Book of Mark
The Gospel according to St. Mark, the shortest of the four Gospels, tells the story of Jesus as the Son of God who serves and suffers, and the Church has received it from the earliest witnesses as the preaching of St. Peter set down in writing by his follower St. Mark.
For Inquirers
Most people expect a story about Jesus to begin with a stable and a star. The Gospel of Mark begins in a desert, with a wild-looking man in camel's hair preaching to the crowds along the river, and within a few lines Jesus walks out of the water and the heavens part above Him. "Gospel" means "good news," and Mark tells it at a run. In the English text this book is read in here, the word "immediately" turns up more than forty times, and the effect is of someone who has seen something astonishing and cannot get the words out fast enough. There is no birth, no family tree, and no long sermon on a hillside. There is a man healing, arguing, crossing the lake in a storm, and walking steadily toward Jerusalem and a cross.[^mk-open]
Christians have always said the man who wrote it was Mark, a young follower who grew up in a Jerusalem house where the first Christians met to pray, who traveled with the apostles Paul and Barnabas, and who later served at the side of Peter. The old stories say that Mark wrote down what Peter used to preach, and the book does feel like a fisherman's memory: Jesus asleep on a cushion in the stern of a boat, Jesus looking around at hostile faces with anger and grief at once, the disciples missing the point again and again, and Peter himself coming off badly. It is the Gospel that does not smooth anything over.[^mk-peter]
The book also leaves a reader unsettled in a way the other three do not. In the oldest copies it stops at the empty tomb, with the women running away trembling, too afraid to tell anyone. Later copies carry a few more verses, and the Church reads and honors both. Thoughtful people, inside the Church and far outside it, still argue about exactly when Mark was written and whether it was the first of the four, and those arguments are worth following.[^oca-gospels][^jant-mk] But the thing a first-time reader notices is how short the distance is between the man at the river and the man at the cross, and how little the author wastes getting there.[^mk-ending-open]
Overview
- Mark is the second Gospel in the traditional order and the shortest of the four, sixteen chapters long, and it names its subject in its opening line: "The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (Mark 1.1).[^mk-web]
- The Church's tradition ascribes it to St. Mark, called John Mark in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 12.12), a companion of Paul and Barnabas and later of Peter, whom the Church also honors as the founder of the church of Alexandria. The Church numbers him among the Seventy and not the Twelve, and the text itself never names its author.[^persons][^oca-gospels][^syn-apr25]
- The oldest tradition says it records what Peter preached. Many Orthodox sources add that it may be the first Gospel written, though the Orthodox Church in America calls that "a matter of debate," and the order of the three Synoptic Gospels is not treated as a point of dogma.[^pap][^oca-gospels][^osb-mk]
- Its shape, in the outline OrthodoxWiki draws from the Orthodox Study Bible, is a preparation for the ministry (1:1–13); the Galilean ministry (1:14–6:29); a ministry beyond Galilee, among Jews and Gentiles (6:30–9:50); the journey to Jerusalem (10); and the ministry in Jerusalem, the Passion, and the Resurrection (11–16). The Jewish Annotated New Testament divides it differently, into an introduction (1:1–15), the enacting of the kingdom (1:16–8:21), passion predictions and radical social teaching (8:22–10:52), and the passion narrative (11:1–16:8). Six of its sixteen chapters are given to the last week of Jesus's life.[^mk-shape]
- Its central themes, according to the Orthodox Study Bible, are Jesus Christ as Servant and Sacrifice, the suffering Messiah, the "messianic secret" (Jesus's repeated commands to keep silent about who He is), and the costly nature of following Him (Mark 8.34; Mark 10.45).[^osb-mk]
- Among the Gospels it is the briefest, the fastest, and the earthiest. It has no infancy narrative and no Sermon on the Mount, it keeps Jesus's Aramaic words ("Talitha cumi," "Ephphatha," "Abba") alongside their translations, it shows the disciples failing to understand, and in its oldest manuscripts it ends at Mark 16.8 with the women afraid. In the Church's iconography it is symbolized by the lion, though the Fathers did not always agree on which creature belongs to which Evangelist.[^mk-voice]
Summary
Mark begins with the Good News "of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," announced in the prophets, and goes straight to John the Baptist in the wilderness, clothed in camel's hair, proclaiming a baptism of repentance and promising one mightier than himself who will baptize in the Holy Spirit. Jesus comes from Nazareth, is baptized in the Jordan, sees the heavens parting and the Spirit descending like a dove, and hears the voice, "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"; the Spirit at once drives Him into the wilderness, where for forty days He is tempted by Satan, lives among the wild animals, and is served by angels. After John is arrested, Jesus comes into Galilee proclaiming that the time is fulfilled and God's Kingdom is at hand, calls the fishermen Simon and Andrew, James and John, and begins a ministry of authority and haste: He teaches in the synagogue at Capernaum, casts out an unclean spirit, heals a leper, forgives and heals a paralytic lowered through a roof, eats with Levi and his tax collector friends, and meets a growing wall of questions about fasting and the Sabbath until the Pharisees go out and conspire with the Herodians to destroy Him. He appoints the Twelve on a mountain, is thought insane by his own family and slandered by scribes from Jerusalem, and teaches in parables, the sower, the lamp, the seed growing by itself, and the mustard seed, before stilling a storm while He sleeps in the stern, freeing the man called Legion in the country of the Gadarenes, and raising Jairus's daughter on the way to which He heals a woman with a twelve-year flow of blood. Rejected at Nazareth, where His neighbors know Him as the carpenter and the son of Mary, He sends the Twelve out two by two, while Herod, who had John beheaded for the sake of an oath and a dinner, hears of Him and is afraid. He feeds five thousand, walks to His frightened disciples across the lake at the fourth watch of the night, argues with scribes from Jerusalem about the tradition of the elders and what really defiles a person, heals the daughter of a Syrophoenician woman and a deaf man in the Decapolis, feeds four thousand, warns against the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod, and restores the sight of a blind man at Bethsaida in two stages. At Caesarea Philippi Peter answers, "You are the Christ," and Jesus begins to teach that the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and rise after three days; Peter rebukes Him and is rebuked in turn, and the crowd is told that whoever wants to follow must deny himself and take up the cross. Six days later, three disciples see Him changed on a high mountain, with Elijah and Moses and a voice from the cloud, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him," and they come down to a father who cries out, "I believe. Help my unbelief!" The second and third predictions of the Passion are met with the disciples arguing over who is greatest and with James and John asking for thrones, and Jesus answers that "the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10.45), after teaching on marriage, on children, and on the rich man who went away sorrowful. Blind Bartimaeus, who cries out to the Son of David, is the last person healed on the road to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem Jesus enters on a colt to cries of "Hosanna," curses a fig tree, drives the sellers from the temple, answers the questions of chief priests, Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, and a scribe, tells the parable of the vineyard and its murdered son, praises a poor widow's two coins, and on the Mount of Olives foretells the fall of the temple, the sufferings of the disciples, the coming of the Son of Man, and the unknown day and hour. The Passion follows with the anointing at Bethany, Judas's bargain, the Passover supper where He takes bread and the cup, Gethsemane and the prayer "Abba, Father," the arrest and the young man who runs away naked, the night trial in which He answers the high priest, "I am," and Peter's three denials and tears, then Pilate, Barabbas, the soldiers' mockery, the crucifixion between two robbers, the cry "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," the torn veil, the centurion's confession, "Truly this man was the Son of God!", and the burial by Joseph of Arimathaea. On the first day of the week, three women find the stone rolled back and a young man in white who tells them that Jesus has risen and goes before them into Galilee, and in the oldest manuscripts the book closes with their flight, silent and afraid; in the longer ending that the Church also reads, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, to two on the road, and to the Eleven, sends them to preach to the whole creation, and is received up into heaven to sit at the right hand of God while the disciples go out and preach, the Lord working with them.[^mk-summary]
Author, Source, and Intention
Mark does not introduce itself. It has no preface of the kind Luke supplies, no letter-style greeting, and no sentence in which the writer steps out from the story to say who he is or for whom he is writing. What can be known about the book's making comes from two places, which have to be read together: the witnesses of the early Church, who say a surprising amount about this Gospel in particular, and the book's own habits of language, detail, and emphasis. Mark is also unusual in that the earliest traditions about it are as much about Peter as about its author, so the question of who wrote it quickly becomes the question of whose memory it holds.
