Intro To The Gospel of Mark Lynn Martin

All right, so from the next—for the next few sermons, I'm going to be preaching from the Gospel of Mark. So today I have three introductions for you.

I'm going to introduce the series, which I'm doing right now. I'm going to give you an introduction to Mark, and I'm going to give a talk about Mark's introduction to his Gospel. So introductions can be really boring.

They can also be very interesting. We'll just hope these are interesting. So for an introduction to the series, here are my objectives for going through the Gospel of Mark. Basically, to study through the Gospel of Mark, to get to know the author of the book, and to ask the questions that the author wants us to ask, and to find out the author's answer to those questions.

So that concludes my introduction to the Mark series.

So now for my introduction to Mark. What do we find when we open up the book of Mark? Well, it's one of the four biographies of Jesus that we find in our New Testament, and it's the shortest one. And these biographies are called Gospels because each one presents the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Mark contains stories about Jesus' ministry, miracles, parables. What it doesn't contain nearly as much of is sermons and teaching by Jesus. So it's a very action-packed book. There are lots of stories, and the teachings of Jesus that it has are mostly stories, like parables.

Also, the stories are fairly abrupt, as we'll see as we go through the book. They're not as polished, or they don't strike you—this doesn't strike you as a really polished book that's like some of the other Gospels are.

There's always action, always something happening. And I'm going to suggest that the writer of the Gospel of Mark is pushing his listeners to ask the question, "Who is Jesus, and what are these stories all about?" It seems to me that he wants to pique people's interest, and it also suggests to me, since he's telling all these stories, that he intends this for an audience of non-Christians as well as Christians, and that he's wanting to get their attention and tell them about Jesus.

So who wrote Mark, and when was it written? When people look to find the date and author of a book, typically you can look at two things. You can look at what the book itself says, or the clues you find inside the book, and you can look at what other people say about the book. So if I happen to have, "Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up Here?" we could just open the book and see it's by David W. Russo. I don't know what the W stands for. Maybe David can tell us. I'm not sure.

But even if it didn't have that in it, we could know from people here who happen to know that David wrote that book. Well, the Gospel of Mark itself doesn't tell us who the author is. There is a heading in your Bible that says it's the Gospel of Mark, but that's not part of the actual text of the Gospel itself. But we do know what other people say about who wrote that book. So the early Christians wrote that they—actually, none of—I don't think any of the Gospels say who wrote it. Luke gives some hints in Acts, I believe, but I'm not talking about them.

But the early Christians said that Matthew was the first Gospel to be written, and it was written by Matthew the tax collector, who was probably the most literate of the apostles, and that's why they wanted him to write that Gospel. Mark and Luke were written after Matthew, and there are different opinions on which order they were written in.

It seems like the majority opinion was that Mark was written next and then Luke, but there are other thoughts on that. And Luke was written by the companion of Paul. Mark was written by John Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, who is mentioned several times in Scripture. But interestingly enough, the early Christians wrote that Mark got his material from the apostle Peter. So Mark is actually not said to have written or come up with this material himself. He's actually writing down what Peter said.

And the Gospel of John was written last, and of course, it was written by the apostle John.

So people have asked, "How likely is it that these were actually the people who wrote the Gospels?" There are arguments out there in the scholarship that these Gospels were—that these books were attributed to the people who wrote them and that they weren't actually written by those people. They had these books that were authoritative, and they were like, "Well, we want to give it a name to give it more authority, so let's just say this was written by Mark." Well, I don't think that's very likely because if you're going to give your book authority, you wouldn't just pick some random person that's mentioned a few times in a few books of your scriptures. You would pick somebody who had a lot of authority.

For example, maybe they would say this was the Gospel of—well, I mean, you could call it maybe the Gospel of James or the Gospel of Peter or something like that, rather than the Gospel of Mark. So I think that it's pretty likely that these attributions are actually accurate because it doesn't seem like something you'd make up. And of course, I think that the evidence from the early Christians is pretty strong.

In fact, just an interesting tidbit, the apocryphal Gospels, the Gospels that are supposed to have been written by apostles but were never accepted by the Church, are often attributed to more famous apostles.

There's the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Thomas. All these people who actually did and said things in the Gospel stories are supposedly the authors of these books that were never accepted by the Christians, whereas the books that were accepted by the Christians were attributed to people that weren't really that famous or amazing of people in those stories.

