New Testament · Book 41 of 66

Mark

The Gospel of the Servant in motion.

Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee: Rembrandt (1633), public domain

Summary

Mark makes one claim, that Jesus is the Son of God, and proves it by what he does, until he gives his life as a ransom for many and rises.

It is the shortest of the four Gospels, and the early church says it came from Peter's preaching.

18 of the 35 miracles in the four Gospels stand in this book, and 9 of their 48 parables, the most miracles of the four for its length.
He stops to explain Jewish customs and prices a widow's coins in Roman money.
It was written to be heard straight through, and still reads that way in about an hour.
He keeps four phrases of Aramaic, the everyday speech of Galilee, in his Greek, and translates each one in the same breath.
The oldest complete Greek copies end at the open tomb. Most later copies carry twelve more verses.

All 16 chapters

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

The colours are the four movements drawn below.

The Sprint

Sixteen chapters by length, in four movements.

the turn

12345678910111213141516

Verses in each chapter, over its number

Mark 8:29 “But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”

The four movements, by verses

678 verses in all

chapters 8 to 16: 393 of 678

28542%
Galilee: the Servant revealed
Chapters 1 to 7
14021%
The Way: the turn
Chapters 8 to 10
23334%
Jerusalem: the Servant suffersthe last week
Chapters 11 to 15
203%
The empty tomb
Chapter 16

Chapter 16 is drawn at all 20 verses the Berean Standard Bible prints, and every quotation on this page comes from it.

The eight verses to know

8 stops on the drawing

The sixteen chapters, one line each

16 chapters, one line each

Mark by chapter: verse count, movement and what happens
Chapter	Verses	What happens
Mark 1	45	The prologue, the first four called, and one day in Capernaum
Mark 2	28	The paralytic, Levi, fasting and the sabbath: his authority questioned
Mark 3	35	The plot to kill him, the Twelve appointed, the strong man bound
Mark 4	41	The kingdom parables, the seed growing secretly, and the storm stilled
Mark 5	43	Legion, the woman twelve years unclean, the daughter of Jairus raised
Mark 6	56	Nazareth's unbelief, John beheaded, five thousand fed, the sea walked
Mark 7	37	Defilement moved to the heart, the crumbs, the deaf man opened
Mark 8	38	Four thousand fed, a blind man healed in two stages, then the turn
Mark 9	50	The transfiguration, then failure in the valley, and the second warning
Mark 10	52	Marriage, children and wealth, the third warning, and the ransom saying
Mark 11	33	The entry, and the fig tree wrapped around the clearing of the temple
Mark 12	44	The vineyard, the tribute, the Shema quoted whole, David's Son and Lord
Mark 13	37	The Olivet discourse, his long answer about the temple's fall
Mark 14	72	The anointing, the supper, Gethsemane, the trial and the denial
Mark 15	47	Pilate, Golgotha, the torn veil, and the centurion's confession
Mark 16	20	The empty tomb, the message for Peter, and the women who ran

Mark in a Nutshell

From the Jordan to the empty tomb, in five stops.

01
A voice in the wilderness prepares the way, the heavens are torn open at the Jordan, and inside the first chapter four fishermen, a demon and a leper have met him.
02
Through Galilee he forgives before he heals, claims the sabbath as his own, stills a storm, frees a man of a legion of demons and raises a dead girl.
03
At Caesarea Philippi the road turns south, and from there he begins to say plainly what is waiting for him in Jerusalem.
04
He enters Jerusalem on a colt, clears the temple, and at the Passover table gives bread and cup as his body and his blood.
05
The trial is a mockery, the sky goes dark, the temple curtain tears, and the women who come to the tomb find the stone rolled away and run.

Written from the book's own text (BSB) and this site's chapter summaries.

What Mark teaches

Six things it says, each on its verse.

The claim comes first

Mark puts his conclusion in his first sentence, and the first man to say the whole title is a Roman officer watching him die.

This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark 1:1BSB

When the centurion standing there in front of Jesus saw how He had breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Mark 15:39BSB

Who says it, and where

Mark opens with a headline: 'The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God' (1:1). Everything after it is the demonstration. Three voices confirm the title through the book and each one is worth noticing. God says it at the baptism, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased' (1:11), and again on the mountain, 'This is my beloved Son: hear ye him' (9:7). The unclean spirits say it and are silenced, 'Thou art the Son of God' (3:11). Then a Roman officer says it at the one place where saying it costs something, watching the man die: 'Truly this man was the Son of God' (15:39). The first human being in Mark to confess the full title is a Gentile soldier at the foot of the cross.

Mark 1:1 · Mark 9:7 · Mark 15:39

Authority before explanation

Mark shows the authority before he explains it, and the speed of the writing carries the point.

The people were astonished at His teaching, because He taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.

Mark 1:22BSB

Verses carrying straightway, at once, by chapter

12345678910111213141516

The pace, and how far the authority reaches

One Greek adverb runs through this Gospel like a drumbeat. The Spirit drives him into the wilderness straightway (1:12), the fishermen leave the nets straightway (1:18), the leprosy departs straightway (1:42), the crowd is amazed straightway (9:15). Mark also strings his scenes together with 'and' where a careful Greek stylist would have subordinated them. The effect is a narrative that never lets the reader settle, and it carries a claim: the kingdom has arrived and it is moving. Jesus opens his mouth in this Gospel to say exactly that, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel' (1:15).

