Through the Eyes of Mark

His World, His Gospel

Jack Ciancio

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781666707960, 9781666707977
• eBook ISBN: 9781666707984
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

How did the early believers receive and understand the Gospel according to Mark? Mark's Gospel cannot be fully understood unless we recognize the spiritual needs, hopes, and fears of his first-century audience and emerging church. Through the Eyes of Mark immerses its readers in the realities of Mark's world. It presents the findings of dozens of the world's leading biblical and New Testament scholars and historians in an easy-to-understand format. Through the Eyes of Mark is a must-read for students of religion, enlightening for general readers, and a fresh addition to the field of Markan studies.

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 ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Conflict and Betrayal
• 1 Mark and His World
• 2 Rome
• Part II Literary Motifs and Martyrs
• 3 Gospel Origins
• 4 Mark’s Gospel As Literature
• 5 Greeks, Martyrs, Maccabees, and Mark
• Part III According to Mark
• 6 Behind the Words
• 7 According to Mark
• 8 The Passion Narrative
• 9 Mark’s Theology
• 10 Transcendence Of Mark
• Bibliography