Who Wrote Mark's Gospel? Part 1 of the new Mark series

alright I'm excited because we're starting something brand new this is gonna be a verse by verse study through the Gospel of Mark you'll be a series we go through the whole Gospel of Mark verse by verse from beginning to end but it might be a little bit different than stuff that you're used to or that you might be expecting so I thought I should just start by explaining like the format how are we going to go through the Gospel of Mark together and we're gonna focus on sort of four different things as we go through the Gospel of Mark and the four things are one understanding it in detail what I mean is I'll be looking at cultural context we'll look at detailed first century insights as we're looking at the discussions between Jesus and say a Pharisee or something like that we'll look at content from history or archaeology but most importantly we'll look at the context of the verses both in mark as well as throughout the whole Gospel of Mark right in the passage the whole gospel and then through it other passages in the scriptures so it'll be a lot of contextual analysis stuff number two that's the first thing number two and this that you expect these things right number two is good theology III want obviously I don't ever plan on teaching bad theology pretty but I intended to do good careful theology which means I'm willing to go like deep on an issue that comes up in the text we might be kind of working through a passage and come across an idea and say hey let's let's evaluate this even more carefully let's let's look at other scriptures let's do a systematic analysis of this issue that we have here coming up in mark so sometimes we might take a topic and do a little detour on that topic that we launched from the Gospel of Mark I think the good theology it exalts God and in and of itself is like an act of worship as we just study and do good theology we're like loving God with our minds when we do that and that's exciting to me looking forward to doing that also number three so one is understanding in detail the second is good theology number three is applying it rightly again you probably expect this one whether it's encouragement or correction we're gonna try to take and apply these things into our into our actual lives which means that we're gonna sometimes confront areas where either our culture or just the habits we've developed in our lives are being confronted with the teachings of Jesus in which case we're not going to ignore that we're gonna focus on that we're gonna highlight that we're gonna be like yeah this is what I need Lord correct me fix me that I'm also excited excited about so in spite of whatever there may be popular teaching on an issue or if it might be popular practice on an issue but it just seems clearly this is what God's telling us we're gonna we're gonna try and let that change the way we live number four and this might be the part that's a little bit different about this Bible study than other studies remark that you may have been too and that's apologetics apologetics most do you guys know is defending the Christian faith that's one way of putting it but it's kind of giving a a why to the what we believe it's like here's what I believe well here's here's your support for the truthfulness of those things so answering skeptics challenges and defending the truthfulness of the Christian worldview particularly in the Gospel of Mark so there's popular claims right now in universities as well as online all over online things like Oh mark gets his geography wrong so whoever wrote it they couldn't known anything about the geography of ancient Israel or they'll say that mark got Jewish customs completely wrong Bart Ehrman who's not always my like skeptic that I point to for some reason Bart Ehrman he says this that mark got Jewish customs completely wrong and it proves that the author of mark didn't even know any Jews really and I certainly not how they lived he's out he's utterly false on this but I want to like unpack that as we come across the passages he would sort of pick on to make that point some people would say that Jesus isn't seen as God in mark well as we're going through mark we're gonna highlight some of the things in mark that talk about the deity of Christ or some people would say that mark didn't even write the Gospel of Mark and that's what we're gonna talk about today rants were the authorship of marking where it came from so for some people like of these four things some of them are more relevant to you're more interesting to you some are just I just want I just want the application like I just want the theology or I just want the apologetics so this means that sometimes the study will be more apologetic focused and you'll be like I'm not as excited or I am more excited and the other time is just verse by verse teaching just simply walk and through the text like what you everybody's used to I would encourage you to you know stick with me through the whole series because it's gonna be all good and needful and useful information even if it's not always your favorite thing today we'll focus on apologetics next week will be all verse by verse simple teaching so by the end I think you have a better grasp of what Mark meant in context the passages in context really understanding in detail number two the theology that we're learning from the Gospel of Mark number three how to live it out on your life and number four the fact that it's true you should have a better grasp of that as well also for the sake of the study in mark I'm gonna be using the new American Standard Bible solely the NASB four for this series that'll be the one I'm using this time generally we'll put out for those watching online we'll put this new video out once a week and it will come out generally on Mondays I'll try to push push it out earlier in the day on Monday unless for some reason I'm not doing the Sunday service for whatever reason because it's Mother's Day comes up or something like that usually we make that a family day instead of a gathering day so there's occasional times where we won't but more than more often than not it will be once a week on YouTube Mondays so here's what we're doing today who wrote mark and is it based on eyewitness testimony now if you're raised up in the church you're gonna be like mark wrote it and yes and your answer is correct but that answer will be challenged and attacked by people and so I'm gonna deal with building the case because there's a good case and I like good cases for the truthfulness of the Scriptures so the authorship of Mark and I'm indebted to a Tim McGrew and Richard Baucom two different scholars who've done a lot of work that I borrowed from and learned from in prepping for this among others so we're talking about just mark not all of the Gospels and we're gonna talk about what scholars call the quality of being genuine the genuineness of mark when