The Gospel of Mark

This anonymous gospel was the first to be written, between 60 and 80CE, by a Roman convert to Christianity. It was copied word-for-word and used extensively by Matthew and Luke, as their primary source although they edited some details. Nevertheless, the gospel author didn't meet Jesus, wrote in Greek, not Hebrew, and was not a Jew. It is unlikely that Mark knew any Jews. There was no-one to correct his blunders about Jewish life, such as misquoting the 10 commendments, attributing God's words to Moses, and having Jews buy things on the Sabbath. The Gospel of Mark has undergone many changes and there are several ancient versions. The oldest versions of Mark all end at Mark 16:7. The Gospel of Mark contradicts the other gospels on many points and contains internal inconsistencies, some of these were later fixed by Matthew and Luke when they made their own copies of Mark. Half way through the second century the Christian proto-orthodox had come to call it 'Mark', although the author is unknown.

Contents:

1. The Gospel of Mark
2. Our version of Mark is different to the original
3. Mark was not a Jew and had no Jewish contacts
4. The Contradictions, Absurdities and Confused Stories of Mark
5. Why was Mark written?

The Gospel of Mark

Origins of the Gospel of "Mark"

The author of Mark wrote in a form of 'Latinized' Greek after (or shortly before) the destruction of the Temple in 70CE, which he mentions. He must have been born 30-50CE. He wrote in either Rome or Syria. The Latin-Greek is similar to the written language of Rome, and 'sense of persecution' also hints that Mark wrote in Rome, where Nero was the worst for persecuting Christians . "Mark" was Written before Matthew and Luke (c. 100), who both use Mark as a source. It was the most extensive source for the other gospels, and there are only about 30 verses that were not copied or used by the authors of Matthew and Luke. Despite this, Mark did not actually meet Jesus nor speak the same language as him.

The Gospel of Mark was written anonymously was not known as a Gospel of 'Mark' for over a hundred years. When Christians came to name the Gospels, they picked 'Mark', who they thought should be a disciple of Peter, who in Greek mythology was associated with the Egyptian god Petra, the gate guardian of Heaven.

As a Roman, Mark directed his writings at a Roman audience. He feels it is required to explain Jewish customs, and does not bother to explain Roman culture to his readers. Yet he did not extensively understand Jewish culture, and his gospel once even misquotes the 10 commandments! He commits other errors that no Jew (no long term friend of Peter) could have committed such as having Jews buy things on the Sabbath, of quoting Moses instead of God, and confusing other things. Many such things are described on this document by Steven Carr, attached to the end of this page.

Contents of the Gospel of Mark

The gospel of Mark does not describe the history of Jesus, or his virgin birth. These parts of the New Testament's stories were added by Matthew, 30 years later, who assimilated other myths into the legends.

Our version of Mark is different to the original

Many versions of Mark circulated in ancient history. The version we have dates to around 150ce. One of the more shocking versions of the gospel of Mark is the Carpocratians version of Mark - where Mark describes Jesus' paedophiliac relations with young boys, which the Carpocratians considered a virtue.

“The first thing to point out is that [...] Mark's Gospel circulated in different versions. [...] We know that it did, since we have numerous manuscripts of Mark's Gospel, as well as of all the books of the New Testament, and no two of these manuscripts are exactly alike [...]. Some of the differences are significant. For example, when Jesus is approached by a leper who wants to be healed (Mark 1:41), rather than indicating that Jesus felt compassion (as found in most manuscripts), some of our earliest manuscripts instead say that he became angry. [...] Of even greater significance are the last twelve verses of Mark, in which Jesus appears to his disciples after the resurrection, telling them to preach the gospel to all the nations and indicating that those who believe in him will speak in strange tongues, handle snakes, and drink poison without feeling its effects. But this amazing and startling ending is not found in the oldest and best manuscripts of Mark. Instead, these manuscripts end at Mark 16:8, where the women at Jesus' tomb are told that he has been raised, are instructed to inform Peter, but then flee the tomb and say nothing to anyone, "for they were afraid." [...] There is no account of Jesus appearing to his disciples, after the resurrection.”

"Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman, p78-79

Mark was not a Jew and had no Jewish contacts

Mark didn't appear to know any Hebrew or Aramaic (the language of Jesus and his first followers). All his quotes from the Old Testament are from the faulty Septuagint translation, in Greek. For example:

“The most telling moment [...] is when Mark has Jesus quote from the Old Testament in his arguments against the Pharisees. Nothing surprising about this - except that Jesus quotes from the mistranslated Greek version of the Old Testament, which suits his purpose precisely, not from the original Hebrew, which says something quite different [...]. That Jesus the Jew should quote a Greek mistranslation of Jewish Holy Scripture to impress orthodox Jewish Pharisees is simply unthinkable.”

"Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [Book Review], p176

Freke and Gandy explain that this can only occur because Mark was written, not by a Jew or anyone who had met Jesus, but by a Roman who didn't speak Hebrew and didn't know that the Greek translation was imperfect.

The following is an abstract from Steven Carr's text. He explains in great detail all the mistakes Mark makes about Jewish customs, beliefs and practices and shows without a doubt that Mark was not a Jew. It seems clear that Mark probably didn't have any Jewish friends to read over his writings or correct him. Matthew and Luke quoted Mark at length: Matthew understood Jewish ways and therefore corrected many of Mark's mistakes.

Mark was not by Mark!

To determine that, it is necessary to look very closely at how Luke and especially Matthew used Mark's Gospel. Time and time again, we see Matthew correcting Mark's blunders about Judaism. Clearly Matthew was a Jew and Mark, despite Papias' bold assertion, was not very close to the Jerusalem Church.

• Comparing Matthew 15:4 with Mark 7:10, Mark represents a more Gentile attitude in quoting the Old Testament as "Moses said" rather than "God said." Matthew, a Jew, would never have attributed the 10 commandments to Moses. It was God who said them, as all Jews will tell you.

• Mark 5:22: "One of the rulers of the synagogue." Diaspora synagogues may sometimes have had more than ruler, as at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:15), but Palestinian synagogues normally had only one. Matthew 9:18, drops this phrase.

• Mark 14:12: On the first day of unleavened bread when they sacrificed the Passover, confuses Nisan 15 with Nisan 14. Naturally, Matthew 26:17 drops the phrase "when they sacrificed the Passover". Was Mark a Jew who did not know about the Passover?

• Mark 14:13 says that the disciples were to be met by a man carrying a pitcher of water. Matthew 26:18 drops the idea that a Jewish man would do a woman's work.

• Mark 15:42, "When evening was already come, because it was Friday (paraskeue) that is, the day before the sabbath ..." . This means "either that Friday began with that sunset, and Jesus had died on Thursday; or else, the evangelist forgot [or did not know] that the Jewish day began at evening." Matthew 27:57-62 clarifies Mark's confusion over Jewish days. Interestingly, the NIV tries to translate the problem away by writing for Mark 15:42 'So as evening approached ", rather than "And when evening had come ", as the RSV has it.

• Mark 15:46 says that that same evening Joseph of Arimathea "bought a linen cloth." Matthew drops the idea of a Jew buying something on the Sabbath. No Jew could have made that mistake.

• Mark 1:2 wrongly ascribes Malachi 3:1 to Isaiah. Matthew 3:3 corrects this

• In Mark 2:7 the teachers of the law complain that Jesus is forgiving sins and say 'Who can forgive sins but God alone?'. Jews did not think that. Matthew 9:3 drops the phrase. There is a Dead Sea Scroll called 'The Prayer of Nabonidus'(4Q242) , written and copied by Jews, where it is said by Nabonidus '... an exorcist pardoned my sins. He was a Jew...'.

  Jews did believe that God could give authority to men to forgive sin.

• Mark 2:26 - Abiathar should be Ahimelech.Matthew 12:1-8 does not repeat the mistake. Incidentally, if Jesus was thinking of 1 Sam. 21:1-8 when he said that David and those who were with him were hungry, then , in his omniscience, he forgot that David was on the run alone and the story that David told Ahimelech was a falsehood - David was not on a mission from the king and he did not have an appointment with any young men.

• Mark 10:19 misquotes the Ten Commandments and inserts an extra commandment: "Do not defraud." Matthew 19:18-20 sticks to the orginal 10, plus the one that many Rabbis regarded as a summary of the commandments.

• Mark 15:34 has Jesus quoting Psalm 22:1 in Aramaic (Eloi). Had Jesus done this, bystanders could hardly have supposed that he was calling for Elijah. Jesus must have used Hebrew Eli, as at Matthew 27:46. The NIV tries to harmonize Matthew and Mark here by using Eloi in both places.

More dubious statements by a "Companion of Peter"

• Mark 7:31 says that Jesus and his disciples journeyed "out from the borders of Tyre ... through Sidon, to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the borders". The journey described is like "travelling from Cornwall to London by way of Manchester" (Anderson, H. _The Gospel of Mark_, NCB (London, 1976).

• Mark 8:10 refers to the "the district of Dalmanutha." As far as is known, there was no such place in Galilee. (The difficulty was recognized early because there are many textual variants in the manuscripts.)

• Mark 5:1 specifies that the eastern side of the lake of Galilee is the country of the Gerasenes . This is more than 30 miles from a lake . This caused a lot of confusion as can by seen by the variety of names in the texts here.Matthew changed Mark's Gerasenes to Gadarenes in Matthew 8:28. Gadara was a well-known spa only eight miles from the lake.

