The Survival of Mark's Gospel: A Good Story?

Abstract

Ever since I began serious NT studies and learned about the hypothetical document Q, I have been intrigued by the questions, Why did the Gospel of survive? Why did it not go the way of Q? Given Matthew's and Luke's incorporation of Mark, and given the nature of the manuscript medium, it ought to have gone the way of Q. Scholars who address the issue believe that Matthew intended his Gospel to replace Mark, and so probably did Luke. Recently, Graham Stanton has argued: When Matthew wrote his Gospel, he did not intend to supplement Mark: his incorporation of most of Mark's Gospel is surely an indication that he intended that his Gospel should replace Mark's, and that it should become the Gospel for Christians of his day. Similarly Luke. Luke's Preface should not be dismissed merely as the evangelist's way of honoring literary convention. There is little doubt that Luke expects that his more complete Gospel will displace his predecessors.1 If Matthew and Luke had had their way and replaced Mark, today we would be debating if a hypothetical Mark ever existed and of what exactly it consisted, and how many strata of development we could discern in it. Instead we have the Gospel of Mark. Why did survive? In this article, I would like to suggest that the Gospel of survived because it was a good story, easily learned from hearing it and easily performed, thus easily transmitted orally.2 These characteristics gave the Gospel widespread popularity. The Gospel itself, I argue, was a development and refinement of an already well-known narrative or narrative framework of Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection. Even after it was committed to writing around 70 C.E., it continued to be performed orally, with minimal dependence on or even connection to manuscripts. In the process of being told and retold orally during the first century or two of Christianity, it became widely known orally to Christians in diverse parts of the empire. I would argue that the reason it has survived to be part of our canon today rather than going the way of Q is because of early orthodox Christians' choice around 150-175 C.E. to give authority not to a single Gospel, nor to a harmonization of the Gospels, but to the fourfold Gospel.3 Furthermore, I suggest that it is only because the Gospel according to was a popular story, widely known orally, that it survived at all and that therefore we have a fourfold, not a threefold, Gospel today. The customary explanations for the survival of the Gospel of have been largely discarded today. Papias's observation that was Peter's interpreter, while quite widespread in the second centuiy, is rejected by many scholars today. The notion of a Roman provenance is also generally rejected in favor of Syria or Galilee.4 Furthermore, even if Papias were correct, that would not in itself account for the Gospel's survival. In the second century some connection to an apostle, such as that provided by Papias, was probably necessary for the Gospel to be included in the fourfold Gospel codex, but it would not be sufficient. Other Gospels (Peter, Thomas) were in circulation and certainly had greater apparent claims to apostolicity. Early in the last century, in part to explain the survival of Mark, B. H. Streeter developed his theory of local texts, that each of the four Gospels became well established in a particular geographical area before the other Gospels became common there (Mark in Rome). He wrote, Again, the survival of would be adequately explained if it had had time to become an established classic in one or more important churches some time before its popularity was threatened by competition with the richer Gospels produced in other centers.5 The theory of local texts, however, has virtually been abandoned by contemporary text critics, as the manuscript and patristic evidence does not seem to support it.6 A new explanation of Mark's survival and inclusion in the fourfold Gospel codex is needed. …