Let's see. And next, I'm going to talk about the origins of the book of Mark and the audience of that book. So Clement of Alexandria says the following. He says, "Mark, the follower of Peter, while Peter was publicly preaching the Gospel at Rome in the presence of some of Caesar's knights and uttering many testimonies about Christ, on their asking him to let them have a record of the things that had been said, wrote the Gospel that is called the Gospel of Mark from the things said by Peter."

He also said, and I think this is a citation or a paraphrase and not a quotation, quoted or cited in Eusebius, "When Peter had publicly preached the word in Rome and by the Spirit had proclaimed the Gospel, those present, who were numerous, urged Mark as one who had followed him for a long time and remembered what had been spoken to record what was said.

And he did this, handing over the Gospel to those who had asked for it. And when Peter got to know about it, he exerted no pressure either to forbid it or to promote it." So what we can learn from this is here's what Clement is saying from the tradition or the apostolic tradition that he received. Peter was speaking out loud. He was presenting the Gospel in Rome. His audience contained non-Christians, including some of Caesar's knights.

And he was telling stories about Christ. And he didn't intend to write these down, but people wanted a record of these stories. So Mark wrote them down, and Peter allowed him to circulate the record of these stories. And the Gospel of Mark is called the Book of Mark or the Gospel of Mark because he was the one who wrote it down and not the Gospel of Peter because Peter didn't even really intend to be creating a Gospel. He was just presenting the Gospel to people, and Mark is writing it down. So it's named after Mark, not because he's the author in the sense that we would consider him the author, but because he's the person who's writing it down.

But Peter, they consider to be the author of the story. I guess you could call it there are books written by so-and-so and so-and-so, and you assume one of them did most of the writing, but the other one was a source or did a lot of the planning of the book. You could, I guess, say something similar for the Gospel of Mark.

So if you recall what I said about what the Gospel sounds like, the Gospel of Mark, it sounds abrupt, and it sounds like the collection of someone's stories. It doesn't sound polished like it would be if someone sat down intending to write a book.

And because it's about a lot of stories, it sounds like it might have been presented to an audience of non-Christians. So I think that fits very well with what Clement is telling us about the Gospel of Mark.

So I want to briefly mention what's called the synoptic problem. So for a long time, people have noticed that three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, have a lot of very similar stories to each other, and sometimes they use the same words for these stories with minor changes or it looks like they often use similar phrasing or tell the story in a similar way. And that makes it sound like the writers of these Gospels were aware of each other, or at least the later ones were aware of the earlier ones, and might have borrowed some stories or wording from each other.

So the theory today that's most common in modern contemporary scholarship is called the theory of Mark in priority, the idea that Mark was written first, and then the other two borrowed from Mark and, using other sources and so on, created their Gospels from that source.

I think that it's an overly skeptical theory. I think it's somewhat dismissive because it kind of relies on the idea that because Mark is kind of this abrupt and not polished Gospel, it's a collection of stories that kind of evolved into more complex and more literary Gospels like Matthew and Luke. And I just don't think that there's any reason to assume that that would have to be the case.

But I think even if this were true, I don't think that even if it were true that the Gospel of Mark were written first and then the other writers just kind of copied those stories and adding from their own sources and so on, I don't think that should worry us because all three of these Gospels have all the signs of being from eyewitnesses. They have all the signs of being from people who knew the culture, who knew the stories, and who were very familiar with either they actually experienced the events that they're describing or they are very familiar with people who have experienced those events. And we'll look at some of those things, I hope, throughout the rest of the Gospel of Mark series that I plan to do.

So to sum up, what do we know so far? Peter is in Rome telling stories that he remembers about Jesus. He's telling it to an audience that contained non-Christians like Caesar's knights, so Romans, an audience of Romans. And he's introducing people to Jesus and his message. Or for the Christians who would be in the audience, he is giving them his firsthand account of somebody who was with Jesus and saw what Jesus did and what happened.

So now that was the introduction to Mark. And now we'll go to Mark's introduction to Mark. And if we are lucky, we'll get to the end of verse 1 this morning. Actually, I have planned to go to the end of verse 1, so we will get there.

Before I get into the first few verses of Mark that we'll be looking at, the book of Mark is called a Gospel, as I said, after the message it contained. So Gospel is the English word for good news or that translates the Greek term evangelion. I'll just say it that way. I think there are a ton of ways of pronouncing that in English.

