Mark

The Book of Mark: An Introduction

The short answer

Mark is the shortest of the four gospels, and it moves fast. Jesus barely finishes one scene before Mark hurries him into the next — the word "immediately" shows up again and again. But the speed has a direction. From early in the story, Mark is driving toward the cross, and everything else — the healings, the arguments, the confused disciples — gathers meaning from where the road ends.

The clearest statement of what the book is about comes near its middle, in Mark 10:45, where Jesus says the Son of Man came "not to be served, but to serve," and to give his life "a ransom for many." A ransom is a payment that sets captives free. Jesus is not describing himself merely as a good example to imitate; he is describing his death as an act that accomplishes something — a release that happens on our behalf, before we have done anything to deserve or even understand it.

Then there is the famous puzzle of the ending. In the earliest manuscripts, Mark stops at 16:8: the women find the empty tomb, and they flee, afraid, saying nothing to anyone. It feels unfinished — and many scholars think it literally is, since the ends of ancient scrolls and early books were the parts most easily damaged or lost. Whatever happened to the final page, the women clearly did not stay silent forever; the very existence of Mark's gospel proves the news got out.

So Mark is a book with an open ending and a decisive center. The ending leaves room for the reader — almost daring us to finish the story ourselves. The center does not. The cross, in Mark's telling, is not a suggestion or a symbol. It is the hinge on which everything turns.

What scholars say

These two excerpts take up Mark's two great puzzles: N. T. Wright asks whether verse 16:8 was really where Mark meant to stop, pointing to how easily the ends of ancient scrolls and early books were lost, while Rowan Williams reads the ransom saying of Mark 10:45 as describing something the cross accomplishes before any action or recognition of ours.

“I take it more or less for granted, by the way, that verse 8 is not where Mark himself concluded his gospel. Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls (in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, or in facsimile, online or elsewhere). A great many of them have lost the beginning and the end, or both. That stands to reason: the two ends of the scroll would be attached to sticks, and might easily have been torn off. If, instead of a scroll, a very early copy of Mark was bound up as a primitive book (a ‘codex’), the same thing could happen to the sheets at either end. In any case, Mark certainly doesn’t mean us to understand that the women never said anything to anybody, that they stayed silent for life.”

N. T. Wright, Lent for Everyone Westminster John Knox Press. All rights reserved. More from Wright in Rebind →

“The New Testament seems to want to say more. Perhaps more to the point, Jesus himself seems to want to say more. ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve,’ says Jesus in Mark 10.45, ‘and to give his life as a ransom,’ a payment, something that releases prisoners and hostages from their bonds. He came to give his life as a transaction, not just as an example but an act that somehow springs the trap prior to any action or recognition of ours. The cross effects a change that happens independently of our efforts or ideas: the possibility of a deeply radically altered relationship with God, that doesn’t depend on us.”

Rowan Williams · 104th Archbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012), The Sign and The Sacrifice Westminster John Knox Press. All rights reserved. More from Williams in Rebind →

What it means for you

Mark's shape says something about the life of faith. The decisive thing — the ransom, the release — has already happened; it does not wait on your effort, your clarity, or your consistency. That is genuinely freeing for anyone who suspects their standing with God rises and falls with their performance. At the same time, the abrupt ending refuses to let you stay a spectator. The women ran from the tomb afraid, and yet the story reached you. Mark seems to hand the reader the next line: the news is out, the trap is sprung — now what will you do with it?

In context

Mark is widely regarded as the earliest gospel, and Matthew and Luke appear to have drawn on it. Its structure is simple: roughly the first half follows Jesus' ministry in Galilee, building the question of who he is; at the midpoint Peter names him the Messiah, and from there Jesus repeatedly predicts his death as the story turns toward Jerusalem. The ransom saying in chapter 10 comes on that road south, and the final chapters slow down dramatically to tell the passion story — the destination the whole book has been racing toward.