Changes

Now we will look at Mark’s gospel. Again, we will take some of these same issues looking at both external and internal evidence with regard to the authorship of Mark’s gospel. Again, we can say that external evidence favors Mark as the author we have references in one of the bishops of Asia, who was the first witness to have stress on Mark’s authorship. We have Irenaeus, you have Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Jerome, Eusebius many of these early leaders of the church. Various canons that were established, various manuscripts that contain that title it’s the Gospel according to Mark.

The internal evidence is a bit scanty, that is we don’t have a lot of things about authorship within the book itself no direct statements certainly within the book, but whatever internal evidences we have is certainly in harmony with what we have from external sources.

We do have for example a reference to a young man who fled from the scene of the arrest of Jesus. That seems to fit the description of the NT of the way John Mark was like. And only Mark makes reference to him. We have a detailed description for example of the upper room where the last supper was eaten, and that may be an indication that last supper held in the home of Mark’s mother. Therefore, he would know first-hand what had taken place being in that home.

There is no question that the author was familiar with Palestine and with Jerusalem in particular. We know that he knew Aramaic; that he was conversant with Jewish institutions and Jewish customs and certainly it had to be a first-hand observer a personal observer, perhaps and apostle to write some of the detailed accounts we have in this gospel, and of course Mark himself was not an apostle but he was a servant or an assistant of the apostle Peter. So, Mark’s style even of writing seems to reflect the character and personality of the apostle Peter the same Peter, the same forthright intense impulsive energetic activity in Mark’s narrative, as there was in Peter’s nature.

~~Now it~~ [**] It is interesting that the Gospel of Mark begins where Peter enters the account as a disciple. ~~And~~ Mark mentions Peter something like twenty-five times in his gospel. And four of those times are peculiar just to Mark. So, he has the majority of references to Peter, and interestingly most of those references to Peter are in terms of disgrace or rebuke.

Now I once made a statement some years ago that Mark’s gospel follows the same general pattern or outline as you have in Peter’s sermon that you have recorded in Acts Chapter 10—his sermon that he preached at the house of Cornelius, Acts 10:34ff. And if you would look at that sermon, you would see it as an outline of what you have in the Gospel of Mark. And somewhere in my workbook, on page 125, I have a reproduction of what a student did to prove that that was the case by outlining the sermon from Acts 10 on the one side, and showing the detailed contents of Mark on the other side with some pictures and the like and we’ve simply reproduced that to show you that basically what Mark writes in his gospel is an outline of what Peter preached in Acts 10 at the house of Cornelius. We know that Peter even refers to Mark as his, “Son in the faith.” Either Mark was a convert of Peter, or at least he was greatly influenced by Peter.

We should note that this book of Mark has had a very checkered history. That is the book of Mark was immediately received with enthusiasm when it was first published. And the first Christian reaction to Mark’s gospel was quite enthusiastic, it was accepted, it was acknowledged as being authoritative, it was a witness to the life of Jesus, it was used perhaps by the other synoptic writers. But after a period of time, it seemed to become less popular. That is we don’t have any commentary written on the gospel of Mark that we know of before the fifth century, by Victor of Antioch. Ao, in a period of time, the book began to be neglected. The feeling was, that everything in Mark was also found in amplified fashion in Matthew or Luke, so why bother with Mark. And besides Mark is not as stylistically interesting as Matthew or Luke or John. Thus, if Mark is just a condensed account of Matthew, if he was the one who followed Matthew’s footsteps and shortened his gospel, then why pay much attention to Mark?

It is interesting though that within the last 50 or 60 years or so, that Mark has come once again back into prominence, there has been a resurgence of interest in this particular gospel, because of the critical work that has been done in showing perhaps it may be if not the earliest at least one of the early gospel accounts. It was quite popular originally it degenerated as far as interest was concerned it, and now it has a resurgence once again back into prominence.

:<font face-"TimesNewRoman" color="blue">B: Being the first of the gospels, his handling of the 'mystery' is rather immature. The others add a richness tot he understanding as they became more proficient in handling it. It might be suggested that the resurgence of interest is among those who cannot handle the mystery themselves, and find the alleged discrepancies easy fodder to disparage the authenticity and reliability of the Bible record. When it is used to discern the differences between later mature understandings, we can see the progress of the OT studies in teh church as they unpacked more of the mystery. </font>

~~Well, let’s~~ Let’s come back then to the author again we say that the external evidence, internal evidence agrees that John Mark was the author what do we know about this man Mark? Well, we know that his name occurs something like ten times in the NT and his full name is John Mark. John being his Jewish forename, and Mark or Marcus being his Latin sir name. His father is not mentioned in the Bible but his mother was named Mary and apparently, she was a well-to-do widow a—women of some considerable means, quite wealthy who lived in Jerusalem, and whose house in Jerusalem seems to have been the place of rendezvous for many of the early church people. They must have had singspirations at her house or something but a place where many of the Christians assembled together in Jerusalem.