Who wrote it
The Gospel text gives no name, and the Jewish Annotated New Testament observes that the titles of the Gospels were probably added later to give them authority. The same introduction allows it to be "possible that the author is the same as the John Mark of Acts" and the Mark named in several letters of the apostles.[^jant-mk] That portrait is worth laying out, because the New Testament's Mark is no stained-glass saint. When Peter is led out of prison by an angel, he comes to "the house of Mary, the mother of John who was called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying" (Acts 12.12), which places the young man's family among the Jerusalem Christians and puts Peter at their door; the synaxarion adds that the house became a lodging for some of the Apostles.[^syn-apr25] When Barnabas and Saul return from Jerusalem they take John Mark with them (Acts 12.25), and he goes on their first journey as their attendant (Acts 13.5), but at Perga in Pamphylia "John departed from them and returned to Jerusalem" (Acts 13.13).[^persons]
The break that followed is told without softening. When Paul proposed a second journey, "Barnabas planned to take John, who was called Mark, with them also. But Paul didn't think that it was a good idea to take with them someone who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia," and "the contention grew so sharp that they separated from each other" (Acts 15.37-39).
Yet the letters of Paul's imprisonment tell the next chapter. Writing to Colossae, Paul sends greetings from "Mark the cousin of Barnabas," adding the instruction "if he comes to you, receive him" (Colossians 4.10); he lists Mark among his fellow workers in Philemon 1.24; and near the end of his life he asks Timothy, "Take Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service" (2 Timothy 4.11). Peter, closing his first letter, sends the greeting of "she who is in Babylon, chosen together with you," and of "Mark, my son" (1 Peter 5.13).[^persons] Whoever the Gospel's author was, the Church has read in these verses the figure of a man who failed, was refused, was reconciled, and ended as the trusted helper of both great apostles.
The earliest explicit statement of what Mark did for Peter in the surviving sources comes from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, whom Eusebius names beside Ignatius of Antioch, and whose five-volume work is lost and survives in quotation. Eusebius preserves Papias's own words about where he gathered his information, which he prized from "the living and abiding voice" over the written page, and then reports what Papias had from "the presbyter," an elder of the previous generation.[^eus-3-39pref] Much of what is later said about Mark builds on this passage, and it is worth reading slowly:
Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.[^pap]
Mark is no eyewitness, which is why Papias must explain where his knowledge comes from; he "followed Peter," whose teaching was shaped by the occasion, with no plan to write a continuous biography; and the evaluation that follows reads as a defense, and F. F. Bruce hears it that way (pp. 124–125): Papias speaks as though he knew of criticism of the book's order, which might be measured against Matthew's arrangement or against John's, and Bruce adds that Papias does less than justice to the literary unity of the Gospel as it stands.[^bruce-pap] The Jewish Annotated New Testament draws a different conclusion from the same passage, namely that Papias considered Mark less dependable than Matthew, because Matthew was one of the Twelve.[^jant-mk] Either reading leaves the center of the testimony untouched: Mark's material was Peter's, and Mark took care to omit nothing he had heard and to state nothing falsely.
St. Irenaeus, in his account of how the four Gospels arose, puts Mark after Matthew's Hebrew writing and while "Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel at Rome and founding the Church," and says that "after their decease Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what Peter had preached."[^iren-iii1]
Clement of Alexandria, in a tradition Eusebius records from the sixth book of his Hypotyposes, gives the occasion in more detail: Peter preached at Rome, and "those who were present, who were numerous, entreated Mark, inasmuch as he had attended him from an early period, and remembered what had been said, to write down what had been spoken."[^clem-vi14] Origen says he learned by tradition that Mark "wrote it according to the instruction of Peter, who, in his General Epistle, acknowledged him as a son."[^orig-mt]
Tertullian, answering Marcion, makes the principle explicit: what Mark published "may be affirmed to be Peter's whose interpreter Mark was," just as men usually ascribe Luke's form to Paul, "and it may well seem that the works which disciples publish belong to their masters."[^tert-iv5]
Even the earliest accounts differ over what Peter did when he found out. In one version of Clement's story, reported by Eusebius in an earlier passage, Peter was "delighted with the enthusiasm of the men" and "sanctioned the composition for reading in the Churches"; in the other, "which coming to Peter's knowledge, he neither hindered nor encouraged."[^clem-ii15][^clem-vi14]
St. Jerome, in his catalogue of illustrious men, takes the warmer line: Mark "wrote a short gospel at the request of the brethren at Rome embodying what he had heard Peter tell," and when Peter heard it "he approved it and published it to the churches to be read by his authority." Jerome identifies the "Babylon" of Peter's letter as Rome under a figure, says that Mark then carried the Gospel to Egypt, "first preaching Christ at Alexandria," and dates his death to the eighth year of Nero, with Annianus succeeding him.[^jerome-dvi] Irenaeus places the writing after the deaths of Peter and Paul, Clement during Peter's life, and Eusebius's two excerpts of Clement describe Peter's response differently; none of the witnesses stops to reconcile them. What they keep constant is the line from Peter to Mark to the book.
Preaching on Matthew, St. John Chrysostom says that Matthew wrote at the request of Jewish believers, "and Mark too, in Egypt, is said to have done this self-same thing at the entreaty of the disciples," a different place from Rome, offered as a report ("is said").[^chrys-1] Chrysostom also compares the Evangelists on Peter's denial. Mark, he notes, tells the denial and the second crowing of the cock more particularly than the others, "having learned these things of his master himself, for he was a follower of Peter," and he finds the detail remarkable for its candor:
In which respect one would most marvel at him, that so far from hiding his teacher's faults, he declared it more distinctly than the rest, on this very account, that he was his disciple.[^chrys-85]
That is an argument from internal evidence, and it fits what the book shows: the disciples' misunderstandings and Peter's rebuke (Mark 8.33) and weeping (Mark 14.72) are left plainly visible by the very writer whom tradition says had them from Peter himself.
The Orthodox Church commemorates the Apostle and Evangelist Mark on April 25, and the synaxarion entry describes him as one of the Seventy and a nephew of St. Barnabas, born in Jerusalem, where his mother's house adjoined the Garden of Gethsemane. It adds the Church's tradition that he was the young man who followed Jesus on the night of the arrest "wrapped only in a linen cloth" and fled naked when seized (Mark 14.51-52), that he went to Rome with Peter, wrote his Gospel there, and then went to Egypt, where he founded a school at Alexandria and composed a Liturgy for its Christians. It ends with his martyrdom, dragged through the streets while serving the Liturgy, and the removal of his relics to Venice.[^syn-apr25] OrthodoxWiki, drawing on the Coptic Synaxarium, tells the same outline with more incident (Anianus the cobbler, the first bishop of Alexandria) and with different dates.[^ow-apmark]
The OCA's synaxarion puts Mark's death on April 4, 63, and the removal of the relics in 820; OrthodoxWiki's life of the Apostle Mark has him arrive in Alexandria in 61, die in 68, and be carried off by Venetian sailors in 828; its article on the Church of Alexandria says he arrived "about AD 40" and died "around AD 63." Jerome's "eighth year of Nero" and Eusebius's note that Annianus held the see for twenty-two years before dying in the fourth year of Domitian give two further reference points; they are left here in the ancients' own terms.[^ow-alex][^eus-annianus]
The identity itself has not gone uncontested in the ancient lists. The list On the Apostles and Disciples, ascribed to "Pseudo-Hippolytus," names "Mark the evangelist, bishop of Alexandria," and separately "Mark, cousin to Barnabas, bishop of Apollonia," and "Mark, who is also John, bishop of Bibloupolis," three Marks where the Church's later tradition sees one.[^ps-hipp] Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, reviewing the Orthodox Study Bible's list of the Seventy, noted with some puzzlement a second Mark under other dates and observed that the Synaxarion makes clear he is the same Mark the Evangelist.[^lash] Hagiography is not uniform on details of this kind, and the Gospel's reception does not depend on their being settled.
OrthodoxWiki's article on the Gospel states that Mark "was one of the 12 disciples," while the OCA states the opposite in plain words, that "Its author was not one of the twelve apostles," and the witnesses above agree with the OCA: Papias says Mark neither heard nor followed the Lord, and Irenaeus, Clement, and Jerome call him Peter's disciple or companion.[^ow-mk][^oca-gospels] The error is a reason to check the guide articles against the older witnesses before trusting them.