they say is a document genuine what they mean is is it written by the person to whom it was attributed people think this person wrote it do they really write it then they call it genuine that's what that means so what you'll hear from everyone it seems nowadays is that all the Gospels are anonymous and nobody knows who wrote them and they were published anonymously and the names that you see on your Gospels were added way later like so long after that nobody knew who really wrote them a quote Bart Ehrman here Bart Ehrman says some books such as the Gospels had been written anonymously only later to be ascribed to certain authors who probably did not write them apostles and friends of the Apostles he wrote that in his book Jesus interrupted where he interrupts Jesus a lot Richard Dawkins Richard Hawkins who we all know is a great Bible scholar no actually he's no he's not but Richard Dawkins says nobody knows who the four evangelists were but they almost certainly never met Jesus personally he wrote that in his book The God Delusion where he said a lot of other things that were well delusional it's interesting though because the implication is that if you can't even trust who wrote it that you're supposed to cast doubt upon the text itself and it's it's kind of like a sideways way to get you to maybe doubt the scripture so I'm not dealing with the doctrine of inspiration here I believe that got the Bible is inspired by God and it's been given to us through human authors and if we were to find out that someone other than mark wrote it it really wouldn't affect me that much to be honest I would be like oh we put the wrong name on the top of the book like it wouldn't actually impact this all that much to be honest but it's still interesting and it's still worth looking at and thinking about so we're gonna talk about this today the chief argument here for that mark didn't write mark is that it was originally anonymous and we're gonna talk about the historical case externally and internally for how we got the information in the Gospel of Mark because what they won't tell you while you while you're reading mark you read through the sixteen chapters the skeptics will point this out it never does he say and I mark wrote this gospel it doesn't say that that's true what they won't tell you though is that this was like a standard way of writing a historical work at the time it was just normal you don't write your name in the middle of the text and say on the guy writing this let me give you some examples Plutarch Plutarch he wrote 50 biographies never mentioned his own name in 50 biographies so we don't doubt that Plutarch wrote them they wouldn't challenge that because that's not Scripture and there's like sometimes a double standard when it comes to the Bible Plato's writings anonymous they're anonymous how do you know Plato wrote those well because of the historical attribution to Plato that's always been attributed to Plato so we open it played out this is pretty simple plato's not playdough that's porphyry also wrote anonymously clement of rome he wrote anonymously doesn't write in now maybe on the top of the manuscript he might have wrote from clement or something but not in the text itself they wrote anonymously it was standard to have works that were anonymous back then especially if they were historical in nature if you were trying to say i'm writing history you didn't want to be like putting yourself in the story because it seemed too d historicism like as if it was more of a story in history that's the idea EP Sanders he said the claim of an anonymous history was higher than that of a named work in the ancient world an anonymous book rather like an encyclopedia article today implicitly claimed complete knowledge and reliability meaning it's just fitting you wouldn't expect him to write his name into it like that it's their way of standing back and saying hey this is what really happened it's not just my opinion that's the nature of this sort of anonymity when you're looking into the text but now we'll look at some external evidence so the first point is that whole well it doesn't have his name it doesn't mean a lot and it doesn't mean a lot applied to other things while all of a sudden it's a big deal with the Bible because people would have double standards sometimes so external evidence um you might ask why do you why do we think mark wrote it anyway why is it that out the church is kind of around the world it's just they all believe mark wrote it you think well it's because it's written right there as I open the thing it's a Gospel according to Mark except why is it written there why in translations across different countries and different lands is it all written the Gospel according to mark how did it come to be written that way in the first place well if we go back in time you know mentally not literally if we go back in time and we get to the 3rd century actually about 207 ad 207 ad there within 200 years of the time of Christ we get to a guy named Tertullian of Carthage Tertullian of Carthage he talked about who wrote the Gospel of Mark so this isn't coming so long after and he says while that gospel which Mark published maybe affirmed to be Peters whose interpreter mark was certainly and he says that mark was written by who mark and he gives us more information he says that it's the record of what Peter taught so Marc was the pennmen Peter was the source of the information so he also tells us how long this has been known if you read through what sertraline wrote about it he says that Mark and the other three Gospels have carried the names Matthew Mark Luke and John from the beginning that's what Tertullian says so he's like this isn't even a new idea this isn't people assigning names later at least according to Tertullian it's always been that way that's kind of a big deal he also tells us about their usage Tertullian also says that the churches planted by the Apostles like like the church in Corinth there's churches that were planted by the Apostles themselves they have vouched for these four Gospels and they have been read in these churches and no other Gospels were read in the churches while some would want to make it sound like there were these battles of the gospel battles going on they radically overstated there were some false Gospels written that's for sure but they were not received in the church the way people act like they were just these four were read and used and the churches who knew the Apostles vouched that these were apostolic in origin so that kind of matters do you think they cared that the teaching that they continued was the teaching they had originally received I think so I think it mattered to them so it's interesting - is Tertullian when he talks about this in 207 a.d he's not actually building a case for us for this he's using it as a known fact against a heretic named Marci own and so Marci own he hated the Jews and he hated