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Was the Gospel of Mark really the first Gospel written—and when exactly did it happen? In this thrilling episode, Jimmy Akin puts on his detective hat, sifts through the clues, and narrows its writing to a stunningly early date in the A.D. 50s—possibly as early as 53! Using ancient sources, Paul’s letters, and clever detective work, Jimmy pins down the decade Mark became Peter’s interpreter and changed history. Mind-blowing evidence that will shake up what many think they know about the New Testament!
TRANSCRIPT:
Coming Up
The Gospel of Mark is widely regarded by scholars today as the first of the Gospels to be penned.
But when, specifically, did that happen? When was it written?
Let’s get into it!
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Howdy, folks!
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Was Mark First?
For many centuries, it was commonly held that Matthew was the first of the Gospels to be written, and that Mark then abridged Matthew to make it shorter.
This view is known as the Augustinian Hypothesis, since St. Augustine proposed it.
As the author of a book on the Church Fathers, I take the views expressed in early centuries seriously.
In fact, I used to tentatively hold the idea that Matthew wrote first.
But after a careful study of the issue, I was forced to conclude that the Augustinian Hypothesis is incorrect, that Mark wrote first, and then Matthew expanded it.
I explain the reasons I came to this conclusion in Episode 61 of the podcast, so you can check that out for more information.
Mark’s Relationship to Luke
It is widely recognized that Luke—like Matthew—used Mark as one of his sources.
Luke even refers to prior written sources in his prologue, telling his patron Theophilus that “many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us.”
And the fact that Mark was one of those narratives is confirmed by the fact that Luke uses about 55% of the material in Mark. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels, p. 160.
This means that we can place the composition of Mark sometime before that of Luke.
In Episode 63, we saw that there are good reasons to hold that Luke was written around A.D. 59, which would then be the latest possible date for Mark.
However, it is probable that it was written some time before that.
How much before?
Mark’s Life Story
We first meet Mark in Acts 12:12, when Peter visits the house of his mother in Jerusalem while he’s on the lam after being miraculously freed from prison.
This most likely happened between April and September of A.D. 43
In Acts 12:25, Barnabas and Paul take Mark with them when they return from Jerusalem to their home base in Antioch.
This most likely happened in October of A.D. 43.
In the next chapter, in Acts 13:2, the Holy Spirit calls Barnabas and Paul to embark on the First Missionary Journey, and they take Mark with them.
The First Missionary Journey likely began in early A.D. 44.
However, we learn in Acts 15:38, Mark had turned back early in the journey, when they reached Pamphylia on the southern coast of modern Turkey.
Thus when Paul and Barnabas were preparing to set out on the Second Missionary Journey, a dispute arose between them:
Acts 15:37-39
Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark. But Paul thought best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. And there arose a sharp contention, so that they separated from each other; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus.
So Paul and Barnabas actually dissolved their partnership—which had lasted for years at that point—over Mark.
Barnabas no doubt felt protective of Mark, because Mark was his cousin, so he was family.
Barnabas then took Mark on an otherwise unrecorded missionary journey including Barnabas’s native island of Cyprus. “Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus”.
This likely happened in March of A.D. 49.
We know from 1 Peter 5:13 that Mark later formed a close bond with Peter, who refers to him as “my son,” meaning his spiritual son, and who was with him during his ministry in Rome, which Peter calls “Babylon” in this passage.
It’s harder to estimate exactly when 1 Peter was written, but—unlike 2 Peter—it does not show signs of being written close to his death.
A plausible suggestion is that it was written around A.D. 62 or 63.
We also learn that Paul eventually reconciled with Mark. In 2 Timothy 4:11, Paul tells Timothy,
2 Timothy 4:11
Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you; for he is very useful in serving me.
So, even though Paul once dissolved his partnership with Barnabas over Mark, the work Mark did afterward proved his worth, and Paul says he is very useful to him.
2 Timothy was written a number of months before Paul’s death, which likely occurred in A.D. 67.
It likely was written in the summer of A.D. 66. So the two of them had already been reconciled by then.
In fact, we know they were reconciled earlier, because in Colossians 4:10 and Philemon 24, Paul sends greetings on behalf of Mark, indicating that Mark was with Paul when these letters were written. He also says that if Mark comes to you, receive him, and he says that Mark is one of his fellow workers.
Colossians and Philemon were likely written between A.D. 58 and 60, when Paul was under house arrest in Rome.
So we know they had been reconciled by then.
When Was Mark Written?
The part of Mark’s life story that is important for our purposes is the period he spent with Peter.
This is significant because the first century source John the Elder reveals that Mark based his Gospel on Peter’s reminiscences. The Elder is reported to have said:
John the Elder (in Eusebius, Church History 3:39:15)
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. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.
Earlier we saw that Mark was a source that Luke used, so the probable date of Luke—A.D. 59—is the latest possible date for Mark.
What’s the earliest possible date?
Well, if John the Elder is correct that Mark is based on the preaching of Peter—and I think he is—then it had to be after Mark met Peter.
We don’t know when that happened, but it would have been in the A.D. 30s or 40s, because Peter visited the house of Mark’s mother in A.D. 43.
However, Mark was quite young then, and this is not the period in his life that John the Elder is talking about. He says that Mark became the interpreter of Peter and he followed Peter.
That means that Mark’s Gospel is based on Peter’s preaching from a period when Mark was a companion of Peter in ministry.
We do not know when this period began, but the journey that Mark took with Barnabas would have occurred in A.D. 49.
Mark thus likely became a companion of Peter in the 50s.
