St. Mark the Evangelist (Mar Markose Msobrono)

By Chev. Dr. Mathews Abraham

The Syrian Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist on 25th April.

Life

‘Mark’ (Marcus) was the Latin surname and ‘John’ the common Hebrew name of the evangelist.  St. Mark was the associate and co-worker of the chiefs of the apostles, namely St. Peter and St. Paul. Mark's mother was a prominent member of the infant Church at Jerusalem and she lived in Jerusalem near the Mount of Olives. Tradition has it that it was in the upper room of his house that Our Lord had his Passover meal with the disciples. It was this house that Peter returned to on his release from prison, and the house was a meeting-place for the brethren, many of whom were praying there the night St. Peter arrived from prison (Acts12: 12-13). The Syrian Orthodox Church proudly presents this Upper Room or the Dayara of St. Mark as the place where the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles and the disciples on the day of Pentecost.

The Apostle Peter had a co-worker whom he refers to as "my son Mark" (1 Peter 5:13). Papias, an early second century writer, in describing the origins of the Gospels, tells us that Mark was the "interpreter" of Peter, and that he wrote down ("but not in order") the stories that he had heard Peter preach about the life and teachings of Jesus.

The Gospel of Mark, in describing the arrest of Jesus (14:51), speaks of a young man who followed the arresting party, wearing only a linen cloth wrapped around his body, whom the arresting party tried to seize, but who left the cloth in their hands and fled naked. It is speculated that this young man was the writer himself, since the detail is hardly worth mentioning if he were not. There is a tradition which says that Mark was the youth who witnessed Judas' betrayal of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Of the four evangelists, only St. Mark relates the incident.  Because his mother had a house in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12), which some suppose to have been in or near the Garden, the youth was awakened (the betrayal occurred at night) and ran out to see what the commotion was about.  It is, in any case, a plausible explanation of why he was not properly dressed.

Mark traveled with Paul and Barnabas from Jerusalem to Antioch (Acts 12:25), and then traveled with them on the first missionary journey. He left Paul and Barnabas in Pamphylia.  Later, because Paul did not want to take him along on a second missionary journey, he traveled with Barnabas to Cyprus to other places. (John Mark was the cousin of Barnabas.) John Mark was with Paul in Rome during Paul's first imprisonment in Rome. During his second imprisonment, Paul asks Timothy to bring Mark to Rome. He is with Peter in Rome when he writes 1 Peter.

There is a tradition that he was sent by St. Peter into Egypt, and was by him appointed Bishop of Alexandria. We are told that St. Mark landed at Cyrene, in Pentapolis, a part of Libya bordering Egypt, and by innumerable miracles, brought many over to the faith, and demolished several temples of the idols. The prodigious progress of the faith in Alexandria stirred up the heathens against this Galilaean. St. Mark therefore left the city, having ordained St. Anianus bishop and returned to Pentapolis where he preached two years, and then visited his church of Alexandria, which he had founded and which had increased in faith and grace as well as in numbers. On April 25, in the year 68 A.D., John Mark was taken by a mob of people and dragged through the rocky streets of Alexandria until he died.

The Christians gathered up the remains of his mangled body and buried them at Bucoles, where they afterwards usually assembled for prayer. His body was honourably kept there, in a church built on the spot, it is said to have been conveyed by stealth to Venice in 815. It is said to be deposited in the chapel of St. Mark in a secret place under one of the great pillars, so that it may not be stolen. The saint is honoured by that republic with extraordinary devotion as principal Patron Saint.

The Gospel According to St. Mark

Mark’s Gospel is called the fast paced Gospel and the shortest Gospel. It helps to imagine the book of Mark as a concisely edited document. Unlike the other Gospels, this one has little tolerance for dialogue and personal reflection. The author is writing to a restless and impatient audience. Mathew and Luke each give four chapters of historical warm-up before recording a miracle by Jesus. Mark covers three miracles and a group event in the first chapter alone. This Gospel can be read by an earnest reader in roughly one hour.

In contrast to all its action scenes, the book includes only a sampling of Jesus’ parables. It focuses on events, not speeches or editorial comments. Mark manages to achieve more drama than perhaps any other biblical writer. Action guarantees an attentive audience, and Mark jams sequences together breathlessly. The heavens open immediately: the Spirit sends Jesus into the wilderness immediately; he calls his disciples immediately. This book uses the hurry-up adverb 42 times. Mark is a Gospel of exclamation points, full of words like ‘amazed’, ‘overwhelmed’, and ‘terrified’. A phenomenon is loose on the earth, and the author is determined to capture its impact for future generations.