What lies behind it
If Papias, Clement, and Irenaeus are right, the Gospel begins as the oral preaching of an eyewitness. The Church's earliest message was spoken before it was written, and Paul's summary of what he "delivered… first of all," that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures," was something he himself had "received" (1 Corinthians 15.3-4).[^cor15] Luke, who states his method at the outset, speaks of those "who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word" (Luke 1.2).[^luke1] The Mark of tradition stands in a particular relation to that chain. He did not hear the Lord himself, but on the tradition's account he heard Peter often, and the vivid, episodic quality that the Jewish Annotated New Testament calls "arresting narrative realism" is at least consistent with such a source.[^mk-voice]
In the Gospel Peter, James, John, and Andrew ask Jesus privately about the end (Mark 13.3); Peter is the one who "remembering" says, "Rabbi, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered away" (Mark 11.21); and the angel at the tomb says, "tell his disciples and Peter" (Mark 16.7). Chrysostom, as we have seen, drew from the frankness of the Peter scenes the conclusion that the author had them from Peter. Bruce, writing from outside the Orthodox tradition, allows that the tradition of Peter's preaching behind Mark's record may rest on fact, while observing that the book itself appeals neither to Peter's authority nor to divine inspiration (p. 265).[^bruce-cano] The evidence is suggestive without being conclusive.
St. Justin Martyr, arguing with the Jew Trypho, says that in "the memoirs of Him" Jesus changed the name of one apostle to Peter and "changed the names of other two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means sons of thunder." The detail about the Sons of Thunder appears in the New Testament only in Mark (Mark 3.17), and Bruce notes (p. 126) that Justin's "memoirs" of Peter may be the Gospel of Mark.[^justin-106][^bruce-just] The question is left open by the translation (Justin's pronoun reads "Him") and by Bruce's own hedge, but the verbal trace is there, and it hints that the Gospel was early known as Peter's.
The Gospel also shows signs of having been written in Greek for readers who needed some Jewish background explained. Mark preserves Jesus's Aramaic and translates it for his readers ("Talitha cumi," "Girl, I tell you, get up!" in Mark 5.41; "Ephphatha," "Be opened!" in Mark 7.34; the cry "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" in Mark 15.34) and he explains Jewish practice parenthetically, "(For the Pharisees and all the Jews don't eat unless they wash their hands…)" (Mark 7.3-4).
The Jewish Annotated New Testament reads that need to explain as an indication that the audience was largely Gentile, though it cautions elsewhere that the "Gentile focus" of Mark is "not as certain as it was once held to be."[^jant-7][^jant-mk] The Orthodox Church in America states that the Gospels come down in Greek, the language in which they were written, except possibly Matthew.[^oca-gospels]
Did Mark have written sources? The Jewish Annotated New Testament thinks it probable that he used "a passion tradition… stories of healing and conflict, parables, and other teachings," and that he drew on a stock of favorite scriptural passages, from Daniel, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, Zechariah, and the Psalms, "known from collections of favorite passages ('testimonia') or from oral tradition."[^jant-mk]
The opening verses show the habit at work. Mark introduces a quotation as from Isaiah that actually begins with Malachi (Mark 1.2-3); the Jewish Annotated New Testament says that Matthew and Luke "correct this misattribution," and Fr. John Behr, who is interested in the passage for another reason, remarks that "the very 'beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ' in Mark is illustrated by the citation of a passage from Isaiah," and he sets Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3 beside Mark's verses.[^jant-1][^behr-55] Origen, in what he calls one interpretation, goes further: since Mark begins his Gospel with John the Baptist, John represents the end of the Old Testament, and "the beginning of the Gospel — for in respect of its extent it has a beginning, a continuation, a middle, and an end — is nothing but the whole Old Testament."[^orig-jn14]
Augustine, who put Matthew first, thought Mark "follows him closely, and looks like his attendant and epitomizer," and he found a reason for the arrangement in the Lord's kingly and priestly character: Matthew and Mark attend the King, while Luke, who treats of the priest, "had no one connected with him to act as his summarist" because "it was the priest's want to enter all alone into the holy of holies."[^aug-hg2][^aug-hg3]
The Jewish Annotated New Testament reports the opposite view, that Mark "was likely one of the sources for Matthew and Luke," and OrthodoxWiki calls the priority of Mark the dominant view.[^jant-mk][^ow-gospels] Papias's complaint about order and Eusebius's note that John supplied the early deeds of Christ that "the three evangelists" left out, with Eusebius quoting Mark's "Now after that John was delivered up" (in the older rendering he is given, Mark 1.14) as the point where Mark's account begins, show the early Church already asking how the four relate.[^eus-3-24]
Why it was written
Where the Gospel was meant to be heard, the tradition answers Rome, with Clement's hearers, Jerome's "brethren at Rome," and Irenaeus's "preaching the gospel at Rome" in agreement. The Orthodox Study Bible says that, according to some Church Fathers, Mark wrote for the church of Rome, which "either was experiencing the great persecution by Nero (beginning in AD 64) or was caught up in the apocalyptic fervor occasioned by the Jewish war," and it explains the book's purpose accordingly: Mark tells the story of Jesus "so his readers may see their own suffering as a prelude to the glorious Second Coming of Jesus and may discern the reward of those who endure to the end."[^osb-mk] The Gospel gives that purpose a voice in the Mount of Olives discourse, where Jesus tells four disciples that they will be handed over to councils and beaten in synagogues and "hated by all men for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved" (Mark 13.13).[^mk-web] A persecuted church needs to hear that its Lord went first.
The date follows from the setting. The Orthodox Study Bible reasons that "because of its connection with Rome and its lack of any clear reference to the destruction of Jerusalem," the Gospel may be dated shortly before AD 70, and the OCA's synaxarion puts its writing at about 62–63.[^osb-mk][^syn-apr25] The Jewish Annotated New Testament lands in a near but different place, between 64 and 72, "during the events of the horrific Jewish War," reading Mark 13.2 and the wars and refugees of the chapter as possibly reflecting those events though "the descriptions are vague." It prefers a setting in the region of Antioch to Rome, while granting that "cogent arguments" have been made for Rome and for Galilee.[^jant-mk] Place and date therefore remain uncertain, and the tradition's Rome is the best-attested answer without being the only one.
What did Mark want his readers to see? The Orthodox Study Bible states it in a phrase, "Jesus Christ as Servant and Sacrifice," and develops three sub-themes. The first is the suffering Messiah: Jesus "acts with power and authority" and is yet the one who has come "to serve and give His life for many," so that Mark places the confession of Peter (Mark 8.29) at the midpoint of his sixteen chapters and immediately follows it with the prediction of rejection and death (Mark 8.31). The second is the secret: He commanded demons, the people He healed, and the disciples to keep silent about His messiahship until He revealed it before the Sanhedrin (Mark 14.62). The third is discipleship, in which "true disciples take up their crosses and suffer with Jesus" (Mark 8.34-38).[^osb-mk] Fr. John McGuckin remarks that in Mark the Passion "casts its shadow over the entire narrative," and that about twenty percent of the whole story of the life of Jesus is given to his last week.[^mcg-30]
Mark has Jesus warn the healed leper, "See that you say nothing to anybody" (Mark 1.44), forbid the unclean spirits to make Him known (Mark 1.34; Mark 3.11-12), and tell the three after the Transfiguration to say nothing "until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead" (Mark 9.9). Chrysostom, commenting on the same commands in Matthew, gives two pastoral reasons. The leper was told to speak to no one "teaching us to avoid boasting and vainglory," and the later command, after Peter's confession, was so that, "when the things which offend are taken out of the way, and the cross is accomplished," the right opinion of Christ might be "engraven pure and immovable in the mind of the hearers."[^chrys-25-54]
The Jewish Annotated New Testament observes that some Jewish texts of the period expected the Messiah's identity to be hidden until the end, and that in 1901 William Wrede proposed that the secrecy was Mark's own device to explain why more people had not embraced Jesus; it concedes that "it is still not clear what it would have communicated to the first audience."[^jant-secret] The Orthodox Study Bible's explanation, that Jesus veiled His identity until He unveiled it Himself before the Sanhedrin, finds its support in Mark 14.61-62, where the high priest asks whether He is the Christ and He answers, "I am."
