In our English Bible Mark is the second \u201cbook\u201d.\u00a0 If you read through Nahum with us you might remember we talked about the \u201cgood news\u201d about Jesus.\u00a0 The New Testament was written in Greek and there is a word used about 100 times which is transtaled \u201cgospel\u201d.\u00a0 The word is \u201ceuggelion\u201d and means \u201cgood message\u201d or \u201cgood news\u201d.\u00a0 Of course the particular \u201cgood news\u201d is about how Jesus has dealt with our sins (disobedience and rebellion toward God, see 1 Corinthians 15:1-11).\u00a0 The first four \u201cbooks\u201d of the New Testament are called \u201cgospels\u201d because they tell the story of Jesus\u2019 life on earth.\u00a0 Mark is one of these \u201cgospels\u201d.<\/p>\n
Throughout Church history Mark has had a rough ride as one of the gospels.\u00a0 Early on it was kind of ignored, then for a while it was considered the best gospel, some even think that Matthew and Luke copied from Mark.\u00a0 Then some critical scholars began to doubt it again.\u00a0 Although from the early days it has been surrounded by controversy it has been considered a part of the Bible from very early in church history<\/p>\n
The author of the book does not identify himself but the best and earliest traditions say it was written by John Mark, or just Mark.\u00a0 He was the son of a rich Jerusalem family.\u00a0 We do not know about his father but his mother, Mary, was an early believer with a large house where the first church in Jerusalem would meet (Acts 12:12).\u00a0 Some even think that their house may have been the house with the large upper room where the last supper took place and that Mark was the young man in Mark 14 who followed Jesus and the disciples to the Mount of Olives then ran away naked when the authorities tried to seize him along with the disciples.<\/p>\n
Mark’s uncle was also an early convert to Christ.\u00a0 His name was Barnabas.\u00a0 It was this Barnabas who helped another famous convert to Christ find his part in the early church, a guy by the name of Saul who we know as Paul.\u00a0 Paul was a very zealous Jew who was a persecutor of the church.\u00a0 He ran around the Jewish world looking for Jewish converts to Christianity in order to kill them.\u00a0 But Jesus got a hold of him and revolutionized his life.\u00a0 He went from being a persecutor of Christians to being one of the greatest evangelists (a person who goes around telling the good news about Jesus) of all time.\u00a0 Not only that he was given the assignment of bringing the good news of Jesus to the non-Jewish or Gentile world.\u00a0 Barnabas helped him get started in this task and introduced him to the believers in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
Paul made three journeys into the eastern portion of the Roman Empire to establish churches among the people there.\u00a0 The first journey was from A.D 46-48.\u00a0 On that trip he traveled with Barnabas and John Mark.\u00a0 As the journey progressed Barnabas allowed Paul to take the leadership role.\u00a0 Eventually Mark left the group, perhaps because they were taking the gospel more and more to Gentiles rather than Jews, perhaps because he did not care for the fact that Paul was taking over from his Uncle Barnabas, or perhaps for some other reason.\u00a0\u00a0 From 49 to 52 A.D. Paul took a second journey around the Mediterranean world. He asked Barnabas to join.\u00a0 Barnabas wanted to take Mark along again but Paul was unwilling to let him go.\u00a0 At that point Paul and Barnabas went their own ways, Paul with Silas on his second journey and Barnabas with Mark to Cyprus.<\/p>\n
Mark disappears from the Biblical record for about ten years.\u00a0 Paul took a third missionary journey lasting from A.D. 53-58.\u00a0 In 58 he was arrested in Jerusalem.\u00a0 He spent 2 years in jail there before being sent to Rome for trial.\u00a0 He was under house arrest in Rome from 60-63.\u00a0 During that time Paul wrote the letters to the Colossians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, and to Philemon.\u00a0 In two of these he mentions Mark as a fellow laborer in Rome.\u00a0 Evidently Paul and Mark’s differences were healed.\u00a0\u00a0 It is believed that it was at this time, A.D. 62, that Mark wrote his gospel in Rome for the Roman church.\u00a0 It is generally believed that Mark wrote with the aid of his other great mentor, Peter, who may have been in Rome at the time.<\/p>\n
Mark seems to be written to the Roman mind.\u00a0 The humanity and<\/span> divinity of Jesus are both major themes of the gospel.\u00a0 Marks gospel “moves”, a feature that would have been impressive to the Romans.\u00a0 Also Mark describes the customs and geography of Palestine (the area around Jerusalem) to his audience as if they might have been unfamiliar with the customs and area of Judea.<\/p>\n 62 AD was also a time of trouble for believers in Jesus in the capital of Rome, trouble which would only increase when Nero became emperor in 63-64 AD. \u00a0The quick action and strange ending of Mark may have been particularly encouraging to Christians suffering trouble.<\/p>\n Finally one last evidence that Mark was writing to the Gentile believers in Rome is that he gives some Latin translations for Greek and Aramaic terms.\u00a0 Although Mark was not one of the original Apostles he certainly had a great deal of exposure to them.\u00a0 Sitting in the house of his mother listening to Peter night after night teaching the early church, on the first missionary journey with Paul, on another missionary journey with his uncle Barnabas, the encourager.\u00a0 Tradition is that the greatest source for his gospel was Peter.\u00a0 But certainly he was a young man with a mission of his own from God and as Peter once said,<\/p>\n “no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” (2 Peter 1:21).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In our English Bible Mark is the second \u201cbook\u201d.\u00a0 If you read through Nahum with us you might remember we talked about the \u201cgood news\u201d about Jesus.\u00a0 The New Testament was written in Greek and there is a word used about 100 times which is transtaled \u201cgospel\u201d.\u00a0 The word is \u201ceuggelion\u201d and means \u201cgood message\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":50,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1400","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1401,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1400\/revisions\/1401"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}