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The Gospel according to Mark

Saint Augustine: “I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not compel me.”

The Early Church Fathers on Mark

Mark’s gospel, the earliest of the four canonical gospels, was written sometime after the Roman Jewish war of 66-70 AD. Some bible scholars date it circa 70-75 AD, others as late as 90-120 AD. The gospel of Mark and all the other books in the New Testament were written in Greek. The title, Kata Markon (Kata Markon), meaning “According to Mark” appeared for the first time on Greek copies of the gospel in the fourth century, shortly after the Roman emperor Constantine declared an Edict of Toleration regarding Christianity in 313 AD.

Constantine’s most important religious advisor was the early church father Eusebius of Caesarea (260-339 AD) who was highly educated, sophisticated, politically powerful, and the official historian of the Christian Church. In his book, the Ecclesiastic History, he quotes from the now lost writings of Bishop Papias (135-140 AD) who in turn quotes the verbal testimony of a presbyter named John regarding the gospel of Mark:

The elder John also used to say this: Mark had been the interpreter (or translator) for Peter. And he wrote down as much as (Peter) told of the sayings and deeds of Christ, accurately, but not in order. For he was not a hearer or follower of the Lord but, as I said, of Peter, who adapted his teaching as needed and did not arrange the sayings of the Lord in an orderly manner. And so, Mark made no mistake in writing some things down as he recalled them. For he had a single concern; to omit nothing of what he heard and to introduce no false statement. (Ecclesiastic History 3.39.15)

According to Eusebius, Papias claimed that he put more credence in the verbal anecdotes and stories of anyone who claimed to know the original apostles over any similar account written down in a book. Based on the following passage from his book, Eusebius thought Papias was provincial, gullible, and naïve, a person who believed in the literal interpretation of the bible, in other words, a staunch member of the orthodox wing of the Church. Eusebius goes on to say:

“I guess he got these ideas from a misinterpretation of apostolic accounts. For he did not understand what they said mystically and in figurative language. For he obviously was a man of very little intelligence, as one can tell judging from his sayings. Nevertheless, it was due to him that so many churchmen after him adopted a similar opinion, basing their position on the fact that he was a man of the earliest era.” (Ecclesiastic History)

Everything Papias wrote has been lost to history, his words only survive in quotations from other church fathers such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Eusebius. According to Papias, Mark was a follower of Peter and never knew Jesus. Based on the charge that Papias had “limited intelligence” and “misinterpreted apostolic accounts,” Papias may have believed the tall tales invented by one of the many itinerant holy men who visited him. Perhaps Papias invented the “elder John” and “Mark” from the person “John called Mark” who was mentioned in the “apostolic accounts” of Acts 12:12, 12:25, 13:5, 15:37, Phlm 24, Col 4:10, 2 Tim 4:11, and 1 Pet 5:13!

The extremely important letter of Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD) regarding the “Secret Gospel of Mark,” discovered in 1958, also claimed that Mark wrote his gospel when he was with Peter in Rome. Eusebius may have concluded that Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and many other early church fathers took the hearsay “sayings” of Papias as a credible source regarding the provenance of the gospel of Mark.

The attribution of John Mark as the author of the first gospel is pure speculation. The Church calls the legend a verbal “tradition.” The original author of the gospel of Mark was anonymous, as were the authors of the other three gospels. All four gospels were published without naming an author, date, or place of composition.

The gospel of Mark, titled in verse 1:1 by its original author “The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” is without a doubt one of the most influential literary works ever written because of the effect it had on Western civilization for almost two thousand years. The other gospel authors used Mark as their template to embellish and refine the story of Jesus Christ.

The one thing Mark is not known for is the way he incorporated gematria and sacred geometry riddles into every major story in his gospel. Although the stories can never be proven historically true, the stories are mathematically true through the lost Greek arts of gematria and sacred geometry.

The sixteen sacred geometry diagrams in this chapter were constructed from the gematria value of words directly spoken by Jesus, God, John the Baptist, the prophets of the Old Testament, or the words narrated by its author, the one we call “Mark.” The first twenty verses introduce the reader to John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Peter and his brother, and the two brothers of Zebedee called John and James.

Diagrams and Commentary for Mark 1:1