Survey of The Life and Teachings of Jesus

© L.D. Underwood 2010

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.