Mark 1:12 · Mark 1:15 · Mark 1:18

The first reaction anyone has to Jesus in this Gospel is to the weight behind his words: 'they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes' (1:22). The rest of the opening chapters map how far it goes. Over unclean spirits, in the same synagogue, 'with authority he commandeth even the unclean spirits, and they obey him' (1:27). Over sin, which the scribes rightly knew belonged to God alone, 'the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins' (2:10). Over the Sabbath, 'so that the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath' (2:28). Over the weather, which leaves the disciples with the question the whole book is asking, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?' (4:41).

Mark 1:22 · Mark 2:10 · Mark 4:41

Every verse the word stands in, with its text, on the word page.

Three times he says where the road ends

Each time he says where the road ends he calls himself the Son of man, and each time the twelve answer wrongly.

Each warning whole, and what the twelve do next
Mark 8:31Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again.	Peter takes him aside and rebukes him for it.
Mark 9:31because He was teaching His disciples. He told them, “The Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill Him, and after three days He will rise.”	They do not understand, and argue about which of them is greatest.
Mark 10:33-34“Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes. They will condemn Him to death and will deliver Him over to the Gentiles, who will mock Him and spit on Him and flog Him and kill Him. And after three days He will rise again.”	James and John ask for the two best thrones.

What the title Son of man carried

The book turns at Caesarea Philippi. Peter answers the question with 'Thou art the Christ' (8:29), and from that point Jesus begins to say what being the Christ means. He says it three times, each fuller than the last. First at 8:31, that 'the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.' Again at 9:31, 'The Son of man is delivered up into the hands of men.' A third time at 10:33 with the Gentiles and the details added, 'they shall mock him, and shall spit upon him, and shall scourge him, and shall kill him; and after three days he shall rise again.' Each prediction is followed by the disciples missing it and by teaching on what greatness costs. The sequence lands on the sentence the whole Gospel has been driving toward.

Mark 8:31 · Mark 9:31 · Mark 10:34

A ransom for many

Why the cross happens is said outright once, to two men who had just asked him for the best seats in the kingdom.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:45BSB

Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush Him and to cause Him to suffer; and when His soul is made a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

Isaiah 53:10BSB

Isaiah's servant makes his soul an offering for sin. Whether Mark means his readers to hear that song here is read both ways, and the panel below names each side.

The price, and the song behind it

Mark states the purpose of the cross in one sentence, given as the answer to two disciples asking for the best seats: 'For the Son of man also came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many' (10:45). The word rendered ransom is a price paid to set someone free, the money that buys a slave or a prisoner out. Isaiah had already put that work on the servant who 'poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bare the sin of many' (Isaiah 53:12). Jesus applies that verse to himself at Luke 22:37, which is the ground for reading the two together; whether Mark intends the echo at 10:45 is argued, and the readings are named on the surface. At the table it becomes a cup, and at the death it becomes an event in the building itself: 'And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom' (15:38). The tearing runs downward, from the top, which is the direction the whole Gospel says the initiative comes from.

Mark 10:45 · Mark 15:38

Jesus applies Isaiah's song to himself on the last night, which is the ground for reading the two together.

For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about Me is reaching its fulfillment.”

Luke 22:37BSB

Whether Mark means the reader to hear Isaiah at the ransom saying is argued: R. T. France (The Gospel of Mark, New International Greek Testament Commentary, 2002) and Rikki Watts (Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark, 1997) read it that way, and Morna Hooker (Jesus and the Servant, 1959) does not.

Isaiah 53 across the canon→

Tell no one, until he is risen

Four times he orders silence about who he is, and at the last of them he sets the limit: not a word until the Son of man is risen.

The four commands, in the words of the verse

Mark 1:25, to an unclean spirit, in the synagogue
But Jesus rebuked the spirit. “Be silent!” He said. “Come out of him!”
Mark 3:12, to the spirits who name him
But He warned them sternly not to make Him known.
Mark 8:30, to the twelve, after Peter's answer
And Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about Him.
Mark 9:9, to the three, coming down the mountain
As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus admonished them not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

The healings he also told them not to publish, and what Wrede proposed

Mark 1:44, to a cleansed leper
“See that you don’t tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and present the offering Moses prescribed for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”
Mark 5:43, to the household at Jairus's house
Then Jesus gave strict orders that no one should know about this, and He told them to give her something to eat.
Mark 7:36, to the crowd in the Decapolis
Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more He ordered them, the more widely they proclaimed it.

Those three tell people not to publish a healing rather than not to name him. Commands of both kinds stop at the resurrection, and after it the instruction reverses: go into all the world and preach the gospel. The traditional reading, followed by most commentators today, takes 9:9 as the key. In that decade the word Messiah carried the expectation of a military deliverer, and a crowd acting on that expectation would have made the mission impossible before it was finished. The exceptions fit: in Gentile country the restriction lifts, and the delivered man at 5:19 is sent home to tell his friends what the Lord has done for him.

