Gospel of Mark

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The Gospel of Mark (also Mark's Gospel; in short: Mark or Mk) is the second book of the New Testament in the Christian Bible. The narrative consists of 16 chapters with 661 verses and is the shortest of the four canonical gospels. In the original Greek it bears the title euangelion kata Markon (), so: “Good News after Mark”; However, above the oldest Unzial manuscripts there is only the shorter title kata Markon (), i.e.: “after Markus”.

It represents the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, describing his person and, in particular, his suffering and death. Jesus is portrayed as a servant of God who proclaims the near-coming rule of God. He is presented as a person who serves, heals and teaches people. At the same time, his Messianicity and Sonship is proclaimed. According to him, Jesus himself is the “mystery of the rule of God”, which is outlined by typical scenes from his life (Thomas Söding). As it appears, the author presumed that Jesus himself had announced the imminent Kingdom of God on earth: “And he said to them, Amen, I say to you, some of those who stand here will not taste death until they have seen that the Kingdom of God has come into power.”

According to historical-critical majority opinion, the Gospel of Mark is probably the oldest Gospel. According to the so-called two-source theory, it served together with a Greek collection of sayings of Jesus (source Q) as a written template for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. According to the prevailing opinion, it arose quite soon after the First Jewish War (66 to 73 AD), i.e. about four to five decades after the events described in it.

Authors
Like all the texts collected in the New Testament, the Gospel of Mark was written in very simple ancient Greek in order to be distributed as widely as possible. The Gospel of Mark – like many testimonies of Jewish and early Christian literature – was originally transmitted anonymously, because the Gospel headline “Gospel after Mark” known to us was added later. Perhaps the authors concerned mainly the doctrine or the tradition they processed, not so much their own fame as a writer, which is why they resigned behind their work. Typical for ancient texts is that the author or the authors are often no longer clearly namable, but this is usually due to tradition.

Marcus, Greciates Markos, is not a Jewish, but a Roman name. The oldest evidence of the writing by Mark can be found in Bishop Papias of Hierapolis (probably around 100 AD), whom Eusebius of Caesarea cites in his church history:
“Marcus was Peter’s interpreter and carefully wrote down what he had kept in mind.”
This tradition leads Papias to the