The Gospel of Mark Belongs To Peter

[Ligurian]

What do we have to do to get Mark's name off of Peter's Gospel?

I already read what Clement said years ago, so I knew Mark got that Gospel called Mark directly from Peter. Peter is the real author.

This website quotes even more sources, and proves without the shadow of a doubt that Mark was just a scribe.

"The authorship of the Gospels is a matter of considerable debate amongst skeptics and critics of the New Testament canon. Mark’s Gospel is an early record of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, but Mark isn’t mentioned as an eyewitness in any of the Gospel accounts. How did Mark get his information about Jesus? There are several historical clues:

Papias said Mark scribed Peter’s teachings
Bishop Papias of Hierapolis (60-130AD) repeated the testimony of the old presbyters (disciples of the Apostles) who claimed Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome as he scribed the preaching of Peter (Ecclesiastical History Book 2 Chapter 15, Book 3 Chapter 30 and Book 6 Chapter 14). Papias wrote a five volume work entitled, “Interpretation of the Oracles of the Lord”. In this treatise (which no longer exists), he quoted someone he identified as ‘the elder’, (most likely John the elder), a man who held considerable authority in Asia:

“And the elder used to say this, Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had followed him, but later on, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.”

Irenaeus said Mark wrote his Gospel from Peter’s teaching
In his book, “Against Heresies” (Book 3 Chapter 1), Irenaeus (130-200AD) also reported Mark penned his Gospel as a scribe for Peter, adding the following detail:

“Matthew composed his gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul proclaimed the gospel in Rome and founded the community. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, handed on his preaching to us in written form”

Justin identified Mark’s Gospel with Peter
Early Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, wrote “Dialogue with Trypho” (approximately 150AD) and included this interesting passage:

“It is said that he [Jesus] changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter; and it is written in his memoirs that he changed the names of others, two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder’….”

Justin, therefore, identified a particular Gospel as the ‘memoir’ of Peter and said this memoir described the sons of Zebedee as the ‘sons of thunder’. Only Mark’s Gospel describes John and James in this way, so it is reasonable to assume that the Gospel of Mark is the memoir of Peter. ..."

Is Mark’s Gospel an Early Memoir of the Apostle Peter? | Cold Case Christianity

 

[public hermit]

What do we have to do to get Mark's name off of Peter's Gospel?

Perhaps it's best to leave it the way it is since Mark compiled it. Yes, it was Peter's teachings that he compiled, but as Papias indicates it was Mark who put it together giving it a final form not necessarily in order. This might give some insight into the discrepancies between the synoptics and John (assuming Markan priority), such as the when the cleansing of the temple occurred. If Mark is compiling, perhaps he put it in the wrong place (towards the end of Jesus ministry), which Matthew and Luke followed? At any rate, isn't it enough to know Mark was compiling Peter? What is changing the name of the gospel going to do?

 

[Pavel Mosko]

The Coptic Church, the Church that saint Mark founded would have a lot of problem with that! Even though, I noticed reading more on this subject that the Church gives Peter a lot of credit for the Gospel.


The imprint of St. Peter's mind can be found everywhere in the gospel. The gospel begins its narrative exactly where Peter could give his own recollections—the preaching of the Baptist and the calling of Andrew and himself.3 The healing of St. Peter's mother-in-law is mentioned quite early.4 On the Mount of Transfiguration, when St. Peter had offered to erect three tabernacles, we have the very personal detail that "he knew not what he said."5 He gives a detailed account of St. Peter's denials, and—alone among the Evangelists—records that St. Peter "warmed himself at the fire"6 and that the [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] crew twice.7 Conversely, St. Peter's humility is evident in the Gospel's omission of the blessing our Lord bestowed on him, "You are Peter, and on this rock will I build My church," while recording the following rebuke, "Get behind me Satan.8

In accordance with St. Peter's nature, the gospel story's movement is quick and impetuous. It does not take the time to dwell on long conversations as in St. John,9 or extended sermons as in St. Matthew,10 or complex parables as in St. Luke.11 St. Mark instead unrolls the public life of our Lord in a series of striking acts that give his gospel the sense of a rapid and dramatic play. The rapidity is helped by St. Mark's favorite connector, "immediately".12 Rather than delving into the depths of Christ's mind, he prefers to remain on the exterior (leaving the interior to be worked out fully by St. John several decades later), especially reporting the miracles He performed, which constantly struck the multitudes with a sense of trembling and awe.13


But saint Mark is the composer, and it bares some of his personality like his attention to detail.

The Gospel of Mark - Jesus Christ the Son of Man – Literature – Resources


Besides that this I believe is the work or Providence as far as giving Mark the honor (Peter gets a lot of attention in the Gospels and in later Christianity).

