The Gospel of Mark
With commentary by Matthew and Luke
A study of the Synoptic Gospels
Get Ready
Synopsis means a summary or general view of the overall work. The synoptic Gospels present the story of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection using the same basic pattern. While each Gospel differs in some of the details from the other two, their summaries align.
We are going to use Mark’s Gospel as our framework, and treat Matthew and Luke as commenters — so these similarities and differences are in the “Notes” section of the study, [with the corresponding verse references in brackets]. In cases in which there are significant differences between Mark and either Matthew or Luke, this study includes a special “Notes” section to provide this information. Even though John’s gospel is written in an entirely different style with a different purpose, this study attempts to include references to those portions of his gospel when they parallel those of Mark.
– Rich
Introduction
Why is Jesus’ story called the Gospel?
“Gospel” is the Greek word for “good news.”
God had been telling the Jews, through the prophets, that his “new thing” would be “good news” for more than six hundred years: The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, an release to the prisoners, [Isaiah 61:1– Jesus applied this passage to himself when he read it in the synagogue, [Luke 4:16-21].
God also links “good news” to announcing salvation and peace, and saying, “Your God reigns,” [Isaiah 52:7].
The Apostles and other followers of Jesus used the phrase to tell the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection – and especially what this means for our relationship with God.
So God’s “new thing” is the best possible “good news” because it is the story of how God has made it possible for us to have a living, loving relationship with him.
Context
In the years after Jesus’ resurrection many people were able to share their experiences with him, including his healings and other miracles and his teachings. As Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and the Apostles and others who knew Jesus personally became fewer and less accessible, some believers began compiling written collections of the stories about Jesus.
Many scholars believe that Mark’s is the first written Gospel, although a significant group supports the tradition that Matthew wrote first. Scholars also believe that a collection of Jesus’ sayings, called “Q” (“source”) circulated at the same time and that both Matthew and Luke used it along
with Mark in preparing their Gospels. The commonality between Mark and Matthew and Mark and Luke is the basis for the idea that Mark’s is the first written Gospel. More than ninety percent of the information in Mark appears in similar form, although not necessarily in the same order, in Matthew; and more than half the material in Mark is also in Luke. Another indicator of Mark as the source is that whenever Matthew and Luke disagree about the sequence of events in Jesus’ life one of them agrees with the narrative in Mark.
All three Gospels were written before the destruction of the temple in 70, probably between 50 and 65 CE.
Authors
Mark
The gospel does not have any information about its author, but Papias, an early church leader in what is now Turkey, identified Mark as one of those who interpreted for Peter, the Apostle, probably while he was preaching in Rome. Even though Mark evidently was not a follower of Jesus during his life on Earth, his relationship with Peter puts him very close to the events he recorded. Many scholars belief he is the John Mark who traveled with Paul as well as Peter. Since Peter was killed some time between 64 and 68 C.E., Mark’s gospel was written around this time, primarily to preserve the story of Jesus for the Roman church.
Matthew
Tradition holds that the disciple who was a former tax collector wrote the first book of the New Testament; but there are two major difficulties with this understanding. First, this gospel was evidently written in Greek, not the Aramaic that the disciple would have used. Second, this gospel relies heavily on the gospel of Mark, which argues against authorship by some one who actually followed Jesus. There is no agreement on who actually wrote the gospel attributed to “Matthew.”
It is clear that the author wrote to Jews and his goal was to demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah of the Jewish scriptures (our Old Testament). The gospel consistently assumes the reader understands Jewish history, scripture, law and custom. Matthew also has more Old Testament references than the other gospels and the opening verses show Jesus is a descendant of Abraham.
Luke
In spite of the opening verses, the author of this gospel does not identify himself, but later church leaders do identify the writer as the Luke who accompanied Paul on two of his missionary journeys and was also with him during his imprisonment in Rome. The author is clearly an educated writer and historian who anchors his narrative of Jesus’ life and ministry in Roman history. He probably wrote the gospel around 65.
Just as the author of Matthew was a Jew writing to Jews about Jesus, Luke was a gentile writing to other gentiles about Jesus as the culmination of history and the key to humans’ relationship with God. The gospel is the first part of Luke’s history of Jesus and the early church — part two is the book of Acts.