Judaism and he he threw away the Gospels except for Luke he edited Luke and took out anything in it that he thought looked Jewish and then he published his own Gospels own version of Luke with no name on it he just published it like yeah that's the new gospel so this is kind of like he's trying to rewrite history and so Tertullian is like hey oh come on look at this fool over here we've we've all been reading and knowing these four Gospels from time immemorial it's always been this way and so his Marcio never got off the ground with his with his silliness it just didn't work and now if we go back up even more let's back up another twenty or so years to the time of about 180 ad and we have clement of alexandria clement of alexandria he tells us that mark wrote his gospel by request from his knowledge of Peters preaching at Rome let me read to you the the quote here this is in Eusebius who's an early church historian and he says that clement said the following and so great a joy of light shone upon the minds of the hearers of Peter that they were not satisfied with merely a single hearing or with the unwritten teachings of the divine gospel but with all sorts of entreaties they besought mark who was a follower of Peter and whose gospel is extent to leave behind with them in writing a record of the teaching passed on to them orally and they did not cease until they had prevailed upon the man and so became responsible for the scriptures for the scripture for reading in the churches so we learned that actually in the early church it's the Gospels and then the Jewish Scriptures that were being read it was the prophets and the Gospels they refer to really interesting so this ancient book Clement refers to this tradition as being handed down from the elders from the beginning which is a really important phrase because the elders would have been the church leadership not just random people in the church look what I've found a piece of paper and write to mark on it you know rather this has been going on from the beginning and it started while Peter was still alive doing his thing IRA næss of Lyon in about 180 around the same time he was at Bishop in France so he would never go from Alexandria to France not the same time though he wrote in a book a work called against heresies actually book 3 chapter 1 he wrote the following Peter and Paul proclaimed the gospel in Rome and founded the community after their departure mark the disciple and interpreter of Peter handed on his preaching to us in written form so he says again mark was a disciple and interpretive Peter and he handed down the gospel that Peter had preached sidenote the function of the written gospel if we catch why it was written was to replace the preaching of the Apostles after they were gone the whole idea behind the Gospels was that we couldn't change the information and since we could no longer access the Apostles we needed a written down that was the idea that seems to be what's exactly has happened so back up some more Justin Martyr in about 150 AD he had in his work dialogues with try foe his dialogue with try foe is like a debate a written debate where he's recording complaints against Christianity and his responses to them so in chapter 103 he says before in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by his apostles and those who follow them it is recorded that this that his sweat fell down like drops of blood while he was praying and saying if it pot if it be possible let this cup pass Justin Martyr refers to the memoirs of the Apostles the memoirs the memories of the Apostles and then he quotes Luke how interesting right he also goes on to talk about how one of these memoirs of the Apostles is the memoir memoirs of Peter interesting now if you go back to the one I quoted earlier chapter 103 he says in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by his apostles and those who followed them we have Matthew Mark Luke and John we had two of them were apostles two of them were those who followed them so he seemed to be referring to these exact ones and of course he goes on to quote from these different books he actually quotes one of them and more specifically and he says this just a martyr it is said that he Jesus changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter and it is written in his memoirs that he changed the names of others to brothers the sons of Zebedee to bow on our gaze which means sons of thunder now anybody have an idea of what what gospel we have the names changed to sons of thunder mark that's in the gospel so he's quoted he's quoted Luke he's quoted mark he says it's the memoirs of the Apostles written down by either the apostles or those who followed them so only mark has an information so these are the memoirs he's talking about when he says the memoirs of Peter he's referring it seems to the Gospel of Mark further Justin Martyr he had a student of his name tation who brought up who wrote the first harmony of the Gospels they were take the four and try to bring him together and it's called the deity Sauron the attesa run interesting it sounds like some sort of like bad guy in a Marvel movie but the deity Sauron is it means through the four that's the the word meaning through the four and what sources did he use to bring all the Gospels together he use Matthew Mark Luke and John no others no battle going on here right he used Matthew Mark Luke and John and no others and he compiled and brought them together so the stew of Justin Martyr newest Matthew Mark Luke and John Justin Martyr seems to be talking about Matthew Mark Luke and John he quotes Luke he quotes Mark he refers to it as the memoirs of Peter not the book of but the memoirs of Peter it's really interesting let's back up more that's 150 right let's back up more let's go to 125 ad we're getting pretty close with 125 80 and we have pay pious of Hierapolis so we're gonna go to hierapolis which is like Asia Minor he worked to gather information about Jesus and to make sure it was accurate by tracing it to the Apostolic sources so he would interview witnesses and compare what they said about Jesus and try to make sure it went back to the right sources in particular he got some stuff from John the elder who was a disciple of Christ so he he had been when he in his younger years cuz he wrote in 125 but he was interviewing these people in the 80s most likely it seems so that would have been when John was still alive one of the oldest living apostles so here's what he tells us about the stuff he learned probably in the first century he says the gospel was pinned by a guy named Mark not only is it marked but it's mark that traveled with Peter he quotes first Peter 5:13 to support this let me read to you first Peter 5:13 she who's in Babylon chosen together with you since greets in G greetings and so does my son mark now a lot of commentators think that Babylon here's a reference to Rome because as Babylon had had