Mark: Volume 2

By Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall

Christianity Today Book Award Winner
The early church valued the Gospel of Mark for its preservation of the apostolic voice and gospel narrative of Peter. Yet the early church fathers very rarely produced sustained commentary on Mark. This brisk-paced and robust little Gospel, so much enjoyed by modern readers, was overshadowed in the minds of the fathers by the magisterial Gospels of Matthew and John.
But now with the assistance of computer searches, an abundance of comment has been discovered to be embedded and interleaved amidst the textual archives of patristic homilies, apologies, letters, commentaries, theological treatises and hymnic verses.
In this Ancient Christian Commentary on Mark, the insights of Augustine of Hippo and Clement of Alexandria, Ephrem the Syrian and Cyril of Jerusalem join in a polyphony of interpretive voices of the Eastern and Western church from the second century to the seventh. St. Mark's Gospel displays the evocative power of its story, parables and passion as it ignites a brilliant exhibit of theological insight and pastoral wisdom.
The Ancient Christian Commentary on Mark (now in its second edition) opens up a long-forgotten passage through the arid and precipitous slopes of post-Enlightenment critical interpretation and bears us along to a fertile valley basking in the sunshine of theological and spiritual interpretation. In these pages we enter the interpretive world that long nurtured the great premodern pastors, theologians and saints of the church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Release date: Feb 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9780830897438

Book preview

INTRODUCTION TO MARK

This introduction is meant to prepare the way for readers to explore Mark through the eyes of the ancient Christian writers. Our first task is to examine Markan authorship as viewed by his earliest interpreters. Next we will explore the unique and honored status of Mark among earliest apostolic texts. Finally we will account for our specific method of investigation into early interpreters of Mark. Then we will discuss modern problems in reading the fathers.

How Early Christian Writers Viewed the Authorship of Mark

Our purpose here is not to establish the Petrine fountain of Mark’s Gospel on the basis of a critical evaluation of the historical evidence. Rather, more modestly, we are asking how the early church reasoned and what it consensually concluded about the authorship and authority of Mark on the basis of all the evidence they had available. This is an underlying premise of this whole series: We are not here trying to correct the ancient Christian writers from the viewpoint of modern historical criteria, but rather to listen to them reason out of their own premises on such questions as the authorship of Mark.

The early church widely regarded the author of Mark’s Gospel as the authentic voice and interpreter of Peter. This view was early stated, largely uncontroverted during the early Christian centuries and ecumenically received by the church. The primary textual evidence for this viewpoint is strong and ancient, as we will show.

The earliest evidence of Markan authorship is set forth by Papias (c. 60-130), the bishop of Hieropolis in Phrygia, in the vicinity of the New Testament churches of Colossae and Laodicea. We find this testimony in a primitive Christian fragment preserved by Eusebius:

But now we must add to the words of his [Papias] which we have already quoted the tradition which he gives in regard to Mark, the author of the Gospel. It is in the following words: "This also John the Presbyter ¹ said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not indeed in order, whatever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but afterward, as I said, he was in company with Peter, who used to offer teaching as necessity demanded, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses. So Mark committed no error in thus writing some single points as he remembered them. For upon one thing he fixed his attention: to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them." (Fragments of Papias, from Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 3.39.14-15) ²

Papias is remembered by Irenaeus as a man of primitive age, the hearer of John, and a companion of Polycarp. ³ Born around A.D. 60 (about the time Paul first preached in Rome), Papias was quite possibly a contemporary of John. In any case he had the privilege of hearing at least the second generation and possibly the first generation of apostolic preaching, and passed on the Johannine tradition that he had received. Papias lived in a region where the gospel tradition flourished quite early, as is evident from Paul’s missionary itinerary reported in Acts 16:6 and 18:23. ⁴ And we read of persons from Phrygia being present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:10). Papias understood himself to be simply passing along a tradition already solidly established. There is no evidence to suggest that Papias was reconfiguring the tradition or inventively reshaping it.

This earliest Phrygian tradition attests to five key points of ancient tradition regarding Markan authorship:

☐ Mark interpreted Peter accurately

☐ Peter was Mark’s chief access to the recollections of Jesus

☐ Mark did not record the tradition in order

☐ Peter presented the Lord’s teaching as the situation demanded, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses

☐ Nothing crucial was distorted or omitted

Within decades after the death of Papias, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) is found in an entirely different locale, in Egypt, reconfirming the tradition that Mark was the reliable interpreter of the narrative of the Lord attested by Peter. The implication is that the tradition of the earliest presbyters of Alexandria known to Clement assumed that Mark had been associated with Peter over a long period of time, that Peter was aware that Mark had written down Peter’s narrative, and that Peter had no objection to his doing so, although Peter did not directly promote or prompt it. Mark is portrayed as responding to the requests of many believers to write out Peter’s widely recognized and authoritative public teaching about Christ while Peter was at Rome.