William Wrede proposed in 1901 (Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, in English The Messianic Secret, 1971) that Jesus made no messianic claim in his lifetime and that the silencing commands were written later to explain why none was remembered. The proposal has been questioned on its own terms: it asks Mark to invent commands hiding a claim he also records openly at 14:62, and Mark reports the commands broken about as often as kept.

The Messianic Secret, the full study→

The disciples fail, and it stays in

Mark keeps the failures of the twelve in the record, and he wrote for people who were failing under pressure themselves.

Then everyone deserted Him and fled.

Mark 14:50BSB

Peter, kept in the record

Mark 14:72
And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. Then Peter remembered the word that Jesus had spoken to him: “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And he broke down and wept.

What a flattering account would have cut

Mark leaves in what a flattering account would have removed. The twelve fail to grasp the loaves and are asked 'have ye your heart hardened?' (8:17). They argue about who is greatest on the road to the cross. Peter confesses the Christ and is rebuked within a few verses. At the arrest they all leave, and Peter denies him three times. The women at the tomb 'said nothing to any one; for they were afraid' (16:8). The honesty serves a purpose for the reader. Mark is writing for people who were failing under pressure themselves, and he shows them a Christ who calls the men who fail, tells them plainly they will fail, and then sends word after the resurrection that names the worst of them: 'tell his disciples and Peter' (16:7).

Mark 8:17 · Mark 16:7 · Mark 16:8

Mark 8:17
Aware of their conversation, Jesus asked them, “Why are you debating about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Do you have such hard hearts?

Two devices Mark uses

The order of the scenes carries part of what he means.

The sandwich: one story split open

Mark opens a story, puts another inside it, and finishes the first, so each one reads the other.

The withered tree is the verdict on the building: full foliage, no fruit, sentence already passed.

opensMark 11:14Then He said to the tree, “May no one ever eat of your fruit again.” And His disciples heard this statement.
insideMark 11:17Then Jesus began to teach them, and He declared, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
closesMark 11:20As they were walking back in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered from its roots.

The other five, and where they fall

5 more

Mark 3:20-35His family sets out to seize him, with the scribes' charge of demonic collusion inside it: two verdicts on one man, and the true family named as whoever does God's will.
Mark 5:21-43A ruler's dying twelve-year-old, with a woman twelve years unclean inside it: faith reaches him from the top of the order and from the bottom.
Mark 6:7-30The twelve sent out with authority, with the beheading of John inside it: the cost of the errand told before the errand goes well.
Mark 14:1-11The priests looking for a way to take him, with a woman breaking an alabaster flask inside it: a year's wages poured out, and a price agreed.
Mark 14:53-72Peter in the courtyard, with the trial inside it: the Master confesses at the cost of his life, the disciple denies to save his.

The device is set out by James R. Edwards, Markan Sandwiches: The Significance of Interpolations in Markan Narratives, Novum Testamentum 31 (1989). How many there are is disputed: Edwards lists nine and Tom Shepherd six, and Edwards records fifty-eight passages proposed by one scholar or another. This page draws the six the readings converge on.

The frame: one turn at the centre

Mark records two healings of blind men, at the two ends of the middle movement.

Mark 8:25. A man at Bethsaida.
Once again Jesus placed His hands on the man’s eyes, and when he opened them his sight was restored, and he could see everything clearly.
Mark 10:52. Bartimaeus, who follows him in the way.
“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Where this reading is set out

The man at Bethsaida sees in two stages, and the next thing in the book is an answer from Peter that is right as far as it goes. R. T. France sets the frame out in The Gospel of Mark (New International Greek Testament Commentary, 2002).

Author: John Mark, who travelled with Peter and is greeted at the close of Peter's own letter
Date: c. AD 50–65
Audience: Believers under pressure at Rome, most of them outside Jewish life

As the earliest witnesses report them; positions and holders under Who Wrote It.

The world behind this book

The book of Mark

Where

The story moves through Galilee, the Gentile country around it, and finally Jerusalem, while the first readers were believers living in the city of Rome itself.

The history, and what it meant to them

The history

Rome was the largest city in the world, perhaps a million people packed into apartment blocks, fed by grain fleets and governed by an emperor most citizens honored as more than a man. In AD 64 a great fire burned much of the city, and Nero blamed the Christians; the Roman historian Tacitus describes the horrifying deaths that followed.

Mark's readers lived among soldiers. He uses Latin words straight out of army life, centurion, legion and cohort, and expects no explanation. To such readers, a cross was not a symbol; it was the slow public execution Rome kept for slaves and rebels.

Back in the world of the story, Galilee was ruled by Herod Antipas, Judea by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and the temple by the chief priests. A carved stone found at Caesarea in 1961 still carries Pilate's name and title, and Josephus fills in the rest of that political map.

What it meant to them

For Christians facing arrest, Mark was bracing. A book that hurries to the cross was handed to people who were being asked to carry one.

The message was blunt: the Son of God reigns by dying. To a household in Rome that knew what a cross was for, that reordered everything: the shame was the throne, and the road the King walked is the road his people walk.