the Jews under subjection to the Jewish mind it's like they're the new Babylon there's they habits under subjection and so that may be very well be that he was in Rome riding that that's quite possible and there he is with Mark how interesting further Peter is the chief source not mark that's what also PPS tells us he tells us that Mark's role was to help improve Peters Greek not that Peter didn't know Greek but that if you know more than one language you may not necessarily be able to write well in more than one language and it seems as though it was to make sure that it was he was going to communicate that and Mark has signs of Hebrew or Aramaic Greek and Latin influences which would be interesting as you have mark and Peter both being involved in the production it plus there's a good reason again to think Peter knew Greek because he was a fisherman in a largely Gentile area part of the Sea of Galilee was not Gentile but a large part of it was and he's doing business dealings with them on a regular basis and we have we have the the sign on the cross written in multiple languages we have a lot of reasons to think that there was a lot of multilingual 'ti is that a word multi-link quality that sounds good I like that use that going on back then just like nowadays when you go to any country where there's there's mixed populations you know you learn you learn a few words right darest a bendiga right so he learned to say that I even say that right probably not maybe you learn to say a few words we also know this that Josephus who is the Jewish historian in the first century he was a very intelligent man and he knew various languages but when he wrote in Greek although he knew Greek he would use secretaries to help improve his Greek just to make sure that it came out the way he wanted it and so again we have good reason to think that Peter would have a reason to use mark and it also makes sense as to why he was travelling with them in the first place may have been able to help iron those things out because Peter was at that point in Rome ministering to a lot of sort of not as Jewish Jewish people the Hellenized Jewish people there were Greek speakers so he may have wanted that help so remember that Justin Martyr called the four Gospels the memoirs of the Apostles right this is not merely an issue who pinned them but of where the content came from another interesting fact is pay pious reports that this is what John the elder said that John the elder gave him this info about mark which traces it back even further and John of course knew Peter so this seems pretty strong now someone could say well how do I know he didn't make that up how do I know that we're all just not brains in a vat and that this whole thing is just the world doesn't mean five minutes ago and if you could always ask those kinds of questions but the point is that the the the historical record seems to clearly indicate one clear answer now it's also interesting as the geography of these guys so if I just took four of them Tertullian he's in Carthage Carthage is about 1100 miles from the next one Clement in alex' Andrea Egypt go another 500 miles north if you go by boat if you go by land it's 1500 miles and you get to Pappy as' or pay pious in hierapolis then you can go another 1,800 miles and you're gonna get to Irenaeus in France and I'm not going sideways here we're going in a in a square to get to all these people these are the four corners of the Roman Empire very much they had no social media they didn't have a postal system going on they didn't have phone calls hey I'm gonna write down that Peter wrote you know this stuff wasn't going on but rather it's spread out as the church but very quickly in churches were planted all over the place the knowledge that marks Gospels read in the churches receiving the churches and that it's marks and that it came through the preaching of Peter is kind of a consistent thing so now I wanna share with you the historical sources that say that mark actually wasn't written by mark the historical sources that tell us that mark wasn't written all by Mark and that it wasn't written at Peter from Peters data or with him as a source okay now I'm gonna tell you something else because there's none of those right there's not a single one in history who challenged Mark's authorship until like over 300 years later and those who are responding are like hello everybody knows mark wrote this book like this is silly so that's in about 400 ad where it gets challenged word finally is challenged after all these people were dead and gone that I just quoted to you and we have a debate between two guys Augustine and Faustus Faustus he's the bad guy boo right Austin he's the good guy and Augustine he's a Christian theologian and philosopher Faustus was a knucklehead and Festus he was a critic of Christianity he wanted to criticize and attack Christianity and one of the things he attacked was the Gospels so again about 400 AD first time someone's questioning the authorship of the Gospels and Augustine has a written debate with Faustus you could actually go and read it so he asked the following questions he's like it strange do you know that Faustus is challenging the authorship of the Gospels because we don't do this with any other historical works you know they were smart back then they weren't all like some people just in history or buddy was dumb sometimes I read them and I think we're dumb reads her stuff and he goes we don't do this with other historical works nobody doubts the genuineness of the books attributed to hypocrite ease I'll get Augustine says and then he talks about why he says because there's a succession of testimonies to the books from the time of Hippocrates to the present day which makes it unreasonable either now or hereafter to have any doubt on the subject how do we know the authorship of the works of Plato Aristotle Cicero Varro and other similar writers but by the unbroken chain of evidence Augustine say look it's been from time immemorial we've all known who wrote these books if you're gonna say that you're not gonna trust them you can't trust any other historical works but this is so often what happens with skeptics I that I experienced they have double standards Oh i-i'll take Epocrates all takes Cicero but the Bible nope standards like way up here where is its autumn somewhere up in the clouds just trust me you can't reach it and it becomes this sort of unreasonable scepticism against the Scriptures so that's the external evidence is it genuine well it sure seems like it and by any normal historical standards you would consider mark to be the author of mark but you still have guys like pard Airmen saying they're anonymous they were originally published with nothing written upon them well we actually don't know that they were originally public publish with nothing written on them we don't know that that's just something he says let me move on well okay before