Tag: Gospel of Matthew

Was the Gospel of Mark written in Alexandria? (Or Rome? Or Antioch? Or Thessalonica? Or Crete? Or…)

I wasted the entire day yesterday going through Gospel of Mark and a bunch of scholarly texts trying to figure out where the Gospel could have been written. I learned a bunch of not shit. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did learn some things. But I ended up with more questions, which is usually the case when anyone reads Mark.

According to “scholarly consensus”, the Gospel was probably composed in Rome. Why do they think this? Because it was likely addressed to a gentile audience and, according to tradition, “Mark” was a companion to Peter who is presumed to have died in Rome. But as I discussed in my last post regarding the subject, Peter is portrayed as kinda a moron and a coward in Mark, which even if Peter portrayed himself in that light (for whatever reasons) I find it highly unlikely that an author who knew the Apostle would write about him that way. But that’s just one reason (among many) on why I’m not convinced that Mark is based on Peter’s DIRECT recollections. Therefore the Roman/Peter tradition is highly dubious.

Antioch is another serious candidate. Paul was heavily involved in the early church there and Mark, in my view, is heavily influenced by Pauline theology. Because Mark was likely widely distributed to Christian communities around the Mediterranean, and Antioch was the center for a lot of missionary work, this church should probably be considered the leading candidate.

The only issue I found with this is that Antioch is also considered the location where the Gospel of Matthew was written. I suppose it’s possible that both could have been composed there and it’s clear that Matthew was VERY influenced by Mark; apparently over 90% of Mark is in Matthew. But because Matthew seems at odds with Pauline theology, it appears as though his Gospel is a response to Mark’s, which would be odd if they hailed from the same church (unless Christians found Mark to be lacking and/or Pauline theology advanced to such a point in the ten or so years between the writing of these two Gospels that they felt Mark needed amending). With this under consideration, it actually appears as though Mark would have been more likely to have been written in Antioch as opposed to Matthew, but that’s a different story.

Another interesting candidate is North Africa, specifically Alexandria. This thought occurred to me while reading chapter 15, when Mark addresses Simon the Cyrene, who was the father of “Rufus and Alexander”. Who the fuck is Rufus and Alexander and why bring them up at all? There’s been attempts by scholars to link these names to others mentioned in the New Testament, but I should point out that unless you were rich or of nobility, you didn’t have a last name in those days. So just because the name “Rufus” appears in one of Paul’s epistles or in the Book of Acts, that doesn’t mean it’s the same Rufus son of Simon. I find Helen Bond’s explanation far more plausible, that Rufus and Alexander were members of the church that Mark was addressing. And where was Cyrene? That’s in modern day Libya.

Now that doesn’t mean shit in the whole scheme of things, but it did get me to consider the possibility that Mark was written in Alexandria, another center of early Christian activity. So with that hypothesis, it’s my obligation to disprove it. Therefore the obvious question should be: “if Mark was written in Egypt, why wasn’t it written in Coptic like the Gospel of Thomas, which was **possibly** written around the same time?”. Come to find out, Koine Greek (the language Mark was composed in) was widely used in Alexandria. For example, Philo, a first century Jewish philosopher based in Alexandria, wrote in Koine Greek. So the fact that Mark was written in Greek does not pose a problem to my Alexandrian theory. But I ran into another problem: Mark’s Jesus addresses the Pharisees a lot, which, according to Burton Mack, were only located in Judea and nowhere else. Philo, again a contemporary of Jesus, didn’t appear to know that they existed. I don’t find this argument from Mack convincing, but there it is.

Honestly, the best “evidence” for the Alexandrian theory is that the churches in Egypt claim Mark as their founder. Again, this historical Mark didn’t actually write the Gospel of Mark, but…if we squint our eyes…it might be easy to see how early church leaders attributed this gospel to Mark, especially if it came out of Alexandria.

Jesus: Disciple of John the Baptist

According to the two oldest sources on the life of Jesus…the Gospel of Mark and the hypothetical Q Source(s) theoretically preserved in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke…the very first thing that happens is Jesus’s baptism by John the Baptist. The existence of this apocalyptic preacher, often thought of as the forerunner of Jesus, is independently confirmed by Josephus later in the first century.

This has led many scholars to believe that Jesus was a disciple of the Baptizer before starting his own ministry. The baptism by John is also considered one of only two events that nearly every scholar believes actually happened in Jesus’s life (the other being the crucifixion). Reasons for believing this is simple: if followers of Jesus really believed he was god, why would early Christians have included stories that made him appear subservient to John?

However, if the synoptic Gospels are any indication, Jesus’s theology would have differed significantly from John’s. John seemingly advocated for an ascetic lifestyle that lacked any hint of universalism that characterized Jesus’s ministry. At some point, it would appear, there was a philosophical break between John and Jesus, possibly caused by John’s execution by Herod Antipas (an event also recorded by Josephus). This break could have been the impetus for Jesus’s ministry.

In my view, Jesus’s connections to John’s movement would have been too well known for early Christian writers to conceal. Therefore (much like the crucifixion) John the Baptist was integrated into Christian theology…as a “forerunner” to Jesus…to cover up what would have otherwise been an embarrassment.

https://jamestabor.com/was-jesus-a-follower-of-john-the-baptist-an-ancient-hebrew-matthew-offers-new-evidence/

The above link is from biblical scholar James Tabor, formerly of UNC Charlotte. I’ve mentioned previously that I sometimes find him a little gullible, but he usually makes interesting arguments. In the article, looking at a Hebrew translation of the Gospel of Matthew, Tabor observes that Jesus is, in fact, seen as lesser than John the Baptist. While ancient historians did state that Matthew was originally composed in Hebrew, insofar as I am aware, the Gospels that we have today were seemingly written entirely in Greek, meaning that these historians were mistaken in their belief. For this reason, I don’t put too much weight into Tabor’s claims. BUT, I add it here to highlight how early Christianity was far from uniform in its theology. In fact, it would look quite alien compared to contemporary Christianity.