Survey of The Life and Teachings of Jesus

© L.D. Underwood 2010

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.