And we'll look at what an evangelion actually is. So the book of Mark is the Gospel concerning Jesus Christ. Now, for context, I'd like to read you the Roman Gospel or a Roman Gospel. I'm going to read something that refers to Augustus Caesar, who was the Roman emperor who ruled while Jesus was born. He ruled from 27 BC to AD 14, which is 35 years if I count right.

Wait a minute. Maybe more. I'm not sure. You do the math.

He was at the beginning of or he kind of began what's called the Pax Romana, which was a period where there were basically no civil wars within the Roman Empire, and the empire was pretty stable, and things were mostly peaceful throughout the Mediterranean world.

It wasn't actually perfectly peaceful, but they called it the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, because supposedly Rome was bringing peace to the world, at least what they considered to be the world. There was more of the world. They just didn't consider it that important, maybe.

And the son of Augustus Caesar, the adoptive son, Tiberius Caesar, was the emperor during Jesus' ministry and death. So what I'm going to read was found on a stone in Asia Minor. It was inscribed there, and it's explaining why they changed the date of their new year to be the date of Augustus Caesar's birthday.

So this is what is written on the stone. "Since providence, which has ordered all things and is deeply interested in our life, has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus, whom she filled with virtue, that he might benefit humankind, sending him as a savior both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things. And since he, Caesar, by his appearance, excelled even our anticipations, surpassing all previous benefactors, and not leaving to posterity any hope of surpassing what he has done. And since the birthday of the God Augustus was the beginning of the Gospel for the world that came by reason of him." The word there, good tidings, is the same word that's translated Gospel in our Bibles.

So remember that this was actually written before Jesus was born. And let's see. Probably a lot of the wording seems somewhat familiar to you. These are really big claims being made of an earthly ruler, and these are very similar claims to what the Christians made of Jesus.

The claims made here are, well, the gods through their providence orchestrated Augustus coming into the world. They actually see Augustus as a god. Roman emperors, I think beginning with Augustus and following, most Roman emperors were seen as objects of worship. They were seen as gods. It calls Caesar a savior for all people to come, both for us and our descendants, it says.

It says no one can surpass him. And it says that this is the beginning of the Gospel, his birthday is the beginning of the Gospel for the world concerning him. So I'm going to look a bit into the Greek word evangelion, which is the word here used here for Gospel.

Literally, it means good news, but it's typically a special kind of good news. It was used particularly for news of victory. And if someone had defeated someone else in battle, a messenger would come back and say, "We've got an evangelion, so-and-so defeated so-and-so in battle."

It was also used for news about an emperor, like in this past quote that I just read.

And typically, it's just really, really good news that you're hearing whenever it's called evangelion. So for an analogy, I'd say it's not the kind of news where your child comes home and says, "Hey, I got an A in my exam." It's the kind of news where your child comes home and says, "Hey, I was accepted into Harvard, and I'm one of the most wonderful people in the country, I guess."

That kind of good news.

And so this is not just, it's good news, but this is definitive good news.

So was Caesar's Gospel actually good news? Well, it's true that few earthly rulers managed to do what he did. He kind of solidified this empire. He ruled it for many years, and it was a large empire, one of the largest that had been, largest and most stable that had been, especially in that area. He was able to keep peace mostly through his realm, and he had a very high approval rating. The people thought he was the greatest, which one would assume if he was being called a god. But he certainly wasn't a god because he gained his power through all sorts of political wrangling and assassinations, wars, murders, and so on, stealing money from treasuries and so on.

And he was a regular human being. He happened to be at the right place at the right time. He also was very bold and able to make the right choices at the right place and the right time. He also had very serious health issues during his entire reign. People were scared he was going to die pretty much all the time. At least the people who knew what was up were scared he was going to die. And he was looking for an heir most of his reign and finally settled on his stepson, Tiberius.

If I understand right, he actually ordered his wife's previous husband to divorce her so that he could marry her. And then Tiberius happened to be her son. And I guess he liked him enough that he made Tiberius the next emperor.

And it's possible that he may have committed suicide too assisted by his wife. So I don't think he was a god, just saying.

So remember this inscription about Augustus and about all the great things about Augustus. The apostles and the New Testament writers said these very same things about Jesus. In fact, they were probably not aware of this particular quote, but the Greek word translated savior here is the word used throughout the New Testament for Jesus. And again, I talked about the Gospel. That's the word they used for Jesus' message. And I think you can replace these words with providence, with God, and Caesar, with Jesus. And it makes perfect sense. But I won't read this because it looks like my sermon was longer than I thought it was.

