MARK, ST., author of the second Gospel. In Acts (xii. 12) we read of "John, whose surname was Mark," and gather that Peter was a familiar visitor at the house of his mother Mary a centre of Christian life in Jerusalem. That he was, as his Roman surname suggests, a Hellenist, follows from the fact that he was cousin (Col. iv. 1o) of Barnabas, who belonged to Cyprus. When Barnabas and Paul returned from their relief visit to Judaea (c. A.D. 46), Mark accompanied them (xii. 25). Prac tical capacity seems to have been his distinctive excellence (cf. 2 Tim. iv. I and when, not long after, they started on a joint mission beyond Syria, Mark went as their assistant (xiii. 5). After leaving Cyprus and on arrival at Perga in Pamphylia (see PAUL), he withdrew, probably on some matter of principle. and returned to Jerusalem (xiii. 13). When, then, Paul proposed, after the Jerusalem council of Acts xv., to revisit with Barnabas the scenes of their joint labours, he demurred to taking Mark with them again, feeling that he could not be relied on should fresh openings demand a new policy. But Barnabas stood by his younger kinsman, and "took Mark and sailed away to Cyprus" (xv. 38 seq.).
When Mark reappears it is in Paul's company at Rome, as a fellow-worker joining in salutations to Christians at Colossae (Col. iv. 1o; Philem. 24). This, along with its context, points to a reconciliation during Paul's last sojourn in Jerusalem or Caesarea. Not long after Col. iv. 10 Mark seems to have been sent by Paul to some place in the province of Asia, lying on the route between Ephesus and Rome. For in 2 Tim. iv. i i Paul bids Timothy, "Pick up Mark and bring him with thee, for he is useful to me for ministering." Once more Mark's name occurs in the New Testament ; this time with another leader, Peter, the friend of his earliest Chris tian years in Jerusalem, to whom he attached himself after the deaths of Barnabas and Paul. Peter's words, "Mark, my son," show how close was the spiritual tie between the older and the younger man (I Pet. v. 13) ; and as he is writing from Rome ("Babylon," since Paul's death and the policy it implied), this forms a link with the early tradition which speaks of Mark as writing his Gospel under the influence of Peter's preaching (in Rome). Such is the gist of the tradition preserved from "the
elders of former days" by Clement of Alexandria (in Eus. ii. 15, vi. 14), a tradition probably based on Papias's record (Eus. iii. 39) of the explanation given by "the Elder" (John) as to the contrast in form between Mark's memoirs of Peter's discourses and some other Gospel (see MARK, GOSPEL oF), but further defining the place where these memoirs were written as Rome. He had acted to some degree as Peter's interpreter or dragoman (gpp,nvths), owing to the apostle's imperfect mastery of Greek; and the fact that he assisted alike Barnabas, Paul and Peter, helps to show the essential harmony of their message.
The identification of the author of the second Gospel with Mark enables us to fill in our picture a little further. Thus Mark was perhaps himself the youth (vEavloricos) to whom his Gospel refers as present at Jesus's arrest (xiv. 51 seq. ; cf. his detailed knowledge as to the place of the last supper, 13 seq.). It was probably as writer and not in his own person, that he became known as "he of the stunted (KoXo0obluervXos, "curt fingered"), a title first found in Hippolytus vii. 30), in a context which makes such metaphorical reference to his gospel pretty evident. It was too as evangelist that he became a subject of later interest, and of speculative legends due to this; e.g., as one of the Seventy (first found in Adamantius, in the 4th cen tury), the founder of the Alexandrine Church (a tradition in Eusebius, ii. 16) and its first bishop (id. ii. 2), and even author of the local type of liturgy (cf. the Acts of Mark, ch. vii., not earlier than the end of the 4th century).
As to his last days and death nothing is really known. It is just possible that Alexandria was his final sphere of work, as the earliest tradition on the point implies (the Latin Prologue, and Eusebius as above, probably after Julius Africanus in the early 3rd century). That he died and was buried there is first stated by Jerome (De vir. ill. 8), to which his Acts adds the glory of martyrdom (cf. Ps.-Hippolytus, De LXX Apostolis).