These assumptions were in place as an established, received tradition in Alexandria. There it was steadily held that Mark had preached in Egypt and founded the African church in Alexandria (Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 2.16, 24). Here are the words of Clement as recited by Eusebius:

Again, in the same books, Clement gives the tradition of the earliest presbyters, ⁵ as to the order of the Gospels, in the following manner: The Gospels containing the genealogies, he says, were written first. The Gospel according to Mark had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered well what he had said, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly hindered nor encouraged it. (Fragments of Clement, Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 6.14.5-7) ⁶

Far from Phrygia (Papias), Alexandria (Clement) and Caesarea (Eusebius), the second-century tradition in southern Gaul about Mark was similarly recalled by Irenaeus (c. 115-202). He also taught that the most ancient guardians of the canonical tradition valued Mark as the disciple and interpreter of Peter, and that he recorded his Gospel after Peter’s death. ⁷ Irenaeus’s testimony should be understood in the light of his cherished remembrance of Polycarp, who himself had been directly acquainted with the apostle John and thus mediated the tradition of the first generation after the apostles. Irenaeus left a written record of the Smyrnean tradition he had received about Mark’s identity. The terms echo the traditions of Phrygia and Alexandria, as we read the record in Eusebius:

Since, in the beginning of this work, we promised to give, when needful, the words of the ancient presbyters and writers of the church, in which they have declared those traditions which came down to them concerning the canonical books, and since Irenaeus was one of them, we will now give his words and, first, what he says of the sacred Gospels: Matthew published his Gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the church in Rome. After their departure Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also transmitted to us in writing those things which Peter had preached. (Fragments of Irenaeus, Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 5.8.1-3) ⁸

Origen (c. 185-c. 254), who had wide firsthand acquaintance with the Palestinian, Alexandrian and Roman traditions, also confirmed this assumption that Mark reliably wrote according to Peter’s gospel, and Origen believed that Peter himself had instructed Mark to write it. These traditions, according to Origen, assumed that Mark was the same individual commended by the apostle in 1 Peter 5:13 as my son.

Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew language. The second is by Mark, who composed it according to the instructions of Peter, who in his Catholic epistle acknowledges him as a son, saying, "The church that is at Babylon ⁹ elected together with you, salutes you, and so does Mark, my son." (Fragments of Origen, Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 6.25.4-5) ¹⁰

Thus by an extraordinary coalescence of diverse testimony from widely diverse arenas we have reliable textual evidence that the second and third generation of Christian teachers viewed Mark as echoing the narrative voice of Peter.

From Eusebius to Augustine

The Palestinian tradition argued specifically for the trustworthiness of Mark’s transmission of Peter’s gospel. Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263-c. 339), who had access to the best library in Palestine, thought that there was sufficient internal evidence in the text of Mark’s Gospel to confirm Mark’s reliability:

Mark writes thus, and through him Peter bears witness, for the whole of Mark is said to be a record of Peter’s teaching. Note how scrupulously the disciples refused to record those things that might have given the impression of their fame. Note how they handed down in writing numerous slanders against themselves to unforgetting ages, and accusations of sins, which no one in later years would ever have known about unless hearing it in their own voice. By thus honestly reporting their own faults, it is reasonable to view them as relatively void of false speaking and egoism. This habit gives plain and clear proof of their truth-loving disposition. As for those who imagine the disciples invented and lied, and slandered themselves as deceivers, ought such critics not to become a laughing-stock? They thereby convict themselves already as accomplices of envy and malice, as enemies of truth-telling itself. For they demean those who have already exhibited in their own lives credible proof of their integrity, whose absolutely sincere character and trustworthiness shines through their very words. Meanwhile their detractors imagine that the Evangelists are rascals and clever sophists who merely fantasized things that never took place. How could believers of such character ascribe falsely to their own Lord things he never did?