I get to the internal evidence I'll talk about that what the write the writing that names of the Gospels from the beginning of mark but I have some more stuff here that I just forgot about so early writers quote mark also this is separate from like Tertullian and these other guys we have early writers that are quoting from Mark we we have a large number of them it would take all day to go through them all but why this matters is because they seem to expect their readers to believe the authoritative nature of mark Matthew Luke and John just these specific four Gospels they don't quote from the heretical ones the Gospel of Thomas they're not quoting from right the the Gospel of Judas are certainly not quoting from they're rejecting those in fact the people who do quote from from tend to be the heretics that get kicked out of the church and they've quote from there why because they wrote them you know because they're trying to push these up onto the church even the heretics though like guys like Celsus who wrote against the christians in the second century he says i've made all these accusations against you and i did it using only your own books and the only quotes from the four gospels as far as any other gospel so the usage of mark from the very beginning is kind of a big deal the fact that the early church utterly rejected these other Gospels means that they cared about the genuineness of the writings themselves there's one of their line of reasoning too and it's this if you're gonna make a an author you have this anonymous work and it's about Jesus and could you imagine you have a scroll and it's a copy of the Gospel marking and you look out and you go I wonder who wrote it like you wouldn't have any way of knowing you didn't ask but somebody headed to you when you copied it across it didn't originally have anything written on it that's the idea that they give but um but but if you're gonna sign a name here and you want this gospel to have authority whose name are you gonna put on it Peter yeah man Peter Thomas right one of those guys Andrew James somebody not mark mark who's that guy right oh yeah oh he traveled with the apostles okay okay no I read about him and you know Paul wrote wrote about his thought mark he ditched him in act okay mark ran away and Paul wouldn't even take him back and then later on Paul's like okay we're reconciled bring mark he'll be useful to me we know mark travel with Peter and first Peter we know that as well but but you wouldn't put mark on there it just doesn't make sense like the most reasonable simple explanation is it's attributed to mark and not Peter because it was mark that wrote it if that's the simple this is sometimes common sense is not allowed in biblical criticism but the internal evidence that's external evidence now let's look at internal evidence every copy of mark we have found that has the beginning or end intact where it would have the the name of the work on it at the beginning and end every single copy it has the attribution that it is the Gospel according to mark all the copies that we have available to us we've never found one without that on it okay that matters you know if they were assigning names later you'd expect different names on different copies okay in in France they somebody wrote this in Egypt someone wrote this it's Peters Gospel here is somebody else's gospel over here but it's always mark but there's another interesting thing about the naming of mark it's the Gospel according to mark which is odd that's not the title you normally would put on on a book normally books had the author's name first and then the book title next so Plato's Republic Aristotle's Poetics you put the author's name and then you'd then the name of the book but here is the Gospel according to Mark now as Christians you're like I know why they did that you know because it because the gospel is more important than the mark but but that's that's what we see and we see it consistently again if you were me even if everyone was making up mark titles why would they all write it the same way why wouldn't they do the standard Mark's Gospel instead of the Gospel according to mark so it's consistency there there's also inside the writings itself inside of the gospel mark the internal evidence there is evidence of what they call a patron perspective or or the idea that Peter seems to have been influencing the writing of this work and so this is where you get into some pretty like detailed theories and things like that and I'm what I'm sharing with you here right now is from the work of a scholar named Richard Baucom and he wrote an extensive book on the topic called Jesus and the eyewitnesses it's very interesting book it's pretty accessible as far as scholarly books go it's very accessible doesn't mean you have to read the same stuff over and over again but it's pretty good he says that at the beginning of mark and at the end of mark we have something called an inclusive and I won't spend a lot of time on this but let me tell you what an inclusive is an inclusive is the idea behind an inclusive according to Richard baucom it's an ancient technique of showing who your eye witnesses are without breaking your story so you're sharing the history here and you want it you want to tell people I have an eyewitness source but you don't want to say I'm gonna stop the story Jesus went here and by the way everybody who's reading this this person here is one of my sources and then he continues the story they don't want to do that they would just use an inclusive the inclusio is like having the person's name at the beginning and the person's name at the end of the work it's like there at the beginning there at the end they have a prominent or specific kind of role and baucom points to other ancient works that do this as well to try to build a case for it if you're interested you could check out his book but get the second edition one because in his second edition of Jesus and the eyewitnesses Richard Bach in response to critics who think he's wrong because he is coming against a lot of scholarship here but I think he rightly demonstrates why a lot of the scholarship is just assuming things that isn't isn't evidence so you put them in two bookends now if you look at mark 1:16 we actually have the first mention of Peter mark 1:16 assistant as he was going along by the Sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea for they were fishermen he also notes that Simon's Simon Peters same guy that his name's mentioned twice right there Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon so he has his name twice in the Greek it's in there twice and some translations they just put it once because it's awkward why don't you see and Andrew his brother then at the end of mark in mark 16:17 it says the angel tells the women go tell his disciples and Peter he is going ahead of you to Galilee there you will see him just as he told you and we have the