Who wrote the Gospels of Mark?

The second of the four Gospels, also known as the "Gospel of Mark", was written by Mark.It tells of the ministry of Jesus from the moment he was christened by John the Baptist to his death and burial.There is no doctrine of divine pre-existence or post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in the original ending.Jesus is depicted as a heroic man of action, an exorcist, a healer, and a miracle worker.Even though he is the Son of God, he keeps his messianic nature a secret.The fate of the messiah as a suffering servant was foretold in prophecy.The original version of the gospel ends with the discovery of an empty tomb, a promise to meet again in Galilee, and an unheeded instruction to spread the good news of Jesus' resurrection.[5]

Mark is thought to have been after AD 70.They reject the traditional ascription to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of the Apostle Peter, which may have arisen from the desire of early Christians to link the work to an authoritative figure.It was considered an inferior abridgement of Matthew in the Christian canon.The view of Jesus has been derived from Matthew, John and Mark.

Mark was seen as the earliest of the four gospels in the 19th century.There is a new recognition of the author as an artist and theologian using a range of literary devices to convey his conception of Jesus as the authoritative yet suffering Son of God.[9]

The crucifixion of Mark is not publicly known.It was written in Greek for a gentile audience and probably in Rome, although Galilee is the third-largest city in the Roman Empire.Early Christian tradition attributes it to the John Mark mentioned in Acts, but scholars generally reject this as an attempt to link the gospel to an authoritative figure.Conflict stories, apocalyptic discourse, and collections of sayings were some of the pre-existing sources used by the author.It was [13].

The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of the ancient genre of bios.Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory, and also included morals, rhetoric, propaganda and kerygma in their works.[15]

The contents of Matthew, Mark andluke can be set side by side in parallel columns because of their resemblance to each other.The Synoptic Problem is caused by the fact that they share so much material and yet also exhibit important differences.Matthew andluke agree with each other in their sequence of stories and events only when they concur with Mark.[16]

In the 19th century, it was widely accepted that Mark was the most reliable source for Jesus, but since 1950, there has been a growing consensus that the primary purpose of the author was to announce a message rather than to report history.The idea of reconstructing the historical Jesus suffered a blow when William Wrede argued that the "Messianic secret" in Mark was a creation of the early church rather than a reflection.The overall description of Jesus's life and ministry is still seen as the most reliable of the four.[19]

When some of Jesus's followers claimed to have seen him rise from the dead, Christianity began within Judaism.Christians relied on Jewish literature to support their convictions.The key concepts of those convictions were the messiah, the son of God, and the suffering servant.Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was imminent, that God would punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the center of his plans.Christian literature became an experience of the living Christ when Christians read the Jewish scripture as a figure or type of Jesus Christ.The new movement spread around the eastern Mediterranean and to Rome and further west, and assumed a distinct identity, although the groups within it remained extremely diverse.[20]

The books were written to strengthen the faith of those who already believed.Christian "churches" were small communities of believers, often based on households with an autocratic matriarch, slaves, freedmen and other clients, and the Evangelists often wrote on two levels, one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other.Jesus would have used the terms "kingdom of God" and "belief" in Mark 1:14 and the following verse.Mark saw the suffering of the messiah as essential in order to counter believers who saw Jesus in a Greek way.Mark might have been writing against the Jews in Jerusalem who saw the Jewish revolt against Rome as the beginning of the end times, according to some scholars.[25]

There isn't an agreement on the structure of Mark.There is a break at Mark 8:26–31 where there are many miracle stories, the action is in Galilee, and Jesus preaches to the crowds.Peter made a confession at Mark 8:27 that Jesus is the messiah.At the end of chapter 10, when Jesus and his followers arrive in Jerusalem, R.T. France describes Mark as a three-act drama.The answer to who Jesus is can be seen as a series of questions asking first who he is, then what form his mission takes, and concluding with the crucifixion and resurrection.The structure of Mark is similar to that of a Greek tragedy according to Stephen H. Smith.[31]

The earliest and most reliable manuscripts of Mark end at Mark 16:8 with the women fleeing in fear from the empty tomb: the majority of recent scholars believe this to be the original ending.Two attempts were made to provide a more satisfactory conclusion.The "shorter ending" is an addition to Mark 16:8 that tells how the women told those around Peter all that the angel had commanded and the message of eternal life was then sent out by Jesus himself.The style and understanding of Jesus are different from the rest of Mark.The majority of manuscripts have the "longer ending", which may have been written in the early 2nd century and added later on.[33]

The author uses the word "gospel" more often than any other writer in the New Testament.It means "the good news (of the saving significance of the death and resurrection) of Christ" and is used by both Paul and Mark.The purpose of the terms "messiah" and "son of God" in Mark is to confirm the identity of Jesus as an eschatological deliverer.The messianic identity of Jesus is supported by a number of themes, including the depiction of his disciples as fearful and uncomprehending, and the refutation of the charge made by Jesus' enemies that he was a magician.[37]

Even the women who received the first proclamation of his resurrection can be seen as failures for not reporting the good news as the disciples move from lack of perception of Jesus to rejection of the "way of suffering" to flight and denial.There is a lot of discussion about this theme.Some argue that the author of Mark was using the disciples to correct "erroneous" views in his own community, others argue it was an attack on the Jerusalem branch of the church, or both.It shows the strong theme in Mark of Jesus as the "suffering just one" depicted in so many books of the Jewish scriptures.The theme of God's love being met by infidelity and failure is reflected in the Jewish scriptures.The failure of the disciples and Jesus' denial by Peter would be powerful symbols of faith, hope and reconciliation for Christians.[38]

There are twenty accounts of miracles and healings in Mark, accounting for almost a third of the total.Mark's descriptions of Jesus' healings are a partial exception to this, as he uses spittle to heal blind people.The charge against Jesus is that he is using an evil spirit and calling up the spirit of John the Baptist.There was no period in the history of the Roman empire in which the magician was not considered an enemy of society.If true, the charge against Jesus would be contrary to their claims.The purpose of the Beelzebub incident is to set forth Jesus' claims that he is an instrument of God.[42]

William Wrede identified the "Messianic secret" as one of Mark's central themes.The tension between the Church's post-resurrection messianic tendencies and the fictions of Jesus' silence of the demons and his disciples' obfuscation of his identity led Wrede to argue that the secret was fiction.There is still debate over how far the "secret" originated with Mark, and whether or not it represents the self-understanding and practices of the historical Jesus.[42]

Christology is an understanding of the person or nature of Christ.The titles applied to Jesus are frequently conveyed in the New Testament writings."Son of God" is the most important title in Mark, according to most scholars.Jesus' own self-designation is visible on the lips of God at the transfiguration.It is not clear just what the title meant to Mark and his 1st century audience, but these and other instances provide reliable evidence of how the Evangelist perceived Jesus.It means Israel as God's people, or the king at his coronation or angels, as well as the suffering righteous man, in the Hebrew scriptures.The phrase "divine man" was used in Hellenistic culture.There is no evidence that "son of God" was a title for the messiah in 1st century Judaism.[46]

Mark doesn't say what he means by "Son of God" or when the sonship was granted.There are four different understandings of the New Testament.

The Hebrew word "messiah" is translated as "anointed person" by Mark.The term messiah was used in the Old Testament to mean an eschatological king who would come at the end of time.The most important occurrences suggest that Jesus can only be fully understood in the context of his death and suffering.50

The third important title, "Son of Man", has its roots in the Book of Enoch, a popular Jewish apocalyptic work of the period.The Son of Man will be seated on the right hand of God before he comes on clouds, according to Mark 14:62.[54]