New Testament · Gospel · book 41 of 66 · 2 min read
The book of Mark
The shortest, fastest gospel, which spends a third of its length on one week and ends — in the oldest manuscripts — with frightened women saying nothing to anyone.
“For the Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
At a glance
- Chapters
- 16
- Author
- Traditionally Mark, associated with Peter; formally anonymous
- Written
- Probably around 70 AD; generally held to be the earliest gospel
- Written for
- A church under pressure, possibly in Rome
- Themes
- urgency, secrecy, service, the cross
What it is about
Mark moves. The word usually translated immediately appears more than forty times, and the first half reads as a series of rapid scenes with almost no discourse. Nearly every scholar considers it the earliest of the four and a source for Matthew and Luke.
It is also the most reticent. Jesus repeatedly tells people not to say who he is, the disciples consistently fail to understand, and the first human being to state the identity correctly is the Roman centurion at the execution.
The ending is the most discussed textual problem in the New Testament. The oldest manuscripts stop at 16:8, with the women fleeing the empty tomb in terror and telling nobody. The longer ending in most Bibles is a later addition, and the abrupt version is almost certainly what Mark wrote.
Where to start
Chapter 1, and read the whole book in a sitting. It takes about ninety minutes and is designed to be taken that way.
The chapters worth knowing
- Mark 4 — The sower and the storm, and the disciples asking whether he cares that they are drowning.
- Mark 8 — The hinge of the book — Peter's confession, and the first prediction of the cross.
- Mark 15 — The crucifixion, and the centurion who is the first human being in the book to say who he is.
What people get wrong about it
That Mark is an abbreviated version of Matthew. It is almost certainly the earliest, and its brevity is a style rather than a summary — its scenes are frequently more detailed than the parallel accounts.
Questions
Why does Mark end so abruptly?
The oldest manuscripts end at 16:8 with the women afraid and silent. The longer ending found in many Bibles is a later addition, and most scholars think the abrupt ending is original and deliberate.
Was Mark the first gospel written?
Most scholars think so, dating it around 70 AD and treating it as a source used by Matthew and Luke — a view based on the amount of Mark that appears, often word for word, in both.