The Making of Mark
St Mark wrote his Gospel as a summary of the preaching of St Peter.
AD 35-68
Tiberius, Roman Emperor AD 14-37 to Nero, Roman Emperor AD 54-68
St Mark, Lindisfarne Gospels, ca. AD 700.
From the Lindisfarne Gospels, ca. AD 700, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
St Mark the Evangelist, as depicted in the Lindisfarne Gospels, produced in the Kingdom of Northumbria in about AD 700, during the lifetime of St Bede. We first hear of John Mark through his mother Mary, whose opened her house in Jerusalem to Christians: see Jailbreak. His cousin Barnabas then took him on preaching missions, but Mark suddenly deserted Barnabas in Pamphylia, after which Paul refused to work with him. Barnabas stuck by Mark, however, and later we find Paul telling Philemon that Mark is one of his fellow-workers, and asking Timothy to bring Mark to Rome as he is so useful to him.
Introduction
Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea from about 313, tells us here how St Mark’s Gospel came to be written. Drawing on testimony going back to the Apostles themselves, he explains that the Gospel should be heard as an echo of the living voice of St Peter, as he preached the good news in Rome.
Abridged.
The divine word having thus been established among the Romans, the power of Simon was soon extinguished and destroyed together with the man.* So greatly, however, did the splendour of piety enlighten the minds of Peter’s hearers, that it was not sufficient to hear but once, nor to receive the unwritten doctrine of the gospel of God, but they persevered in every variety of entreaties, to solicit Mark as the companion of Peter, and whose gospel we have, that he should leave them a monument of the doctrine thus orally communicated, in writing. Nor did they cease their solicitations until they had prevailed with the man, and thus become the means of that history which is called the Gospel according to Mark.
They say also, that the apostle [Peter], having ascertained what was done by the revelation of the spirit, was delighted with the zealous ardour expressed by these men, and that the history obtained his authority for the purpose of being read in the churches. This account is given by Clement, in the sixth book of his Institutions, whose testimony is corroborated also by that of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis.* [...]
* Eusebius has been telling us that Simon Magus, a Samaritan dabbler in religions who had tried and failed to buy his way into the company of the Apostles, took himself off to Rome and set himself up as an Apostle. Things were going well — he had amassed quite a following, who venerated “pictures and statues of this selfsame Simon” — when St Peter appeared in Rome, and once again exposed him as a fraud.
* Eusebius gives as his authorities the testimony of Titus Flavius Clemens (150-?215), also known as Clement of Alexandria, who had headed up the illustrious Catechetical School of Alexandria, and Papias (fl. 95-110), bishop of Hierapolis, who was personally acquainted with St Polycarp (69-155) and others who had known the Apostles. Papias’s book An Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord is now lost, though fragments survive in the writings of Eusebius and others.
