[9] Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of New Testament Greek, pp. 92-95.
[10] In this Gospel only is sin called "lawlessness."
[11] These analyses of the Gospels are not complete, but are arranged with the hope that the readers, by studying all the four, may gain a clearer conception of the life of our Lord.
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CHAPTER IV
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK
[Sidenote: The Author.]
John Mark was the son of a Mary who was an influential member of the Church at Jerusalem, as the Church met in her house (Acts xii. 12). He was a cousin of Barnabas (Col. iv. 10), who had been a man of some property. It has been thought that Mark was the "young man" referred to in the account given by this Gospel of the arrest of Jesus in the garden. To others the incident would probably have appeared insignificant. He lived at Jerusalem during the famine in A.D. 45, and Barnabas took him to Antioch on returning thither from Jerusalem at that time. He accompanied St. Paul and St. Barnabas on St. Paul's first missionary journey, and laboured with them at Salamis in Cyprus. It is possible that Acts xiii. 5 means that John Mark had been a "minister" of the synagogue at Salamis. At any rate, the Greek can be so interpreted. After crossing from Paphos to the mainland of Asia Minor, the missionaries arrived at Perga. Here St. Paul made the great resolve to extend the gospel beyond the Taurus mountains. St. Mark determined to leave him. Perhaps he was not prepared for so magnificent an undertaking as a "work" which included the conversion of the Gentiles (Acts xiv. 27), or for the substitution of the leadership of St. Paul for that of St. Barnabas.
St. Mark returned to Jerusalem, and was again at Antioch about the time of St. Paul's rebuke of St. Peter. Possibly St. Mark followed the example of most of the Jewish Christians at Antioch in inducing St. Peter and St. Barnabas to withdraw from {50} fellowship with the Gentile converts. Whether he did so or not, it is certain that St. Paul refused to take St. Mark with him on his second missionary journey, A.D. 49. St. Barnabas then went home to Cyprus with St. Mark. We hear no more of the future evangelist until A.D. 60, when we find that he is with St. Paul in Rome, and completely reconciled to him. He is the apostle's "fellow-worker" and his "comfort" (Col. iv. 11; Philem. 24). About four years later, St. Paul, in writing shortly before his martyrdom to Timothy, requests him to come to Rome by the shortest route, and to take up Mark on the way, "for he is useful to me for ministering" (2 Tim. iv. 11). The last notice that we have of St. Mark in the New Testament illustrates how complete a harmony had been effected between the expansive theology of St. Paul and the once cramped policy of St. Peter and St. Mark. In his First Epistle St. Peter refers to "Mark, my son," and his words make it certain that the two friends were then together at Babylon, i.e. Rome.
In the 4th century it was widely believed that St. Mark was the founder of Christianity in Alexandria, and the first bishop of the see which was afterwards ruled by St. Athanasius and St. Cyril. It is important to notice that this tradition appears first in Eusebius, and is not mentioned in the extant works of Clement and Origen, the great luminaries of the early Alexandrian Church. But it seems to be too well supported by the great writers of the 4th century for us to regard it as a fabrication. If the tale is true, St. Mark must have brought Christianity to Alexandria either after the death of St. Peter about A.D. 65, or about A.D. 55, in the interval between his separation from St. Paul and his stay with him at Rome.