The Contribution Of Mark
THE CONTRIBUTION OF MARK
One might be tempted to mimic the early church and wonder why one should bother with Mark at all. Those who do not consider the gospel an inferior extract of Matthew and/or Luke may well find Mark’s significance to lie almost entirely in his supplying to these more verbose evangelists the basic raw material of their own gospels. On this view, Mark’s significance could be considered mainly historical: he was the first to compose a gospel, the first to set forth an account of the ministry of Jesus in this peculiar and largely unparalleled genre.
But that accomplishment in itself should not be underrated. Mark is the creator of the gospel in its literary form—an interweaving of biographical and kerygmatic themes that perfectly conveys the sense of meaning of that unique figure in human history, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. Furthermore, by tying the significance of Jesus for the church so tightly to a specific series of historical occurrences in Palestine in the the third decade of the first century, Mark has ensured that the church, if it is to be true to its canonical documents, never abandons the real humanity of the Christ whom it worships. By reminding Christians that their salvation depends on the death and resurrection of Christ, Mark has inextricably tied Christian faith to the reality of historical events.
Mark’s very organization of this history makes a point in this regard. The structure of the gospel has been understood in various ways. Philip Carrington suggested that a synagogue lectionary sequence lies at the basis of its structure,70
Table 5
Parallels between Peter’s Preaching and Mark Arts 10 Mark
Acts 10
Mark
“good news” (v. 36)
“the beginning of the gospel” (1:1)
“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit” (v. 38)
the coming of the Spirit on Jesus (1:10)
“beginning in Galilee” (v. 37)
the Galilean ministry (1:16—8:26)
“He went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil”
(v. 38)
Jesus’ ministry focuses on healings and exorcisms
“We are witnesses of everything he did ... in Jerusalem” (v. 39)
the ministry in Jerusalem (chaps. 11-14)
“They killed him by hanging him on a tree” (v. 39)
focus on the death of Christ (chap. 15)
“God raised him from the dead on the third
day” (v. 40)
“He has risen! He is not here.“ (16:6)
but this is most unlikely. 71Equally improbable is the complicated series of Old Testament correspondences discerned by Austin Farrer. 72Most think that geography plays a significant role in the gospel’s structure, and there is truth to this. But the significance of the geography lies not in some particular theological scheme of Mark’s but in the actual sequence of the ministry of Jesus. As C. H. Dodd has noted, the sequence of Mark’s gospel follows the same sequence revealed in the early church’s preaching. 73In table 5 note the parallels between the preaching of Peter in Acts 10:3640 and the structure of Mark
While the sequence in table 5 is to a considerable extent dictated by the actual course of events, Mark’s straightforward, action-oriented account preserves the sequence more clearly than do the other gospels. The kerymatic structure of Mark helps the readers of the gospel understand the basic salvation events and prepares them to recite those events in their own evangelism.
This same bare-bones narrative sequence also throws into prominence the structural divide of Caesarea Philippi. Though often differing on the structure of Mark, commentators find in this incident the hinge on which the gospel turns. The material in Mark 1:1-8:26, with its stress on Jesus’ miracles, leads up to Peter’s divinely given insight into the true nature of the man Jesus of Nazareth. But immediately after the confession, and dominating the remainder of the gospel, is the focus on the suffering and death of Jesus. As we have noted, this combination of emphases reveals a major Christological purpose of Mark’s: Jesus is the suffering Son of God and can truly be understood only in terms of this suffering.
As we also noted above when discussing the purpose of the gospel, another central theme in Mark is discipleship. The Twelve figure very prominently in Mark and serve in general as a pattern for the disciples whom Mark addresses in his gospel. To be sure, the Twelve are not always presented as models to be emulated: their conspicuous failure, though present to some degree in the other gospels, is especially prominent in Mark. Mark portrays the disciples as hard of heart (e.g. 6:52), spiritually weak (e.g. 14:32-42), and incredibly dim-witted (e.g. 8:14-21). As Guelich puts it, Mark presents the disciples as both "privileged and perplexed.” 74Perhaps in both these ways they are models for the disciples of Mark’s day and of ours: privileged to belong to the kingdom, yet perplexed about the apparent reverses suffered by that kingdom when Christians suffer. In another way, Mark perhaps wants implicitly to contrast the situation of the Twelve, seeking to follow Jesus before the cross and the resurrection, with that of Christian disciples at his time of writing: the latter, however, follow Jesus with the help of the powers of the new age of salvation that has dawned.