~~Now~~ John himself, John Mark was either a cousin of Barnabas or else a nephew of Barnabas, depending on whether we take the Revised Standard Version (RSV) or the King James Version (KJV). The RSV says he was a cousin of Barnabas, and the KJV says he was a nephew of Barnabas. But at least he was related to Barnabas and also the spiritual son of the apostle Peter. We know that John Mark at least accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey described in the book of Acts. When they reached a particular city called Perga in Pamphylia, all of a sudden John Mark’s courage failed and he became a quitter and went home to mamma. This is recorded in Acts 13. We don’t know exactly why, it may be that the conditions were much rougher by this time, they had gone first to Cyprus where they had relatives and friends and a good reception. Now they were in a portion of Turkey and there was a lot more resistance, and there was the unknown Terrain; people that were not familiar; mosquitoes in that area; the fact that Paul was tending to have predominance over his relative Barnabas sort of being a charismatic leader we know and sort of taking over, and that might have ruffled Mark’s feathers the wrong way. :<font face-"TimesNewRoman" color="blue">B:This also explains why so many of Peter's frailties are exposed. </font>

So, for whatever reason, he went home; and because of that defection, Paul and Barnabas had to part company when they decided to go on the second missionary journey because Barnabas wanted to take John along and give him another try at it. Paul didn’t want that to happen and so as a result, Paul and Barnabas parted company, and Paul chose Silas to go with him on that second missionary journey and Barnabas took his relative John Mark with him, and once again they went to Cyprus for some ministry.

And as we look through Mark’s gospel, it is very interesting the description is not didactic, it is not scholarly and systematic like we have in Matthew rather, Mark’s description is intended to catch public attention. It is as if he were a street-meeting preacher. If we are going to do preaching out on the streets, we want to find some way to hold our audience and we are not going to have some long logical discourse that you give them, because you will lose them. We got to tell illustrations and stories and keep their attention that way and if we read through the Gospel of Mark, we will find about twenty-three times, Mark describes something of how people responded to Jesus. Positively and negatively. Even it even indicates the gestures of Jesus and so it is if he is saying, “Here Jesus is, see him for yourself. Does your judgment coincide with that of his enemies, or that of his friends? You make the choice.”

~~Now basically~~ Basically this gospel is chronological, that is starting at the beginning, and ending at the end. But it is not divided up into topical sections like we saw Matthew to have, the best way to analyze the Gospel of Mark is to look at each of its paragraphs. Each paragraph, if you want the fancy word, pericope that we looked at the other day, but each paragraph is a unit of thought and presents an individual picture of Jesus. What Mark does is to rely upon the cumulative effect of these pictures for his interpretation of Jesus, not developing a theme, not giving argumentation, but just picture after picture after picture and cumulatively you get the total seen of what Jesus is like.

Some consider his style of writing unique to these Gospel writers. Some might define him as an abbreviationist rather than being a protractionist. That is to say, he doesn’t just string things out on a long argumentation, but he is right to the point. His words are stripped of any kind of excess verbiage, he is brief, and blunt. He is pertinent and pithy; he is short and sweet; he is curt and clear cut. In fact, he has been described as high-pressure head-long and homiletical in style. He short of uses the “shock method” and he gives us these succinct little snap shot albums with candid camera shots not a carefully prepared portrait like we are going to get from John for example. But just like a series of slides that are impressionistic and have that staccato jerk to them, he just gallops at breathless speed—and he is noted for his rapidity of action it has been called the gospel of action and adventure and accomplishment.

Just for an idea of diction denoting immediacy, there are forty-two references to the word that means “immediately” or “straightway.” More than all the rest of the New Testament put together Mark is a high gear. He hurries the reader from one episode to another, like a tour leader would do with sight-seers. --"You have 10 ten minutes to take your picture ~~there~~ then and back on the bus "--and at the end he Mark leaves his readers receptive, but quite breathless.

Just to have idea, in the book of Mark there are about 1,331 ‘and’s. ~~Now if~~ If someone wrote a term paper and said, this happened and this happened, and this happened your English teacher would say that is pretty poor style. But there is something about having all those 'and's which makes it so the reader can’t put the book down--this happened, and this happened, and this happened and it just keeps going until the end and that is the way Mark is. It conveys action.

There is a also the notion of a problem with the correct ending of the Gospel account of Mark. There is a problem that some have with the beginning of the book of Mark because it starts so abruptly, but a more significant problem is the ending of this particular gospel. And the manuscripts show three different possible endings. There would either be a short, very abrupt ending which would come at the end of verse 8 of that sixteenth chapter. Now that would certainly make it end abruptly just as it began abruptly. Although it would leave the disciples trembling in fear which seems like rather a strange place to end the gospel or good news. But this ending is supported by some of the better manuscripts that we have dating from the fourth century.

Then there are other intermediate endings that is different stopping points that are not really taken up by too many quite seriously, for example there is a footnote in the bottom the of Revised Standard Version that says, after verse 8 some manuscripts add the sentence, “But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him all that they had been told and after this Jesus himself sent out by means of them from East to West, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.” Some stop it after verse 8, but before we reach the end of the chapter, or they add those additional two sentences after verse 8.

But everything we find there is duplicated elsewhere in the gospel accounts where there is no question of authenticity. There are going to come times when people in church will find that these verses are in a footnote, or may not even exist in their version of the Bible and they are going to say, “How can you preach with authority from verse 14” Lets say, “if he actually stopped at verse 8?” And all we are saying is that those last verses have a difference of style, they are not in some of the best manuscripts which may have any number possible explanations as to whether Mark himself wrote it or whether somebody close to him reproduced it or whatever. But everything there, as far as content is concerned is certainly in harmony with what we find elsewhere in scripture. And so it is not a major problem, but I think if we want to stress those points, if we go to the best possible scriptures to use, where there is no question, because there are liable to be people who will wonder if we can really say that with authority if there is that much question about the text’s authenticity.

The teaching of the NT authors is not a new teaching. It is a commentary on the old teaching. Consider Paul, he was taught by Jesus, but when he taught the Bereans, he did not rely on an authority given him by Jesus. He did not say , Trust me... Jesus really told me this." He taught them from the OT and they validated his teachings.

SLTJ:Ch 5