Description

We start our series on the Gospel of Mark. 

Here is some information to help with understanding the date, location, and author of the Gospel of Mark. 

Date: One of the first parts of the puzzle comes from looking at the other Gospels. Matthew reproduces 606 of Mark's 661 verses and Luke reproduces 320 of Mark's verses Matthew uses nearly 51% of Mark's actual words and Luke uses 53% of Mark's actual words. This leads us to a couple of possibilities. Either all 3 Gospels are using the same source material or Matthew and Luke used Mark as common source material. The consensus among most scholars is that Matthew and Luke used Mark as source material to write their Gospels, Most likely making Mark the first of the Gospels written. However, this doesn't mean that there weren't other sources that Mark drew from. Most likely Mark drew from the Church's oral tradition. 

There is also a great deal of evidence that the author of Mark actually got all of the information directly from Peter himself. Early church tradition connects Peter with the Gospel of Mark and indicates that John Mark of Acts, (Act 12:12,25; 15:37, 39) was possibly the author The earliest evidence we have of this is from a Bishop in the 2nd century named Papias who we know was born about 60 A.D. In Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History (3.39), Papias states that Mark became Peter's interpreter and wrote accurately, but not in order, all that he had remembered of the things said and done by the Lord. He also stated that Mark did not see Jesus, meaning he was not an eyewitness to the life of Jesus. On top of this, the connection appears over and over again in the early church. It is seen in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen ( who argues that 1 Peter 5:13 is referring to the same Mark who wrote the Gospel), Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine who lived to 430 AD. So in the first several centuries many of the big names in the church connected Peter to the Gospel of Mark. 

The Text:

There are some clues form the text that helps us in determining the date of authorship as well.

• Mark's Gospel is concerned with suffering (we will dive into this as we get into the text). As an example, we can look at the suffering of John the Baptist and Jesus, and the disciples. The emphasis of this could be because the first readers of the Gospel were a suffering community. Nero reigned Rome from 54 to 68 AD and was famous for his persecution of Christians. If Mark was indeed writing from Rome He and his community would have been well aware of what it meant to suffer for their faith.
• The Jewish War or the Great      Revolt started in 66 AD. The Jewish War was a revolt against Roman rule and led to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. Mark 13…also known as the Markan Apocalypse is full of allusions to the war and the destruction of the temple. Scholars argue about whether the Gospel pre-dates or post-dates the war, the dates of the war fit within our 55-75 time frame.

Location:

Papias, Clement, Irenaeus, Origin, all the guys we have gone over believe Rome to be the place of Origin for Mark's letter. If we connect Mark to Peter and Peter to Rome at the end of his life, then Rome is the place for these guys and for the tradition of the Church.

The text itself seems to support a non-Jewish location because Mark periodically stops to explain Jewish customs (Mark 7:3-4 as an example), to translate Aramaic expressions (Mark 5:41). This also indicates that the Gospel would have been intended to a gentile community as Jews wouldn't really need to have these things explained to them. These are things a non-Jewish person might need help in understanding.