So whose Gospel has won? I just submit to you this question. Whenever we think of the word Gospel, whenever we think of the word savior, do we think of Caesar or do we think of Jesus?

So let's get into the first few verses of Mark. Mark begins, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you."

So most Bibles will put a period after God and then start a new sentence, "As it was written in the prophets, behold, I send my messenger before you." So my question is, why is this the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Why does Peter not start out saying, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets"?

Well, I'm going to suggest that we should have this as one sentence, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets." The point being that Jesus' Gospel started long before Jesus was even born. It started with the prophets who were foretelling Jesus coming into the world. They're foretelling, in this case, "Behold, I send my messenger." That's foretelling John coming before Jesus. So that pushes it back even further.

Compare that to the birthday of the God Augustus was the beginning of the Gospel of Augustus Caesar. So Caesar's Gospel started at his birthday, but Jesus' Gospel started way before his birthday ever occurred.

And let's look at a few more words here. "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ," Peter says. So again, this ties Jesus back to the Old Testament where he was foretold the Christ. It's the same word as Messiah. It means anointed. This was used of the future king in the Old Testament. They were speaking of this future king of Israel who was predicted by the prophets. Actually, I don't think it's in the Old Testament. I think it's in other Jewish literature that they use the term in this way. But that's how it was used in the New Testament. So when we look through the Old Testament, we can see that this king that the Old Testament is pointing forward to is going to rule the nations. "The Lord said to me, 'You are my son.

Today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.'" So by using the word Christ, the New Testament writers are calling Jesus not just a king, but an emperor, an emperor of the nations, just like Caesar was an emperor.

He says, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The Son of God had multiple meanings in or it meant different things in Judaism and in paganism, this term. As I understand it in Judaism, the Son of God, that term typically referred to a lofty angelic being.

For example, look in Job in the Masoretic text. It says, "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them." In the Septuagint, it translates sons of God as angels of God.

So this suggests that Jesus pre-existed his birth as a spiritual being like God in some way. In this case, he's actually the unique Son of God. Unlike the angels, he's actually divine, and he's the only begotten Son of God as the New King James or the King James renders it. I'm not sure how the New King James does or unique Son of God.

The Son of God probably is also pointing back to the Messiah who is called my son. God calls the Messiah my son. So it's probably also referring to that. In paganism, Son of God referred to particularly successful rulers in many cases. They were considered sons of God, and sometimes they were even considered gods themselves, like Augustus was in the quote that I gave. It was a title that was often used for Caesars, my understanding is anyway. And this title to a pagan, it conveyed divinity or at least some sort of partial divinity.

Whereas Jesus is Son of the God, he's Son of the Creator God, not just a son of some random Greek god somewhere. And that means he is God's divine son. He's God's chosen ruler. That's what a pagan would probably hear from in this statement that Jesus is the Son of God. But a pagan would typically have thought of a Son of God as being fathered through biological reproduction from a god, but Jesus was not. He wasn't fathered in the biological way by God.

So in that sense, he differed and in many other senses too from the pagan sons of God. But this phrase was one that in the ears of these pagan listeners, the Caesar's knights, my guess is that they heard that Jesus is this divine ruler, this wonderful Son of God. So to sum up what we heard here, Peter is in a room. He's presenting Jesus to an audience that includes some of Caesar's knights.

And he uses words to suggest that Jesus is a replacement for Caesar. He talks about Jesus' evangelion that begins before Jesus' birth, unlike Caesar's Gospel that began at Caesar's birth. Jesus is called Christ or God's chosen king foretold ages ago to rule the nations. I don't think that it was foretold or that anyone claimed that Augustus had been foretold long ago.

He is also called the Son of God, which in Judaism would be God's chosen ruler pre-existing his birth as a spiritual being and in paganism, a divine ruler with blessing from God. And just to clarify, when I'm saying what these would be in Judaism and paganism, I'm just making my best guess.

We can't be absolutely sure what a Jewish person or a pagan would have heard when he heard the term Son of God, but I'm making a guess at it. So Peter is presenting Jesus as a replacement for Caesar or something better than Caesar. And I guess my question would be, is it any wonder that Peter was executed in Rome?

This Gospel could easily have been presented not long before Peter's death. Of course, we don't know. But in any case, Peter was not afraid of making his message clear even before Caesar's own knights that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and the true Gospel is the Gospel about him, not the Gospel about Caesar.