1 Corinthians 12:24, KJV: "For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked:"

I believe saint Mark got the credit for his important and underrated work as a scribe from the Christian tradition. That work is important too, extroverted preachers should not hog up all the credit and glory.

 

[Ligurian]

Perhaps it's best to leave it the way it is since Mark compiled it. Yes, it was Peter's teachings that he compiled, but as Papias indicates it was Mark who put it together giving it a final form not necessarily in order. This might give some insight into the discrepancies between the synoptics and John (assuming Markan priority), such as the when the cleansing of the temple occurred. If Mark is compiling, perhaps he put it in the wrong place (towards the end of Jesus ministry), which Matthew and Luke followed? At any rate, isn't it enough to know Mark was compiling Peter? What is changing the name of the gospel going to do?

Jesus says that we will believe on Him by the words of those men given to Him by the Father. Peter is one of these men, Mark isn't.

John 17:4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest Me to do. 6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me; and they have kept Thy word. 20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; 21 That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, [art] in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.

John 21:17 ... Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep.
18 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry [thee] whither thou wouldest not. 19 This spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me.

This is literally the Gospel of Peter, and proves Jesus' prophecy that Peter would be faithful and feed Jesus' sheep.

 

[Ligurian]

the Church gives Peter a lot of credit for the Gospel.

Is Mark’s Gospel an Early Memoir of the Apostle Peter? | Cold Case Christianity

"Clement said Mark recorded Peter’s Roman preaching
Clement of Alexandria (150-215AD) wrote a book entitled “Hypotyposeis” (Ecclesiastical History Book 2 Chapter 15). In this ancient book, Clement refers to a tradition handed down from the “elders from the beginning”:

“And so great a joy of light shone upon the minds of the hearers of Peter that they were not satisfied with merely a single hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine gospel, but with all sorts of entreaties they besought Mark, who was a follower of Peter and whose gospel is extant, to leave behind with them in writing a record of the teaching passed on to them orally; and they did not cease until they had prevailed upon the man and so became responsible for the Scripture for reading in the churches.”

Eusebius also wrote an additional detail (Ecclesiastical History Book 6 Chapter 14) related to Mark’s work with Peter:

“The Gospel according to Mark had this occasion. As Peter had preached the Word publicly at Rome, and declared the Gospel by the Spirit, many who were present requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to those who had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly forbade nor encouraged it.”

This additional piece of information related to Peter’s reaction to Mark’s work is important, because it demonstrates that Clement is not simply repeating the information first established by Papias, but seems to have an additional source that provided him with something more, and something slightly different than Papias.

Tertullian affirmed Peter’s influence on the Gospel of Mark
Early Christian theologian and apologist, Tertullian (160-225AD), wrote a book that refuted the theology and authority of Marcion. The book was appropriately called, “Against Marcion” and in Book 4 Chapter 5, he described the Gospel of Mark:

“While that [gospel] which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s whose interpreter Mark was.”

The Muratorian Fragment confirmed Mark’s relationship to Peter
The Muratorian Fragment is the oldest known list of New Testament books. Commonly dated to approximately 170AD, the first line reads:

“But he was present among them, and so he put [the facts down in his Gospel]”

This appears to be a reference to Mark’s presence at Peter’s talks and sermons in Rome, and the fact that he then recorded these messages then became the Gospel of Mark.

Origen attributed Mark’s Gospel to Peter
Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History Book 6 Chapter 25) quoted a Gospel Commentary written by Origen (an early church father and theologian who lived 185-254AD) that explains the origin of the Gospels. This commentary also attributes the Gospel of Mark to Peter:

“In his first book on Matthew’s Gospel, maintaining the Canon of the Church, he testifies that he knows only four Gospels, writing as follows: Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew language. The second is by Mark, who composed it according to the instructions of Peter, who in his Catholic epistle acknowledges him as a son, saying, ‘The church that is at Babylon elected together with you, salutes you, and so does Marcus, my son.’ 1 Peter 5:13 And the third by Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, and composed for Gentile converts. Last of all that by John.”

An Anti-Marcionite Prologue affirmed Peter’s connection to Mark
There are three Gospel ‘prologues’ that appear in many Latin Bibles from antiquity. Known as the “Anti-Marcionite Prologues”, they date to the 4th century or earlier. The prologue for the Gospel of Mark is particularly interesting:

“Mark declared, who is called ‘stump-fingered,’ because he had rather small fingers in comparison with the stature of the rest of his body. He was the interpreter of Peter. After the death of Peter himself he wrote down this same gospel in the regions of Italy.”

