The Gospel according to Mark (according to Josh)

 I finished studying the book of Mark a couple months ago, but I still processing it–and probably will be while I make my way through the other gospels and the rest of the New Testament. There’s a lot to think about related to the Gospel of Mark, and I’m in a weird spot where I’m not super stable on much of what I’m thinking about. But writing this has helped me get more stable. If you read this, and have any thoughts of your own, please feel free to let me know! Writing is really impactful on my thinking, and interacting with others forces me to think even more differently, and that’s all good. 

The First Synoptic Gospel

Scholars are mostly in agreement that the gospel attributed to Mark is the first written of the four canonical gospels. To illustrate, imagine this: 

Three friends witness a car accident. A police officer asks them each to write a report of what happened. If all three do so without looking at each other’s papers, then they would likely tell many if not all of the same events, but not in the exact same words. 

This scenario, where eyewitnesses report what they saw, is not what’s happening in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. All three synoptic gospels share many of the same events exactly in the same words. If they were eyewitnesses, they copied from each other a great deal, even though they did choose to diverge from one another to make certain points. 

Additionally, the synoptic gospels do not claim to be eyewitness accounts, nor are they written in 1st person as such accounts would be. They are all written anonymously and in the 3rd person, more like news reports than first hand witness statements. 

Imagine this instead: 

A reporter for the Associated Press reads the police report of a car crash and interviews eyewitnesses and attains some information secondhand. She writes an article based on her findings. Then two other reporters write articles, taking verbatim quotes from the AP, along with some other data from other sources. That’s more like what’s happening with the synoptic gospels. Mark is the AP. We know this because both Matthew and Luke quote from Mark extensively. When Matthew changes what was written in Mark, usually Luke still quotes Mark verbatim. And when Luke changes what was written in Mark, usually Matthew quotes Mark Verbatim. Occasionally, both Matthew and Luke change what was written in Mark, but when they do, they don’t quote each other, as you would expect if one of them was the original source. 

This all makes Mark very interesting. It’s not a foregone conclusion, but it’s certainly probable that Mark’s gospel is the most historically accurate. Each of the gospels present Messiahs who emphasize different things. Maybe Mark’s Jesus is the closest to the historical Jesus’s original teachings. 

The Message

Jesus’s first declaration in Mark reads like a thesis statement: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). 

That Mark centers Jesus’s kingdom preaching should be meaningful to Latter-day Saints. The Introduction to the Book of Mormon declares, “that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth.” If the term “kingdom” doesn’t resonate with you, try the term “zion.” The message of Jesus in Mark is that the season when zion will be established has come near. We must turn around and prepare for it. 

Right after Jesus declares that “the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he begins gathering people into it.  

The kingdom is led by Jesus, “the Son of Man,” who has the authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:10). 

“Son of man” is a mysterious title for Jesus, with no scholarly consensus on its meaning. Latter-day Saint scripture offers an explanation (Moses 6:57), but there are two explanations that I think resonate a little more with me. The first is that Jesus identifies himself with the “son of man” (or, simply, “human being”) prophesied in the book of Daniel: 

“As I watched in the night visions, 

I saw one like a human being (KJV: Son of Man) coming with the clouds of heaven. 

And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. 

To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, 

that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. 

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, 

and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” 

So when Jesus identifies as the “Son of Man” he is declaring himself to be the promised human-like king, given authority and dominion by the ancient one (likely YHWH). In the Hebrew Bible, the term “son of man” exclusively means “human being,” but I don’t think that diminishes it as a title for the savior. Jesus was fully human, which plays into a number of important theological points. You can believe that Jesus is the Son of God–but that wasn’t a unique identifier in the ancient world where it was quite common for rulers to declare themselves sons of God. You can believe that Jesus is God, but the existence of a god is no more unique a theological principle as the idea of any other god. But what makes Christian theology unique, in my mind, is Christ’s humanity: That God became human. The christology of the gospels themselves actually offer a little different take than later christian interpretations of them: that God anointed a human to be his Son, the bearer of his divine name on earth–the present ruler of his kingdom. Jesus never actually declares himself to be God. Rather, he is the “son of man” who is anointed to bear the divine name of YHWH and rule God’s kingdom on earth. 