A commentary on the Apocalypse assigns the lion to Mark, for "in whom is heard the voice of the lion roaring in the desert," pointing to his opening quotation of "the voice of one crying in the wilderness."[^apoc-lion]
St. Augustine, who disliked assigning the creatures by the beginnings of the books, preferred the lion for Matthew, the king, the calf for Luke, the priest, and the man for Mark, who "handles the things which the man Christ did."[^aug-hg6] The Orthodox Church's iconographic tradition settled on the lion for Mark, and the OCA notes that the "most classical interpretation" connects Mark with the lion.[^oca-gospels] The synaxarion explains the choice as signifying "the might and royal dignity of Christ" and says that Mark wrote "for Gentile Christians, emphasizing the words and deeds of the Savior which reveal His divine Power."[^syn-apr25] Augustine argued that his own assignment was the more reasonable one and faulted the rival schemes for keeping in view only the beginnings of the books, so the choice was no idle one for him; but the different assignments show how many aspects of the book (its roaring opening, its human detail, its royal power) a single reader could see.
Augustine saw the second and third Gospels as two sons held between the arms of the first and last: "the remaining two… were supported on either side by the same, like sons who were to be embraced, and who in this way were set in the midst between these two."[^aug-hg2] The canonical lists that name the four Gospels, among them Athanasius's thirty-ninth Festal Letter and the sixtieth canon of the Council of Laodicea, give the same order, and Jerome's preface places the Gospels "in the following order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John."[^canon-lists][^jerome-pref] Augustine takes the order to be the order of writing, Matthew first and Mark second, while the OCA treats the relative order of the Synoptics as an open debate.[^aug-hg2][^oca-gospels] Chrysostom draws a different lesson from the number four: if four write "not at the same times, nor in the same places, neither after having met together," and yet speak "out of one mouth, this becomes a very great demonstration of the truth."[^chrys-1b]
Manuscripts and the text
The Gospel comes to us through copies, and the oldest witnesses to the Greek New Testament are the great codices of the fourth and fifth centuries: OrthodoxWiki dates Codex Sinaiticus to between 330 and 350, describes Codex Vaticanus as slightly older, and Codex Alexandrinus as a fifth-century Bible containing the Septuagint and the New Testament, though those articles say nothing specific about Mark.[^ow-codices] Textual critics sort the later witnesses into families: an Alexandrian type (second to fourth centuries) that includes Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and underlies most modern translations; a Western type (third to ninth centuries); and a Byzantine type (fifth to sixteenth centuries) that supplied Erasmus's textus receptus and makes up about ninety-five percent of manuscripts, with modern critical editions (Westcott–Hort, Nestle–Aland) aiming to reconstruct the original text.[^course-textcrit]
The apparatus of the Jewish Annotated New Testament (the notes of the New Revised Standard Version) records a number of notable variants in Mark, and the first is in the very first line. In Mark 1.1 "the Son of God" is marked as lacking in other ancient authorities, and in Mark 1.2 the apparatus offers "in the prophets" as the alternative to "in the prophet Isaiah." The World English Bible used throughout this entry prints both "the Son of God" and "in the prophets," while Origen, expounding the opening verse, quotes it as "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet."[^mk-var1][^orig-jn14] The extracts the Catena Aurea preserves on the Isaiah difficulty (see below) argue from the Evangelist's own habit of quotation.[^cat-1]
Where Mark 1.41 has Jesus "moved with compassion" in the World English Bible, the apparatus records that other ancient authorities read "anger," a reading that matches the Gospel's willingness to show Jesus looking at His opponents "with anger" and grief (Mark 3.5).[^mk-var1]
A second variant touches the Lord's trade. In Mark 6.3 the people of Nazareth ask, "Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" in the World English Bible, but the apparatus notes that other ancient authorities read "son of the carpenter and of Mary," the form that matches Matthew 13.55. Origen's answer to the pagan Celsus bears on which reading he knew. Celsus mocked a teacher who was nailed to a cross "or because he was a carpenter by trade," and Origen replied that Celsus was "blind also to this, that in none of the Gospels current in the Churches is Jesus Himself ever described as being a carpenter."[^cc-vi36][^mk-var1] Origen's reply suggests that the copies of Mark he knew did not have the reading our English text prints.
Other variants are additions. The apparatus records that other ancient authorities add the verse "Let anyone with ears to hear listen" at Mark 7.16; "and fasting" at Mark 9.29; that verses 44 and 46 of chapter 9 (identical with verse 48) "are lacking in the best ancient authorities"; and that verses Mark 11.26 and Mark 15.28 are added in others. The World English Bible and the text of the Orthodox Study Bible print all of these, The Orthodox Study Bible's New Testament is the New King James Version, and the Byzantine texts predominate and are "ongoing in the church."[^mk-var2][^ow-osb][^course-textcrit] The Fathers' practice was already to compare. Jerome, revising the Latin Gospels for Pope Damasus, observed that "there are almost as many forms of texts as there are copies," traced much of it to "copyists more asleep than awake," and resolved to use only early Greek manuscripts.[^jerome-pref]
The Orthodox Study Bible states the question of the ending with unusual directness: "The earliest manuscripts of Mark end abruptly at 16:8. Later manuscripts provide additional material (16:9–20), included in this and other versions, which the Church recognizes as inspired."[^osb-mk] The Jewish Annotated New Testament prints three possibilities: the book ending at 16:8, a "shorter ending" ("And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter…"), and the traditional longer ending, adding in a note that some authorities insert after verse 14 a further passage in which the disciples blame Satan's age of lawlessness.[^jant-end] OrthodoxWiki reports that almost all contemporary New Testament textual critics have concluded that neither the longer nor the shorter ending was originally part of Mark, and that the Byzantine Majority text has twelve more verses; it also prints the NKJV footnote, from "a much respected version in Orthodox circles," saying that verses 9–20 are bracketed as not original, lacking in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, "although nearly all other manuscripts of Mark contain them."[^ow-mk16][^ow-mk]
The longer ending also has early witnesses, and they bear on when it was in use and not on who wrote it. Tatian's Diatessaron, composed about AD 175, weaves the longer ending into its single narrative: the English translation, made from the Arabic form, marks Mark 16:9–11 and 13 in its account of the resurrection morning and 16:14, 16–18 and 20 in its closing scene, which ends with the disciples preaching everywhere while "our Lord helped them, and confirmed their sayings by the signs which they did."[^diat] The Apostolic Constitutions, without naming Mark, give the signs of Mark 16.17-18 as words the Lord spoke to the apostles ("they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall by no means hurt them") and explain that "these gifts were first bestowed on us the apostles when we were about to preach the Gospel to every creature."[^ac-viii] St. Ambrose, arguing that the Son of God is not a created being, appeals to the Lord's command "Go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to all creation" (Mark 16.15): "He Who says all creation excepts nothing."[^ambrose] And Aquinas's Catena Aurea gathers the earlier commentators on the chapter, including Augustine's harmonization of Mark's appearances at the tomb and in the country with those in Luke and John, in which Augustine treats the verses as Mark's own words.[^cat-16] OrthodoxWiki adds that Irenaeus, writing in 177, quotes Mark 16:19.[^ow-mk16]
Translations
Latin versions of the Scriptures were in use as early as the second century, as OrthodoxWiki's article on the Vulgate says, with references to them in Tertullian and Cyprian, though they were thought crude and provincial.[^ow-vulgate] Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome in 382 to produce a standard text from the Greek, and Jerome began with the Gospels, arranged "in the following order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John," revised against early Greek manuscripts; that revision became the Vulgate, whose Clementine edition of 1592 remained the Roman Church's official text until 1979.[^ow-vulgate][^jerome-pref]
In the East, Syriac-speaking churches long read the Gospels in Tatian's Diatessaron, which, as Bruce reports (pp. 126–128), remained the preferred edition in many of them for over two hundred years, until pressure from bishops in the early fifth century brought the four separate Gospels of the Peshitta; Ephrem the Syrian's commentary on the Diatessaron survives.[^bruce-diat] OrthodoxWiki credits Rabbula of Edessa with the Syriac New Testament known as the Peshitta, and observes that the translation of the Bible opened the golden age of the Syriac language.[^ow-rabbula] Because the Diatessaron (about AD 175) is the earliest witness to the longer ending that this entry cites, the ending's presence in this early Syriac-speaking world has a bearing on the textual question above, though the text cited is the Arabic form.
