Red-Letter Day
Evangelist
April 25 · d. 70
also known as Mark, John Mark, St. Mark, Mark the Evangelist
Mark, called by the early church the interpreter of Peter, wrote down the apostle's preaching at Rome and gave the church the Gospel that bears his name. Tradition sends him on from Rome to Alexandria, where he founded the church that the Coptic Orthodox still keep as their own, and where he died a martyr under Nero. His feast is kept on April 25.
The figure of Mark steps quietly into the New Testament from the edges. He is the cousin of Barnabas, the young companion of Paul on the first missionary journey who turned back at Perga and so divided Paul and Barnabas for a season, and later, in Peter's first letter, the apostle's "son" who sends greetings from Babylon, which the church has read from the beginning as a code for Rome.
What the church has remembered most about him, however, is what he did at Rome. Peter preached, and the Roman Christians, hearing him, were not satisfied with the spoken word and asked Mark to set it down. Mark, who had been with Peter and had listened with care, wrote what Peter remembered: the towns, the boats, the storms, the crowds pressing in, the demoniac among the tombs, the deaf man whose ears were opened with a sigh and a word, the cross. He wrote in a hurry. The Greek runs forward at the pace of a man with news he cannot keep. Mark opens his Gospel with the line that has stood ever since as the herald-call of the church's preaching: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
From Rome, the tradition takes him south, across the Mediterranean to Alexandria, the great Greek-speaking city of Egypt. There he preached the Gospel he had written, and there he gathered a church. The patriarchate that traces its succession back to him, the See of Saint Mark, the Coptic Orthodox Church, is one of the oldest continuous Christian communities on earth. They have kept him as their founder for nineteen centuries.
The end, as the Coptic church has remembered it, came on the eve of Easter in the reign of Nero. The mob of the city laid hands on him at the altar, put a rope around his neck, and dragged him through the streets of Alexandria until he was dead. He was buried by his people in the place where, in time, they would build a church to his name.
How we know. The witnesses to Mark stand close to the apostolic generation. The earliest is Papias of Hierapolis, writing about 130 and preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in the Ecclesiastical History 3.39, who reports a tradition he had received from John the Presbyter, a hearer of the apostles. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing about 180 in Against Heresies 3.1.1, gives the same picture independently. Clement of Alexandria, preserved by Eusebius at EH 2.15, adds the Roman setting: that Peter's hearers asked Mark to write. Eusebius himself, at EH 2.16, is the first narrative source for Mark's mission to Egypt. These four witnesses, in roughly that order, are the load-bearing patristic record.
In McGiffert's translation of Eusebius (Schaff's NPNF series), Papias preserves the foundational claim: "This also the presbyter said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ." The word translated interpreter, in Papias's Greek, is hermeneutes: the one who carries another's words across into a second language and a second audience. Irenaeus, a generation later, uses the same word; as Irenaeus writes in Against Heresies 3.1.1, in the Roberts and Donaldson translation: "After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter."
The Roman setting comes from Clement, preserved by Eusebius. The Mark of the New Testament appears under several names: John, called Mark (Acts 12:12); Mark, the cousin of Barnabas (Colossians 4:10); the John who departs at Perga (Acts 13:13); the Mark Paul asks for at the end of his life as "profitable to me for the ministry" (2 Timothy 4:11); the Mark with Peter at "Babylon" in 1 Peter 5:13. The church has read these as a single life: the young man whose early failure became, in the end, the steady companionship of two apostles and the writing of a Gospel.
The Greek text of Mark is dated by patristic and modern witnesses alike to the late 60s, the years just before and after Peter's martyrdom at Rome; the apostolic-Petrine witness behind the Gospel is the church's reading and is not in serious dispute even in modern critical readings. For Mark's later movements, Eusebius gives the first narrative; in McGiffert's translation again: "And they say that this Mark was the first that was sent to Egypt, and that he proclaimed the Gospel which he had written, and first established churches in Alexandria." The fuller martyr-narrative belongs to the later Coptic Acta of Mark, which the Alexandrian church has preserved as its own founding memory.
