New Testament · The Gospels
Κατὰ Μᾶρκον
The breathless Gospel, 'immediately,' again and again, to a cross and an empty tomb.
The shortest Gospel, and almost certainly the first. Mark moves at a sprint, using the word immediately more than forty times, with no birth narrative and no genealogy; it begins with a grown man walking out of the desert. The Jesus here is emphatically physical, moved with compassion, sighing, angry, exhausted, and the disciples are consistently slower than everyone else to understand. Two features repay attention. Mark keeps having Jesus tell people to say nothing about him, a pattern scholars call the messianic secret, which builds tension until a Roman centurion at the cross becomes the first human being in the book to name him rightly. And the earliest manuscripts end at 16:8 with women fleeing in terror and saying nothing, which every modern Bible footnotes.
If you remember one thing
The shortest Gospel, told at a run, with immediately as its favorite word. Half the book is the last week, which tells you what Mark thinks the story is about.
“For the Son of Man also came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Mark 10:45
Mark 16:9-20
The earliest manuscripts end at verse 8. Most Bibles print the longer ending with a note, and Christians differ over how to treat it.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Taken young into the Babylonian court, Daniel rose by wisdom and unbending faith, refusing the king's food, reading dreams and the writing on Belshazzar's wall, and emerging unharmed from the lions' den. His later visions map the rise and fall of empires to the end.
The carpenter from Nazareth whom the New Testament proclaims as the Messiah promised to Israel and the Son of God. He taught for roughly three years in Galilee and Judea, was executed under Pontius Pilate, and was raised on the third day. Christians across every tradition confess him as fully God and fully man, the formula the Council of Chalcedon settled on in 451.
A prophet in camel's hair who preached repentance at the Jordan and baptized Jesus. He named himself the voice crying in the wilderness from Isaiah, and was beheaded by Herod Antipas for condemning the king's marriage.
A Galilean fisherman who spoke first and thought later, walked on water and sank, confessed Jesus as the Christ, denied him three times, and was restored on a beach over breakfast. He preached the sermon at Pentecost and opened the door of the church to Gentiles at Cornelius' house.
A fisherman called with his brother James, part of the inner three, and traditionally the author of the fourth Gospel, three letters, and Revelation. The Gospel calls him the disciple Jesus loved and places him at the cross, entrusted with Jesus' mother.
One of the twelve, who kept the money box and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, then threw the money back into the temple and hanged himself. The Gospels report his motives sparingly and do not speculate.
A son of Herod the Great, ruling Galilee through the whole of Jesus' ministry. He imprisoned John the Baptist for condemning his marriage, had him beheaded on the strength of a rash oath at a birthday party, and later heard about Jesus and wanted to see a miracle. When Pilate sent Jesus to him, he got nothing and sent him back.
She held a grudge against John the Baptist for calling her marriage unlawful, and used her daughter's dancing and her husband's oath to get his head on a platter. Mark notes that Herod himself had feared John and liked to listen to him, which makes the manipulation the point.
A wealthy member of the council who had not consented to its decision. He went to Pilate and asked for the body, which took nerve, and buried Jesus in his own new tomb. All four Gospels record it.
He shouted for the Son of David and was told to be quiet, so he shouted louder. Mark records that he threw off his cloak, which for a beggar was the thing he collected coins on, and jumped up. Asked what he wanted, he said he wanted to see.
A Gentile mother who asked Jesus to free her daughter and was answered with a hard saying about not giving the children's bread to the dogs. She took the image and turned it: even the dogs under the table eat the crumbs. It is the only exchange in the Gospels where someone answers Jesus back and is commended for it.
A respected official who fell at Jesus' feet begging for his dying daughter, then had to stand through a delay while a woman in the crowd was healed, and heard while waiting that the girl had died.
A craftsman of Nazareth, betrothed to Mary, who was told in a dream to take her as his wife despite a pregnancy that was not his. He named the child, which in that culture was the act of claiming him as a son, and it is through Joseph that Jesus is legally of David's line.
The apostles the gospels say least about. Andrew, Peter's brother, is the one who keeps bringing people to Jesus: his brother, the boy with the loaves, the Greeks who came asking. Thomas is remembered for one sentence of doubt and forgotten for another, let us also go, that we may die with him.
The fathers, mothers, and relatives named around the Twelve. Zebedee is left in the boat with the hired men when James and John walk away from the family fishing business, a detail Mark includes without comment.
The tax collector called from his booth at Capernaum, on the road running from Damascus to the coast. Mark and Luke call him Levi; Matthew's gospel calls him Matthew and adds the detail that he was a tax collector, which the others leave out of the apostle list.
The priest who gave David the consecrated bread and Goliath's sword, not knowing he was a fugitive. Doeg the Edomite reported it, and Saul had eighty-five priests killed along with the whole town. Only Abiathar escaped.
James son of Zebedee, John's brother, one of the inner three, and the first apostle martyred, killed by Herod Agrippa. James son of Alphaeus, of whom almost nothing is recorded. And James the brother of Jesus, who did not believe during the ministry and became the leader of the Jerusalem church.
A quiz for Mark is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
