Notes on Mark: The Author and the Manuscript

I'm rereading the Gospel of Mark along with various commentaries and will be reposting episodes of my previous notes that last ran 12 years ago. I'll intersperse them with new material as it is appropriate. Kind of an old again, new again thing that we'll be doing. 

Here's a touch of background to get us started.

Pasquale Ottini
St. Mark writes his Gospel at the dictation of St. Peter

I like the fact that the Gospel of Mark was requested by the Roman Christians so they had a copy of Peter's stories.

The unanimous early tradition of the Church was that Mark's Gospel captured the narrative of the apostle Peter. According to St. Jerome, "Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, write a short Gospel at the request of the brethren at Rome, embodying what he had heard Peter tell. When Peter had heard this, he approved it and published it to the churches to be read by his authority." Jerome wrote these words in A.D. 392, but the tradition went back to apostolic times. Bishop Papias of Hierapolis, who died around the year 120, used to quote an unnamed "elder" in the Church whotold him that "Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ."

Suppose Papias heard the "elder" say this in A.D. 100, and the elder was about seventy years old. This elder would have been a mature man of around forty years when Peter was martyred i Rome in A.D. 67. Papias was a disciple of John the evangelist, and he was a friend of Polycarp. Papias' testimony, then, reaches right back to the apostles.

The Memoirs of St. Peter

Even though Mark was writing based on Peter's authority, he also knew Jesus himself.

We can be sure that Mark knew Jesus Christ personally, although he was not one of the twelve Apostles: most ecclesiastical writers see in Mk 14:15-52, the episode of the young man who leaves his sheet behind him as he flees from the garden when Jesus is arrested, as Mark's own veiled signature to his Gospel, since only he refers to this episode. If this were the only reference it would be ambiguous, but it is supported by other circumstantial evidence: Mark was the son of Mary, apparently a well-to-do widow, in whose house in Jerusalem the first Christians used to gather (Acts 12:12). An early Christian text states that this was the same house as the Cenacle, where our Lord celebrated the Last Supper and instituted the Holy Eucharist. It also seems probably that the Garden of Olives belonged to this same Mary; which would explain Mark's presence there.

The Navarre Bible: Mark

More interesting, historical stuff about the book itself.

There is a very interesting thing about Mark's gospel. In its original form it stops at Mark 16:8. We know that for two reasons. First, the verses which follow (Mark 16:9-20) are not in any of the great early manuscripts; only later and inferior manuscripts contain them. Second, the style of the Greek is so different that they cannot have been written by the same person as wrote the rest of the gospel.

But the gospel cannot have been meant to stop at Mark 16:8. What then happened? It may be that Mark died, perhaps even suffered martyrdom, before he could complete his gospel. More likely, it may be that at one time only one copy of the gospel remained, and that a copy in which the last part of the roll on which it was written had got torn off. There was a time when the church did not much use Mark, preferring Matthew and Luke. It may well be that Mark's gospel was so neglected that all copies except for a mutilated one were lost. If that is so we were within an ace of losing the gospel which in many ways is the most important of all.

The Gospel of Mark
(The Daily Bible Series*, rev. ed.;)

* Not a Catholic source and one which can have a wonky theology at times, but Barclay was renowned for his authority on life in ancient times and that information is sound.

UPDATE (from 2012)
I have been contacted by a gentleman who begs me to stop quoting Barclay's comment that Mark 16:9-20 is not in any of the early great manuscripts.

Therefore, I turned to Mary Healy's excellent Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture to see what she said. Here we go, sports fans!

Verses 9-20, commonly called the Longer Ending, do not appear in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel. Scholars are virtually unanimous in holding that these verses were not written by Mark but by a Christian of the late first or early second century who sought to fill out the abrupt ending of verse 8. (Footnote: a few ancient and medieval manuscripts of Mark insert other brief endings, which the Church does not accept as canonical.) Yet the Church accepts this addendum as part of the canon of inspired Scripture. The Holy Spirit's gift of inspiration is not limited to the original writer, but encompasses each biblical book in its final edited form.

The author of the Longer Ending was apparently familiar with all four Gospels (or with the oral testimonies on which they were based), and compiled these verses from the resurrection accounts in Matthew, Luke and John. ...

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Sources and Notes Index