We next have clear chronological references to Mark in Colossians and Philemon, in the period between A.D. 58 and A.D. 60, when Paul was under house arrest in Rome.
Mark was likely serving as Peter’s interpreter in Rome during this time, and he also re-entered the orbit of Paul.
If we know that Mark didn’t become Peter’s traveling companion until the 50s, and if he had to have written before Luke was published in 59, then this means Mark must have written his Gospel sometime in that decade.
We should thus allow some time (1) for Mark to absorb (or re-absorb) Peter’s preaching after becoming his companion and (2) some time for Mark’s Gospel to come into Luke’s hands and be absorbed by him.
We can therefore estimate that Mark’s Gospel was written sometime in the mid 50s, say around A.D. 55.
This gives us a buffer of a few years for Mark to serve as Peter’s companion and then a few years for Mark’s Gospel to come into Luke’s hands—something that likely happened no later than when Luke arrived in Rome with Paul in A.D. 58.
I thus commonly estimate that Mark was written sometime around A.D. 55.
Even Earlier?
However, it is possible that it could have been written slightly earlier.
There’s a very strange passage in 2 Corinthians 8:16-19, where Paul tells the Corinthians:
2 Corinthians 8:16-19, LEB
Thanks be to God, who has put in the heart of Titus the same devotion on your behalf, because he not only welcomed our request, but being very earnest, by his own choice he went out to you.
And we have sent at the same time with him the brother whose praise in the gospel has become known throughout all the churches. And not only this, but he was also chosen by the churches as our traveling companion together with this [monetary] gift that is being administered by us to the glory of the Lord himself.
Here Paul says he is sending the brother whose praise in the gospel has become known throughout all the churches.
What’s strange about this is that Paul almost always names specific individuals he refers to in his letters. For example, he just mentioned Titus, and as far as I can remember, this is the only occasion where Paul mentions a traveling companion of his without naming him.
What’s going on here?
One of the things a lot of people don’t know about ancient letter writing is that letter writers who had literary aspirations not only sent a copy of what they had written, they also kept a copy for their own archive.
Later, when they published a collection of their letters, it was composed from letters they selected out of their archive.
And we have evidence that this is what Paul did. As David Trobisch points out in his book Paul’s Letter Collection, the evidence points to there being a first edition of Paul’s letters that Paul himself published during his lifetime.
This collection consisted of Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Galatians—or what scholars have called the Hauptbriefe, a German term meaning = Chief Letters.
Later, Paul’s letter collection was expanded after his death by one of his collaborators—perhaps Luke—to give us the Pauline letters we find in the New Testament today.
We can talk about why the evidence suggests this in a future episode.
But what people also don’t commonly know is that when an author published a collection of his letters, he could edited them.
Thus, when Paul published his own letter collection, he may have made small edits to them, and one of those edits could have been the name of someone he’d had a falling out with.
So let’s get back to the brother whose praise is in the gospel. Could that be Mark? After he wrote 2 Corinthians, could Paul have had another falling out with Mark so that he didn’t want to recommend him by name and changed “Mark” to “the brother.”
Well, Mark was known for writing a gospel. And Mark would have been praised for this throughout all the churches.
The churches may have even chosen Mark and encouraged Paul to take him as a traveling companion—perhaps to spread the gospel around the Christian world.
The fact he was chosen by the churches could also indicate some reluctance on Paul’s part to take him.
That would be consistent with Paul’s previous refusal to work with Mark on the Second Missionary Journey.
So perhaps Paul reluctantly took Mark on his current trip, which was the Third Missionary Journey, and then after he wrote 2 Corinthians, he had another falling out with Mark.
He thus didn’t want to recommend Mark by name when he published the first edition of his letter collection, though he and Mark later reconciled, as illustrated by the letters found in later editions of Paul’s letter collection.
If so, what would that say about when the Gospel of Mark was written?
Well, 2 Corinthians was most likely written in late A.D. 54 or early A.D. 55.
So Mark’s Gospel would have had to be written before that.
Since we still need to allow some time for Mark to become Peter’s interpreter and absorb his preaching, we might estimate that Mark was written around A.D. 53 on this theory.
Now, I want to point out that—as interesting as this theory is—I am not convinced.
It is not a standard theory that scholars have devoted much attention to, and you won’t even find it mentioned in most scholarly commentaries on 2 Corinthians.
I think it’s interesting to consider, but there are too many other possibilities for what it means.
Having one’s praise in the gospel does not have to mean that you wrote a gospel. It could mean that you did good work preaching the gospel message of Jesus or that you served the gospel in some other way.
Also, the fact the brother is unnamed doesn’t mean that Paul had a falling out with him. Another possibility is that the churches in Macedonia—the area where Paul was writing from—had not yet chosen the brother they were going to send with Paul.
He knew they were going to pick such a person, but he didn’t yet know who it was, so he just said “the brother” instead of using a name.
I thus think that it’s possible that Mark wrote as early as 53, and that the argument from 2 Corinthians is interesting, but it’s not certain enough for me to alter my estimate.
Conclusion
I thus think that we have good evidence that the Gospel of Mark was written sometime after Mark became the traveling companion of Barnabas in A.D. 49 and before Luke was written in A.D. 59.
That puts Mark sometime in the A.D. 50s, and while the argument from 2 Corinthians is interesting, I don’t think it’s enough to confidently estimate Mark as being written around A.D. 53.
I thus continue to split the decade in half and estimate that Mark was written around A.D 55.
We’ve now estimated the dates when the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts were written.
But what about the Gospels of Matthew and John?
We’ll turn to them in future episodes of the podcast.
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