Through the Eyes of Mark: His World, His Gospel

Introduction

The Gospel according to Mark is arguably the most compelling and yet bewildering, rewarding and yet frustrating, forthright and yet mystifying account of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It has been described as boring, plain, and artless, as well as being emotionally intense, realistic, and vivid. This diversity in descriptions makes for one very intriguing piece of literature. Beyond the coincidence that my birthday, April 25, falls on Mark’s feast day, I never had any particular opinion one way or another about this Gospel. Except for its brevity¹ it didn’t seem to be much different from any of the other gospels, basically offering the same parables, pericopes, and teachings about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. A few years ago, however, that all changed—I discovered Mark.

While doing some academic research on the Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Luke, Matthew), I discovered in Mark a unique and multifaceted story, a narrative that hides a fascinating complexity behind a superficial simplicity. In Mark I found a canonical gospel that, on careful scrutiny, is out-of-line with the other Gospels. For example, in Mark, unlike the other three Gospels, the twelve apostles come across as befuddled. They never quite understand what Jesus is all about. In the end they abandon him as he suffers and dies alone. Why would Mark present the apostles, especially Peter, considered closest to Jesus and for whom Mark was the alleged translator, in such a disparaging manner? What did Mark know that the other Gospel writers did not? And why did subsequent editors of his Gospel find the ending of his original manuscript so troubling that they thought it necessary to add an ending of their own?

These and many other questions prompted me to delve into as many books and articles on Mark as I could find. The more I explored Mark’s Gospel the more I found myself being pulled into a vortex of fascination. As if reading a slowly developing mystery novel my intrigue grew until I reached a point of appreciation that is best described by Morton Enslin: The longer I study this gospel, the more I am impressed by the daring genius of its author. Far from being an artless work, it bears on every page the evidence . . . of the author’s creative design.² Mark offers controversy, theological challenges, and fascinating insights into a world far removed, a world where myth intertwined with reality. His Gospel is not only a story about Jesus but also about the early church and the forces that influenced his telling of that story. Most people have heard selected scriptural verses from this Gospel hundreds of times in many worship services, and yet few realize the conflict and turmoil Mark was conveying in the words he used and in the words he purposefully avoided using. Without Mark it is possible that we would not have the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, or John and, therefore, no organized first-century written account of the ministry of Jesus. It is quite conceivable that without Mark’s Gospel Christianity as we know it would never have come to fruition. If so, the history of Western Civilization would have been quite different.

If, as I have noted, there are so many books and articles on Mark’s Gospel, you might ask, "Why another? While there are numerous books and articles on this particular gospel, many of them are quite academic, written by and for scholars and theologians. Or they preach" Mark rather than strive for an understanding of Mark. This book is different in that it offers the reader passage into Mark’s world, to see that world through Mark’s eyes and thus come to an understanding of what influenced Mark to write that particular Gospel in that particular form at that particular time in history. I have gathered the leadings of many scholars, theologians, and church historians hoping to give the reader a detailed look at Mark’s world, his intention for writing the Gospel, what influenced him, the opposition and conflicts with which he struggled, and how that all culminated in a theology he hoped to convey to the burgeoning Christian church. In short, I wanted to get behind the eyes of the Evangelist to see the world as he saw it.

The difficulty in preparing a book on Mark and his Gospel is that we have an excess of suppositions about him, his Gospel, Jesus, and those formative years of the church, but very few definitive and verifiable facts. Sam Williams uses the term informed conjecture to define the process scholars have used to come up with the very best conclusions given so few verifiable facts.³ Albert C. Outler cautions us that these are ingenious conjectures as to how things ‘really were.’⁴ William Wrede calls it suppositionitis, historical guesswork at best.⁵ All these suppositions are drawn from tidbits of historical information gleaned from various period writings such as the books of the New Testament, Apocryphal Books, Roman historical records, and the writings of the early church fathers. It helps that interwoven throughout those records are many verifiable historical facts that lead to well-reasoned conclusions. Nevertheless, the truth is that much of what we accept as fact is really drawn from specious suppositions. The human mind, perhaps more so 2,000 years ago than today, has a habit of allowing the imagination to fill in where facts run out. A more scientific way of stating that is to be found in the explanation for mental schemas.