Sources cited

Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History
Tacitus, The Annals
J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Every work MannaFest builds on →

Who Wrote It, and When

Author: The book names no writer inside the text, and every manuscript that preserves a heading gives it to Mark. The earliest external statement is also the fullest. Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor, writing around AD 110 to 130 and quoted a century later by Eusebius of Caesarea, the first church historian (Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15), reports what he had from an older figure he calls the Elder: Mark became Peter's interpreter and wrote down accurately, though not in order, what he remembered of the things Christ said and did, since he had followed Peter rather than the Lord himself. The man is usually identified with John Mark, who appears in a Jerusalem house where the church is praying in Acts 12:12, travels with Barnabas and Paul, parts company with Paul in Acts 15:37 to 39, is asked for again in 2 Timothy 4:11, and is greeted at the close of 1 Peter 5:13 in Peter's own words, 'and so doth Mark my son'.
Date: The early witnesses divide over one question: whether Mark wrote while Peter was alive or after his death. Clement of Alexandria reports the first, Irenaeus the second, and both are second-century voices. Peter's death is placed in Nero's persecution at Rome, which runs from AD 64. The other pressure point is 13:2, where Jesus says of the temple buildings 'there shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down', and readers who take that as written after the event date the book after AD 70.
Audience: Mark writes for readers outside Jewish life who need the customs explained. He stops the narrative to describe handwashing practice for people who have never seen it, 'except they wash their hands diligently, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders' (7:3), and adds a note about cups and pots in the next verse. He converts money into coinage a Roman reader would know, telling us the widow 'cast in two mites, which make a farthing' (12:42). The tradition places that audience at Rome, and 15:21 fits it, where Simon of Cyrene is identified as 'the father of Alexander and Rufus', two men the first readers evidently knew by name.
Occasion: Peter's preaching needed to outlast Peter. It gives less teaching than Matthew and more motion, and it drives from the opening sentence toward the cross. A church facing arrest and death is handed a Christ who says plainly what following him costs: 'If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me' (8:34).

The Years of Mark

Mark timeline

c. AD 28 to 30
The baptism by John, the calling of the fishermen, and the Capernaum ministry that opens the book at speed.
Mark 1:15
c. AD 29 to 30
Caesarea Philippi: Peter's confession, the first passion prediction, and the turn of the whole book toward Jerusalem.
Mark 8:29
c. AD 30 to 33
The final week, which fills roughly the last third of the Gospel, ending with the crucifixion, the torn veil, and the empty tomb.
Mark 15:38
c. AD 50s to 60s
Peter teaching at Rome, with Mark as his interpreter; the window Clement of Alexandria gives for the writing of the Gospel.
AD 64
Fire at Rome and the persecution under Nero, the pressure many commentators read behind the Gospel's teaching on cross-bearing and endurance.
Mark 8:34
c. AD 64 to 67
The deaths of Peter and Paul at Rome; Irenaeus places the writing of Mark after their departure.
AD 70
Jerusalem falls and the temple is destroyed, the event chapter 13 opens by predicting.
Mark 13:2
c. AD 110 to 130
Papias of Hierapolis records that Mark was Peter's interpreter and wrote accurately though not in order, the earliest statement about the book's origin.
c. AD 180
Irenaeus quotes Mark 16:19 as the conclusion of this Gospel in Against Heresies, the earliest datable citation of the longer ending.

The Voices on Mark

each in his own words, on a verse of this book

This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.Mark 1:1
The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - The evangelist speaks with strict propriety: for the beginning of the Gospel is in the account of John the Baptist, contained in the first paragraph; the Gospel itself in the rest of the book.
John Wesley, 1755, Explanatory Notes upon the New TestamentThe teaching he answers: The claim comes first→
“Which is easier: to say to a paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your mat, and walk’?Mark 2:9-11
This was a suitable argument in itself. He could not have cured the disease, which was the effect, if he could not have taken away the sin, which was the cause. And besides, his curing diseases was a figure of his pardoning sin, for sin is the disease of the soul; when it is pardoned, it is healed.
Matthew Henry, 1710, Commentary on the Whole BibleThe teaching he answers: Authority before explanation→
“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”Mark 7:28
Today there are many children of God refusing their blood-purchased portion of health in Christ and are throwing it away, while sinners are pressing through and picking it up from under the table
Smith Wigglesworth, 1924, Ever Increasing Faith, Chapter 4: "Wilt Thou Be Made Whole?"
If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels.”Mark 8:38
For this purpose the disciples of Christ must be bold and courageous, that they may be always ready for martyrdom. Now confession of Christ, though it is regarded by the greater part of men as a trifling matter, is here represented to be a main part of divine worship, and a distinguished exercise of godliness.
John Calvin, 1554, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark and LukeThe teaching he answers: Three times he says where the road ends→

