The Provenance of Mark’s Gospel

In the comments of a post, there was some discussion over my passing comment that the reason that Mark alone includes the names Alexander and Rufus, the sons of Simon of Cyrene, is that they were known to the community for whom he wrote.  In light of this, over the next series of posts I want to look at the various arguments used by different scholars for locating the provenance of Mark’s Gospel and its first readers in Rome, Syria-Palestine or Galilee.  Finally, I will turn my attention to those who challenge a mirror-reading of Mark in order to outline the contours of a “Markan community” and argue instead that, while Mark may initially have been received by a local readership, the gospel was intended to be read by “all Christians” (to borrow from Richard Bauckham’s, The Gospel for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences).  I look forward to your feedback as we discuss the origins of the Gospel according to Mark.

Update: I am taking a short holiday so I will get to the first post on the Roman provenance on Mark sometime near the end of next week.

Why the Synoptic Problem Matters

This will be my final post for awhile on the Synoptic Problem and it is an update of one of my earlier posts from my last blog (see Mark Goodacre’s response here so I hope I have done more justice to the Farrer option this time and especially avoided the term “boring” ).  I have attempted to make the case in three different posts for Markan priority, but many students may wonder why the order of the gospels and who was doing the copying really matters.  Here are 3 scenarios to show how different solutions have led to very different pictures of early Christian history.

Scenario 1:  According to the Griesbach hypothesis, the Gospel of Mark is a later abridgment of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  The famous approach of Ferdinand Christian Baur and the Tübingen School viewed the entire early history of Christianity through the Hegelian dialectic of thesis (a Jewish or Petrine Christianity stream inherited by the Ebionites), antithesis (a Gentile/Pauline Christianity stream inherited by Marcion and his followers) and synthesis (catholicizing Christianity).  Matthew represented a Jewish Gospel and Luke a Pauline Gentile one, while Mark was the later synthesis of the two.

Scenario 2:  The Two Source Hypothesis (2SH) starts with Mark and the hypothetical Q.  Add the possibility of the independence and early date of (some) traditions contained within the Gospel of Thomas and it becomes possible to speak of multiple trajectories (cf. Robinson and Koester, Trajectories Through Early Christianity).  Specifically, the argument is that some groups privileged Jesus as a teaching sage as opposed to those that valued the kerygma (proclamation, preaching) of Christ crucified and risen (Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins or Who Wrote the New Testament: the Making of the Christian Myth pushes the source & form critical argument that every reconstructed source goes back to a distinct Sitz im Leben [situation in life] to the limit by positing a variety of Jesus groups in Syria-Palestine behind Q, Thomas, pre-Markan pronouncement stories, miracle chains in Mark/John, etc).   Of course, not all advocates of the 2SH agree.  The dating or literary relationship of Thomas with the Synoptics is widely debated and many question the existence of a distinct “Q community” (chaotic approaches doubt the “Q” material was ever from a single document at all!) or how this ‘community” could be ignorant of interpretations of Jesus death & resurrection as creeds (1 Cor 15:3-5), prayers or hymns to the exalted Lord (1 Cor 16:22; Phil 2:6-11), rituals (Lord’s Supper, baptism as symbolizing death/resurrection) and possibly a pre-Markan passion narrative were fairly early and widespread.  But we cannot exclude the possibility of greater diversity in the earliest period. 

Scenario 3:  According to the Farrer hypothesis, Markan priority is correct but we can dispense with Q because Luke relied on Matthew.  Suddenly the pool of multiply attested sources for reconstructing the historical Jesus and the earliest history of Christianity is lessened as there is no more Q (not to mention other written sources like “M” and “L” as in B.H. Streeter’s revision of the 2SH in The Four Gospels: A study of origins).  Our best evidence for the emergence of the Jesus movement in an apocalyptic milieu is found in Paul and the Gospel of Mark.  For instance, to summarize the points listed in the late Michael Goulder’s Luke – A New Paradigm (pp 22-23), (1) some parts of Mark go back to words and events of Jesus lifetime while the non-Marcan accounts in other gospels is doubtful, (2) Marcan traditions were collected and expanded by the Jerusalem church under Peter, James & John, (3) Mark wrote around 70 CE, (4) there was no Q, (5) Matthew wrote for Jewish Christians around 80 CE and he is the creative author of so-called “M” and “Q” traditions, (6) Luke wrote around 90 CE expanding on Mark and Matthew, (7) John wrote in Asia around 100 CE and knew all three Synoptics, (8) Thomas is a late gnosticizing gospel depending on the Synoptics and especially Luke.  Of course, not all these points necessarily follow for advocates of the Farrer theory as Matthew could have still had source(s) for his non-Marcan material (Goulder here relies on his unique theories about Midrash and Lection in Matthew) and the issue of dating the texts and of John/Thomas dependence could all be debated.

