Mark: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries

Introduction

Introduction Week in and week out churches in many North American denominations hear the reading of a Sunday lection from the Gospels. It has become so routine that we may not ever really think how much we owe this to the writer we Christians customarily call Mark. Mark’s was the first Gospel with this now common designation. It was in all likelihood the first of the four written in the Bible. It even begins its narrative at 1:1 with a title calling attention to its purpose: “The beginning of the good news (euaggelion = gospel) of Jesus Christ, [Son of God]” (parentheses mine). Please notice the lowercase “g” on Mark’s first reference to the term gospel or good news. Mark, it appears, was simply trying to show that his writing was a kind of narrative rendering of what by 70 c.e. or so was known as the basic core of the gospel, theologically understood as the death and resurrection of Christ.1 With Mark’s new narrative interpretation, the word gospel includes Jesus’ ministry and proclamation of God’s kingdom along with his death and resurrection. What is amazing, however, is that this narrative gospel of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection eventually becomes a quasiliterary genre in the church, Mark’s Gospel—hence the capital G. For after Mark writes his “beginning of the gospel,” others within a generation seem to take up the literary task along with him. Matthew and Luke evidence clear literary dependence on Mark, and later, in his own quite different way, so does John. We go about today blithely reading aloud a Gospel lection Sunday to Sunday, but it need not have been so. Somehow around 70 c.e. Mark lays a groundwork in the form of what biblical scholar Frances Moloney calls a theologically driven narrative2 that causes others to write and still many other others to hear and expect a narrative rendering of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection. Of course, we need to be careful about such generic statements. We today can call Mark the first of the Gospel genre all we like, but if we do we may just occlude some important truths. Genre is in actuality a literary term, not a theological one. And in literature there is no such thing as a genre sui generis. Whatever Mark is writing, theologically driven or not, is influenced profoundly by the literary and cultural context of his age. Moreover, Mark is also more generally a creature of his time and culture. Since he writes in the common 1. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). 2. Francis Moloney, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), xvii. 1 Koine Greek of his day and his text shows he seems to know a little bit about Aramaic (5:41; 7:34) and deals in the occasional Latinism, he must have been the beneficiary of some education. In all likelihood, this meant not only knowing languages, but how to communicate in them. Education in the Greco-Roman world meant some exposure to grammar and rhetoric and with it, practice exercises in imitating epic storytellers like Homer.3 It is one thing to note that Mark wrote a work that subsequently influenced the ways in which Christians and their lectionary committees later used the word Gospel; it is quite another thing to argue that Mark’s Gospel somehow emerged ex nihilo. It did not. For that matter, even the limited theological way that we wish to speak of these gospel developments must be qualified somewhat. The irony is that Mark’s gospel, Mark’s theology itself appears “unfinished.” His title at 1:1 reads “the beginning of the gospel” (emphasis mine). By the time this work ends—and most scholars agree it is at 16:8—Mark’s writing seems downright elliptical: “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” What kind of ending is that? Many readers are left scratching their heads. To underline the point that this is not merely a modern problem, it is also helpful to note that ancient writers were likely no less satisfied with Mark’s ending than we. Within a relatively short historical timespan there is an addition to Mark’s text (16:9-20) as well as the writing of Matthew and Luke in the latter part of the first century. The latter two authors seem to use Mark’s structure, but clearly correct his...