• Mark 6:14-27 repeatedly refers to Herod Antipas as a "king." Matthew commits this error only once (14:9). The correct title 'tetrarch' appears in Matthew 14:1, Luke 3:19, Luke 9:7, Acts 13:1, but not once in Mark's Gospel

• Mark 6:17 says that Antipas married the wife of his brother Philip. According to Josephus, Antiquities. 18.5.4, she was actually the wife of a different brother.

Places where Matthew adds Jewish elements which 'Mark' overlooked

• Mark 13:17-19 fails to urge Jesus' followers to pray that they do not have to flee on the sabbath (compare Matthew. 24:20).

• Mark 2:23-28 lacks the appeal to the Mosaic Law found in Matthew 12:5.

• Mark 7:19b, a comment by the evangelist, asserts that Jesus "declared all foods clean." Matthew 15:20 drops this. It is inconceivable that Jesus would have abolished the food laws without his opponents ever once mentioning that in accusations.

• Mark 9:4 names Elijah before Moses. Naturally ,Matthew 17:3 puts Moses before Elijah, as Moses is far more important to Jews than Elijah.
• Mark 11:10 refers to the kingdom our father David. No Jew would have referred to our father David. The father of the nation was Abraham, or possibly Jacob, who was renamed Israel. Not all Jews were sons of David. Naturally, Matthew 21:9 does not refer to our father David.

• Mark 12:31,33,34 subordinate the Torah to love, and to the kingdom, in contrast to Matt. 22:36-40, who as a Jew, put a far greater emphasis on the Law.

Mark has to explain Jewish features.

Mark never explains Gentile matters, such as who Pilate was. However, he assumes that his intended readers know even less about Judaism than he does and he has to explain the most elementary features. By contrast, Matthew makes more use of Judaism and assumes his readers are up to speed. Was Mark really a Jewish companion of Peter, or someone who was very close to the earliest, Jewish , followers of Jesus?

• Only Mark 12:42 explains that a lepton, a coin used in Palestine, was worth half a quadrans. Further more, "quadrans" is a word borrowed from Latin.

• Mark 10:12 forbids women to divorce their husbands and remarry. But Jewish law already forbade that! The teaching would have seemed outlandish to a Jew of Palestine, but was an appropriate expansion for those of pagan background.

• At Mark 3:17 and Mark 10:46, he has to explain the most elementary meanings of Aramaic surnames. This is supposedly from somebody to whom Aramaic was a mother tongue. Even if Mark is just explaining things to his readers, it is clear that his readers , being ignorant of elementary Aramaic and even the currency of Palestine, would have been in no position to check out any of the things that he wrote.

• Mark 6:48 uses 'the fourth watch'. The Jews divided the night into three watches. The Romans divided the night into four watches, according to the conservative 'New Bible Dictionary'. This is still more evidence that Mark's Gospel was written for people who would have been familiar with Roman and not Jewish customs, and so would have found it hard to check the Gospel stories.

There is nothing in Mark which a well educated Roman Gentile would not have known. For example, when Mark 15:38 talks about the curtain of the Temple, Roman Gentiles would have known that the Temple had a curtain, as it was taken to Rome after Jerusalem was sacked (Book 7, Chapter 5 in 'Wars of the Jews' by Josephus).

Mark didn't know Peter

We have seen already that Mark was not known as a Gospel of 'Mark' for over a hundred years. When Christians came to name the Gospels, they picked 'Mark', who they thought should be a disciple of Peter, who in Greek mythology was associated with the Egyptian god Petra, the gate guardian of Heaven. Nowadays, Christians nowadays consider 'Peter' to be a genuine historical person, but it seems that even if he was real, Mark didn't know him. Peter certainly could have corrected any of Mark's errors in Jewish knowledge, and it is ludicrous to assume that Mark wrote this text without showing Peter (or any other Jew). It is clear that Mark didn't know any Jews. All three other gospels refer to Peter Matthew 16:17-20 Luke 22:28-32 John 21:15-17 and give him authority, whereas Mark doesn't. I think Mark knew Peter was not real; but merely a piece of Roman mythology used symbolically in a way all Romans would have understood. Later authors (such as the Jewish author of the Gospel of Matthew), who copied Mark's text, did not know this, therefore they elevated him.

Why was Mark written?

“Professor Dennis R MacDonald writes: "Whether as a response to the Jewish War (66-70) or to the deaths of the earliest followers of Jesus, or to the need of a definitive version of Jesus' life, or to objectionable theological trends, the author of the Gospel of Mark recast traditional materials into a dramatic narrative climaxing in Jesus' death. It is not clear precisely what kind of book the author set out to compose, insofar as no document written prior to Mark exactly conforms with its literary properties. Its themes of travel, conflict with supernatural foes, suffering, and secrecy resonate with Homer's Odyssey and Greek romantic novels. Its focus on the character, identity, and death of a single individual reminds one of ancient biographies. Its dialogues, tragic outcome, and peculiar ending call to mind Greek drama. Some have suggested that the author created a new, mixed genre for narrating the life and death of Jesus."”