The Parable

The kingdom of the son of man is a community, separated out by their understanding of secret-keeping stories called parables, designed to exclude people from the kingdom who don’t understand: 

“And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables.’” 

Interestingly, Matthew changes this explanation slightly. For one, while in Mark, Jesus answers the question about parables only to the disciples, Jesus answers the question publicly in Matthew. For another, Matthew focuses on the fulfillment of prophecy as a reason to teach in parables, and that the elect will understand. Mark’s (and Luke’s) Jesus is intentionally trying to exclude people by teaching things, taught plainly to the disciples, through parables to everyone else. 

Why would he do this? I don’t know. Early christians known as Gnostics believed that Jesus came to deliver secret knowledge to a select handful of believers who would form a secret society to pass down this knowledge (or Gnosis) to the properly initiated. Their writings were rejected by the early church, but were they on to something? 

Latter-day Saints distribute endowments of secret knowledge in temples. Brigham Young taught that the endowment was design “to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels, being enabled to give them the key words, the signs and tokens, pertaining to the holy Priesthood, and gain your eternal exaltation in spite of earth and hell.”) But the temple endowment seems more like a parable itself. It’s full of symbolism and metaphors, and I have a hard time believing that its point is to give us a bunch of passwords to exaltation. Still there’s something there that tastes like the teachings of the Markan Jesus. A kingdom of God is made up of people united by shared secret knowledge only spoken of in veiled metaphors to people outside of the in-group. 

What I do know is that in Mark, nearly everyone is very confused about the mission of Jesus. Literally no one understands what the Messiah means when he says he’s about to be killed and that he will rise on the third day from the dead. The very notion is so far outside of everyone’s realm of possibility. And then it happens and still no one understands. Another feature of the Gospel of Mark is that in it, Jesus seems not to want anyone to understand. Over and over again, he compels people to “tell no one” of his miraculous power. 

Wait! I think I found an answer, in a passage that actually reveals the secret interpretation of a parable: Jesus’s explanation of the parable of the sower. 

Right after explaining why he speaks in parables (see above), Jesus offers his disciples a private interpretation of the parable he just told. Matthew copies this parable and interpretation into his own account, but makes some key changes. Here’s the explanation of the final part of the parable, as written in Matthew: 

“But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” 

And here’s Mark (probably the earlier-written): 

“And these are the ones sown in the good soil: they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirsty, and sixty, and a hundredfold.” 

In Matthew, the elect will understand the word. In Mark, the elect will merely accept it. And it seems to me by the rest of the evidence in Mark that they probably won’t understand it, maybe not ever. The residents of the Kingdom of God on earth will accept the teachings of Jesus, most importantly the death and resurrection of their Messiah. Membership in the kingdom may entitle them to additional, secret knowledge (Temple? Personal revelation?), but in Mark’s point of view, it may never add up to a complete picture. 

During the final part of my mission, I went to a zone leader training meeting where the Assistants to the president drew a fairly simple diagram on the blackboard illustrating the process of receiving revelation. At the end of their presentation they asked for questions, and were met by silence. Then one of them said something that was kind of silly: “If you don’t have questions about this, you don’t understand.” 

More silence. 

Finally, I raised my hand. “I’m looking at this diagram and thinking about your training, and I feel like it was pretty easy to follow, and I get the concept,” I said, “but I don’t have any questions, and you said if I don’t have questions, I don’t understand, so I guess my question is, what am I missing?” 

President Weston, who was known for his enigmatic responses, nodded and pointed at me with all his western-farmer charm. “That Elder,” he said, “he gets it.” 

I left that meeting feeling kind of proud, but still kind of confused, and not really like I “got it” at all. I sometimes tell that story to illustrate how silly my mission president (and his assistants) could be. But I do feel like the spirit of his comment (and my question) was right. If you feel like you totally have it, that’s not a great sign. If you accept it, accept what you do understand about it, but stay open to the real possibility that you don’t actually understand it at all, then you’re primed to learn more. Your soil is enriched for the kingdom.