For Mark in particular, Egypt is a natural place to look, since the tradition places him there. OrthodoxWiki's article on the Copts says that, after Mark's arrival in Alexandria, the church spread among native Egyptians and that "in the second century… scriptures were translated into the local language, namely Coptic," and the Copts preserve Coptic as their liturgical language.[^ow-coptic] The Church of Alexandria, whose founding the tradition ascribes to Mark, thus saw Scripture translated into the local language in the second century.
Elsewhere, Wulfila made the first translation of the Bible from Greek into Gothic, of which fragments survive in the Codex Argenteus at Uppsala, and in the ninth century Saints Cyril and Methodius devised an alphabet in order to translate the Scriptures and the services into what is now called Old Church Slavonic.[^ow-ulfilas][^ow-cm] English translation of the Gospels begins early; the early English translations include the Wessex Gospels (about 990), Wycliffe (1382), Coverdale (1538), and the Authorised Version (1611), and list the later translations: the Douay-Rheims, the New King James Version used in the Orthodox Study Bible, the Revised Version, the American Standard Version, the Revised Standard Version and New Revised Standard Version (the basis of the Jewish Annotated New Testament), and the many dynamic-equivalence versions and paraphrases.[^course-english][^ow-osb] Translations differ both in their philosophy (formal correspondence, dynamic equivalence, or paraphrase) and in the manuscript tradition they follow, and the ending of Mark shows it plainly, where a modern reader's Bible may print the last twelve verses in brackets, in a note, or as a plain part of the text. The Scripture quoted throughout this entry is the public-domain World English Bible.
Controversy and Contestation
Papias's account of Mark reads as a reply to a complaint, and Bruce hears him answering criticism of the Gospel's order (pp. 124–125). Papias says that Mark, careful "not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely," committed no error in writing as he remembered, and Tertullian argues that what disciples publish belongs to their masters.[^pap][^tert-iv5] Critics of the tradition nevertheless have material of their own. Bruce notes that Papias's account of Mark came from the elder, while it is not clear that his account of Matthew came from such an authority, but he also notes that the tradition may rest on fact while the book itself makes no appeal to Peter.[^bruce-pap][^bruce-cano] The Jewish Annotated New Testament holds that the titles were added later and that the question of whether the author is the New Testament's John Mark is a possibility only.[^jant-mk] There is also a literary question: the Gospel is no raw transcript of sermons, and Bruce says that whatever Mark's sources were, he wove them into his work with the skill of an independent author (p. 125).[^bruce-pap] The tradition claims only that Peter is the source, not that Mark had no art, so this observation does not by itself contradict it.
In the tradition, Rome and Egypt appear as the place of writing; Irenaeus puts the writing after Peter's departure, Clement during his life; Peter approves, or does neither; there is one Mark, or there are three; Mark dies in 63, or 68, or in "the eighth year of Nero."[^jerome-dvi][^chrys-1][^clem-vi14][^iren-iii1][^ps-hipp][^ow-alex][^ow-apmark] The sources do not hide these differences, and what they share is the core: a man named Mark, associated with Peter, wrote this Gospel. The Muratorian Fragment, the earliest list of New Testament books, is of limited help, because its text begins in the middle of what is generally taken to be the notice of Mark, with the words "…at which nevertheless he was present, and so he placed [them in his narrative]," which a translator's note suggests may mean that Mark arranged his material in the order given by Peter, a participant in the events.[^mur]
The question of which Gospel came first is a dispute within the Church as well as outside it. For Augustine, Matthew was first and Mark his "attendant and epitomizer." The Orthodox Study Bible, OrthodoxWiki, and the OCA lean the other way: OrthodoxWiki calls Mark "chronologically the first Gospel written," the Study Bible notes that "many believe" it was first, and the OCA calls it "perhaps the first written… although this is a matter of debate."[^aug-hg2][^osb-mk][^ow-mk][^oca-gospels]
The Jewish Annotated New Testament reports the modern view with a note on the stakes: for most of Christian history Mark was regarded as less authoritative than Matthew, but when its "lack of literary artifice" came to be seen as a virtue, scholars decided Mark was prior and "therefore preserved more faithfully the words and deeds of Jesus," a view that, it says, "made it easier to downplay the Jewish practices of Jesus, which are more prominently discussed in Matthew."[^jant-mk] A quieter criticism of Augustine's position holds that where Mark and Matthew tell the same story Mark is usually the longer, which does not look like abbreviation.[^lecture] The OCA calls the question a matter of debate, nothing else cited here makes the order a matter of dogma, and Augustine's own concern, even as he calls Mark an epitomizer, is to show that the Evangelists wrote in knowledge of one another and each by inspiration.[^aug-hg2]
The Gospel's own first sentence about Scripture has drawn a charge of error. Mark writes that the words about the messenger are "in the prophet Isaiah" though the first half is from Malachi. The Jewish Annotated New Testament notes that Matthew and Luke "correct this misattribution" by cutting the opening words that come from Malachi. Aquinas's Catena Aurea preserves the ancient discussion. Jerome says plainly, "this is not written in Isaiah, but in Malachi, the last of the twelve prophets." A Greek commentator replies that it may be a mistake of the writer, or else that the Evangelist compressed into one quotation two prophecies delivered in different places by two prophets; and Bede suggests either that the sense is found in Isaiah or that the name of one prophet came to Mark's mind in place of another, which the Holy Spirit allowed because what the prophets speak belongs to all of them alike.[^cat-1][^jant-1] The Catena's own preface warns that many passages it assigns to Chrysostom are not found in his works and that those assigned to Jerome come from a work that is "universally pronounced to be spurious," so these are best taken as the medieval Church's compilation of patristic opinion, with the individual attributions unverified.[^cat-pref] The textual variant "in the prophets" at 1:2, which the World English Bible prints, is the form in which the difficulty disappears from the text.[^mk-var1]
Mark's account of David and the showbread has drawn a similar charge. Jesus says that David entered the house of God "at the time of Abiathar the high priest" (Mark 2.26), whereas the Old Testament story names the priest as Ahimelech. The Jewish Annotated New Testament states that "Mark does not accurately follow the biblical text, 1 Sam 21.1–6," that David acts alone in 1 Samuel, and "the priest is Ahimelech, not Abiathar."[^jant-abiathar] Chrysostom, commenting on Matthew's version, turns to Mark's in an aside that shows how the problem was met: "But Mark says, In the days of Abiathar the High Priest: not stating what was contrary to the history, but implying that he had two names."[^chrys-39] The answer is a harmonization, and critics will not count it as proof.
Behr, an Orthodox scholar, is candid that the Gospels contain "irresolvable discrepancies," and among his small examples is whether the cock crowed once (as in Matthew, Luke, and John) or twice (as in Mark); he reports that some early Christians took such discrepancies to be divinely placed "stumbling blocks" that direct attention to the theological level.[^behr-42] Chrysostom treats the cock-crow differently, as a matter of harmony: Matthew's "before the cock crow" and Mark's second crowing are both true because a cock crows several times, and Mark mentions the second "to show that not even the sound checked him."[^chrys-85]
The angel's word that Jesus "goes before you into Galilee" (Mark 16.7) sits uneasily with the longer ending's appearances in and near Jerusalem, a tension the Jewish Annotated New Testament notes and that Augustine, in the passages the Catena reproduces, addresses by observing that Mark "never relates the fulfilment of that which was foretold by the Angel," while Matthew does, and that neither contradicts the other.[^jant-16][^cat-16] The historicity of the night trial before the high priest is questioned by the Jewish Annotated New Testament on the ground that a Passover-night trial would have been forbidden, and the scene "is of questionable historicity"; no patristic discussion of that argument is cited here, so the reader must weigh it against the Gospel's own account.[^jant-14]
The saying that of the day and hour "no one knows—not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13.32) was used by the Arians, and St. Athanasius answers it at length in his third discourse. He argues that the Son who knows the Father cannot be ignorant of the hour, that Christ "speaks humanly" as the incarnate Word, and that "this as before is not the Word's deficiency, but of that human nature whose property it is to be ignorant."[^ath-iii] He adds a pastoral reason, that to know the day of the end would make people careless of the time between.