Is Mark’s Gospel an Early Memoir of the Apostle Peter? | Cold Case Christianity

Why did Mark get credit for scribing?
The Gospel according to Peter.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Why did Mark get credit for scribing?
The Gospel according to Peter.

1) Because there was no modern "ghost writing" back them, nor did they have modern notions of copy right (and even if they had that would not have mattered to the Christians of the day).


2) Because Peter did not write it or did he dictate it. He also did not he even translate it into Greek, Mark did all that. In fact the only thing Peter did was supply some raw quotes and stories, while it was up to Mark to record them, and compose and edit it all into one cogent narrative.


3) Besides the above the Gospel also includes some details that are unique to Mark's point of view especially when Peter denied Christ and was hiding.

 

[Ligurian]

Because Peter did not write it or did he dictate it. He also did not he even translate it into Greek, Mark did all that. In fact the only thing Peter did was supply some raw quotes and stories, while it was up to Mark to record them, and compose and edit it all into one cogent narrative.

Should we assume that intellectual theft is OK by you as well? Doesn't matter what's legal when. It's the right or wrong of the thing, period. These personal conversations belong to Jesus and the Apostles His Father gave Him. They don't belong to people Jesus never knew... your ridiculous inference aside.
If someone made a tape-recording of your 'bestest day ever' and sold it on Amazon, wouldn't you be a little peeved?
Or would you just say (yawn) up to them to record it, edit it blah blah blah... if so, you're the sucker that's born every minute.
Intellectual Theft: Everything You Need to Know

After all, Mark sat in the sun for a good 20 minutes furiously scribing away. Peter only lived and breathed with Jesus 24/7 for 3 1/2 years after Jesus chose him from Galilee. Mark gets all the credit because he wrote it down... doesn't matter that Mark might've been struggling to write a bad sonnet on a good day... all those papyrus cuts definitely earned him a place in the hallowed halls of Christendom, and dragged his anonymous-pseudo-self into the light of Peter's Gospel.

“While that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s whose interpreter Mark was.”--Tertullian, Against Marcion

 

[Strong in Him]

What do we have to do to get Mark's name off of Peter's Gospel?

Nothing - that would mean tampering with the Bible.

I don't think there are many who dispute that Peter was the source of Mark's information; but Mark wrote it all down and compiled the Gospel. To call it the Gospel of Peter would confuse it with another book of that name which was not considered to be authentic and is not in the canon of Scripture.

 

[The Liturgist]

Jesus says that we will believe on Him by the words of those men given to Him by the Father. Peter is one of these men, Mark isn't.

Actually St. Mark is; according to the same tradition you are following that declares Mark as having based his Gospel on a narrative of Peter, he was not one of the Twelve, but he was a member of the supporting community of close followers, more than that, even; he is traditionally counted among the Seventy, along with the other New Testament authors.

And, what is more, indicates that the Cenacle was more likely than not the upper room in the Jerusalem house of St. Mark, and that Mark delivered water to the house for the last supper.

There are two possible locations in Jerusalem for the Cenacle; one is a gothic structure built by the Crusaders, and is disputed with the Jews who claim it is the tomb of King David. The other, more probable location, is a much smaller building, a tiny monastery built or rebuilt centuries earlier by what is now the Syriac Orthodox Church. But regardless of what building you think occupies the site of St. Mark’s house, the tradition is clear, that the Cenacle, the Upper Room where the first Eucharist happened, where our Lord broke bread with His disciples, and probably the site of his post-Resurrection dinner with them in The Gospel According to Luke, and also the place where the tongues of fire descended on the Apostles at Pentecost.

Here you can see a Syriac Orthodox eucharist being celebrated in the Upper Room in what I believe is probably Mark’s house, with refurbishments beginning most likely around the time St. Helena started her project of restoring the city:

It is easy to picture that space configured as a first century dining room, with either a triclinium, which we know our Lord made use of when invited to various dinners, or another configuration. The size is just right, and I strongly believe Providence would support the survival for Christians of such a sacred place.

John 17:4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest Me to do. 6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me; and they have kept Thy word. 20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word; 21 That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, [art] in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.

John 21:17 ... Jesus saith unto him, Feed My sheep.
18 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry [thee] whither thou wouldest not. 19 This spake He, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me.