This is why I think it has been rightly said that One must put complete confidence in the disciples of Jesus, or none at all. For if we are to distrust those of such unimpeachable character, we reasonably must also distrust all ancient writers on the same principle. We must distrust any who at any time have compiled, either in Greece or anywhere, lives and histories and records of persons of their own times, celebrating their noble achievements. Otherwise we would be considering it as reasonable to have greater confidence in those of lesser character, and have lesser confidence in those of greater character. And that would clearly be tendentious. How could it be that these would falsify the account of his death? What would be their motive in writing down deeds he never did? Were all these things and everything like them in the Gospels merely dreamed up by counterfeit disciples? Or take another twisted hypothesis, that we should distrust the more glorious and lofty parts of the report, yet credit only the ordinary parts of the report as truthful? How could they do so and doubt these candid reports of ignominious actions? How could they reasonably support such an unreasonable type of selectivity? To say that the same witnesses spoke the truth and at the same time lied is to predict contraries about the same people at the same time. They report his hands and feet being pierced, his being given vinegar to drink, struck on the cheek with a reed, and reviled by those who looked upon him. Were these things and all else like them in the Gospels simply by dubious witnesses—the insults and blows to his face, the scourging of his back, the crown of acanthus set on his head in a demeaning way, and finally his carrying of his own cross, and his being nailed to it! If it was their aim to deceive, and to adorn their master with false words, they would never have written these demeaning accounts of his pain and agony, that he was disturbed in spirit, and that they themselves forsook him and fled, or that Peter the apostle and disciple who was chief of them all, denied him three times, unless they had an extraordinarily high standard of truth-telling. (POG 3.5, italics added) ¹¹

Eusebius thought he had good cause to conclude that Mark was a written monument of the doctrine which had been [by Peter] orally communicated to them (Ecclesiastical History 2.15). ¹² Accordingly, Mark’s Gospel early and steadily received ecumenical sanction to speak with apostolic authority so as to be read in Lord’s Day services in the churches everywhere.

A tradition so widely disseminated as Rome, Palestine, Antioch, Constantinople, Gaul, Phrygia and Alexandria could hardly have been easily invented or subsequently fabricated. It is unlikely that Clement in Alexandria was relying on Papias in Phrygia, or that Irenaeus in Gaul was relying on the Alexandrian tradition. Rather these traditions were more likely widely separated, and perhaps independent traditions reporting the same view of the authorship of Mark as directly dependent on the preaching of Peter. Athanasius wrote: Mark the Gospel writer . . . uses the same voice [as Peter did in his confession of Jesus as Messiah], speaking in harmony with the blessed Peter (Sermon on the Nativity of Christ, 28). ¹³

Hence there is little doubt that a general ecumenical consensus existed on Markan authorship quite early, possibly in the first century among the elders of Alexandria and Phrygia, and doubtless in the early second century in Asia, and soon thereafter in most other places.

The philologically adept and textually critical Latin writer Jerome, who was widely acquainted with the traditions of Rome, Dalmatia, Gaul, Antioch, Constantinople and Palestine, thought the ancient consensus was clear and confirmable that

Mark the disciple and interpreter of Peter wrote 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, as Clement in the sixth book of his Hypotyposes, and Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, record. Peter also mentions this Mark in his first epistle, figuratively indicating Rome under the name of Babylon: She who is in Babylon elect together with you salutes you and so does Mark my son. So, taking the Gospel which he himself composed, he went to Egypt and first preaching Christ at Alexandria he formed a church so admirable in doctrine and continence of living that he constrained all followers of Christ to this example. Philo, most learned of the Jews, seeing the first church at Alexandria ¹⁴ still Jewish in a degree, wrote a book on their manner of life as something creditable to his nation telling how, as Luke says, the believers had all things in common at Jerusalem, so he recorded what he saw was done at Alexandria, under the learned Mark. He died in the eighth year of Nero and was buried at Alexandria, Annianus succeeding him. (Lives of Illustrious Men 8) ¹⁵

Jerome not only accepted the early tradition that Mark was Peter’s disciple and interpreter, but further argued, beyond Clement, that Peter had inspected and approved Mark’s report, and that Mark took Peter’s gospel to Alexandria and died there as first bishop of Alexandria. Elsewhere Jerome goes so far as to ascribe the Gospel of Mark essentially to Peter (Lives of Illustrious Men 1). ¹⁶