The question "Why do you call me good? No one is good except one—God" (Mark 10.18) was handled differently by the Valentinians, who, as Irenaeus reports, took it as the Lord's confession of "that God who is truly good" and read the "heavens" of the parallel saying as the Aeons.[^iren-i20] Mark thus fed disputes on both sides of the great Christological question. The reading Athanasius defends holds together the real humanity the book shows, in Jesus asleep on a cushion, grieved, and crying out on the cross, and the divine identity it announces from its first verse (Mark 1.1) to the centurion's confession (Mark 15.39).
Clement of Alexandria, listing the late arrival of the heresies, writes that Basilides claimed "for his master, Glaucias, the interpreter of Peter," and that Valentinus was a hearer of Theudas, a link to Paul.[^strom-vii17] Mark and Glaucias are both called interpreters of Peter in the sources, one by the Church's witnesses and one by a heterodox teacher's own claim, so a claim to an apostle's interpreter was something both sides could make. Marcion, by contrast, rejected the other Gospels and based his edition on Luke, and Tertullian answers by pressing the claim that the apostolic churches vouch for the Gospels he left out, including Mark's, which "may be affirmed to be Peter's."[^ow-gospels][^tert-iv5] OrthodoxWiki's article on the Gospels mentions a "Secret Gospel of Mark" only as a "see also."
After the dispute over unwashed hands, Mark comments on the Lord's saying that nothing from outside can defile: "making all foods clean?" (Mark 7.19). The Jewish Annotated New Testament points out that Matthew omits the remark, argues that the declaration "likely goes beyond Jesus' own practice," and offers three possibilities: Mark's rejection of Jewish food laws, an apocalyptic tradition of the transformation of impurity, or a later addition made when the Gospel was brought into line with Paul's mission.[^jant-7] Origen, writing on Matthew's parallel, takes Mark's phrase at face value, as the Savior "making all meats clean," and he uses it against those who insist on the letter of the law.[^orig-xi12]
A more cautious reading on the other side holds that the passage cannot have meant what is often claimed because food was still an open question in Acts 15 and Peter remained observant, so Jesus may have been speaking about the status of food that was already kosher, or about the difference between kosher law and purity.[^lecture]
The Jewish Annotated New Testament also reads Mark as ambivalent toward the Temple and its priestly religion, and it records a "conflictual relationship with Pharisees, Herodians, and scribes" in a Gospel it describes as consistently showing Jesus's rejection by "all of 'his people.'"[^jant-mk] Mark itself gives the confession "Truly this man was the Son of God!" to a Gentile centurion (Mark 15.39) and records Jesus healing the daughter of a Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7.24-30), details a reader weighing the Jewish Annotated New Testament's picture will want to set beside it; no Orthodox discussion of the question is cited here.
The strongest case against the longer ending is stated by those who weigh manuscripts: the two great fourth-century codices lack verses 9–20; the Jewish Annotated New Testament says the ending "was not likely the original ending of Mark" and that "most scholars assume it was a pastiche of phrases from the other Gospels composed in the second century"; OrthodoxWiki reports that the United Bible Societies' fourth edition rates the omission of the verses as "certain"; and Bruce, a Protestant scholar, concludes (p. 288) that these verses were not part of Mark's work, because their content summarizes appearances recorded in the other Gospels and the clause about picking up serpents is probably based on Paul's viper on Malta.[^jant-end][^ow-mk16][^bruce-mk16] The Jewish Annotated New Testament adds that the shorter ending is not attested in any manuscript earlier than the fourth century, and it interprets the abrupt close at 16:8 as Mark's final irony, in which followers are told to proclaim what they have heard and "out of fear they remain silent."[^jant-end]
The case for the longer ending rests on reception. The Diatessaron, the Apostolic Constitutions, Ambrose, and Augustine (through the Catena) all use the verses, and OrthodoxWiki points to Irenaeus.[^diat][^ac-viii][^ambrose][^cat-16][^ow-mk16] Bruce himself, who thinks the verses secondary, adds (p. 288) that this would not make them uncanonical, because canonicity and authorship are two distinct questions.[^bruce-mk16] The Orthodox Study Bible takes that path: "The Church recognizes as inspired" what the later manuscripts supply. In the Church's worship, moreover, the two endings sit side by side: on the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women the Liturgy's Gospel is Mark 15:43–16:8, ending where the oldest manuscripts end, and the Matins Gospel is Mark 16:9–20.[^ow-myrrh][^osb-mk] In worship, then, the Church reads both the ending at the women's fear and the ending at the Ascension on the same morning. Vincent of Lérins gives a rule that fits the practice, though he says nothing about endings or lectionaries: the rule for reading Scripture is not what an isolated text, or an isolated manuscript, suggests, but what the Church has received, since "owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense."[^vincent] OrthodoxWiki's "against omission" argument, that a loss of the original ending would deny biblical preservation, is a doctrinal argument, and no source cited here shows that the Orthodox Church has ever made that argument herself.[^ow-mk16]
Methods of Criticism
Since the late eighteenth century, Western scholars have taken Mark apart to learn where it came from, and in some of their methods it has been the main subject, since the modern case for its priority underlies the source hypotheses described below. Against this stands the way the Fathers themselves read.
Textual criticism asks what Mark wrote. Its claims about this book are mainly the ones set out above: that the oldest manuscripts end at 16:8, that the shorter ending is later, that the longer ending is probably a second-century addition, and that "the Son of God" in 1:1, "Isaiah the prophet" in 1:2, 7:16, 9:44 and 46, 11:26, and 15:28 are uncertain or secondary in some witnesses.[^jant-end][^mk-var1][^mk-var2] The discipline is known as "low" criticism, which "precedes translation."[^course-textcrit] Orthodox reception of it is chiefly a matter of practice: the Orthodox Study Bible prints the longer readings and describes the longer ending as inspired, the Church reads both endings in worship, and the Fathers themselves compared manuscripts.[^osb-mk][^ow-myrrh][^jerome-pref] The ending is one place where the textual critic's conclusion bears directly on the book's shape, and there the Church's liturgical practice already holds both readings together.
Source criticism asks what written materials stand behind the Gospel, and for Mark the question is bound up with its place among the Synoptics. Augustine proposed in the fifth century that Matthew came first, Mark followed as his epitomizer, and Luke used both, a view OrthodoxWiki says "remained unchallenged until the late eighteenth century."[^aug-hg2][^ow-synopt] The dominant modern hypothesis reverses the first two. In the Two-Source hypothesis Mark is the first Gospel, and Matthew and Luke both used it together with a lost sayings source called Q; the Four-Source version adds material peculiar to each; and the Farrer hypothesis keeps Mark's priority but dispenses with Q by having Luke use Matthew.[^ow-gospels] The Jewish Annotated New Testament reports that Mark "was likely one of the sources for Matthew and Luke" and that John may reflect an indirect knowledge of Mark or be independent.[^jant-mk] A "Two-Gospel" model is also proposed alongside the Two-Document and Farrer models.[^lecture]
OrthodoxWiki traces the word "synoptic" to Griesbach's three-column arrangement of 1776 and the OCA says the three are "most probably interrelated textually in some way, exactly how being an ongoing debate among scriptural scholars."[^ow-gospels][^oca-gospels] The Orthodox sources are cautious without being hostile. Chrysostom argues from the independence of the four, who wrote "not at the same times, nor in the same places," and yet agree; a hypothesis of literary dependence would qualify that argument, and no source cited here shows how an Orthodox reader would answer.[^chrys-1b] On either order the tradition of Peter behind Mark can stand: if Mark was first, as the OSB's "many believe" allows, it fits a tradition that already ascribed to him a close link with the apostle; if he was second, as Augustine thought, the tradition's reverence for Matthew is preserved. Whichever way the argument falls, the stakes the Jewish Annotated New Testament names, a willingness to downplay Jesus's Jewish practice, are a reason for care rather than a reason to refuse the hypothesis.
