Who actually wrote the Gospel of Mark?  When?  And Why?

In my previous post I laid out the major themes and emphases of Mark’s Gospel, and now I want to turn to some of the key historical issues about it.  I begin with the author.

The two most important things to note are (1) every surviving manuscript that preserves a title ascribes the book to Mark, either calling it “The Gospel according to Mark” or “The Holy Gospel according to Mark,” or just “According to Mark” and (2) these manuscripts were produced over three centuries after the book was placed in circulation.

Our oldest two manuscripts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, for you fellow Bible nerds) come from toward the end of the fourth century (around 375 CE), and they have the titles (“According to Mark”).  What about manuscripts before then?  We just have no information (since these are our two earliest).  But it does mean that some 300 years after Mark had been circulating, scribes copying it were entitling it that.  And how much earlier than that?  Two hundred years?  Fifty years?  Three years?  Take your guess.

It’s no surprise that scribes were giving it this title by this time, since outside the manuscripts, the book was ascribed to Mark much earlier.  John Mark is mentioned in the book of Acts as a Jew from Jerusalem; he comes to be associated with both Peter and Paul.  Already by the early second century we hear of a story that Mark was Peter’s secretary (interpreter? translator?), who listened to him preach, and then wrote down his (Peter’s) version of what Jesus said and did.  The story first comes to us in Papias, a Christian author from around 130 CE.

There are two major problems with thinking that Papias’s statement demonstrates that Mark wrote this book.  One is that there is no way of knowing that Papias was referring to the book we have.  He mentions a Gospel; he says Mark produced it from Peter’s teachings; but he doesn’t say what is in it or quote it – so there’s no way of knowing for certain that he’s talking about our Mark.

I’m not just being overly skeptical here.  As I pointed out in my post on Matthew, the only two things Papias says about the Gospel Matthew allegedly wrote are not true of our Matthew.  In that case he either appears to be referring to a different book altogether to shows his own information is not reliable.  So too with Mark?

The other problem the quotations of Papias in later sources (we don’t have his writings, only scattered references to them later) recounts traditions about Jesus that almost no one thinks can be accurate.  (See this recent post:  https://ehrmanblog.org/is-the-gospel-of-mark-papias-refers-to-our-gospel-of-mark/ ).  If he’s not trustworthy when we can test his claims then we have to be cautious in trusting ones we cannot test.

It was not for another fifty years or so that anyone definitively called this Gospel “Mark.”  In his work Against Heresies, from 180 CE or so,  Irenaeus names the book Mark and quotes it, so we know he’s talking about our Mark.  [[Earlier authors who appear to quote Mark (e.g., Justin in 150 CE) don’t name its author (oddly)]].

If we look for any evidence in the Gospel itself that it was written by Mark or from provides Peter’s perspective on Jesus, there’s really nothing there.  The author never names himself or gives any hints about his identity or indicates that he had any association with Peter or with any of the other characters in the story.  He is fully anonymous.  Lots of the accounts in the Gospel have nothing to do with Peter and include lots of things that Peter would not have known (e.g., what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane when Peter was not near him and was sound asleep!  14:32-42).  Peter is not portrayed in a positive light in the Gospel: he cannot understand who Jesus is, he puts his foot in his mouth, he denies him three times, and at one point Jesus calls him Satan.  That doesn’t mean Peter could not be the source of the stories, but there’s nothing in the stories to make one suspect he is; just the contrary.

The other thing to point out is that if the historical Mark was from Jerusalem, as Acts indicates, he almost certainly could not have written this kind of subtle and elaborate account in Greek.  His native language would have been Aramaic.  From the entire first century we have only one Jewish author from Judea-Galilee who has left us any Greek writings, Josephus, a high-level, highly educated, elite aristocrat.  Mark would not have been in that league, if he knew any Greek at all (he may have been able to speak some if is his parents had money and he was from Jerusalem, as Acts indicates.  But learning to write compositions in antiquity took many years of training for the elite kids, and to do so in a second language was highly unusual.)

Why was it then attributed to Mark?  When the Gospels – all of them anonymous – were assigned names, these, the four most popular, were attributed to two of Jesus’ own disciples (Matthew and John) and to intimate companions of his two most important apostles, Luke the companion of Paul and Mark the companion of Peter.  Two are by members of the twelve; two are backed by the most important leaders of the early church:  these are four names that guarantee the truth of the accounts.

As to when it was written: obviously before Irenaeus (180 CE) cites it and Justin (150 CE) who probably knows it, more important, obviously before Matthew and Luke (80-90 CE) who both used it.  There are also good indications that Mark was writing after the Jewish uprising against the Romans (66-70 CE).   He indicates that that God brought about the destruction of Jerusalem (by gentiles) because Jews had rejected Jesus their messiah (thus the Parable of the Vineyard, 12:1-11; see especially 12:9), and that the temple itself had been destroyed (13:2).

Usually, then, this Gospel is dated to just after the war, maybe 70-75 CE.

There have been a number of suggestions as to why the author wrote the book.  Some have thought that since the entire generation of eyewitnesses and disciples had died out or were soon to do so, he wanted to make a record of what had happened in Jesus’ life.  It may be that he was well aware of numerous stories about Jesus in circulation and thought they should be recorded.  Possibly he know many of the stories conflicted with one another and wanted a definitive account.  There is no solid evidence that he knew of or even used previous written accounts that no longer survive, thought it is certainly possible.

On top of these plausible speculations, one needs to consider the themes of the account as I described them in the previous post.  Mark’s ultimate goal is to explain that Jesus was definitely the messiah sent from God even though he is not the one anyone expected.  That is why, in Mark’s account, no one – not his family, the Jewish leaders, or even his own disciples – can understand him.  Jesus repeatedly declares he has to die for others and not even his closest intimates can get their minds around it.

That’s because it is the opposite of what God’s messiah was expected to do.  Mark writes his Gospel to counter the Jewish claims that Jesus could not be the Messiah, showing that they are precisely the ones who don’t understand what God has done to fulfill of his age-old plan..  Note: Jesus ministry begins with the fulfillment of Scriptural prophecy in the coming of John the Baptist and ends with Jesus quoting Psalm 22 on the cross.  It is all according to plan.

The idea that Jesus is the messiah who must suffer and die is hugely enigmatic idea just Jesus in his ministry in mark is hugely enigmatic.  He intentionally teaches so people will not understand and repent; he who unsuccessfully tries to keep his activities secret; he does not allow those who begin to understand to tell others what they’ve seen and heard; and in the end not even his disciples have figured him out:  they never even learn that he has been raised from the dead.

Mark may have written this account the way he did precisely because it was a perspective that nearly everyone had trouble believing:  God’s messiah had to suffer, die, and be raised from the dead.