Thus by the time of Augustine (354-430) it had become a long-standing ecumenical tradition (three centuries old) that the Holy Spirit had supervised the accurate transmission of the gospel tradition from the eyewitness apostles to the consenting church through Mark and Luke who

credibly received accounts with which they had become acquainted in a trustworthy manner through the instrumentality of actual followers of the Lord as he manifested himself in the flesh, and lived in the company of those disciples who were attending him. Divine providence, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, has taken care that they who were intimate associates of the first apostles should be given authority to preach the gospel, and also to compose an account of it in writing. Apart from these four Evangelists, all those other individuals who have attempted or dared to offer a written record of the acts of the Lord or the apostles, failed to commend themselves in their own times as persons of the character which would induce the church to yield them its confidence, and to admit their compositions to the level of canonical authority of holy writ. These spurious accounts were written by persons who could make no legitimate claim to be credited in their narrations. In a deceitful manner they introduced into their writing certain matters which are condemned at once by the catholic and apostolic rule of faith, and by sound doctrine. . . . But the fact is that just as [these four] each received the gift of inspiration, they abstained from adding to their various narratives any superfluous or synthesized compositions. For Matthew is understood to have taken it in hand to construct the record of the incarnation of the Lord according to the royal lineage, and to give an account of a great deal of his deeds and words as they stood in relation to this present life of men. Mark follows him closely, and looks like his associate and epitomizer. For in Mark’s narrative he gives nothing in concert with John apart from the others. . . . Taken by himself, Mark has relatively little exclusively to record, and taken in conjunction with Luke even less. In concurrence with Matthew, Mark has a greater number of passages. Frequently he narrates in words almost numerically and identically the same as those used by Matthew. (Harmony of the Gospels 1.2) ¹⁷

We have already seen Eusebius relate the testimony of Clement that Mark was the first to establish the church in Alexandria. ¹⁸ He further confirms this tradition:

And they say that this Mark was the first that was sent to Egypt, and that he proclaimed the Gospel which he had written and first established churches in Alexandria. And the multitude of believers, both men and women, that were collected there at the very outset, and lived lives of the most philosophical and extreme asceticism, was so great, that Philo thought it worthwhile to describe their pursuits, their meetings, their entertainments, and their whole manner of life. (Ecclesiastical History 2.16.1-2) ¹⁹

But did Philo actually meet Peter in Rome or regard Mark as the disciple of Peter in Alexandria? According to a highly questionable but nonetheless intriguing tradition reported by Jerome:

They say that under Caius Caligula he [Philo] ventured to Rome, where he had been sent as legate of his nation, and that when a second time he had come to Claudius, he spoke in the same city with the apostle Peter and enjoyed his friendship, and for this reason also adorned the adherents of Mark, Peter’s disciple at Alexandria, with his praises. (Lives of Illustrious Men 11) ²⁰

Jerome may have confused Philo’s commendation of the Therapeutae at Alexandria with early Christian communities. Philo (c. 20 B.C.-A.D. 50) was still alive in A.D. 41. Eusebius (260-339) had fantasies that the Jewish ascetics described in Philo’s Contemplative Life, the Therapeutae, were Christian groups. ²¹ While Philo was doubtless describing a Jewish community in Alexandria, Eusebius and Jerome thought he was describing the church in Alexandria, of which Mark, according to tradition, was the founder.

We are here trying to establish what the ancient consensual tradition considered factual concerning the authorship of Mark. The speculations about Philo are less crucial to settle here than that the Palestinian tradition regarded a highly honored and independent source, Philo, as confirming the already-existing ecumenical tradition concerning the reliability of Mark. These later texts, which reflect a growing tendency to assimilate Philo into proto-Christian piety, merely say that Philo mentioned an ascetic group, that this group was Christian and that Mark was thought to have founded the group. ²²

Ancient tradition preserved in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History agrees with the reckoning of Jerome ²³ in placing the death of Mark in Alexandria in about the year 62: When Nero was in the eighth year of his reign, Annianus succeeded Mark the evangelist in the administration of the parish of Alexandria (Ecclesiastical History 2.24.1). ²⁴

The Unique and Honored Place of Mark Among Early Apostolic Texts

We find early Christian texts quoting the Gospel of Mark in literature originating in every locale of the early church’s missionary and pastoral activity—Africa, Asia and throughout the northern Mediterranean. The evidence points to Mark’s Gospel being a normative part of the early Christian corpus of liturgical sources. At an early date the church received it into the canon of New Testament writings by wide (and apparently unanimous) agreement. From the beginning of the worldwide Christian witness, Mark has been listed as a part of every preacher’s armamentarium of sources for knowing Jesus Christ.