"Early Christian Literature" by Prof. Dennis R. MacDonald, via Wikipedia accessed 2006 Aug 21

The re-writing of the Jewish-Christian stories about Jesus into a complete biography were as revolutionary as St Paul's letters to the early Christian churches. Together they produced a Roman version of Jewish Christianity.

The Contradictions, Absurdities and Confused Stories of Mark

• Jesus sends his disciples out to preach, but in Mark they are told to wear sandals (contradicting Matthew), and are told to take a staff (contradicting Luke):

  Matthew 10:9-10	Mark 6:8-9	Luke 9:3
  Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff	These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff - no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic.	Take nothing for the journey - no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic.

• The gospels describe where Jesus taught. Mark contradicts Luke and John's accounts:

  “Mark has Jesus teaching only in the area of Galilee, and not in Judea, and only traveling the 70 miles to Jerusalem once, at the end of his life. Luke, however, portrays Jesus as teaching equally in Galilee and Judea. John's Jesus, on the other hand, preaches mainly in Jerusalem and makes only occasional visits to Galilee.”

  "Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [Book Review], p173

• Mark contradicts Luke and John on the issue of how Jesus was sentenced:

  “According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was both tried and sentenced by the Jewish priests of the Sanhedrin. Luke has it that Jesus was [not] sentenced by them. Yet according to John, Jesus does not appear before the Sanhedrin at all.”

  "Jesus Mysteries" by Freke & Gandy [Book Review], p173

“

The accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke contradict each other, even on the parts of Christian mythology which Christians consider to be the most important: The crucifixion and resurrection. They give different sets of final words, confusingly differents accounts of the empty tomb (one of them including an earthquake), and wildly different accounts of the resurrection. They're all making it up!”

"The Crucifixion and Resurrection: Contradictory Gospels" by Vexen Crabtree

Two minor contradictions with Matthew on the wording of Jesus and the details of some events show us that passing on stories by word-of-mouth causes inaccuracies:

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An excerpt from Steven Carr on other contradictions:

Contradictions in Mark's stories

Mark 4:11 says that the secret of the kingdom of God has been given to the disciples. What was this secret? When was it given to the disciples, who seem totally ignorant of who Jesus was (Mark 4:41)?

In Mark 6:7-13 till 29-30 the disciples are sent out to preach and teach. As the disciples did not know Jesus was the Messiah until Mark 8:30, that must have been interesing!

Peter - Repent of your sins, and follow Jesus of Nazareth.
Bystander in the crowd - Is he the Messiah who will rid us of the cursed Roman occupation?
Peter - I never thought to ask him. I don't know. I'll ask him when I see him again, and get back to you.

What could the disciples have preached and taught in Mark 6 that had anything to do with the secret of the kingdom of God? Why send people out to teach without explaining that you are the Messiah?

They were also given power over evil spirits, but it is not until Mark 9:29 that Jesus explains that they have to pray first before driving out a demon. How did the disciples drive out demons before that, when Jesus had neglected to give them such basic instruction as to pray first?

Mark 7:14 gives some instruction about the Law which a simpleton could grasp, yet Jesus tells the disciples in verse 18 that they are without understanding. These are the preacher-teachers who had been given the secret of the kingdom of God.

Despite not being able to understand, and not knowing, elementary instruction about the Law, they had already by chapter 3 had liberal practices on fasting and the Sabbath, and the whole teaching of chapter 7 (which the disciples did not understand) was caused by a question about the practices of those same disciples!

Don't forget that these preacher-teachers, who had been given the secret of the Kingdom of God in 4:11, had had their hearts hardened in 6:52, so that they did not understand even such a blatant miracle as walking on water. Why give the disciples the secret of the kingdom of God and then harden their hearts so that they don't understand it? Surely the average Christian would fall about laughing if he read such stories in the Book of Mormon or the Qu'ran.

Other characteristics unique to Mark

• Son of Man is the main title used for Jesus in Mark [...] Mark has Jesus call himself 'Son of Man' numerous times

• The testing of Jesus for forty days contains no discourse between Jesus and Satan (Mark 1:12-13). Later authors added this.

• Jesus' family say he is out of his mind (Mark 3:21).

• Only place in the New Testament Jesus is addressed as "the son of Mary" (Mark 6:3) and the only gospel that both names his brothers and mentions his sisters (Mark 6:3). Matthew has a slightly different name for one brother and no mention of sisters (Matthew 13:55). Jewish authors were not often inclined to mention mothers and sisters, only brothers and fathers.

• When Jesus is arrested a young naked man flees (Mark 14:51-52). The Greeks were much more inclined to write of romantic involvements between spiritual leaders and young men.