September 11th, 2021
I finished reading the gospel of Mark and I wanted to write a review about it. For starters, I was much more receptive to the Gospel of Mark than I was to the Gospel of Matthew. I don’t think I can pinpoint why this was the case as there are multiple potential reasons. To start, the Gospel of Matthew opened up with stories in Chapters 1 and 2 for which the veracity I was skeptical about. These stories included the virgin birth of Jesus, Herod and the Magis, and Jesus and his family going to Egypt and then to Nazareth. Another potential reason was that the author of Matthew seemed to use more conversations between characters whereas the author of Mark did not (I have spoken about my lack of trust in conversations being accurately recorded). Another potential reason was that a vast majority of the content found in Mark is found in Matthew as well. Related to the previous reason I have heard that the scholarly consensus is that the Gospel of Mark was written before the Gospel of Matthew and that the author of Matthew used the Gospel of Mark as a source. This would certainly be believable based on the fact that the majority of Mark can be found in Matthew. Both gospels don’t read like eyewitness accounts, but I generally trust an account that doesn’t add story elements such as conversations or commentary more than I would an account that sticks to the events. I think this is ultimately why I was more receptive to Mark than I was to Matthew. The Gospel of Mark doesn’t say anything about Jesus’ birth nor does it go into detail about his resurrection. It would seem, if the author of Matthew did use the Gospel of Mark as a source, that Matthew added story elements to the Gospel of Mark. I don’t think the reason is clear to me at the moment, but as it stands, the idea of Matthew using Mark as a source makes sense. I will likely touch on this idea after I finish reading Luke, but what I know about this is based on the following chart:
From reading both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark, It’s not hard to believe that 94% of the content of Mark makes up 56% of Matthew. I would wager that most of the passages that I took issue with in Matthew were not found in Mark. This is related to a larger discussion around the synoptic problem which is the question of the specific literary relationship between the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). From the Wikipedia page:
“The texts of the three synoptic gospels often agree very closely in wording and order, both in quotations and in narration. Most scholars ascribe this to documentary dependence, direct or indirect, meaning the close agreements among synoptic gospels are due to one gospel’s drawing from the text of another, or from some written source that another gospel also drew from.”
Synoptic Gospels Wikipedia Page
The idea of documentary dependence makes sense to me as well as the idea that the authors of Luke and Matthew drew from the Gospel of Mark. This, along with the idea that Matthew and Luke pull from another source for certain passages, is the most widely accepted hypothesis among scholars. A graphic of this hypothesis is shown below:
I hope to explore this more at a later date, but a couple of good resources that just came out are the following videos: Who Wrote The Bible? Episode 5: The Gospels & Acts & Did the Gospels Copy Each Other? Another thing to explore is the relationship between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John, but that’s also for a later date.
Getting back to the Gospel of Mark, there are some things I would like to address. The author of Mark is anonymous and there are no “I witness…” statements, but I would consider Mark 1:1 to be a statement of purpose:
This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, <the Son of God>…
Mark 1:1, NLT
The message seems clear enough, this is the Good News about Jesus. I’m not sure if I can get into a detailed analysis of what this means in the Gospel of Mark and I will leave it at that for now. One thing I wanted to mention was that I have a note in my Bible that the “the Son of God” bit is not found in some of the manuscripts (important manuscripts presumably otherwise there wouldn’t be a note), but while this isn’t exactly earth-shattering in the Gospel of Mark as there are other references to Jesus being the Son of God later, it is important to point out that content can be added and the only way to detect it is by studying the manuscripts. I will discuss this in detail when I talk about the ending of Mark.
