Summary: Bible - Book of Mark

The GIST

Mark, a book of the Bible, is the second of the four Gospels, a fast, urgent account of Jesus from his baptism to the empty tomb. Tradition, going back to the early writer Papias, attributes it to Mark the Evangelist, a companion and interpreter of the apostle Peter. The text itself names no author, and scholars still argue over who wrote it. It is usually dated to around 70 CE, the time of the Jewish war with Rome and the fall of the Temple, and it was written in Greek for a mainly non-Jewish audience, probably in Rome.

Most scholars think Mark was the first Gospel written and that the others drew on it. It has no birth story and no family tree. It begins with a grown man walking into the Jordan and ends, in the oldest manuscripts, with frightened women running from a tomb. In between it shows a teacher, healer and exorcist whom demons recognise at once and his own followers hardly at all. Its announced subject is in its first line: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God".

What It Says

The beginning (chapter 1). There is no preamble. John the Baptist is preaching repentance in the wilderness, Jesus comes from Nazareth of Galilee and is baptised, and as he comes up out of the water he sees the heavens opened and hears a voice: "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." There is no pause: "And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness", where he is tempted by Satan for forty days. When John is imprisoned Jesus begins to preach in Galilee: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." He calls fishermen from their nets with a promise, "Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men." In the synagogue people are astonished, "for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes."

Authority and opposition (chapters 2 and 3). The healings bring crowds, and the crowds bring trouble. When a paralysed man is lowered to him, Jesus first says, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee", and the scribes are scandalised; he then tells the man to get up and walk. A dispute over picking grain on the day of rest produces a saying found only in this Gospel: "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath". He appoints twelve. His own circle fears for his sanity: "they said, He is beside himself." Scribes say he casts out demons by the prince of demons, and he answers with a piece of plain logic: "if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand."

Parables and mighty works (chapters 4 and 5). From a boat Jesus teaches the crowd in parables: "Behold, there went out a sower to sow". The seed falls on different ground with different results, and he explains privately that "The sower soweth the word." The kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that grows great. That evening a storm fills the boat while he sleeps. He wakes and speaks to the sea, "Peace, be still", and there is "a great calm". On the far shore a man living among the tombs runs to him. Asked his name, the spirit in him answers, "My name is Legion: for we are many." The spirits enter a herd of swine, about two thousand, which rush into the sea, and the man is found "sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind". Two healings are then folded together. On the way to a dying girl, a woman in the crowd touches his garment and is healed; "Who touched my clothes?" he asks, and tells her, "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole". Then he takes the girl by the hand with words Mark keeps in Aramaic: "Talitha cumi".

Rejection, bread and the sea (chapters 6 to 8). In his home town they cannot get past what they know of him: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary". Mark breaks off to tell at length how Herod had John the Baptist beheaded: Herodias held a grudge, her daughter danced, the king made a rash promise, and the head was brought "in a charger". Then come the wonders in the wilderness. With "the five loaves and the two fishes" Jesus feeds a crowd of "about five thousand men". That night he comes to the struggling disciples "walking upon the sea". He heals a deaf man with a touch and a sigh and one more Aramaic word: "Ephphatha, that is, Be opened." A second crowd is fed. Yet the disciples still do not understand, and he has to ask them how many baskets were left over.

The turning point (chapters 8 to 10). On the road Jesus asks the question on which the Gospel turns: "But whom say ye that I am?" Peter answers, "Thou art the Christ." From that moment the teaching changes. The Son of man must suffer, be killed and rise again, and anyone who wants to follow has to accept the same road: "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." Then the piercing question: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

Six days later Peter, James and John see him "transfigured before them" on a high mountain, and a voice from a cloud says, "This is my beloved Son: hear him." At the foot of the mountain the father of a tormented boy speaks for every half-believer: "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." On the way Jesus welcomes children, "Suffer the little children to come unto me", warns that "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God", and, when disciples jostle for rank, states his own purpose: "For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." Outside Jericho blind Bartimaeus receives his sight and "followed Jesus in the way."

Jerusalem (chapters 11 to 13). Jesus enters the city to shouts of "Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord". In the Temple he drives out those buying and selling: "My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves." A string of debates follows. Asked about paying tax, he says, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Asked for the first commandment, he begins with Israel's creed: "Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord". He praises a poor widow who gives "two mites". Then, leaving the Temple, he foretells its ruin, "there shall not be left one stone upon another", and on the Mount of Olives speaks of wars, persecution and the coming of the Son of man, adding, "Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away."

The Passion (chapters 14 and 15). At Bethany a woman breaks "an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious" over his head, and he calls it preparation for his burial. At the Passover meal he takes bread: "Take, eat: this is my body." He tells Peter that "before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice." In Gethsemane he prays, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt." Judas identifies him with a kiss, the disciples scatter, and a young man escapes arrest by leaving his linen cloth behind, a detail only Mark records.

Before the high priest the secret kept all through the book is finally asked aloud: "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" Jesus says he is. Outside, the cock crows a second time, and Peter remembers: "And when he thought thereon, he wept." Pilate asks, "Art thou the King of the Jews?", offers the crowd a choice, releases Barabbas, and hands Jesus over to be scourged and crucified. Soldiers mock him with "Hail, King of the Jews!" Simon a Cyrenian, "the father of Alexander and Rufus", is made to carry the cross to Golgotha. At the ninth hour Jesus cries out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He dies, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom", and it is a Roman centurion who says what the opening line claimed: "Truly this man was the Son of God." Joseph of Arimathaea asks for the body and lays it in a tomb.

The tomb (chapter 16). After the sabbath women come with spices, asking, "Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?" It is already moved. A young man in white tells them, "he is risen; he is not here", and sends them to tell the disciples and Peter. Then: "neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid." The King James text continues with appearances of the risen Jesus, the charge "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature", and his being "received up into heaven".

Why It Matters

That closing passage is the best known puzzle about Mark. The two earliest Greek manuscripts end with the women's fear, and most recent scholars take that to be the original ending; the longer ending is found in the great majority of manuscripts, and a shorter one in a few.

Mark's themes have shaped how Jesus is read. The titles Son of God, Christ and Son of Man carry its understanding of him, the last drawn especially from Daniel. Its picture of followers who misunderstand, flee and deny has been explained in several ways, and recent studies judge it less harsh on Peter than earlier ones did. In 1901 William Wrede named the Messianic Secret, Jesus' insistence on silence about who he is, and argued it was a creation of the early church; how far it goes back to Jesus is still debated. Almost a third of the book is miracle and healing.

Once most scholars concluded, in the nineteenth century, that it was the earliest Gospel, it came to be valued as a prime source for the historical Jesus, a judgment that has itself been questioned. Scholars now generally class it as ancient biography, written to strengthen believers.

Who Should Read It

Anyone who wants to meet the story of Jesus in its leanest form. It can be read in one sitting and rewards it, because its pace is part of its meaning. It suits newcomers to the Bible, and readers who know the other Gospels will find it rougher, stranger and more human than they remember.