues and main points, but never answer Jesus’ question for ourselves – who do you say that I am? How many scholars, academics and students of theology and RS achieve great proficiency in all these subjects yet evade the blunt challenge of Jesus’ question? It is a question that you the reader must be prepared to answer, and one that cannot be fended off by clinging to vague notions of so called objective and impartial study. Mark will not let us get off the hook so easily. It seems that Mark wrote to early Christians who, because of their answer to this question, were prepared to go the way of the Messiah. They were to suffer, and even to die, taking up their own cross as Jesus had said, because they understood for themselves who this Jesus was and why he came. This radical call to follow Jesus remains, the cost is not optional. Even in the 21st century whether those who leave everything to become disciples of Jesus risk their lives in doing so will depend on which part of the globe they live in. In the academic world to confess that Jesus is the Son of God will be done at the cost of being thought of as intolerant, obscurantist and intrusive. After all, the academy says, studying Mark is about arriving at an impartial understanding of the text and its problems. What would the author of the gospel say to this? The Jewish authorities were those who should have heard and understood, and yet they were cast out of the vineyard for their reaction to the master’s son. In the modern world the academics and the theologians may well be expected to hear and understand, but how many do? Can we say that we have truly read and understood Mark’s gospel if we have not answered Jesus’ question? To confess that Jesus is the Son of God, if we listen to his teaching, is not only to make a truth claim about him but also to identify with him. Will you then take up your cross and follow him, denying yourself, and being unashamed of him and his words? To those who count the trappings and trophies of this life of greater value than becoming a disciple he plaintively asks ‘what good is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?’.