More voices on Mark

J.C. Ryle, Gregory the Dialogist, Charles Spurgeon, Albert Barnes, John Wesley

This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.Mark 1:1-8
Mark's shortness is its strength, Ryle argues: plain facts about Jesus rather than long discourses.
The Gospel of Mark, which we now begin, is in some respects unlike the other three Gospels. It tells us nothing about the birth and early life of our Lord Jesus Christ. It contains comparatively few of His sayings and discourses. Of all the four inspired histories of our Lord's earthly ministry, this is by far the shortest. But we must not allow these peculiarities to make us undervalue Mark's Gospel. It is a Gospel singularly full of precious facts about the Lord Jesus, narrated in a simple, terse, pithy, and condensed style.
J.C. Ryle, 1857, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark (lightly modernized text, Grace Gems edition)
At once the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness,Mark 1:12
Which Spirit drove Jesus into the desert, and why he willed to be tempted at all: Gregory answers both.
It is often doubted by some by what spirit Jesus was led into the desert. This question is properly understood if we believe he was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit, so that his own Spirit would lead him there, where the evil spirit would then find him to tempt him. Therefore it is not unworthy of our Redeemer that he willed to be tempted, he who had come to be killed. For it was just that he should overcome our temptations by his temptations, just as he had come to conquer our death by his death.
Gregory the Dialogist, the sixth century, Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 16
As soon as Jesus and His companions had left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew.Mark 1:29-33
One house, one evening, and by nightfall a whole city is at the door. Spurgeon preaches small beginnings.
WE SEE BEFORE US small beginnings and grand endings. One man is called by the voice of Jesus, and then another; the house wherein they dwell is consecrated by the Lord's presence, and by-and-by the whole city is stirred from end to end with the name and fame of the Great Teacher.
Charles Spurgeon, 1875, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1236: “The Best House-visitation” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored.Mark 3:5
The Gospels call the Lord angry once, and Spurgeon stops there rather than explaining it away.
MY TEXT WILL REALLY CONSIST of these words: "He looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts." It is the divine Lord, the pitiful Jesus, the meek and lowly in heart, who is here described as being angry. Where else do we meet with such a statement while he was here among men?
Charles Spurgeon, 1886, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1893: “Jesus Angry with Hard Hearts” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.Mark 1:1
What the word gospel meant before it was a book title: Barnes defines it, and finds Mark's beginning in John's preaching.
The beginning of the gospel - The word “gospel” literally signifies good news, and particularly the good tidings respecting the way of salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ. Some have understood the word “gospel” here to mean “history” or “life - the beginning of the history,” etc.; but Mark says nothing of the early life of the Saviour. The word “gospel” here has reference rather to the preaching of John, an account of which immediately follows, and means the beginning of the good news, or annunciation respecting the Messiah.
Albert Barnes, 1832 to 1869, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)
Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored.Mark 3:5
Angry at the sin and grieved for the sinner: Wesley draws the line a Christian's anger has to hold.
Looking round upon them with anger, being grieved - Angry at the sin, grieved at the sinner; the true standard of Christian anger. But who can separate anger at sin from anger at the sinner?
John Wesley, 1755, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament

Voices still in copyright, quoted briefly

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Each verified against the source; go to the work for the rest.

Taking up the cross at 8:34 is the call to die to everything this world holds you by, Bonhoeffer reads.
“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, "Discipleship and the Cross" (1937) · on Mark 8:34

More works on Mark

6 works this site reads

J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark (1857)
R. C. Sproul, Mark: An Expositional Commentary (2011)
Chuck Missler, Mark: An Expositional Commentary (Koinonia House)
R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (New International Greek Testament Commentary, 2002)
C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to Saint Mark (Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary, 1959)
Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, the sermons on Mark

The words Mark leans on

Five the book turns on.

The words underneath

euthus: at once, straight away

Greek · G2112

εὐθὺς

Strong's entry: directly, i.e. at once or soon

The pace word. Greek spells it two ways under one number, so the count takes the pair.

87 times in the New Testament; 41 verses of Mark · euthus, in full →

euangelion: good news, the announcement itself

Greek · G2098

εὐαγγέλιον

Strong's entry: a good message, i.e. the gospel

Rome announced a new emperor's reign with this word. Mark puts it in his first line and hands it to Jesus.

73 times in the New Testament · euangelion, in full →

exousia: the right to act, and the power behind it

Greek · G1849

ἐξουσία

Strong's entry: privilege, i.e. (subjectively) force, capacity, competency, freedom, or (objectively) mastery (concretely, magistrate, superhuman, potentate, token of control), delegated influence

What astonishes the synagogue, what he hands to the twelve, what the priests challenge.

102 times in the New Testament · exousia, in full →

lytron: the price that buys a captive free

Greek · G3083

λύτρον

Strong's entry: something to loosen with, i.e. a redemption price (figuratively, atonement)

The word behind ransom, used once, in the sentence the book turns on.

2 times in the New Testament · lytron, in full →

schizo: to tear open

Greek · G4977

σχίζω

Strong's entry: to split or sever (literally or figuratively)

Twice, and only twice: the heavens at the baptism, the veil at the death.

11 times in the New Testament · schizo, in full →

The Aramaic he keeps, and the Latin he borrows

Talitha cumi · Ephphatha · Abba · Eloi

Aramaic was the everyday language of Galilee and Judea, and Mark keeps four of its phrases in his Greek, translating each one in the same breath.

Talitha cumi
Taking her by the hand, Jesus said, “Talitha koum!” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”
Mark 5:41BSB
Ephphatha
And looking up to heaven, He sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means, “Be opened!”).
Mark 7:34BSB
Abba
“Abba, Father,” He said, “all things are possible for You. Take this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what You will.”
Mark 14:36BSB
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani
At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Mark 15:34BSB

The script, the spellings, the meanings and the counts on the cards above are read from this site's own lexicon, built on the STEP Bible dataset from Tyndale House, Cambridge.

