The Pedigree of the Gospels
When we consider how the gospels came to be written, we must try to think ourselves back to a time when there was no such thing as a printed book. The gospels were written long before printing had been invented, and compiled when every book had to be carefully and laboriously written out by hand. It is clear that, as long as that was the case, only a few copies of any book could exist.
How do we know, or how can we deduce, that Mark was the first of all the gospels? When we read the synoptic gospels even in English we see that there are remarkable similarities between them. They contain the same incidents often told in the same words; and they contain accounts of the teaching of Jesus which are often almost identical. If we compare the story of the feeding of the 5,000 in the three gospels (Mark 6:30–44; Matthew 14:12–21; Luke 9:10–17), we see that it is told in almost exactly the same words and in exactly the same way. A very clear instance of this is the story of the healing of the man who was sick with the palsy (Mark 2:1–12; Matthew 9:1–8; Luke 5:17–26). The accounts are so similar that even a little parenthesis – ‘he said to the paralytic’ – occurs in all three in exactly the same place. The correspondences are so close that we are forced to one of two conclusions. Either all three are taking their material from some common source, or two of the three are based on the third.
When we study the matter closely we find that Mark can be divided into 105 sections. Of these, ninety-three occur in Matthew and eighty-one in Luke. Only four are not included either in Matthew or in Luke. Even more compelling is this. Mark has 661 verses; Matthew has 1,068 verses; Luke has 1,149 verses. Of Mark’s 661 verses, Matthew reproduces no fewer than 606. Sometimes he alters the wording slightly but he even reproduces 51 per cent of Mark’s actual words. Of Mark’s 661 verses, Luke reproduces 320, and he actually uses 53 per cent of Mark’s actual words. Of the fifty-five verses of Mark which Matthew does not reproduce, thirty-one are found in Luke. So the result is that there are only twenty-four verses in Mark which do not occur somewhere in Matthew and Luke. This makes it look very much as if Matthew and Luke were using Mark as the basis of their gospels.
What makes the matter still more certain is this. Both Matthew and Luke very largely follow Mark’s order of events. Sometimes Matthew alters Mark’s order and sometimes Luke does. But when there is a change in the order Matthew and Luke never agree together against Mark. Always one of them retains Mark’s order of events.
A close examination of the three gospels makes it clear that Matthew and Luke had Mark before them as they wrote; and they used his gospel as the basis into which they fitted the extra material which they wished to include.
It is thrilling to remember that when we read Mark’s gospel we are reading the first life of Jesus, on which all succeeding lives have necessarily been based.
Mark, the Writer of the Gospel
Who then was this Mark who wrote the gospel? The New Testament tells us a good deal about him. He was the son of a well-to-do lady of Jerusalem whose name was Mary, and whose house was a rallying point and meeting place of the early Church (Acts 12:12). From the very beginning Mark was brought up in the very centre of the Christian fellowship.
Mark was also the nephew of Barnabas, and when Paul and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey they took Mark with them to be their secretary and attendant (Acts 12:25). This journey was a most unfortunate one for Mark. When they reached Perga, Paul proposed to strike inland up to the central plateau; and for some reason Mark left the expedition and went home (Acts 13:13).
He may have gone home because he was scared to face the dangers of what was notoriously one of the most difficult and dangerous roads in the world, a road hard to travel and haunted by bandits. He may have gone home because it was increasingly clear that the leadership of the expedition was being assumed by Paul, and Mark may have felt with disapproval that his uncle was being pushed into the background. He may have gone home because he did not approve of the work which Paul was doing. Writing in the fourth century, John Chrysostom – perhaps with a flash of imaginative insight – says that Mark went home because he wanted his mother!
Paul and Barnabas completed their first missionary journey and then proposed to set out upon their second. Barnabas was anxious to take Mark with them again. But Paul refused to have anything to do with the man ‘who had deserted them in Pamphylia’ (Acts 15:37–40). So serious was the difference between them that Paul and Barnabas split company, and, as far as we know, never worked together again.
For some years, Mark vanishes from history. Tradition has it that he went down to Egypt and founded the church of Alexandria there. Whether or not that is true we do not know, but we do know that when Mark re-emerges it is in the most surprising way. We learn to our surprise that when Paul writes the letter to the Colossians from prison in Rome Mark is there with him (Colossians 4:10). In another prison letter, to Philemon, Paul numbers Mark among his fellow workers (verse 24). And, when Paul is waiting for death and very near the end, he writes to Timothy, his right-hand man, and says, ‘Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful in my ministry’ (2 Timothy 4:11). It is a far cry from the time when Paul contemptuously dismissed Mark as a quitter. Whatever had happened, Mark had redeemed himself. He was the one man Paul wanted at the end.
Mark’s Sources of Information
The value of any story will depend on the writer’s sources of information. Where, then, did Mark get his information about the life and work of Jesus? We have seen that his home was from the beginning a Christian centre in Jerusalem. Often he must have heard people tell of their personal memories of Jesus. But it is most likely that he had a source of information without a superior.
Towards the end of the second century there was a man called Papias who liked to obtain and transmit such information as he could glean about the early days of the Church. He tells us that Mark’s gospel is nothing other than a record of the preaching material of Peter, the greatest of the apostles. Certainly Mark stood so close to Peter, and so near to his heart, that Peter could call him ‘my son Mark’ (1 Peter 5:13). Here is what Papias says:
Mark, who was Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he recollected of what Christ had said or done. For he was not a hearer of the Lord or a follower of his. He followed Peter, as I have said, at a later date, and Peter adapted his instruction to practical needs, without any attempt to give the Lord’s words systematically. So that Mark was not wrong in writing down some things in this way from memory, for his one concern was neither to omit nor to falsify anything that he had heard.
We may then take it that in his gospel we have what Mark remembered of the preaching material of Peter himself.
So, then, we have two great reasons why Mark is a book of supreme importance. First, it is the earliest of all the gospels; if it was written just shortly after Peter died, its date will be about AD 65. Second, it embodies the record of what Peter preached and taught about Jesus. We may put it this way: Mark is the nearest approach we will ever possess to an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus.
The Lost Ending
There is a very interesting point about Mark’s gospel. In its original form it stops at Mark 16:8. We know this for two reasons. First, the verses which follow (Mark 16:9–20) are not in any of the great early manuscripts; only later and inferior manuscripts contain them. Second, the style of the Greek is so different that these verses and the rest of the gospel cannot have been written by the same person.
But the gospel cannot have been meant to stop at Mark 16:8. What then happened? It may be that Mark died, perhaps even suffered martyrdom, before he could complete his gospel. More likely, it may be that at one time only one copy of the gospel remained, and that a copy in which the last part of the roll on which it was written had got torn off. There was a time when the Church did not much use Mark, preferring Matthew and Luke. It may well be that Mark’s gospel was so neglected that all copies except for a mutilated one were lost. If that is so, we were within an ace of losing the gospel which in many