Christians read the Jewish scripture as a figure or type of Jesus Christ, so that the goal of Christian literature became an experience of the living Christ. Uniting these ideas was the common thread of apocalyptic expectation: Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was at hand, that God would very soon come to punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the centre of his plans. Those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts: the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the suffering servant, the Day of the Lord, and the kingdom of God. From the outset, Christians depended heavily on Jewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures. Ĭhristianity began within Judaism, with a Christian "church" (or ἐκκλησία, ekklesia, meaning "assembly") that arose shortly after Jesus's death, when some of his followers claimed to have witnessed him risen from the dead. Thus the proclamation of Jesus in Mark 1:14 and the following verses, for example, mixes the terms Jesus would have used as a 1st-century Jew ("kingdom of God") and those of the early church ("believe", "gospel").
#OLD MANUSCRIPT MARK PLUS#
Christian churches were small communities of believers, often based on households (an autocratic patriarch plus extended family, slaves, freedmen, and other clients), and the evangelists often wrote on two levels: one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other dealing with the concerns of the author's own day. Like all the synoptic gospels, the purpose of writing was to strengthen the faith of those who already believed, as opposed to serving as a tractate for missionary conversion. Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory, and also included morals, rhetoric, propaganda and kerygma (preaching) in their works. The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of the ancient genre of bios, or ancient biography.
The Gospel of Mark was written in Greek, for a gentile audience, and probably in Rome, although Galilee, Antioch (third-largest city in the Roman Empire, located in northern Syria), and southern Syria have also been suggested. The author used a variety of pre-existing sources, such as conflict stories, apocalyptic discourse, miracle stories, parables, a passion narrative, and collections of sayings, although not the Q source. This would place the composition of Mark either immediately after the destruction, which is the position of most scholars, or during the years immediately prior. It is usually dated through the eschatological discourse in Mark 13, which scholars interpret as pointing to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 AD)-a war that lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. Authorship and date Īn early Christian tradition deriving from Papias of Hierapolis (c.60–c.130 AD) attributes authorship of the gospel to Mark, a companion and interpreter of Peter, but most scholars believe that it was written anonymously, and that the name of Mark was attached later in order to link it to an authoritative figure. Mark, 1448 The two-source hypothesis: Most scholars agree that Mark was the first of the gospels to be composed, and that the authors of Matthew and Luke used it plus a second document called the Q source when composing their own gospels. Most critical scholars reject the early church tradition linking the gospel to John Mark, who was a companion of the Apostle Peter, and it is now generally agreed that it was written anonymously for a gentile audience, probably in Rome, sometime shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. All this is in keeping with Christian interpretation of prophecy, which is believed to foretell the fate of the messiah as suffering servant. He is called the Son of God but keeps his messianic nature secret even his disciples fail to understand him.
It portrays Jesus as a teacher, an exorcist, a healer, and a miracle worker, though it does not mention a miraculous birth or divine pre-existence. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to his death, burial, and the discovery of his empty tomb. The Gospel of Mark is the second of the four canonical gospels and one of the three synoptic Gospels.
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