The traffic runs the other way as well. Mark carries Latin words of army and market life straight into his Greek: the centurion at the cross, the legion in the tombs, the governor's residence, and the denarius he uses as the ordinary unit of money.

The questions

Two open questions, with the people who hold each reading.

How does Mark end?

Where this book stops is the largest text question in the New Testament. The copies divide at this verse.

So the women left the tomb and ran away, trembling and bewildered. And in their fear they did not say a word to anyone.

Mark 16:8BSB

The Gospel ends at 16:8
Held by Bruce M. Metzger and most modern textual scholarship
The last twelve verses are Mark's own
Held by John William Burgon
The first ending was lost early
Held by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort

The witnesses, the readings, and what a King James reader holds

6 witnesses · 3 readings

A reader holding a King James Bible has all twenty verses with no note, and that is by design. The King James rests on the Received Text, the printed Greek of the sixteenth century, which follows the great majority of later copies. The ASV on this site prints all twenty as well.

The witnesses, with their dates

Witness	Kind and date	What it carries
Codex Sinaiticus	Greek majuscule, a copy written all in capitals, 4th century	Ends the Gospel at 16:8.
Codex Vaticanus	Greek majuscule, 4th century	Ends at 16:8, and the scribe left a blank column before Luke, which is not his practice elsewhere in the Gospels.
Codex Bobbiensis (k)	Old Latin, 4th or 5th century, copying an older Latin text	Ends with the shorter ending alone, without 16:9-20. The Sinaitic Syriac also lacks the passage.
Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Bezae, Codex Washingtonianus	Greek majuscules, 5th century	All three carry the longer ending with no mark of doubt, and Washingtonianus adds a further expansion after 16:14.
Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.10.5	a bishop in Gaul quoting the text as Scripture, about AD 180	Quotes 16:19 as the conclusion of Mark, older than any surviving manuscript of the book. Tatian's Diatessaron, a single running account woven from the four Gospels about AD 170, carries the material too.
Eusebius of Caesarea, Questions to Marinus; Jerome, Letter 120	the first church historian, and the translator of the Latin Bible, each reporting the copies he had seen, early 4th century; about AD 407	Both report that the passage was missing from most Greek copies known to them.

The three readings, and who holds each

The Gospel ends at 16:8
Held by Bruce M. Metzger and most modern textual scholarship (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd edition, 1994), and commentators who read the fear and silence of 16:8 as the book's last demand on the reader.
The two oldest complete Greek Bibles, the two Fathers who report the Greek copies of their own day, and the style break at verse 9, where Mary Magdalene is introduced again three verses after she was named.
The last twelve verses are Mark's own
Held by John William Burgon (The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark Vindicated, 1871), whose collection of the evidence on this side is still the fullest, and the Byzantine-priority editors Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont (The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, 2005).
Irenaeus quoting the passage as Mark a century and a half before Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were copied, the great majority of later Greek manuscripts, the liturgical reception of centuries, and the judgment that a Gospel ending at they were afraid is no ending at all.
The first ending was lost early
Held by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort (The New Testament in the Original Greek, Introduction, 1881), and many since who find both a deliberate stop at 16:8 and Markan authorship of 16:9-20 hard to hold.
It accounts for the early citation and the stylistic break at once. It cannot be demonstrated, since a lost ending leaves no evidence by definition.

Witnesses are weighed by age, kind and place rather than counted, which is why five early copies from three regions can outweigh a thousand later ones from one, and why the two Fathers reporting what they saw count as evidence about copies that no longer exist.

What changes, and what does not

No doctrine rests on this passage, because each of the things it is asked to carry stands on texts nobody disputes.

The resurrection
inside the part of the chapter every copy carries
But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here! See the place where they put Him.
Mark 16:6
The commission to go
on the closing words of Matthew, and again at Acts 1:8
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Matthew 28:19

The Ending of Mark →

Did Mark write first?

Almost everything here turns up again in Matthew or Luke, usually in the same order and often in the same words.

Mark was written first
Held by most scholarship since B. H. Streeter
Matthew was written first
Held by Augustine

The holders, and the works they argue it in

Mark was written first
Held by most scholarship since B. H. Streeter (The Four Gospels, 1924), who reads Matthew and Luke as working from Mark and a sayings source
Matthew was written first
Held by Augustine (On the Harmony of the Evangelists, about AD 400) and the Griesbach hypothesis, taken up by William R. Farmer (The Synoptic Problem, 1964)

This site's tradition binds no reader to a hypothesis and holds the four accounts to be independently inspired and complementary.

The Four Gospels →

The Hard Questions, Honestly

The places a careful reader stops, with the readings named and their holders.

What do the signs of 16:17-18 promise, and to whom?

“And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” The promise is made to them that believe, and that the gifts of the Spirit are in full operation today is this site's own tradition, Wesleyan-Pentecostal, resting on texts nobody disputes: “But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal” (1 Corinthians 12:7).

The evidence, and the readings

Peter at Pentecost quotes Joel on the Spirit poured out upon all flesh (Acts 2:17 to 18), and these verses of Mark stand inside the last twelve, whose witnesses are set out above, as a witness to what the early church expected. The book's own last verse shows how it worked out, with the disciples preaching everywhere and 'the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed' (16:20). The Acts of the Apostles records four of the five happening: demons cast out, new tongues at Pentecost, Paul shaking a viper off his hand on Malta without harm, and the sick healed under apostolic hands. Acts records no one drinking poison and living, and neither does any other book of the New Testament. Two readings of how the promise is to be handled are set out below.