Conclusion: the Synoptic Problem matters!  It is not just for those individuals who enjoy a good puzzle.

More Evidence for the Priority of Mark

Here are a few more examples (from the NRSV) to argue for Markan Priority.  I will go through each to show why I believe Markan priority makes better sense than Markan posterity, but the best thing a new student of the NT can do is to grab a synopsis and a highlighter and work out the Synoptic Problem for themselves.

Example 1:

But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. (Matt 9:25)

He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ (Mark 5:41)

But he took her by the hand and called out, ‘Child, get up!’ (Luke 8:54)

It makes more sense to see Matthew and Luke omitting older Aramaic expression for their Greek-speaking audiences than Mark (who is supposed to be an abridgement, hence summarizing Matt/Luke) to add these details.  For other Aramaic words in Mark, see 3:17; 7:11, 34; 14:36; 15:22, 34.   For the argument that Mark translates from older Aramaic sources (especially at 2:23-3:6; 9:11-13; 10:35-45; 14:12-26) while Matthew/Luke make corrections to Mark’s Greek text, see Maurice Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’ s Gospel.

Example 2

He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? ⁴He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests… For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath. (Matt 12:3-4, 8.)

And he said to them, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? ²⁶He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ ²⁷Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; ²⁸so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’ (Mark 2:25-26)

Jesus answered, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and gave some to his companions?’ Then he said to them, ‘The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.’ (Luke 6:3-5)

There are two issues: the first is that Ahimelech (not Abiathar) was high-priest during this incident (1 Samuel 21:1-6) which is why it was omitted by Matthew and Luke (the proposed solutions for this problem in Mark I may come back to another time).  The second is that Matthew and Luke (independently?) get rid of the generalizing statement in Mark 2:27 yet retain Mark 2:28 as a Christological title (Matthew also seems to raise the Christology by Jesus claim to be greater than the temple in v 6).

Example 3

But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. ²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ 28 Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ ²⁹He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ ³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’  (Matthew 14:26-33)

But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; ⁵⁰for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ ⁵¹Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, ⁵²for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. (Mark 6:49-52)

A common theme in Mark is the dullness of the disciples, whereas Matthew has a much higher regard for Peter and the Twelve (for another example, compare Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi in Mark 8:29-30 versus Jesus’ praise of Peter in Matt 16:17-18).  Thus, Mark’s portrayal of the disciples is problematic for Matthew, who alters Mk 6:52 so that the disciples do recognize Jesus identity and adds the bit about Peter following Jesus onto the lake.

Example 4

‘So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy place, as was spoken of by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand), ¹⁶then those in Judea must flee to the mountains (Matt 24:15-16)

‘But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains (Mark 13:14)

‘When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. ²¹Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, (Luke 21:20-21a)

Despite those who argue for an earlier date for Luke-Acts (cf. Colin Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History; John A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament),  I see this as a clear sign (along with Luke 19:42-44) that Luke is re-reading the earlier oracle in Mark (and Matthew) in light of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (can I plug my talk on the dating of Luke-Acts and Papias at San Francisco this November ).  Again, this makes it unlikely that Mark is later than Luke.

Example 6

As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. (Matt 27:32)

They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. (Mark 15:21)

As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus. (Luke 23:26)

In this example, the naming of Simon’s sons almost seems superfluous and is most likely because these individuals were known to the community of readers.  At the later time when Matthew and Luke wrote, the named individuals are no longer relevant and so drop out.

There are many more examples outside of this post and the last and I would again invite readers to check out Mark Goodacre’s The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze that is available in its entirety online.   For instance, one of his major contributions to the debate is his examples of editorial fatigue on pp. 71-76 (where Matthew or Luke alter their Markan source but fail to make the changes all the way through so that when they revert back to Mark it creates continuity errors).  But all these examples convince me that Markan priority is the most likely scenario.

A Sign of Scholarly Consensus on Markan Priority?