Form criticism tries to explain what lay behind the texts: the patterns, prayers, and sayings that circulated by word of mouth before anyone wrote them down. Its strength is that it takes seriously what the Papias tradition itself affirms, that the Gospel was spoken before it was written. The Jewish Annotated New Testament's account of Mark's likely materials (a passion tradition, healing and conflict stories, parables, other teachings) overlaps with its interest.[^lecture][^jant-mk] Some are skeptical of the method as a whole, calling it "completely hypothetical" because nothing survives from the period that is not already text, and Brevard Childs, a Protestant scholar, says of the reconstructed stages of tradition that the procedure is largely hypothetical.[^lecture][^childs] McGuckin accepts what recent study offers by way of distinguishing the forms of the Aramaic preaching from the more Greek forms of the second apostolic age, and he sees Mark's own interpretation of the Parable of the Sower (Mark 4.10-20) as a mark of the symbolic reading characteristic of the Greek evangelists; yet for Orthodoxy, he says, there is "no great chasm" between what Jesus taught and what the first disciples passed on.[^mcg-26] The ancient testimony has its own account of the oral stage, in which Peter "adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers" and Mark wrote down what he remembered.[^pap]
Redaction criticism takes the Gospel as it stands and asks what its author has done with his material. On the assumption of Markan priority, Matthew and Luke can be measured against Mark, and two examples run from Mark outward: Mark's disciples cry "Teacher, don't you care that we are dying?" (Mark 4.38) where Matthew's say "Save us, Lord!"; and Mark says Jesus "could do no mighty work" at Nazareth (Mark 6.5) where Matthew says He did not do many. Matthew reads as softening or interpreting, which suggests that Mark "might be more historical."[^lecture] The method's strength is that it attends to each evangelist's own purposes, as the Fathers did when they asked why one Gospel words an incident as it does. The Jewish Annotated New Testament adds that Matthew drops Mark's remark that Jesus declared all foods clean.[^jant-7] A redaction-critical reading of Mark's own hand is also possible, in Wrede's proposal that the secrecy commands are Mark's contribution, and in the Jewish Annotated New Testament's suggestion that a verse such as Mark 13.10 on the gospel being preached to all nations was "perhaps inserted by Mark."[^jant-secret][^jant-13]
The Fathers noticed some of the same differences and read them in their own way. Origen brings Mark's added phrase into his reading of Matthew, and Chrysostom's remark on Mark's candor about Peter belongs to the same kind of question.[^orig-xi12][^chrys-85] Orthodox hesitation centers on the presupposition. The method reads a difference between Gospels as a sign of an author's choice, and Behr and Childs warn from different sides that a historical-critical search for the "original" meaning can lose sight of what the text now says to the Church.[^behr-12][^childs]
Historical-critical study sets Mark in a date, a place, and a community. The principal claims are those of the Jewish Annotated New Testament: a date between 64 and 72, during the Jewish War; a setting most likely near Antioch; an audience that is largely Gentile on one reading, though the introduction itself cautions that the "Gentile focus" is not as certain as once held, and a Gospel that gives "a stronger critique of economic inequality than do the other Gospels"; and a text shaped by persecution, with similarities to Paul on the centrality of faith and clean foods.[^jant-mk] The Orthodox Study Bible dates the Gospel shortly before AD 70 on the strength of its connection with Rome, and the OCA's synaxarion puts it at about 62–63; these overlap with the Jewish Annotated New Testament's range only in part, and the sources divide over the city as well as the date.[^osb-mk][^syn-apr25] Where the method moves from setting to reconstruction, the Orthodox response is warier. McGuckin cautions that the sparse and contested detail about the Church's first generation has "given rise to a flourishing of speculation passing off as history," and Behr observes that the approach of modernity has fragmented theology by concentrating on what texts meant.[^mcg-29][^behr-12] One proposal is "critical realism" as a middle path between naive recovery of the past and skepticism about it.[^course-hist]
Narrative, literary, and canonical approaches read Mark as the story it is. Here the Jewish Annotated New Testament speaks of its "deceptive simplicity" and "arresting narrative realism," reads the book as a drama of irony in which the audience knows what the characters do not, and treats the ending at 16:8 as the last irony.[^jant-mk][^jant-secret] It also notes that Mark's structure resists being treated as a passion narrative with a long introduction, since the Gospel is "much more comprehensive."[^jant-mk] McGuckin's suggestion that Mark is cut into five teuchoi, or scroll-sections, each opening with an episode that is repeated or completed shortly afterward, so that the Gospel is a kind of new Pentateuch for the Gentiles, is one of these structural readings.[^teuchoi] It is McGuckin's modern interpretation, and no patristic witness cited here states it; it is offered as a literary suggestion and is not tested here against the text. Childs, in his canonical method, argues that a book's structure should be read as it stands, and Behr observes that all four Gospels are centered upon the Passion and that Mark's own beginning is illustrated by a citation from Isaiah (p. 55).[^childs][^behr-55] The Church's liturgical reading has itself "canonically shaped" these texts, a remark the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women illustrates, when the Liturgy ends the Gospel at 16:8 and Matins carries on to the Ascension.[^course-canon][^ow-myrrh]
Patristic reading was textual and scholarly and was done within the Church, as St. Basil's words on the labor of attending to "every phrase and… every syllable" show, and scholars distinguish four senses of patristic exegesis: the literal, which is never abandoned, and the typological, tropological, and anagogical.[^basil][^lecture] Mark's Fathers show all of this at small scale. Origen reads the opening of Mark typologically, with John the Baptist as the end of the Old Testament and the whole Old Testament as the beginning of the Gospel; Chrysostom reads the commands of silence tropologically, as lessons against vainglory and in the timing of faith; Augustine reads the Evangelists' symbols as fitted to the whole design of each book and so settles, against others, on the man for Mark; and the Church's worship honors the evangelist with the lion of his icon and with a Liturgy of St. Mark that remembers him as one "who has shown us the way of salvation."[^orig-jn14][^chrys-25-54][^aug-hg6][^oca-gospels][^lit-mark] Harmonization is a work of attention in all of them: Chrysostom on the second cock-crow, on Abiathar, and on the Evangelists' differing words; Eusebius on the gap that John filled; Augustine on the appearances after the Resurrection.[^chrys-85][^chrys-39][^eus-3-24][^cat-16]
St. Vincent of Lérins asks why Scripture needs the Church's interpretation when the canon is complete, and answers that because of its depth "all do not accept it in one and the same sense," and so the rule for understanding the prophets and apostles must be framed "in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation."[^vincent] McGuckin says the same from the Orthodox side: for Orthodoxy there is no decisive differentiation between Scripture and Tradition, since the written Gospels themselves arise from the Spirit's articulation in the illumined faith of the Church.[^mcg-28] The practical consequence is visible in the Liturgy of St. Mark itself, where the Church of Alexandria prays for the city "for the sake of the martyr and evangelist Mark," prays that "the waters of the river" may flow, and recites the institution of the Eucharist and the Ascension in the language of the Gospels, so that the book's author, its feast, and its text are all kept alive in worship.[^lit-mark] The OrthodoxWiki article on the liturgy notes that the oldest extant copy dates from the fourth century, and the Alexandrian Rite contains elements from the liturgies of Basil, Cyril, and Gregory, which leaves open how much of the text goes back to Mark himself while keeping the ancient claim that he composed a Liturgy for the Christians of Alexandria.[^ow-lit][^syn-apr25] The Church receives Mark, on the testimony cited here, as the book of the one who followed Peter and wrote down what Peter preached, which leaves its reader at an empty tomb with the promise that "he goes before you into Galilee" (Mark 16.7) and then, in the longer ending, carries on to the commission and the Ascension. Read beside Matthew and the other Gospels in the fourfold witness, it is the briefest and fastest of the four, and the one that says least about itself.