The signs accompany the believing church wherever the gospel goes
held by this site's own tradition, Wesleyan-Pentecostal, with the wider Pentecostal and charismatic streams and many outside them; the promise is attached to 'them that believe' with no time limit stated, and the record in Acts and the gift lists of 1 Corinthians 12:7 to 11 read the same way
On this reading the promises are God's to give as he chooses in the service of the gospel, which is why they are described as signs that follow rather than powers a believer possesses.
The serpent and poison clauses describe protection in danger, never a test to be staged
held by the reading the narrative itself gives at Acts 28:3 to 5, where a viper fastens on Paul's hand while he is gathering firewood and he shakes it into the fire and takes no harm: an unsought hazard met in the course of the work, which is how this site reads the two clauses
This is the answer to the handling sects that have deliberately taken up venomous snakes and drunk poison on the strength of this verse. Deliberately courting the danger is the thing Jesus refused in the wilderness when he was invited to throw himself down and force God's hand, and Deuteronomy 6:16 is what he answered with.

The Gifts in the Church Today →

Was it Abiathar or Ahimelech who gave David the bread?

Jesus defends his disciples for plucking grain by recalling David eating the showbread, 'How he entered into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest' (2:26). In 1 Samuel 21 the priest at Nob who gives David the bread is Ahimelech: 'Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest' (21:1). Abiathar is Ahimelech's son, who escapes the slaughter at Nob and serves as high priest through David's reign. Matthew and Luke record the same argument without naming a priest at all. Two readings of the Greek phrase are held, and neither settles the difficulty from the words alone.

The phrase means in the time of Abiathar
held by C. E. B. Cranfield (The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary, 1959) and most commentators, who read it as the ordinary Greek way of dating an episode, the construction Luke uses at 3:2 for the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas and at 4:27 for the days of Elisha
On this reading Abiathar is the priest a first-century hearer would attach to the whole episode, since he alone survives the slaughter at Nob and carries the priesthood forward through David's reign.
The phrase points to the passage about Abiathar
held by R. T. France (The Gospel of Mark, New International Greek Testament Commentary, 2002), who reads it as Mark's way of naming a place in the scroll, as Mark does again a few chapters later when he sends the reader to the place in Exodus by naming the bush (12:26)
On this reading the words locate the story rather than date it, and the priest who hands over the bread is still Ahimelech.

Does Mark contradict Matthew and Luke about the staff?

Mark's charge to the twelve permits one: they should take nothing 'save a staff only; no bread, no wallet, no money in their purse' (6:8), and they are to go 'shod with sandals' (6:9). Matthew 10:10 and Luke 9:3 have Jesus telling them not to take a staff, and Matthew adds shoes to the list. The point of all three is the same, that they travel light and depend on hospitality, and the difference sits in one item.

The difference is between acquiring and carrying
held by D. A. Carson (Matthew, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, 1984), who reads the two verbs as the whole difference: Mark permits taking (airo) the sandals and the stick a man already had on him, and Matthew forbids procuring (ktaomai) anything more for the trip
What this reading does not cover is Luke, who uses the same verb Mark uses, airo, and has Jesus forbid the staff. That part of the difficulty stands, and this page leaves it standing rather than closing it.
The three are three records of one instruction, differing in one item
held by readers who take the point of the charge as the whole of what the three accounts agree on, that the twelve travel light and depend on the hospitality of the towns they enter, and who leave the item itself unreconciled

How can this generation not pass away, and how can the Son not know the day?

Mark's version of the Olivet Discourse carries two hard verses close together. At 13:30, 'This generation shall not pass away, until all these things be accomplished.' At 13:32, 'But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.' The discourse answers a question about the temple buildings raised at 13:1 to 2, and it holds together that destruction, a period of distress marked by 'the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not' (13:14), and the coming of the Son of man 'in clouds with great power and glory' (13:26). No date is proposed here, and none is proposed on any surface of this site, because 13:32 forbids the calculation directly and the chapter closes by telling the reader to watch instead.

13:30 attaches to the temple, which that generation did see fall
held by R. T. France (The Gospel of Mark, New International Greek Testament Commentary, 2002), who takes the disciples' question about the buildings at 13:1 to 2 as the reference of 'all these things', and the reading held through most of church history
The word carries the sense of a kind rather than a span of years
held by C. E. B. Cranfield (The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary, 1959), who reads the Greek term as a group marked by its response to Jesus rather than by a thirty-year span
On 13:32, the Son's not knowing belongs to his real humanity
held by the reading held from the early church onward and set out in the Definition of Chalcedon (451), that the eternal Son took a genuine human nature with a genuine human mind, and that the limitation is spoken from that nature; the deity of Christ is not reduced by it, since the same chapter has him speaking with the authority of the one whose words shall not pass away
Mark shows the same reality elsewhere without embarrassment: Jesus grows tired, sleeps in a boat, is grieved and angry at 3:5, and marvels at unbelief at 6:6.

