Gospel of Mark

MARK, GOSPEL OF, the earliest in date, though the second in canonical order, of the Four Gospels. For the evidence that Mk. was used as a source by the compilers of Mt. and Lk., and that it is therefore older than they, see the article GOSPEL. It was clearly of high authority in the period just after it was written. There are reasons for thinking that it was known not only to Mt. and Lk. but to Jn., and it was certainly used by the author of the apocryphal Gospel of Peter. It is perhaps quoted or echoed by the Roman writer Hermas about A.D. I40; it was used by Tatian (who had been in Rome, and who about A.D. 170 made a Harmony of the Gospels in Syriac) ; and it was ranked as one of the Four Gospels by Irenaeus (about A.D. i8o). Irenaeus, like Tatian, had been in Rome, and the evidence of early quotations may be thus said to be in favour of Rome as a place of origin for Mk. It must certainly have been backed by some powerful Church in order to secure a place in the Canon, since, despite its vogue in the first century, it fell at a later date into relative disrepute. It is seldom quoted in antiquity-the longer and fuller Gospels of Mt. and Lk. were preferred to it. The earliest known com mentary on Mk. dates from the fifth century. There are mss. of the Gospels in which it stands not second, but last, of the four.

Early Traditions Regarding the Gospel.

The earliest tradition with regard to the writing of the Gospel is contained in a fragment of Papias (quoted by Eusebius, H.E., III. xxxix. i 5), which may be translated as follows: "This also the presbyter used to say: Mark indeed, who be came the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, as far as he remembered them, the things said or done by the Lord, but not, however, in order. For he had neither heard the Lord nor been his personal follower, but at a later stage, as I said, he had followed Peter, who used to adapt the teachings to the needs [of the moment], but not as though he were drawing up a con nected account of the oracles of the Lord : so that Mark com mitted no error in writing certain matters just as he remembered them. For he had one object only in view, viz.:—to leave out nothing of the things which he had heard, and to include no false statement among them." It is not clear how much of this statement goes back to the unnamed "presbyter," how much represents Papias' own ampli fication of what the "presbyter" had said. Papias himself ap pears to have been Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia about A.D. 14o, and a great champion of oral tradition. It is clear that criticisms had been made on Mk.'s Gospel on the ground of its defective "order"; and it is probable that the Gospel which is being tacitly preferred to it is that of Mt., in which it was

thought that the ma'zcrials were arranged in a more orderly way, and which, moreover, was (wrongly) supposed to be actual work of the Apostle St. Matthew. The fragment in any case embodies the perfectly sound critical judgment that no particular impor tance is to be attached to the "order" of Mk., who has produced a work which is essentially a "miscellany," a narrative built up out of anecdotes which were originally disconnected, and which had been used "in accordance with the needs of the moment" for the purpose of preaching.

The statement that "Mark became the interpreter of Peter" is less valuable. It is not likely that the unnamed "presbyter" would have possessed precise information upon this point, any more than that the Apostle Peter would have required, in the strict sense, an "interpreter." (Galilee was very largely a bilin gual country, and it is probable that the original disciples of Jesus would have been able to speak a little colloquial Greek.) If the Gospel reached Asia Minor from Rome, this fact would suffice by itself to explain the tradition—it would be taken for granted that the authority of Peter, who (with S. Paul) had been a Roman Apostle, was behind it. The Gospel, no doubt, does contain, inter alia, authentic "Petrine" traditions, but it is a mistake to regard it as being exclusively "Petrine"; and it is of interest to observe that the earliest tradition stresses the fact that the author of the Gospel had not been himself an eye-witness. The claim which is made (and it is probably a just one) is that he represents the traditions of eye-witnesses at second-hand. Irenaeus, in the account which he gives of the Gospel (Iren. Adv. Haeres, III. i. 2; cf. III. x. 6), echoes Papias' words, and is clearly dependent on Papias: but he adds one new fact (the knowledge of which he may have owed to his residence at Rome), viz. :—that the Gospel was written after the deaths of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The information is, no doubt, to be trusted. Later traditions are perhaps hardly worth quoting. There are allusions to Mk. in the Muratorian Fragment (end of the second century) and in Hippolytus (who described Mark as "docked" or "curt-fingered"). Clement of Alexandria (conflicting with Irenaeus) suggests that the Gospel was written while S. Peter was still alive, and S. Chrysostom inferred wrongly from some words of Eusebius, who represents Mark as "proclaiming in Egypt the Gospel that he had written" (Euseb., H.E., II. xvi. I), that the Gospel was written, not at Rome, but in Egypt.