I recall James McGrath asking how to gauge scholarly opinion on the pseudonymity of the Pastorals (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus).  On the one hand, the commentary tradition is pretty evenly divided and you have a number of major commentaries defending authenticity (Gordon Fee [1989]; Donald Guthrie [1990]; J.N.D. Kelly [1993]; George W. Knight III [1999]; William D. Mounce [2000]; Luke Timothy Johnson [2001]; Ben Witherington [2006]; Philip H. Towner [2006] etc); on the other hand, commentaries are often geared towards a conservative market and I think James is right that one of the signs of scholarly consensus is that pseudonymity is mostly taken for granted while any monograph, SBL presentation, etc would not be able to just proceed on the basis that Paul wrote these letters without first defending their authenticity.  I suspect a similar thing is at work with the nearly unanimous support for Markan priority (whether scholars accept the Two Documentary Hypothesis, the Farrer theory or more chaotic approaches).  It is not that there are not able scholars who have challenged Markan priority (e.g. William Farmer), but anyone who makes an argument about the gospels or the historical Jesus that rests on a different solution to the Synoptic Problem is going to have to make a strong case for an alternative.  One sign of this consensus is that, of all the commentaries I listed here, the vast majority start from the premise of Markan priority.  The one significant exception I can think of is C.S. Mann’s commentary on Mark for the Anchor Bible series that worked on the basis of the Griesbach hypothesis,  but it has since been replaced by Joel Marcus’s two-volume commentaries that support Markan priority (Mark 1-8, pp. 40-47).   A “consensus” can always be overturned, but to defeat a reigning paradigm one must (1) poke enough holes into its main arguments and (2) present enough counter-arguments to suggest another solution is more probable.

The Reception of Mark

I encourage readers to check out Charles E. Hill’s article at the Bible and Interpretation.  Hill is a well respected expert on the canonization of the gospels as one can see from his publications on his faculty page and his recent book Who Wrote the Gospels: Probing the Great Gospel  Conspiracy  (Oxford University Press, 2010) (see various blog reviews, also here, here, here, short note here). I hope to carefully read through this book in the Fall when I have a bit more time, but I did find his article ”What Papias Said about John (and Luke): A ‘New’ Papian Fragment” (JTS 49 [1998]: 582-629) to be an impressive and well-argued case that Eusebius preserved Papias’ remarks in H.E. 3.24.5-13 though I myself am not quite persuaded that Papias knew a fourfold gospel canon.  But one of his parenthetical asides caught my attention:  “Judging only from the numbers, it already seems tenuous to claim that other Gospels were about as popular as Matthew, Luke, or John (Mark could be a different story), or that the competition between them was quite close” (italics added).  In comparison to the other three canonical gospels, Mark was the odd one out in the canon.  In fact, this is one reason why the source critical discussions are so important, as it was only the establishment of Markan priority as a viable solution to the Synoptic Problem by scholars such as C.H. Weiss (1838) and H.J. Holtzman (1863) that helped Mark emerge out of the shadows of the other gospels (especially Matthew) and led to a huge increase in scholarly interest as can  be observed in the continuing stream of commentaries on Mark that have been written.  However, the situation for Mark throughout most of church history has been one of neglect.  This may be due to Mark’s brevity, the absences of the birth stories, much of the sayings material, resurrection appearances, or perceived doctrinal or literary/rhetorical deficiencies.  An excellent book on this is by Brenda Deen Schildgen, Power and Prejudice: The Reception of the Gospel of Mark (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999) (RBL reviews here) and here is a list of some of her observations on pp. 39-41, 50-52:

• We have no commentaries on Mark (though Jerome left 10 sermons on Mark) before Victor of Antioch in the 5th century who compiled one from the passing comments of Origen, Titus of Bostra, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria.*
• From the Biblia Patristica, up to Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian there are roughly1400 plus citations/allusions to Mark versus 2000 of John, 3300 of Luke and 3900 of Matthew.  In the 3rd century, there are roughly 250 of Mark versus 3600 for Matthew, 1000 for Luke and 1600 for John.  Origen references Mark roughly 650 times, versus almost 8000 of Matthew, 5000 of John and 3000 of Luke.  In Augustine’s extant sermons, he has 250 references to Matthew, 170 to John, 150 to Luke and 15 to Mark.**
• Schildgen argues for some impact of Mark on lectionary readings (the Easter account in Mark 16 may have influence on western rites, Mark may have had some special status in Alexandria), but she still concludes that Mark was only read in the lectionary once per every 16 readings of John or Matthew  
• She could have added that we have little early manuscript attestation – our oldest manuscript evidence is Chester Beatty papyri (p⁴⁵) from the third century that has fragments of all 4 gospels, and then not until the fourth century in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

* Note: Adela Collins in her Hermeneia commentary on Mark argues that Origen might have compiled a commentary on Mark based on the way he exegetes Markan passages in his commentaries on Matthew and John (p. 105), but if he did there is no more trace of it.