Speaking to the Gospel overall, I think it can be assumed that the author of Mark was familiar with the Hebrew Bible as there are quotes taken from it, but I don’t know what the relationship between the author of Mark and Judaism must be. The author of Matthew, on the contrary, was either more familiar with the Hebrew Bible or just decided to add more quotes and prophecies. I don’t think I have time to do a detailed analysis of Mark, but I think it would be worth exploring what Mark is saying and what Matthew was trying to say. Mark seems to be a plain reading of the events and is certainly less embellished than Matthew, but I’m not sure to what degree. With Mark being the first gospel to be written, I would be interested in exploring how it relates to the early church and the formation of Christianity during the time of Paul but I think I will wait to do that until after I’ve read his letters.
I wanted to now get into some specific things that I found interesting. To start, in the first chapter of Mark the author quotes Isaiah, but the first part of the quote is from Malachi 3:1 and the second part is from Isaiah 40:3:
Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.
Malachi 3:1, NLT
Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord!
Isaiah 40:3, NLT
[It began] just as the prophet Isaiah had written: “Look, I am sending a messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare your way. He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming! Clear the road for him!’”
Mark 1:2-3, NLT
I’m don’t think I understand the full context of these passages, but to me, it is definitely apparent that the author of Mark used Hebrew Scripture to enrich, explain, and reinforce his narrative about Jesus. There are other quotations from the Hebrew Bible, but I’m not sure what their context is either. I think it would be a worthwhile endeavor to study the gospel of Mark to see how the author used the Hebrew Bible and then to see how the authors of Matthew and Luke took what the author of Mark had to say and then modified it. The Malachi 3:1 passage is quoted by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew in 11:10. It would be interesting to know why Matthew decided to do this. Regardless, this passage in both Mark and Matthew refers to John the Baptist. He is described in Mark 1:4-6:
This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. His clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey.
Mark 1:4-6, NLT
I can accept these as historic details about John the Baptist without too much skepticism, but there is still a lot of mystery surrounding him. The next part of the section I have some reservations about mostly because it is a direct quote:
John announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am – so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. I baptize you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”
Mark 1:7-8, NLT
As I’ve stated previously, I find direct quotations to be suspicious simply because there is a question of who the eyewitness was and what their memory was like. Even so, there is still a lot of mystery surrounding John the Baptist. I find the Bible to be a blend of fact and fiction, but I don’t know what is fact and what is fiction. It may be as simple as Mark 1:4-6 being fact but Mark 1:7-8 being fiction. I also have questions of where the idea of Baptism comes from and its intersection with Judaism. Related to this is where the idea of baptizing with the Holy Spirit comes from and how the Holy Spirit intersects with Judaism. This video by Religion for Breakfast goes into it a little bit: The Pre-Christian Origins of Baptism
There is an interesting exchange in Mark 2:1-12 when Jesus heals a paralyzed man. Jesus says to the paralyzed man that his sins are forgiven, but the religious leaders say this is blasphemy and that only God can forgive sins. It seems apparent that the author of Mark believed that Jesus was the Son of God, but the text says that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins. It would be interesting to learn more about the relationship between the titles Son of Man and Son of God in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to help understand this passage. How would any eyewitness know what the teachers of religious law were thinking? Matthew changes this story to say that the teachers of religious said these things. And also that the crowd that saw this praised God for giving humans such authority.
Another interesting tidbit was in Mark 2:23-27 where there is discussion about the Sabbath and that the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath. I don’t really know what this means in the context and it would be interesting to compare it with what the authors of Matthew and Luke have to say about it.
I have other questions that I want to get to, but I think that would take me down a rabbit hole that I’m not ready for at the moment. I think it makes sense to Read Luke first before diving into those questions.
The last thing I want to touch on before ending this is the ending of Mark. My NLT bible has notes in the text at the end of Mark that the most ancient manuscripts end with Verse 16:8, but that later manuscripts add either a shorter ending, a longer ending, or both. The ending of Mark reads the following way:
The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened.
Mark 16:8, NLT
The shorter ending is the following:
Then they briefly reported all this to Peter and his companions. Afterward Jesus himself sent them out from east to west with the sacred and unfailing message of salvation that gives eternal life.