disciples and Peter and Peter is mentioned there and it seems slightly odd why and Peter I mean Peter one of the disciples yes clearly there's some other reason why and Peters being mentioned here you can get in more into that this is just one argument it's not the whole case for the internal stuff on Peter I'll share some other things now though and I'll let Richard Bach him explain the rest if you're interested in that you can check it out he might have something online that you can find as well if you don't want to buy the book also there's more stuff Peter is referenced in mark more frequently than any other gospel his name Peter he seems to be reference he seems to have a special place in the Gospel of Mark notice here in a couple passages it's Peter who speaks and Jesus answers to a group and this this richer baucom thinks is implying that it's Peters perspective we're seeing in the story as Mark takes what story the story that Peter would tell as first person I did this or we did this and then Jesus did this and he's changing it to to not carry that first-person pronoun you know when Peter wrote it in mark 11 verse 20 it says and here I unintentionally quote from the ESV but here it is as they passed by in the morning they saw the fig tree withered away at its roots and Peter remembered and said to him rabbi look the fig tree that you cursed his withered and jesus answered them have faith in God and it's this Peter says to him and jesus answered them and it's just interesting it's a different thing that comes in Matthew and Matthew the same instance it reads different it's not Peter remembered and jesus answered to them instead it says when the disciples saw it they marvelled saying how did the fig tree withered once this is Matthew 21 verse 20 and 21 so and jesus answered them and he explains the withering of the fig tree so we have this um this thing in markets Peter asks jesus answered them in matthew it's they asked and jesus answered them it's just less from his perspective it seems so these are little hints there's and you add these up the point as you walk through these and you try to add them up here's another example where Peter just has an interesting place in the in the telling of the story keep in mind that Peter and Andrew or Simon and Andrew they're brothers and they're both at their house in this case in mark 1:35 it says in the early morning while it was still dark Jesus got up left the house and went away to a secluded place and was found praying there or was praying there Simon and his companions searched for him they found him and said to him everyone is looking for you it's just interesting it's like Simon and his companions they searched if you look at why is it Simon and his companions I mean they were the disciples right why isn't the disciples went to go look for him so you can almost like hear peter telling the story but presumably andrew james and john are there as well also at the transfiguration we have another potential indication of this this is in mark 9 verse 5 and 6 Peter said to Jesus rabbi it's for us to be here let us make three Tabernacles one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah for he did not know what to answer for they became terrified and here's where Richard Baucom says it's like you can almost hear Peter telling it it doesn't seem to be he doesn't seem to be speaking for the group here he doesn't have a role as the announcer for the group it's just and I said this you can almost hear it coming off of him is this is this ironclad no no no its implications we're just saying hmm interesting interesting when we add this to the other evidence that Peter may have been a source then it becomes even more interesting because it's consistent with the external evidence now other people in mark that are named you ever read mark like this right you don't read it going like let me examine the names in the Gospel of Mark like you never do this but you can learn some cool things from it so other named persons in mark can strengthen in this case most of those who are healed and mark they don't have names he just heals people Jesus just heals people but occasionally we get names for instance in mark 10 we don't just have a blind man we have a blind man named Bartimaeus why does this guy have a name blind bartimaeus the son of Timaeus why him why does he have a name well Richard Bach ins case she's in Jesus and the eyewitnesses is that he thinks that the occurrence of names and he walks through this very carefully gives a bunch of examples that I don't have time to do tonight but he he basically says hey I think that this name was there because to the community that was listening to the gospel originally they knew bartemaeus and so they're like oh yes and bartemaeus was there so then they mentioned his name whereas when they're mentioning some people that are not named well they weren't accessible to the community so there's no point in giving their names there's other examples and this one's maybe a little better mark 1521 we hear about Alexander and Rufus for seemingly no reason let me read to you the verse they pressed into service a passerby coming from the country Simon of Cyrene the father of Alexander and Rufus to bear his cross okay I get why Simon might be named maybe he's known to the community maybe that's part of the reason but Alexander and Rufus his kids why are they named why does mark bother giving them names tradition says that mark was written where remember I read you those quotes where do they say that mark was written in Rome in Rome okay so this disgust will being written in Rome at their at their request in Romans when Paul writes to Rome he greets a guy named Rufus let me read it to you alright I was like I won't read it to take that it's in Romans 16 I just didn't write down the first thought I feel so bad so it's not a surprise that mark would bring a Rufus into the story if that same guy was now in the church in Rome and so he's like oh yes and Simon of Cyrene he came he was compelled to carry Jesus's cross and he's the father of Alexander and Rufus because that community knew those guys and they were following Jesus at that time so it could be that Rufus who was from Rome at that point in time he's able to say yep I was there I remember my dad telling me about that event I remember my dad telling me how he was he was upset about it you know who knows who knows so interesting stuff there's more about Rufus as well and stuff like that but I'll move forward um this is this is not iron-clad proof what we're putting pieces of the puzzle together we're going they all seem to be consistent with the same idea so it's especially strong though this usage of names when Peters out of the story again another reason why Peter or the disciples they're no longer in the story and now these names come up because it's like mark is telling you here's my sources for this information while the disciples were