** I counted 1463 references to Mark in the first volume of the Biblia Patristica (though many of these are concentrated in figures such as Irenaeus [237 times], Tertullian [347 times] or Clement of Alexandria [270 times]),  245 in the next volume and 646 in the volume on Origen.  However, my eyes started to drift alot as I sat in a library trying to count all the references so I wouldn’t mind if someone wanted to double check my count .  But one thing I noticed from a brief glance is that there was an extremely loose definition of a citation or allusion to Mark’s text and I think the numbers are actually much lower as many of them could be from shared material in the triple tradition (so from a Matthew or Luke parallel rather than Mark), a gospel harmony or continuing oral tradition.  Other bloggers have also noted very different statistics:  see Stephen Carlson or Peter M. Head (and comments from Hill below).

Source Criticism: Markan Priority?

When scholars refer to the “Synoptic Problem,” they mean the literary relationship between Matthew, Mark and Luke (the first three canonical gospels can be arranged and compared in a synopsis while the Gospel of John is very different from the “Synoptic” tradition).  Indeed, there must be some kind of literary relationship since the Synoptic Gospels often agree in order, wording and even down to parenthetical asides such as “let the reader understand” (Mk 13:14; Matt 24:14).  The three most common solutions to this tricky puzzle are the Griesbach hypothesis (Matthew and Luke wrote first, Mark a later abridgement of the two), the Two-Documentary Hypothesis (Mark wrote first and was independently used by Matthew and Luke, while the shared material in Matthew and Luke goes back to a single Greek document labelled “Q” [from German Quelle or source]) and the Farrer or Goulder-Goodacre hypothesis (Mark wrote first, but dispenses with “Q” as Luke used Matthew).  There are also more chaotic approaches to the Synoptic problem that may allow for Luke’s knowledge of Matthew and argues that material in the double tradition (the so-called “Q” material shared by Matthew/Luke) may go back to a variety of Greek and Aramaic sources.  For more in depth treatment, see Stephen Carlson’s excellent site on the Synoptic Problem including a number of diagrams of potential solutions and an annotated bibliography.  Or Mark Goodacre, who made his introductory textbook The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze available online, has many useful podcasts on this question.

I am not going to get into the whole Synoptic Problem but focus on Mark.  While Augustine’s solution that Mark was a mere follower and abbreviator of Matthew (De Consensu Evangelistarum 1.3) held sway for approximately 1400 years, I am in agreement with the huge majority of NT scholars that Mark was the first gospel written and the source for Matthew and Luke (i.e. Markan priority).  I find convincing the arguments from order (Mark tends to be the middle term, so Matthew and Luke rarely agree in wording or order against Mark), length (Mark is the shortest of the three and almost entirely reproduced in Matthew and Luke), writing style (Matthew/Luke often edit and clean up Mark’s awkward grammar or style, omit Aramaic words, etc), and harder readings (Matthew/Luke seem to correct Mark’s christology, eschatology, ambivalent view of disciples, etc).  Moreover, Mark would make a rather odd summary of Matthew or abridgement of Matthew and Luke:  why would Mark cut out the birth narratives, much of the ethical teaching (e.g. Sermon on the Mount or Plains) and the resurrection appearances (assuming the Gospel ends at 16:8), or why would Mark choose to add details to individual pericopes shared in the triple tradition (stories shared by all three Synoptics) such as that Jesus’ family had thought he had gone out of his mind (Mark 3.19-21), that Jesus’ initial attempt to heal the blind man was not completely successful (‘I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.’) (Mark 8:22-25), that the fig tree Jesus cursed for not having any fruit because “it was not the season for figs” (Mark 11:14) and so on (it makes much more sense that Matthew and Luke omitted these potentially embarrassing passages)?  Here are some examples from a handout I used when teaching a class on this (taken from the RSV) in which I asked students in each example to tell me which passage they think was earlier and why:

Example One:

 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief (Matthew 13.58)

And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief. (Mark 6.5-6)

Example Two:

“Save, Lord; we are perishing!” (Matt 8.25)

“Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” (Mark 4.38)     

 “Master, Master, we are perishing!” (Luke 8.24)   

Example Three:

‘Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’ (Matthew 16.28)

And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’ (Mark 9.1)

Example Four:

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness… (Matthew 4:1; cf. Luke 4:1)

The Spirit immediately drove [from ekballō] him out into the wilderness (Mark 1:12)

Example Five:

“Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good.” (Matt 19:17)

“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Mark 10:18; cf. Luke 18:19)

Example Six:

…and behold a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And he stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean!’  (Matthew 8.2-3)

And a leper came to him beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, ‘If you will, you can make me clean.’ Moved with anger [textual variant: compassion; see here for more discussion], Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I will; be clean!’ (Mark 1.40-42)

…when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and besought him, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said, ‘I will; be clean.’ (Luke 5.12-13).