Mark's feast is kept on April 25 in the Western and Greek Orthodox calendars; the Coptic Orthodox keep him also on Pashons 30 (May 8) for his martyrdom. The liturgical color is red, the color of an evangelist and martyr. He is patron of Venice, of Alexandria and the Coptic Orthodox Church, and of Egypt.
Of the four living creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation, Mark is the winged lion, because his Gospel opens with the voice crying in the wilderness; the winged lion became the civic emblem of Venice and remains the symbol of the city. His relics, by the Venetian tradition, were translated from Alexandria to Venice in 828 and rest in the Basilica di San Marco; in 1968 Pope Paul VI returned a relic fragment to the Coptic Pope Cyril VI for the new Cathedral of Saint Mark in Cairo.
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The Gospel according to Mark(Greek (Koine), c. AD 65-70)
Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels and the one that runs fastest; it is meant to be read at a single sitting. The King James is recommended for its cadence and its place in the prayer-book tradition; any sober modern translation will serve.
Other translations: English Standard Version, Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition)
Public domain: King James Version (Wikisource)
Ecclesiastical History 3.39 (the Papias fragment on Mark)(Greek, Eusebius c. 325; Papias material c. 130)
The earliest external witness to Markan authorship: Papias, citing John the Presbyter, names Mark as Peter's interpreter who wrote down Peter's preaching accurately though not in order. The load-bearing patristic testimony for Mark's relation to Peter.
Public domain: CCEL (McGiffert / NPNF)
Ecclesiastical History 2.15 (Mark composes the Gospel at Rome)(Greek, Eusebius c. 325; Clementine material c. 200)
Eusebius preserves Clement of Alexandria's account of the composition setting: Peter's Roman hearers entreated Mark to leave them a written record of the preaching, and Peter sanctioned the work for use in the churches.
Public domain: CCEL (McGiffert / NPNF)
Ecclesiastical History 2.16 (Mark in Egypt and Alexandria)(Greek, c. 325)
The earliest narrative source for Mark as founder of the Alexandrian church, the patriarchal tradition that Coptic Christianity preserves to this day.
Public domain: CCEL (McGiffert / NPNF)
Against Heresies 3.1.1(Greek (surviving in Latin), c. 180)
Irenaeus, writing about 180, gives independent second-century confirmation that Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, wrote down what Peter had preached.
Public domain: CCEL (Roberts and Donaldson / ANF)
Mark: The Gospel of Passion (Biblical Imagination Series)(English, 2012)
The lay-accessible entry point. Michael Card has spent decades praying the Gospels into song, and his volume on Mark reads the second Gospel as the Gospel of Petrine eyewitness urgency. The book to put first in a thoughtful parishioner's hand who wants to pray Mark slowly.
The Gospel according to Mark (Pillar New Testament Commentary)(English, 2002)
The deeper scholarly-believing pick. James R. Edwards's volume in the Pillar series is the standard believing-register academic commentary on Mark, accessible to a parish priest or a seminarian without seminary Greek. Edwards takes the apostolic-Petrine witness behind the Gospel seriously and reads the Greek with care. For the reader who has finished Card and wants exegetical depth.
Primary text. The Gospel of Mark itself, in the ESV or another sober modern translation; the King James preserves the cadence that has shaped centuries of English reading and rewards a second sitting. The Gospel is short enough to be read at a single sitting, and was meant to be.
Patristic witnesses. Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History 2.15, 2.16, and 3.39 are the load-bearing patristic record, freely available in McGiffert's translation in Schaff's Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 1, hosted by CCEL. Irenaeus's Against Heresies 3.1.1, in the Roberts and Donaldson translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, gives the same picture independently.
Modern scholarship. Michael Card's Mark: The Gospel of Passion (IVP, 2012) is the lay-accessible entry point, a devotional companion that reads Mark as the Gospel of Petrine eyewitness urgency in a register a thoughtful parishioner can pray with. James R. Edwards's Gospel according to Mark (Pillar New Testament Commentary, Eerdmans, 2002) is the deeper scholarly-believing pick for the reader who wants exegetical apparatus past Card's devotional length; accessible to a parish priest or a seminarian without seminary Greek.
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Almighty God, by the hand of Mark the evangelist you have given to your Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ: We thank you for his witness, and pray that you will give us grace to know the truth, and not to be carried about by every wind of false doctrine, that we may know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.