RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Htarinus Mark
MARE.
I. The Man. II. The Gospel.
External Testimony to Authorship (§1).
Internal Testimony (§ 2). Relation to the Other Synoptics (§ 3). Mark xvi. 9-20 (§ 4).
I. The Man: In Acts xii. 12, 25, a John Mark is named as one of the Christians of Jerusalem, at whose mother's house the meetings of the community were held, who was also a companion of Barnabas and Paul on their missionary journey to Antioch and Cyprus (Acts xiii. 5) but left them when they reached Asia Minor. Because of this defection, Paul refused to take him along on the second missionary journey, and this caused a separation between Barnabas and Paul, Barnabas and Mark going together and Paul and Silas becoming companions. A Mark is mentioned by Paul several times in his epistles (Col. iv. 10, " Mark, the cousin of Barnabas "; II Tim. iv. 11; Philemon 24), always in favorable terms. In I Pet. v. 13 is mentioned one of the name as " Mark my son." These notices do not suffice to prove the existence of two men of the name (Schleiermacher and Kielen in TSK, 1843), but the historicity of at least one Mark is apparent. He was a Jew (Col. iv. 11), and, like the Jesus Justus of that passage and other Jews of the period, took a Roman name in addition to his Jewish name. Acts xii. 12 suggests that his father was already dead in the early years of Christianity. Mark appears to have been younger than Paul and Peter, but still old enough to have been an adult at the time of the crucifixion. Tradition identifies him with the man described in Mark xiv. 13 as "bearing a pitcher of water" and with the young man of verses 51-52, and also makes him one of the seventy disciples; it does not follow from I Pet. v. 13 that he was converted and baptized by Peter. His missionary activity is abundantly recognized by Paul, and the last historical datum is that of his presence in Rome about 63 a.d. Legend makes him the founder of the Church in Egypt and bishop of Alexandria (Eusebius, Hist, eccl., IV., xv.). The predicate " stump-fingered " applied to him in Hippolytus, Hcer., VII., xxx., is possibly a misunderstanding arising from the fact that the Gospel ascribed to him is without such introduction and conclusion as the other Gospels have.
II. The Gospel: Universal tradition ascribes to Mark the authorship of the shortest of the Gospels, and almost as unanimously regards Peter as the authority behind Mark (Tertullian, Adv. Marcion, IV., v.). Bound up with this is the legend
that Mark was the convert of Peter. i. External Irenseus (Hcer., III., i. 2) reports that Testimony Mark wrote the Gospel after Matthew to Author- was written and after the death of ship. Peter, and Origen adds (Eusebius, Hist, eccl., VI., xxv. 5) that it was written before the Gospels of Luke and John. Clement of Alexandria reports (Eusebius, Hist, eccl., VI., xiv. 6-7) that the writing was undertaken at the request of the converts at Rome, and that Peter neither favored nor hindered the undertaking. These reports may well be based upon the words of Papias recorded in Eusebius (Hist, eccl., III., xxxix. 15). This celebrated passage asserts that
the Gospel was based not on Mark's own knowledge of Jesus, whom he had not heard, but on the preaching of Peter, and that this Mark faithfully recorded but did not observe chronological order. This is not to be pressed farther than is legitimate as the report of a well-informed man of the Church of Asia Minor in the immediate postapostolic period; it is evident both that the Gospel is not a full record and that the order of events is not that of history. Papias says nothing of the method or occasion of writing the Gospel, only it is clear that he thinks of it as composed in Greek, and he calls Mark " the interpreter of Peter." " Interpreter " has often been understood as a synonym of " author " of the written expression of Peter's teaching; but it is better to take the word in its nearer sense of " translator," since the fact that the Gospel contains reports of Jesus' words and the other fact that Mark is expressly said not to have heard Jesus seem to demand a documentary basis. There is no necessity, however, to doubt the Marcan origin of the second Gospel, especially in view of Justin Martyr (Trypho, cvi.) and of the fact that it is ascribed to a man of the second rank when tradition might have assigned the authorship to an apostle.
The Gospel contains no title which gives the author's name. Some scholars regard i. 1 as a title; but since verses 2-3 are not in the style of the citations usually employed in this Gospel, it is better to take verse 1 as the predicate after " John came," verse 4. Then the report of 2. Internal " the beginning of the Gospel " reaches Testimony, through i. 13, while verses 14-15 report Jesus' assumption of the work begun by John. The rest of chapter i. reports the initial success of Jesus; with ii. 1 is registered the beginning of conflict with scribes and Pharisees; iii. 6 notes the purpose of these opponents to destroy Jesus; in rapid succession follow the story of recognition of him as Son of God by the demons, his teaching of the disciples, his wonder-working, the sending of the twelve to preach and heal, his celebrity (reaching even to Herod's court), his Galilean activity and his journey through Persea, his announcement of his coming death, his last conflicts with the ecclesiastical authorities, his final instructions to the disciples, his suffering and death and resurrection. Evidently the intent of the evangelist was to detail in chronological order the facts of Christ's life, and time notes (viii. 1, cf. vi. 34, ix. 2) show that this purpose was kept in mind, though sometimes the relation of cause and connection is preferred to that of time. Thus the impression the whole Gospel gives is that of a development which proceeds inevitably to the end. But the evangelist never asserts himself as an eye-witness of the events which he narrates; there is no more reason to connect him with the " certain young man " of xiv. 51 than with the " certain one " of verse 47. Of greater consequence is the matter of trustworthiness. To be noted are the lively freshness of tone, the loving lingering on little episodes, the definiteness of reference to details of place, time, and person, the result of which is to impress the reader with the fact that this book is
Mark
Markos Eugenikos