Mark comes straight to the point

The tradition of the Church tells us that the Gospel according to Mark is based on the memories and preaching of the apostle Peter. During my studies, my historical-critical teachers taught me systematic distrust of the church fathers, but the fathers were not always wrong and the historical critics were often wrong. We cannot prove Peter’s influence on Mark, but it is likely, because Peter appears remarkably often in the stories. Moreover, he is mentioned for the first time in 1:16 and for the last time in 16:7. An inclusio. Ancient writers used such signals to indicate their sources.

Peter was an important eyewitness to the life of Jesus. After Easter he spoke about it, first in his own country and later further afield. He may have reached Rome. Mark wrote down part of what he said. Of course, this Gospel is not primarily about Peter but about Jesus.

Throughout the Gospel, people wonder who this Jesus is. Mark shows that the question causes a lot of confusion. Peter himself gets it wrong. However, Mark starts his book with a huge spoiler, because his opening sentence is ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God’. The reader is immediately put on the right track.

Instead of ‘the gospel’ we can of course read ‘the good news’, because the word gospel means good news. The translators could also have chosen the title ‘Messiah’ instead of Christ to bring Jesus’ Jewish roots out more clearly.

Mark’s rather massive superscription tells us as readers that Jesus of Nazareth is not just anyone. He is the long-awaited Messiah of Israel and also the Son of God. Then, as we read on, we can marvel for pages at how the people who met Jesus on earth wondered who He was. But the starting position of those people was much more difficult than ours, because the fact that Jesus is God’s Son and the Messiah only became clear at the end of his life, through his resurrection. It was not in doubt in the earliest churches. We can only do theology properly if we first acknowledge this.

Mark’s first readers were probably in Rome and in any case in the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire claimed to have “good news” for the people. The emperor Augustus had brought peace. The word gospel was therefore regularly used in imperial propaganda. But it was indeed propaganda, because Rome was a cruel power that demanded submission on pain of death. The Roman Empire was good for the rich in the city of Rome and in other cities, but not for the poor masses and the subjugated peoples. So the news from Rome was fake news! The real good news is that God had come to earth in Jesus and made himself known.

There’s no birth story in Mark. He comes straight to the point. His book is not for December but for January. His inscription makes us curious to read on, to discover what was so good about the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. A new year, a new reading of the Gospel?

Pieter J. Lalleman is the editor of the European Journal of Theology and as such a member of the executive committee of FEET