gone do you guys know when the disciples were not around in an important time in Jesus's ministry yeah oh the woman at the well that would be interesting one yeah they'll be in John though um there's another time and even more important time in Jesus's ministry is that his crucifixion and remember what Peter did he denied Christ and then he left weeping and he's not around the next time he enters the story Jesus is already risen so where's where's Mark getting his data and is he gonna tell us and you know who he brings in to the story very carefully at that point the women the women and this is really interesting stuff they're present not just randomly but they're present at the cross at the burial of Jesus and then at the discovery of the empty tomb in particular and the women are Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James the less and Joseph that's her kids and Salome and then at the burial that was at the cross at the burial it's the two of them Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph and then at the empty tomb it's the three again interesting how mark brings these women in at that just that point and they're not just around they're not just present their present doing one particular thing if you read the verses where these women show up at these pivotal moments the the burial the crucifixion the burial and then the empty tomb discovery and you look at the verses you'll see that they're functioning as witnesses in Mark's Gospel in particular so mark 1540 it says there were also some women looking on from a distance and among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James the less and Joseph and Salome they're literally a whole verse with names listed and the only thing he says is they were just watching as them as the the body of Jesus was being taken that's their job they were just watching then in 1547 it says after the burial right that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph swirling on to see where he was laid the verbs are about them looking they're looking on to see where he is lay it was laid then in 16 verse 4 it says looking up they saw that the stone had been rolled away although it was extremely large entering the tomb they saw a young man sitting at the right wearing a white robe and they were amazed and he said to them do not be amazed you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who has been crucified he has risen he's not here behold the place where he lay and he invites them to check it out they're functioning as witnesses it seems it seems to be their function here where the normal witness Peter and the disciples are not available I think that's kind of neat I think that's pretty interesting a richer Baucom says that this this study of names has been largely they get neglected in scholarship they just don't talk about it they don't deal with it generally speaking now some people would say oh come on what if mark just made up those names and these wants to make his story sound more real right like I want to put people's names in here to make it sound more real we have a good reason to think that that is not what happened oh I have a bunch of good reasons for one we have no historical works like this ever like it from the time there's no historical work for someone does this like carefully constructed historical lie like this just doesn't exist right we also have as the later Gospels were written they lose names they don't add new names right and then when they finally do start having much later Gospels false Gospels where they add new names they add the wrong names and that's where it gets exciting there's okay this is not exciting right but this part's not exciting but the result of it are exciting okay there has been a study of Palestinian names from the time of Jesus looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls looking at the biblical texts and then looking at ossuary Zhou series is the number one source the AA series are these like bone boxes they find in graves and they look at them and they look at the names that are carved there and they go this is the kind of things people were named back then like right now nowadays people don't have the same names as they used to have you noticed that like my my my grandma's time it was Norma Dorothy were common names right I don't know any Dorothy's now so someone tells a story from back then they're gonna try to pick period proper names well there's no way I mean you couldn't Google period proper names from the 1930s I you can't do that in the first century mark seems that period proper name so let me explain there's an Israeli scholar by the name of Tali lon and she compiled this list of names didn't not for any sort of apologetic work or anything like that but it's called the lexicon of Jewish names in Late Antiquity and you're welcome to read it if you're have insomnia what she found is that some names were extremely popular inside Israel and yet different names were popular outside Israel so even at the same time different names different popularity levels other ones were very rare so richard Baucom he took the work that she did the research heated and then she come in he compared leaving out the Gospels and just compared the Gospels names to the names founder nossor ri's and the Dead Sea Scrolls and to see what we get and he found that the most popular names in the Gospels and acts the top number one name anybody have an idea what it was you're gonna say Judas but it was adduced no it was Lisa cuz lotta - this is Judas not Iscariot remember but there were it was the most popular male name was Simon Simon now in the writings of also Josephus his writings we have a list of names as well so in Josephus and in the ossuaries and in the Dead Sea Scrolls we have Simon as one of the most popular names it's number one in Josephus and the ossuary it's the second most popular name in the Dead Sea Scrolls content Simon oh it's period-appropriate isn't it then the second most popular name at the time was Joseph or Joseph same same name this is the second most popular in Josephus and the ossuary x' and it was barely the most popular edging out Simon in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Alexandria on the other hand the second most popular Jewish boy name was not Joseph it was sabotage or sabot eius because they just had different names different areas different names different influences they weren't the same if you take the top nine names from these sources in the first around the 1st century it's actually goes from before to little after in that time if you take them in the top nine names they they include 41% of the names or these same nine names for boys in the New Testament 40% of the names we find are those names there it's not just the names but the ratios of the names and the more you you pool in the more you go the Gospels altogether Matthew Mark Luke Sean an axe all of them together it looks just