Mark

Author: Mark
Date of Writing: 1st Century AD
Type of Book: Gospel
Theme: Jesus Christ, the Servant

The Gospel of Mark is thought by many scholars to be the earliest of the gospel accounts.  There have been some who dispute this, but it really doesn't matter whether it was written first or not.

John Mark wrote this.  (John was his Jewish name; Mark was his Roman name.)  He was the nephew of Barnabas and was just a boy when these events took place.  On Paul's first missionary journey, he went with Paul and his Uncle Barnabas.  Though he didn't make it through the entire journey, later he was of great value to Paul, and earned his respect.

It is generally accepted that Mark's account of the life of Jesus was compiled from Peter's sermons, writings, and personal conversations, combined perhaps with young Mark's personal experiences. (It's likely that he is referring to himself in Mark 14:51-52.)

While the book of Matthew depicts Jesus as King, the book of Mark presents Jesus as a Servant.  It is a book of action, which is to be expected since Peter was always a man of action.  It is shorter than the other Gospels because it tells the stories without transcribing the sermons of Jesus.  Again, this book is concerned more with what Jesus did than with what He said.

The time of writing is believed to be when Mark and Peter were both in Rome, or perhaps shortly after Peter was killed, and the intended audience was Roman Christians.  Mark spends a lot of time explaining Jewish traditions that would have been foreign to the Roman readers.  The Roman Christians were undergoing severe persecution for their faith, and so the servanthood of Jesus, and the fact that His followers are called servants too, had personal relevance to them.

The most common word in the book of Mark is the conjunction "and".  As a book of action it streams events together in rapid-fire style, using the word "and" to hold the stories together.

In our busy society today, where everyone is fighting to get ahead, the message of the serving Jesus, who always responded immediately to the instructions of the Father, is a wonderful reminder of how we need to live.  May we learn to serve incessantly and respond immediately to the call of our Master.

-from Pastor Chuck Smith from The Word for Today Bible