The Gospel of Mark: The Darkest Story of Jesus

Exploring the Mystery, Despair, and Hope of the First Gospel

Some History First

The Gospel of Mark is my favorite book in the Bible because it’s old and scary and profound. It sometimes gets belittled for being short and simple, but I think it’s actually quite literary. It has a feel that is unique from the other Gospels. I’ll get more into that. It’s the oldest Gospel, and I like that about it too. Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. John was written after the three Synoptics and was separate from them (though there’s a lot of debate about that).

It’s difficult to say who really wrote the Gospel of Mark. Tradition attributes it to John Mark, Peter’s chronicler. Papias tells us that Mark wrote down Peter’s memories. There are some problems with this, though. It’s not certain that Papias is actually referring to the text we call the Gospel of Mark, and the source of Papias’ writings suggests he relied too much on oral tradition. More importantly, Matthew used Mark as a source. If Matthew was an apostle who had been with Jesus, why would he rely on the account of someone who wasn’t? It doesn’t make sense. John and Luke have similar problems. Most scholars think the Gospels were written anonymously and that the titles were added later to legitimize them. Or maybe it was just some other guy named Mark. The name was common. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call whoever wrote it “Mark.”

Scholars are more confident about when Mark was written. In Chapter 13, Jesus tells his followers that the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed. He speaks of wars, earthquakes, and the need for the early Christians to flee to the mountains. He assures them not to worry because these are the signs of the coming Kingdom of God. Now, the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD after the Jewish rebellion. Most scholars think this chapter was written in response to that event and the diaspora that followed, dating the Gospel to around 70 AD, roughly 40 years after Jesus’ death. Some argue for an earlier date.

Where Mark was written is less clear. I lean toward Syria. A lot of Christians fled there after the destruction of the temple and Antioch was one of the epicenters of literature within the Roman Empire. Some scholars suggest Mark was written in Rome. That would fit tradition better, and Mark uses Latinisms. I don’t find this theory too convincing, but it could be. There are other possibilities, but let’s move on.

The Gospel as Literature

Mark is often dismissed as the simplest Gospel. It’s short and direct. But simplicity is not the absence of artistry. Mark’s style reminds me of Hemingway. His sentences are spare but carry profound meaning. Written in Greek, Mark’s language lacks the sophistication of the literary elite of his time. He wasn’t an ancient academic. He was someone closer to us. An ordinary person. And bear in mind, he was a Christian in the very early days. There were only small Christian communities scattered sparsely around the Mediterranean. There were no churches yet. Our understanding of how these early Christians actually practiced Christianity is limited. So, the author of the Gospel of Mark wrote it when Christians were still figuring out what Christianity was.

Mark’s tone is what sets it apart. It’s the darkest and grayest of the Gospels. Judea is a land of poverty, sickness, demonic possession, and desperation. The narrative is urgent because time is short. Jesus begins by proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is near and repentance is crucial. There’s less spiritual musing here than in the other Gospels—just a relentless march toward the imminent destruction and renewal. Unlike the other Gospels, Mark offers no joyous birth narrative, no angelic celebrations. If you take the original ending, you don’t even get a resurrection scene. John the Baptist is a wild man, living on locusts and honey. Mark feels like a carnival of desolation, yet it clings to hope. Suffering will end. The righteous will see eternal bliss. The Kingdom of God is beautiful, even if it remains unseen.

This hopefulness amid despair reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. At the end of that bleak journey, the boy finds a new family. He carries the fire, and there’s hope, even in the apocalypse. Apocalypse is a confusing word here though, because in The Road we have a bad apocalypse (everyone and everything dies) but in the Gospel of Mark we have a good apocalypse (Heaven comes to Earth). So when we call Jesus an apocalyptic prophet, we mean a good apocalypse.

Jesus in Mark is mysterious, more so than in the other Gospels. His closest followers don’t understand him. He reveals the secret of the Kingdom of God to the Twelve but speaks in parables to everyone else. We don’t get to hear what that secret is though. We just get the parables. When he heals, he often commands people to stay silent. This has been called the “Messianic Secret.” One theory is that this emphasis on secrecy might explain why, after Jesus’ death, some people claimed ignorance of his status as Messiah. Here’s what I mean—when early Christians started spreading Christianity around Jerusalem (after Jesus’ death) there may have been a lot of skeptics saying, “I was there when that happened. I didn’t hear anything about him being a Messiah. I didn’t see any miracles”. His secrecy would explain that. I believe this theory is not widely accepted. I don’t find it too convincing, especially if we date Mark at 70 AD, but it is an interesting theory.

Another haunting aspect of Mark is Jesus’ rejection by his own family. They try to restrain him. Later, when his mother and brothers come to see him, he says, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” His family isn’t part of his following. At his death, he’s abandoned by nearly everyone. Mary, his mother, is not in the Gospel of Mark.

One of Mark’s subtleties is the role of Jesus’ death. After Jesus dies, the temple curtain tears in two. What does this mean? Mark doesn’t explain, leaving the reader to figure it out. The curtain separated God’s presence in the temple’s innermost sanctum from the people. Its tearing symbolizes the end of that separation. Jesus becomes the new temple, the new path to God.

For a first-century audience, this might not have been immediately clear. Mark leaves these clues for the reader to ponder. This is why calling Mark a simple Gospel feels wrong. It demands more thought than the others, which spell things out more directly.

The True Ending

If I could rewrite the rules of Christendom for a day, I’d restore the original ending of Mark. Modern Bibles include two endings—a shorter one and a longer one. Both were added later by different authors. The true ending stops at 16:8. Here it is:

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

That’s it. No appearance by the risen Jesus, just an empty tomb and fear. If the women told no one, how does anyone know? Scholars suggest they eventually shared the news, perhaps in Galilee. But Mark doesn’t tell us. The ambiguity is deliberate. It leaves us to imagine the risen Jesus and grapple with the meaning of the resurrection. It’s unsettling, mysterious, and profoundly literary.

The added endings tie everything up in a neat bow, but they rob Mark of its mystery. The original ending is terrifying and hopeful. It’s an ending that lingers, much like the Kingdom of God itself—always near, but just out of reach.