exactly like it's real people from the 1st century from within the with in Palestine within Israel the most popular woman named you already guessed it Mary right Mary is our some variation thereof the most popular inside and outside the the New Testament in in Israel during that time now if you take the popular versus unpopular stuff you have to keep in mind something is that generally most scholars think three of the four Gospels or written outside Palestine must may or may not be true but this is the general thought so outside Palestine you're making stuff up and you're picking Jewish names for people how on earth did you just happen to pick the right names for people inside Palestine or inside Israel that's interesting interesting stuff they weren't invented the point is they were remembered they did not invent these names they remembered them they recall them because these are just their real names also they find when they study za series that the Bible gets right not only the right names but gets right the way these names are differentiated if you see there's a lot of Simon's but there but there may not be a lot of another name you know so when I have a lot of the person with the same name I start to have to add extra stuff at the end of that guy's name to know who he is Simon the Tanner Simon son of Jonah Simon Peter I had his Greek name with his heat with his Hebrew name so that we can identify him better and this this is what the Gospels do they take on the ossuary they'd be like Simon and it add more right it would add more stuff to these people's names either their occupation the city they were from or their family name of the name of a father or something like that this is what they would do and this is what the Gospels do they get this entirely right not only the way the names are differentiated but which names needed to be differentiated because they were so common it gets all this stuff right so if you're gonna say that the names were added by mark because he was trying to spice up the story it doesn't make sense these seem like real names of real people and the ratios and the way they're identified tell us this is history and normal historical analysis would have people nodding their heads but when it's the Bible sometimes people like but it's the Bible we can we can't be like saying that that stuff like true and stuff like and that's that's there that's on them I don't have a problem saying it's true and then at all also there's more evidence for the Gospel of Mark and that is the Galilean familiarity that mark has in particular Peter would have been a fisherman in Galilee who just for most his time on the North Shore of Galilee and that's what mark knows the most about in the writing of the Gospel of Mark when he talks about areas outside that area of Galilee that that narrow area where the fishing in the life of the fisherman took place it's like a vague reference and they went over here I mean maybe Peter didn't know as much about that area he visited it one time or two times or something but if it's about that area of Galilee or the City of Jerusalem there's more details in the Gospel of Mark the implication is that well the author somehow knew stuff about Galilee and we don't think that mark was from there this is coming from Peter or one of the fisherman disciples is what it seems the details the specific details it's details that a first century fisherman would know and say in fact it focuses specifically on the area where the fishermen did their jobs so he wouldn't even go to the south of Galilee typically speaking they wouldn't even travel down there some will say that Mark's geography is wrong but I'm gonna deal with that as we move through the text we'll come to a passage and I'll just unpack that a little bit like the apologetics moment then but mark focuses on the Galilean ministry of Jesus in particular he's in Galilee a lot in the Gospel of Mark and less details and less time is spent when he's elsewhere richer Baucom did a study on the geography of this and he said this in conclusion the world of Jesus's Galilean ministry according to mark is the world of a Capernaum fisherman focused on and around the northern part of the lake of Galilee that's his study of the text so this is another little detail we add to our sort of cumulative case here that what we've been told about mark is true about mark I think that's kind of a big deal add it all up right we have Universal and early acknowledgement of mark as the author and Peter as the source we have statements from people with some reliability in that not just random people right church leaders from various parts in various areas around the world of the time we have the usage in the churches and in the writings of the early Christians and we have internal indications of like a Peter type perspective or Petrine perspective and other indications that there are these sort of eyewitness indicators like the women well if they're the eyewitnesses now who are the witnesses before and we have the inclusio with Peter and that kind of stuff it's all just kind of adds up and I think it's really interesting stuff I think that what you may have taken for granted that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark is something that you should have taken for granted all along and next week we're gonna dig into it'll be verse by verse study I won't be quoting church fathers it'll be a verse by verse study we'll be digging into the Gospel of Mark we're just gonna plot our way through and God willing we'll just have blessing after blessing as we dig through this book and let it change our lives let's pray Lori thank you for not just giving us the scriptures but given us the breadcrumbs that lead us to the scriptures we we're grateful well we pray as we begin this venture this study through the Gospel of Mark that it would change our lives that we would see Jesus more clearly than ever before that would understand his words better than ever before that we would appreciate and be able to see the Majesty that is the scriptures as we study it and be armed Lord that we might be bold in the truth and communicate these true things to other people we we pray for people who will be watching this series that maybe don't know you and as they hear the words of Christ that their lives would be trained change transformed and they'd be saved we asked for that you would I you just bless our study blesses our the wisdom and insight into your Holy Word in Jesus name Amen [Music]

Channel: Mike Winger

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Keywords: who wrote the gospel of mark, who wrote Mark's gospel, who wrote mark, authorship of Mark, authorship of the gospel of mark, gospel of Mark series Mike Winger, gospel of Mark, gospel of Mark series, Mike Winger, part 1, is mark based on eyewitness testimony

Id: 7c7jWg60N_0

Length: 52min 47sec (3167 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2019