Mark's symbol in art is a Lion, usually winged. In the book of Revelation, the visionary sees about the throne of God, four winged creatures: a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle. It has customarily been supposed that these represent the four Gospels, or the four evangelists. One way of matching them is to say that the man stands for Mathew, whose narrative begins with the human genealogy of Jesus; the lion for Mark, whose narrative begins with John the Baptist roaring like a Lion in the desert (The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’), the ox, a sacrificial animal, for Luke, whose narrative begins in the Temple, and the eagle for John, whose narrative begins in Heaven.

The author’s first language was not Greek, and he did not have a Hellenistic education, so he did not have enough facility in Greek to write in a highly literary style. The Semitic features of the Gospel of Mark probably indicate that the mother tongue of the author was a Semitic language (probably Aramaic), which is consistent with his being a Palestinian Jew.

Date

The text of the Gospel itself furnishes us with no clear information as to the time that it was written. Nevertheless, a great majority of moderate and conservative scholars assign Mark a date between 65 and 70 CE, although there are vocal minority groups which argue for earlier or later dates. Mark makes no mention of the destruction of Jerusalem, hence it must have been written before that event, probably in about A.D. 63. The place where it was written was probably Rome. Some have supposed Antioch (compare Mark 15:21 with Acts 11:20).

Audience

Mark is a Hellenistic gospel, written primarily for an audience of Greek-speaking residents of the Roman Empire. This is evidenced by the fact that it explains Jewish usages and takes care to interpret Aramaic words and phrases which a Gentile would not likely be able to understand, such as:

"Boanerges" (3:17); Sons of Thunder  

"Talitha cumi" (5:41); Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.

"Corban" (7:11); A gift or offering consecrated to God;

"Bartimaeus" (10:46); The Son of Timaeus

"Abba" (14:36);  Father

"Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabakthani" (15:34). “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me”  

 

Mark also uses certain Latin words not found in any of the other Gospels, such as "Speculator" meaning executioner or soldier which literally means a scout or a spy, "xestes" , a corruption of Sextariusm meaning pots,  "Quadrans" , meaning a farthing, ie a Roman coin, and "Centurion". These usages are consistent with the hypothesis that Mark is writing in Greek as a foreign language for the first time.  

 

The characteristics of this Gospel

 

(1) The absence of the genealogy of our Lord

(2) Eye witness accounts

The vividness of description that is consistent with it being an eyewitness account; details unnecessary to the flow of the narrative are included. Examples include:

·    Mark 2:4 (Breaking of the roof);

·    Mark 4:37-38 (Jesus’ sleeping on a cushion in the stern of the boat);

·    Mark 6:39 (The arrangement of the people in groups whom Jesus feeds and the fact that the grass was green);

·    Mark 7:33 (Jesus’ putting fingers in ears and touching of tongue);

·    Mark 8:23-25 (The gradual process by which the blind man’s eyes were restored);

·    Mark 14:54 (Peter’s sitting with the servants around the fire in the courtyard).  

 

(3) Mark lays great emphasis on the Messiah ship of Jesus. At his Baptism he is called ‘the beloved Son of God’; at Caesarea Philippi he approves Peter's insight that he is the Messiah, the Son of God (Mark 8:29); at his trial his reply to the High Priest's question 'Are you the Messiah?' is the firm 'I am.' (Mark 14:62). Our Lord is represented as clothed with power, the "Lion of the tribe of Judah."

(4) Mark also records with wonderful minuteness the very words as well as the position and gestures of our Lord.

(5) He is also careful to record particulars of person, number, place, and time, which the other evangelists omit.

(6) The phrase "immediately” or “and straightway" occurs nearly forty two times in this Gospel; while in Luke's Gospel, which is much longer, it is used only seven times, and in John only four times.

Out of a total of 662 verses, Mark has 406 in common with Mathew and Luke, 145 with Mathew, 60 with Luke, and at most 51 peculiar to itself.

Gospel Priority

It has been traditionally believed that Mathew wrote the first Gospel in the Aramaic language which was the native tongue of our Lord and the apostles. Later on, Mark and Luke wrote their Gospels in the Greek Language drawing material from the Aramaic gospel.

The Protestant scholars who came up with the Q theory and the Marcan Priority Theory had an agenda to discredit the Church's tradition since apostolic times, that Mathew was the first-composed Gospel. That may be because Mathew most strongly presents the case for the Church as a body led by Peter, and for the Eucharist as the literal Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

The last twelve verses of Mark

Most scholars agree that Mark's Gospel originally ended at chapter 16 verse 8 with the words, 'for they were afraid.' It is thought that the remaining verses are a later addition and not the work of Mark. Some manuscripts add verse 8b (the Shorter Ending) while others add verses 9-20 instead (the Longer Ending). Some manuscripts insert both. Most of the ancient manuscripts bring the book to an abrupt ending at verse 8a. The author's style in both of these endings is different from that of Mark. Since most of Mark's Gospel is contained in Luke and Mathew it was once thought that Mark was a later summary of the other two. This may account for a certain neglect of Mark and that consequently the original ending was lost.  

 



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