Sources
[^mk-open]: Mark 1.1-13 (WEB); Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), "The Gospel according to Mark," introduction. [^mk-peter]: Acts 12.12; Acts 13.5; 1 Peter 5.13; Mark 4.38; Mark 3.5; Mark 8.33; Mark 14.72 (WEB); Papias, Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, frag. preserved in Eusebius, Church History 3.39.15; Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 85.1. [^mk-ending-open]: Mark 16.8 (WEB); The Orthodox Study Bible, introduction to Mark. [^mk-web]: Mark 1.1; Mark 13.9-13 (WEB). [^persons]: Acts 12.12; Acts 12.25; Acts 13.5; Acts 13.13; Acts 15.37-39; Colossians 4.10; Philemon 1.24; 2 Timothy 4.11; 1 Peter 5.13 (WEB). The identification of these figures with the Evangelist is traditional (The Orthodox Study Bible; OrthodoxWiki) and "possible" for JANT. [^oca-gospels]: Orthodox Church in America, "Gospels." [^syn-apr25]: Synaxarion, "Apostle and Evangelist Mark" (April 25; OCA). [^pap]: Papias, Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, frag. preserved in Eusebius, Church History 3.39.15 (NPNF); cf. the ANF translation of the same fragment. [^osb-mk]: The Orthodox Study Bible, introduction to Mark. [^mk-shape]: OrthodoxWiki, "Gospel of Mark," outline; Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), "The Gospel according to Mark," introduction; Mark 11–Mark 16 (WEB). [^mk-voice]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), "The Gospel according to Mark," introduction; Mark 5.41; Mark 7.34; Mark 14.36; Mark 15.34 (WEB); Orthodox Church in America, "Gospels"; Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 1.6.9. [^mk-summary]: Mark 1–Mark 16 (WEB), including Mark 1.4-13, Mark 1.14-20, Mark 2.1-3.6, Mark 3.13-35, Mark 4, Mark 5, Mark 6, Mark 7, Mark 8, Mark 9.2-29, Mark 10.35-45, Mark 10.46-52, Mark 11, Mark 12, Mark 13, Mark 14, Mark 15, Mark 16. [^jant-mk]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), "The Gospel according to Mark" (introduction by Lawrence M. Wills), 54–56. [^eus-3-39pref]: Eusebius, Church History 3.39.3–4; 3.36.2. [^bruce-pap]: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 124–25. [^iren-iii1]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1, quoted in Orthodox Bridge, "Contra Sola Scriptura (Part 2 of 4)" (citing Richardson, 1970, 370); cf. F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 173. [^clem-vi14]: Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes, frag. preserved in Eusebius, Church History 6.14 (ANF); cf. F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 189. [^orig-mt]: Origen, Commentary on Matthew, bk. 1, preface; cf. Eusebius, Church History 6.25. [^tert-iv5]: Tertullian, Against Marcion 4.5. [^clem-ii15]: Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes, frag. preserved in Eusebius, Church History 2.15. [^jerome-dvi]: Jerome, On Illustrious Men 8. [^chrys-1]: Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 1.7. [^chrys-85]: Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 85.1–2. [^ow-apmark]: OrthodoxWiki, "Apostle Mark." [^ow-alex]: OrthodoxWiki, "Church of Alexandria"; cf. OrthodoxWiki, "Apostle Mark." [^eus-annianus]: Eusebius, Church History 3.14. [^ps-hipp]: Pseudo-Hippolytus, On the Apostles and Disciples §§14, 56, 65. [^lash]: Ephrem Lash, review of The Orthodox Study Bible (Anastasis). [^ow-mk]: OrthodoxWiki, "Gospel of Mark." [^cor15]: 1 Corinthians 15.3-4 (WEB). [^luke1]: Luke 1.1-4 (WEB). [^bruce-cano]: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 265. [^justin-106]: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 106; Mark 3.17 (WEB). [^bruce-just]: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 126. [^jant-7]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), notes on Mark 7.1-23, 73–74; Mark 7.3-4 (WEB). [^jant-1]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), notes on Mark 1.2-3, 57. [^behr-55]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006), 55. [^orig-jn14]: Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, bk. 1.14. [^aug-hg2]: Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 1.2.3–4. [^aug-hg3]: Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 1.3.5–6. [^eus-3-24]: Eusebius, Church History 3.24.7–13. [^mcg-30]: John Anthony McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 30. [^chrys-25-54]: Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 25.3 and Hom. 54.4; Mark 1.43-44; Mark 8.30 (WEB). [^jant-secret]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), "The Gospel according to Mark," introduction, 56. [^apoc-lion]: Commentary on the Apocalypse on Rev 4:7–10 (attributed to Victorinus of Pettau). [^aug-hg6]: Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 1.6.9. [^jerome-pref]: Jerome, Preface to the Four Gospels (to Pope Damasus). [^canon-lists]: Athanasius, Festal Letter 39.5; Council of Laodicea, canon 60. [^chrys-1b]: Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 1.6. [^ow-codices]: OrthodoxWiki, "Codex Sinaiticus"; "Codex Vaticanus"; "Codex Alexandrinus." [^course-textcrit]: Course discussion notes and lecture notes, Gospels and Acts. [^mk-var1]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), apparatus (NRSV notes) on Mark 1 and Mark 6; Mark 1.1; Mark 1.2; Mark 1.41; Mark 6.3 (WEB). [^cc-vi36]: Origen, Against Celsus 6.36; cf. Matthew 13.55 (WEB). [^mk-var2]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), apparatus (NRSV notes) on Mark 7, 9, 11, and 15; Mark 7.16; Mark 9.29; Mark 9.44; Mark 9.46; Mark 11.26; Mark 15.28 (WEB); The Orthodox Study Bible (NKJV), same verses. [^ow-osb]: OrthodoxWiki, "Orthodox Study Bible." [^jant-end]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), notes on Mark 16, 94–95. [^ow-mk16]: OrthodoxWiki, "Mark 16." [^diat]: Tatian, Diatessaron (Hogg translation, from the Arabic), §§53, 55; OrthodoxWiki, "Gospels." [^ac-viii]: Apostolic Constitutions 8.1. [^ambrose]: Ambrose, Exposition of the Christian Faith 1.86. [^cat-16]: Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 2 (Mark) (Oxford, 1842), on Mark 16, citing Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 3.25. [^ow-vulgate]: OrthodoxWiki, "Vulgate." [^bruce-diat]: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 126–28. [^ow-rabbula]: OrthodoxWiki, "Rabbula of Edessa"; "Aramaic." [^ow-coptic]: OrthodoxWiki, "Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria"; "Coptic." [^ow-ulfilas]: OrthodoxWiki, "Ulfilas." [^ow-cm]: OrthodoxWiki, "Cyril and Methodius." [^course-english]: Course discussion notes, Gospels and Acts. [^lecture]: Course lecture notes, Gospels and Acts; Mark 4.38; Matthew 8.25; Mark 6.5; Matthew 13.58; Mark 7 (WEB). [^bruce-mk16]: F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 288; Acts 28.3-6 (WEB). [^ow-myrrh]: OrthodoxWiki, "Sunday of Myrrh-bearing Women." [^vincent]: Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory 2. [^ow-synopt]: OrthodoxWiki, "Synoptic gospels." [^ow-gospels]: OrthodoxWiki, "Gospels." [^childs]: Brevard S. Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Fortress, 1985). [^mcg-26]: John Anthony McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 26–28; Mark 4.10-20 (WEB). [^jant-13]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), notes on Mark 13.1-37. [^behr-12]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006), 12–13. [^mcg-29]: John Anthony McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 28–29. [^course-hist]: Course discussion notes, Gospels and Acts. [^teuchoi]: John Anthony McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 26–27. [^course-canon]: Course discussion notes, Gospels and Acts. [^basil]: Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit 1.2. [^lit-mark]: The Divine Liturgy of St. Mark. [^mcg-28]: John Anthony McGuckin, The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 28. [^ow-lit]: OrthodoxWiki, "Liturgy of St. Mark"; "Alexandrian Rite." [^cat-1]: Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 2 (Mark) (Oxford, 1842), on Mark 1:2–3, citing Jerome, Epistle 57; Pseudo-Chrysostom; Bede. [^cat-pref]: Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 2 (Mark), preface by the Oxford editors. [^jant-abiathar]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), notes on Mark 2.23-28, 66. [^chrys-39]: Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Hom. 39.1. [^behr-42]: John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006), 42. [^jant-16]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), notes on Mark 16.1-8, 94. [^jant-14]: Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press), notes on Mark 14.43-65, 91. [^ath-iii]: Athanasius, Four Discourses against the Arians, Discourse 3.42–46; Mark 13.32 (WEB). [^iren-i20]: Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.20.2; Mark 10.17-18 (WEB). [^strom-vii17]: Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.17. [^orig-xi12]: Origen, Commentary on Matthew, bk. 11.12. [^mur]: Muratorian Fragment (c. 170), opening lines.