The longer ending is the following:
After Jesus rose from the dead early on Sunday Morning, the first person who saw him was Mary Magdalene, the woman from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went to the disciples, who were grieving and weeping, and told them what had happened. But when she told them that Jesus was alive she had seen him, they didn’t believe her. Afterward he appeared in a different for to two of his followers who were walking from Jerusalem into the country. They rushed back to tell the others, but no one believed them. Still later he appeared to the eleven disciples as they were eating together. He rebuked them for their stubborn unbelief because they refused to believe those who had seen him after he had been raised from the dead. And then he told them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone. Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. But anyone who refuses to believe will be condemned. These miraculous signs will accompany those who believe: They will cast out demons in my name, and they will speak in new languages. They will be able to handle snakes with safety, and if they drink anything poisonous, it won’t hurt them. They will be able to place their hands on the sick, and they will be healed.” When the lord Jesus had finished talking with them, he was taken up into heaven and sat down in the place of honor at God’s right hand. And the disciples went everywhere and preached, and the Lord worked through them, confirming what they said by many miraculous signs.
Mark 16:9-20, NLT
I know that some of this language appears in other books of the New Testament, but one thing that is worth noting is the bit about the miraculous signs of a believer and that a believer will be able to cast out demons, speak in new languages, be able to handle snakes with safety, be able to drink poisons, and heal the sick. What I find fascinating and worth mentioning is that there a some churches in the appalachian region of the US that take these passages literally specifically the part about handling snakes. See these videos here: A look at the snake-handling churches of Appalachia & Snake-Handling Pastor Dies From Rattlesnake Bite. Most Christians would probably be shocked by this; I certainly found it shocking and distressing the first time I heard about it, but what I find more distressinng is that the passage that alludes to this isn’t even in the earliest manuscripts of Mark therefore should not be considered as part of holy scripture. Even a person who accepts that the Bible is inerrant and infallible would have to concede that Mark 16:9-20 should not be considered as part of that. No doubt these snake-handling Christians are ardent believers, but they are believing in something that cannot be considered part of the original inerrant and infallible Word of God recorded in the Gospel of Mark, if that is even the case. If the beliefs and convictions of these Christians outweigh reason, I wonder about the tenability of other biblically-based beliefs, convictions, and practies (among other non-biblically based beliefs that some Christians adhere to). A few that I consider suspicious and that I should like to explore at a later date are Biblical inerrancy/infallibility, Biblical literalism, the King James Only movement, purity culture, young earth creationsim, the flat earth conspiracy, the prosperity gospel, televangelism, mormonism, conversion therapy, the pro-life movement, antivax, faith healing, Hell and Satan, modern-day prophecy, etc. A good podcast that covers some of these topics is The Belief it or Not Podcast on Youtube. They have an episode on these snake handling churches: The Belief It Or Not Podcast: Ep. 34 – Snake Handlers. I think of my personal belief as a push-pull relationship. Some things push me away from belief in Christianity and other things pull me towards belief in Christianity. Most, if not all, of the things that I listed above are things that push me away from accepting Christianity as true. If people are so easily deceived into false and harmful belief systems, what makes me think that I am any less susceptible to them. I think what it ultimately boils down to is that I see how submission to authority figures can lead people to harm both inside and outside of Church communities and I’m wary of getting involved. I lack trust in the confidence of certain Christians, theologians, apologists, and pastors, etc. who claim to know what they are talking about. Oftentimes, they are not willing to engage in different ideas and are only interested in defending their belief however they see fit. I would much rather engage with someone who is willing to say I don’t know than someone who thinks they have all the answers. I think this is why I gravitate towards scholars more to learn about things I don’t know as well as trusting the scholarly consensus on certain topics. A scholar whose work I look forward to reading is Bart Erhman. To be sure, he is not well liked in conservative Christian communities and I don’t know to what extent I agree with him, but as one of the premier New Testament scholars, I look forward to seeing if some of the thoughts that I’ve had with regards to the New Testament fall in line with his opinions. I will leave this post at that.