A schema is a fixed mental representation either of how things are, or how we think they are or should be. It is formed by a combination of experience and learning.⁶ Schemas are not a process of which the individual is consciously aware.⁷ Through repeated exposure to similar stimuli, for example, experiences, teachings, and observations the individual subconsciously builds a cognitive model, a sort of mental data bank, that informs what to expect, what it means, how best to respond, the implications of, stereotypes, and a general repertoire of theories regarding new types of stimuli.⁸ That pre-existing model then strongly influences the individual’s response to new stimuli. The Gospel of John offers an excellent example of the schema challenge that Jesus as Messiah posed for the Jews. In John 12:32 Jesus says, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. This, however, was counter to the schematic representation of the Messiah affixed in the minds of the Jews. John exposes this cognitive conflict in 12:34, The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man will be lifted up?’ Centuries of authoritative teaching had formed a schema of the Messiah in the minds of the Jews that was dramatically different from that described by Jesus.⁹ Schemas work syllogistically from the information that has been laid down from prior experience. Such prior experience then influences new decision-making.¹⁰ If, therefore, a person’s experience or instruction has always been "If A then B," then any situation that presents pre-existing schemata A (for example, the Messiah will remain forever) will facilitate the assumption that B follows (therefore, the Messiah cannot be lifted up). Trying to reconcile what I know with information that shows what I know might be wrong creates what modern psychology calls cognitive dissonance, an incompatibility of beliefs, which leads to a negative emotional state as the individual tries to resolve the issue.¹¹ Little wonder the Jews had difficulty accepting as the long-awaited Messiah this poor suffering peasant who was eventually condemned and executed as a common rebel. They were assured their Messiah would come in glory to vanquish Israel’s foes and remain with them forever.

Schemas play another crucial function, which is that they help fill in gaps of missing information.¹² Where no knowledge exists to verify the facts and render a certifiable response the mind will configure a close enough response based on knowledge already encoded. This explains why many of the suppositional particulars of those early church years have come to be accepted as fact when, in reality, there is no credible evidence to support their validity. For example, it is widely assumed that the John whose other name was Mark (Acts 12:12) was the author of the Gospel according to Mark but there are no facts to support such a claim. Our need to fill in this gap is accommodated by our subconscious schema processing rendering us more comfortable with some answer that fills in a missing piece of the puzzle rather than no answer. In the Acts of the Apostles we have a historical figure named John Mark, sometimes called Mark, a name that appears several times but with no other reference as to identity, and we have a Gospel that tradition has titled Mark; therefore, because they have in common certain schematic facts—place, historical time, associates, group affiliation—it must be the same Mark. And yet, there is no proof John Mark or, as will be shown, an individual named Mark, was the author of this Gospel.

Contributing to the difficulty of coming to a full understanding of Mark is that, while it is true that there is a lot of material written about the Gospel of Mark, much of it is inconsistent and contradictory. This led to what I found to be the candy shop effect—so many good suppositional facts to choose from that choosing one fact over another was difficult. In the end it came down to drawing conclusions from the preponderance of information and what formed the most logical conclusion based on available facts rather than on theological suppositions.

This book is limited to a compilation of what years of research by numerous scholars has determined to be the factors that influenced Mark, the unique genre Mark created with his Gospel, and the message that he was attempting to convey to the rest of the first-century Christian community. There will be differing opinions (informed conjectures), to be sure, but generating differing opinions is one of the most alluring characteristics of Mark and his Gospel. This is not an evangelical lecture on what to believe nor does it offer a theological position. Through this analytical deconstruction of the Gospel according to Mark readers will gain insights into Mark’s world, the historical events, and the worldview of first-century citizens that shaped his writing. In brief, I invite readers to set aside their schematic beliefs and to look behind the scenes to see what Mark saw and experienced in his world that led him to write that particular narrative, at that particular time, and in that particular format.

1

. It is shortest in total length compared to Matthew and Luke. If, however, one compares the length of shared pericopes, Mark’s are most often longer (Stein, Studying,

53

).

2

. Enslin, The Artistry of Mark, 388.

3

. Williams, Jesus’ Death,

205

.

4

. Outler, The Gospel, 4.

5

. Wrede, The Messianic Secret,

8

.

6

. Beck and Clark. "Anxiety and Depression",

24

.

7

. Rest, Postconventional Moral Thinking,

136

.

8

. Narvaez and Bock, Moral Schema,

300

.

9

This example is of particular importance throughout this study for two reasons:

1

) It is a perfect example of the inflexibility of a schema;

2

) it well explains the conflict between early Christianity and Judaism as it exemplifies the conflict between the traditional Jewish schema of the Messiah and the dramatically new and conflicting Christian proclamation of the suffering-servant messiahship of Jesus.

