How could Jesus be the messiah?  Wasn’t the messiah to be a powerful figure sent from God to overthrow the enemies of the Jews and establish a new kingdom on earth?  How could a person publicly humiliated and tortured to death by his enemies be considered the Mighty One to Come?  That is the question Mark sets out to address in his narrative, the first of our surviving Gospels.

My goal in this entire thread on the books of the New Testament is to provide four major posts on each of the books, one summarizing its major themes; another dealing with the historical questions of who wrote it, when, and why; another providing an annotated bibliography of other work written by scholars for a non-scholarly audience – studies, commentaries, and online resources; and a final one dealing with one of its key, interesting aspects. I have done that for Matthew, and now I do it for Mark. This post is on it’s overarching and distinctive themes.

As I did with Matthew, here I begin by summarizing the book in one fifty-word sentence. Before you read it, try it yourself. Have you ever read Mark closely or studied it? If so, what would you say it is about, in one sentence, covering its contents and showing its distinctive features? Here’s my attempt:

Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!

Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!

Learn More!