The Abomination of Desolation→

The Text and the Spade

Papyrus 45 (Chester Beatty I)3rd century AD
The earliest substantial copy of Mark that survives, in a codex that gathered all four Gospels and Acts. Its Mark is fragmentary, running through chapters 4 to 12, and it is the oldest witness to the body of the book by a wide margin.
Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus4th century AD
The two oldest complete Greek Bibles, and the primary witnesses behind the ASV's underlying text. Both end Mark at 16:8, which is why they carry so much weight in the question about the last twelve verses.
Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Bezae5th century AD
Two early majuscule witnesses that carry Mark with the longer ending in place and no mark of doubt. Alexandrinus is the earliest surviving Greek manuscript to contain 16:9-20 in full.
Codex Washingtonianus (W, the Freer Gospels)5th century AD
Bought in Egypt in 1906 by Charles Lang Freer. It carries the longer ending and inserts additional material after 16:14, the passage known as the Freer Logion, which appears in no other Greek manuscript. Jerome (Letter 120) reports having seen the same expansion in Greek copies, so the codex confirms a reading otherwise known only from his testimony.
Codex Bobbiensis (k), Old Latin4th or 5th century AD, copying an older Latin text
The most important Old Latin witness to Mark. It ends the Gospel with the shorter ending alone, without 16:9-20, which is why it matters out of proportion to its age. The shorter ending appears in a small group of later Greek manuscripts as well, usually alongside the longer one.
7Q5, Qumran Cave 7the fragment is 1st century; the identification is not accepted
A scrap of Greek papyrus with a few legible letters. Jose O'Callaghan proposed in 1972 (Biblica 53) that it preserves Mark 6:52-53, and Carsten Peter Thiede later argued the case at length. Papyrologists have not accepted it: the identification requires emending the text and reading damaged letters against their more natural values. It is listed here because the claim still circulates, and the honest position is that no first-century manuscript of Mark is known.

Capernaum: the synagogue foundations and the house beneath the octagonal churchexcavated from 1905, with the Franciscan campaigns from 1968
Mark's base of operations, where the first day of ministry in chapter 1 runs from the synagogue to Simon's house within a few verses. The white limestone synagogue standing today is later, and beneath it lie black basalt foundations of a first-century building. A short walk away a modest first-century house was enlarged into a public hall and then covered by a fifth-century octagonal church, the usual sign that early Christians marked a spot. Mark 1:29 puts Jesus in the house of Simon and Andrew that same day; that the excavated house is the one Mark means is a traditional identification, which the building itself cannot settle.
The Galilee Boat, recovered near Ginosarfound 1986; radiocarbon and construction dating place it around the 1st century BC to 1st century AD
A wooden fishing boat about eight metres long, exposed when the lake fell in a drought. It is the physical scale of a vessel that would hold Jesus and the twelve, and it makes concrete the many crossings Mark reports, including the stern where Jesus sleeps through the squall at 4:38.
Kursi, on the eastern shore of the lakeexcavated from 1970 after the site was exposed during road works
A large Byzantine monastery and church, with a chapel built against the hillside, marking the place early Christians identified with the healing of the demoniac in Mark 5. The location bears on the place-name question at 5:1, since the country of the Gerasenes takes its name from a city some way inland, and Kursi sits on the lake with a steep slope running down to the water. Whether this is the site cannot be proved. What the excavation establishes is that the early tradition placed the event at a spot where the terrain matches the account.
The ossuary inscribed Alexander son of Simon, Kidron Valley, Jerusalemfound 1941 in a tomb of a Cyrenian Jewish family; published by Nahman Avigad in 1962
Mark alone identifies the man pressed into carrying the cross as 'the father of Alexander and Rufus' (15:21), which only helps a reader who knows the sons. A burial cave used by Jews from Cyrene, in Jerusalem, produced an ossuary, a stone box holding the bones of one person after the flesh had gone, naming an Alexander son of Simon. The names are common and the identification cannot be established, so it stands as a possibility rather than a proof. What it does establish is that a Cyrenian Jewish community with exactly these naming habits was living and burying its dead in first-century Jerusalem.
The Pilate stone, Caesarea Maritimadiscovered 1961; the inscription cut in the AD 20s or 30s
A limestone block reused in the theatre at Caesarea, carrying a dedication that names Pontius Pilate and his office in Judaea. It confirms the governor of Mark 15 as a real official of the right rank in the right province at the right time.

The Pulpit on Mark

The Best House-visitation
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1236: “The Best House-visitation” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 1:29-33
Gathering to the Center
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1298: “Gathering to the Center” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 1:45
Jesus Angry with Hard Hearts
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1893: “Jesus Angry with Hard Hearts” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 3:5
A Powerful Reason For Coming To Christ
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1529: “A Powerful Reason For Coming To Christ” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 3:8
Satan, Self, Sin and the Savior
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 3306: “Satan, Self, Sin and the Savior” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 5:9
The Faculty Baffled, The Great Physician Successful
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 827: “The Faculty Baffled, The Great Physician Successful” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 5:25-28
Tell It All
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 514: “Tell It All” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 5:33
Good Cheer From Christ's Real Presence
The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 3128: “Good Cheer From Christ's Real Presence” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition)
Charles SpurgeonMark 6:45-52