10

. Lipson, The Influence,

449

.

11

. Harmon-Jones, A Cognitive Dissonance Theory,

185

,

192

.

12

Lipson, The Influence,

449

; Rest, Postconventional Moral Thinking,

136

.

Part I

Conflict and Betrayal

1

Mark and His World

What would eventually become the Gospel according to Mark essentially began immediately following the death of Jesus. Although we theorize about a much later date of creation, the truth is that all the forces that eventually shaped Mark’s final product began with the realization that Jesus was gone and his followers were on their own, a disorganized group of believers in—what? Even they were unsure about how or why their beloved Jesus ended up crucified as a rebel. Despite the confusion and doubts and within a cauldron of political, religious, and cultural events the memory of Jesus was kept vibrantly alive in the hearts and minds of his followers. It is within that cauldron that we must look for those seminal events that would lead to the creation of the Gospel according to Mark.

To fully understand this Gospel we must know the world in which Mark lived and how he perceived it. With that in mind we must first engage in what is known as redaction criticism, which is the investigation of the Gospel traditions, so that we may better understand the life situation of the Evangelists that led them to write their Gospels. In New Testament studies, the German term Sitz im Leben (situation in life), refers to the circumstances, conditions, the happenings that we, two thousand years removed, in a different culture, language, and knowledge of the world, and a wholly different religious schema, deduce as influencing those to whom we attribute the creation of the four Gospels. We are interested in the Sitz im Leben of the Evangelist himself when he wrote his gospel. Here we must pause to ask, "Did the Evangelists really write their Gospels?" Not in the sense that Dickens wrote his novels. The Gospels are a collection of oral stories told, bits of written information, and sermons preached over the years from the crucifixion to the first formal written gospel narrative. The redactors, that is, editors, of the Gospels compiled those narratives by selecting and organizing what information already existed about Jesus within the growing Christian community. Along with what they selected they added their own material to both improve the flow of their narratives and to advance their own personal theological opinion.¹ The resultant Gospels were strongly influenced by the Sitz im Leben of each individual Evangelist and the needs of the Christian community.

To better understand Mark we need to know the religious, political, and cultural forces that affected his thinking, beliefs, and goals. How did the early believers receive and understand Mark? As will be shown, first-century Christians did not trust the written word, so we must wonder how Mark hoped to get his message of the Good News across not only in written form but in a form never before seen. To understand Mark’s Gospel, we really need to know his world. As much as possible, we must try to understand that world by recognizing that first-century cognitive processes, that is, how the brain processes information, would not yield the same results as our twenty-first-century cognitive processes. Mark wrote in Koine Greek,² the Greek of the first century, which is not the same as modern-day Greek. The words in Mark’s text do not function for us today as they did for his first-century audience, whether Christian or Gentile. We must immerse ourselves in Greek philosophy and literature, Roman paganism and power, Judaic literature and theology, and the traditional myths of all those cultures to understand Mark and this burgeoning movement of believers not yet known as Christians. What was going on in the community of believers, the Jewish nation, and the pagan Roman Empire that prompted Mark to write? And why did he choose this never-before-seen form in which to write? Most importantly, how do the answers to those questions affect our faith today?

Mark Who?

Who wrote the Gospel according to Mark? Traditional theory claims that the author of this Gospel is the John whose other name was Mark, mentioned in Acts 12:12.³ It is accepted that this Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their missionary journeys to Seleucia, Cyprus, Salamis, Paphos, and Perga. It was in Perga, for some undisclosed reason, that Mark left them to return to Jerusalem (Acts13:4–13). Later, when Paul asked Barnabas to set out on another missionary journey, Barnabas wanted to take Mark, but Paul refused, citing Mark’s desertion of them at Pamphylia. This did not sit well with Barnabas and he left Paul and set out with Mark for Cyprus (Acts 15:36–39). While we will never know what caused the rift we do read that it was sharp (Acts 15:39). It seems quite likely that, from John Mark’s perspective, being accused of desertion was not something to be taken lightly. This raises important questions. Was

Paul’s rejection based on theological differences? Missionary techniques? If John Mark was the author of this Gospel how might these differences and Paul’s sharp rejection of having him along influence Mark’s subsequent narrative?

Other references to Mark include Colossians 4:10, which mentions greetings being sent by Mark the cousin of Barnabas. While none of these references provide evidence that John Mark wrote the Gospel, they do indicate that there was a Mark,