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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 635. St. Mark's Gospel
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St. Mark's Gospel
1. We read the pages of St. Mark and are struck with its crisp and graphic narrative. Picture after picture passes before our eyes, each quickened with a vivid touch which carries us to the heart of the event. There are the animated scenes caused by the early miracles of Jesus-the crowds who hasten and gather in their joyful excitement, and eagerly bear their sick to His healing touch; and we are made actually to feel the fear of the disciples as they follow their Lord on His journey to Jerusalem. Some of the descriptive expressions are of great value from a chronological point of view; for example, when the hungry villagers are fed by their compassionate Teacher, the narrator informs us that “they sat upon the green grass.” Grass is green only at the Passover, and the artless remark affords an important clue when it is our task to compare the first three Gospels with the Fourth. Ere we close the book we are forced to the conclusion that the writer tells no borrowed tale, but had seen the things whereof he writes. The question now presents itself: Who was this man whose memory was a storehouse of sacred scenes? Tradition points to St. Peter.
2. Papias tells us, on the authority of a certain John, who was an elder of the Church, and either a disciple of the Lord or of one of His Apostles, that Mark committed to writing the oral Gospel of Peter. He says of the elder: “And the Presbyter said this. Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I have said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.” Papias, it is said, died about the year 163. He was a hearer of the Apostle John, and knew many who had known Jesus and His Apostles. He tells us that Mark's Gospel was made by committing to writing what the author remembered of the fragmentary history of Jesus, which was the oral Gospel of Peter. Other early writers repeat in different terms the same tradition, until Tertullian was almost justified in saying, as he did, that “the Gospel of Mark is maintained to be Peter's, whose interpreter he was”; and we may believe that this Gospel contains the cycle of representative facts which formed the basis of apostolic teaching, enriched with the additions which the Apostle Peter was wont to make from his personal knowledge of Jesus.
In splendour robed for some court-revelry
A monarch moves when eve is on the wane.
His faithful lieges flock their prince to see,
And strive to pierce the gathering shade-in vain.
But lo, a torch! And now the brilliant train
Is manifest. Who may the bearer be?
Not great himself, he maketh greatness plain.1 [Note: E. C. Lefroy, Sonnets.]
3. If we compare St. Mark's Gospel with the rest, we shall find that it presents on the whole the completest picture of our Blessed Lord's doings as He went on from day to day, from His baptism to His resurrection. It seems to keep most exactly to the order of time, and to mention most of the minute circumstances of what He did, how He looked, how others with whom He was behaved themselves. It is less abundant in discourses and conversations, and more abundant in exact relation of miracles, and other actions of our Lord. And thus it comes to pass that, while the other Gospels seem, each of them, to have their particular object-St. Matthew, to prepare the way for our Lord's Kingdom, and explain the nature of it, to the Jews more especially; St. Luke, to set Him before us as a Priest, and to invite the Gentiles to Him; St. John, to set forth His Eternal Godhead, and put unbelievers of all times to shame, and encourage His worshippers by recording especially those words and deeds of His by which from time to time He silenced His enemies in His own holy city Jerusalem-St. Mark, on the other hand, seeming to write merely for the sake of showing us our Lord as He was, by His deeds rather than His words, leads on his reader to the most distinct and hearty acceptance of Jesus Christ come in the flesh as our only helper and healer. We feel more and more as we read the truth of what St. Peter, St. Mark's own teacher, expresses in those memorable words, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name,” no other power or virtue, “under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,” or healed.
4. Mark's Gospel was evidently written for Gentile readers, as it contains explanations of Hebrew terms and customs. Tradition says that it was written after the death of Peter and Paul. There is one decisive mark of time in the Gospel itself. In the eschatological discourse attention is called to the sign given by Jesus of the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, which leads us to infer that the Gospel was written before that time, but when the event was impending. This would fix the time as about 70 a.d.
So far as historical testimony pronounces on the question of the place in which this Gospel was written, it is in favour of Rome. To this effect are the statements made by Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and others. And there is a certain support given to this by the use of Latin words peculiar to this Gospel.
One of Dean Burgon's best-known works was “The Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark.” This Gospel had always been his favourite book in the New Testament. He spent years in collecting materials for a volume which should vindicate the genuineness of these verses. As he was closing the two dissertations for the Divinity School at Oxford which afterwards appeared in book form, his sister passed away. In the poem, “L'Envoy,” which he appended to the work, these words occur:-
Open those lips, kind sister, for my sake,
In the mysterious place of thy sojourn, …
And tell the Evangelist of thy brother's toil;
Adding (be sure!) he found it his reward,
Yet supplicates thy blessing and thy prayers,
The blessing, saintly Stranger, of thy prayers,
Sure at the least unceasingly of mine!
It is related of the Dean's brother-in-law, Mr. Higgins, that when lying on his death-bed he said to Burgon: “I suppose, Johnny, you will inquire for St. Mark immediately-won't you?” “What? In Paradise, do you mean?” “Yes, to be sure,” he rejoined, raising his head slightly from the pillow to smile and nod.
About five minutes before the Dean's death in 1888, he said to his niece, “Give me a pencil.” She gave it. “And now St. Mark,” he whispered. “I held the New Testament before him, and was turning the page to find which passage he wanted, when quite suddenly the breathing changed, and the end came immediately.”1 [Note: J. T. Stoddart, The New Testament in Life and Literature, 116.]