This is literally the Gospel of Peter,

No, its not literally the Gospel of Peter, for three reasons:

1. For it to literally be the Gospel of Peter, Peter would have had to write or dictate it word for word; his epistles and responsibilities in the church give me strong reason to believe that by the gift of the Holy Spirit, St. Peter became literate, but regardless, he did dictate two epistles, but not the Gospel according to Mark. Rather, the Gospel according to Mark can be asserted via higher criticism to be the work of another author, as it is stylistically quite different, and I would say more fluid and somewhat more elegant, than the Petrine epistles. Indeed, if it were not for the tradition that it was based on the narrative account of Peter, we would not be having this conversation, and a great many scholars do reject that tradition. But if we are going to accept the tradition of the early church, in a manner faithful to reason, tradition and experience (the Wesleyan quadrilateral, which also encompasses the Anglican “Scripture, Tradition, Reason” approach), then there is no basis, either in the scriptures, tradition or rational evaluation in light of the experience of the church for assigning Petrine authorship to a Gospel which does not stylistically resemble the epistles definitely attributed to St. Peter.

2. The early church uncontroversially attributed this Gospel to St. Mark, and 1 Peter to St. Peter. There was some question over the authenticity of 2 Peter, but this was resolved in the fourth century when St. Athanasius of Alexandria, the champion of Christianity against the Arians at the Council of Nicea in 325, and for the rest of his life, the defender of the Christian faith against Arianism, which had become the religion of Emperor Constantine’s successors until Emperor Theodosius, promulgated in a letter to the bishops of the Church of Alexandria, of which he was archbishop, our 27 book New Testament canon, which he effectively defined in a manner that satisfied the church, that excluded or deprecated some books like the Shepherd of Hermas and 1 Barnabas, and included others which were controversial among some church fathers, but have since become vital portions of the canon, like Hebrews and Revelations. Since that same set of early ecclesiastical histories, synaxaria, and hagiography is the source for the tradition that Mark’s Gospel was primarily derived from Peter’s account (of course, the similarities between the three synoptic Gospels and in particular the fact that most unique material is either in the Gospels according to Luke or Matthew, and relatively little is in Mark, indicates there was a shared narrative and probable secondary sources, such as the “Q source”, a lost Aramaic Gospel of the Hebrews also attributed to St. Matthew, and a possible “Sayings Gospel”, which could be (albeit with arguable Gnostic corruptions), the Gospel of Thomas*

3. There actually is a fragmentary, and probably psuedepigraphic, Gospel According to Peter, which the early church was suspicious of; the fragment we have was found by archaeologists reverently buried with the body of a 9th century Coptic monk, and contains a lucid account of the Passion, which is extremely comprehensive and contains most of the traditions associated with the event, followed by a strange depiction of the scenario of the Empty Tomb. Given that the early church tended to regard this Gospel as spurious, and it was later condemned by Pope Gelasius in 493, one would expect even more so that if there were an actual Gospel the authorship of which could be attributed to Peter, the church would have made note of that in the context of this probably spurious gospel.

So, I don’t think you’re quite grasping the concept of literal and of authorship. We can plainly tell, because like Saints Paul, Luke, John and the other New Testament authors, Peter has a style, that he did not dictate word for word the Gospel According to Mark. Rather, its a bit like if you interviewed someone, and had them recount a historical event, and then based on those interviews, and one would expect, some cross referencing with other reliable sources, and you wrote a historical account of the event, you would be the author. According to tradition, the same one you are basing this entire thread on, that is what happened.

Also, for that matter, there is even more compelling evidence that Luke’s Gospel and Acts were based on the narratives of the Apostle Paul. If Saint Paul , who was not one of the twelve and was not a direct participant in the events in the Gospel according to Luke, if we applied what seems to be your approach to higher criticism, the authorship of that Gospel would be even more problematic.

and proves Jesus' prophecy that Peter would be faithful and feed Jesus' sheep.

What makes you think that to feed the sheep of our Lord, Saint Peter would have to personally dictate or inscribe every word of a Gospel? Let’s consider for a moment the numerous other things he did which were vital for the early church:

• He provided servant leadership for the Apostles.
• He was instrumental in facilitating the acceptance of Saint Paul after the conversion experience of the former persecutor Saul on the Road to Damascus.
• At the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, he was instrumental in facilitating what Lutherans would call concord, and what Russian Orthodox would call Sobornost, and what many of us might call consensus or conciliarity or even reconciliation, between the Jewish Christians associated with St. James the Just, the bishop of Jerusalem and the brother of our Lord**, and the burgeoning apostolate of St. Paul to the Gentiles, namely establishing that gentiles did not have to convert to Judaism to become Christians (this also doubtless aided St. Thomas the Apostle in his evangelism in Mesopotamia and in India, where he was martyred in 53 AD, which gave us the Church of the East which has a mix of gentile and Jewish descent).
• Additionally, St. Peter was the first bishop of the Church of Antioch, the city whose denizens coined the term Christian, and the mother church of the Church of the East, the Church of Armenia, and the Church of Georgia, and which until Constantine was one of the three main autocephalous churches after the Roman devastation of Jerusalem in 130 AD, the others being the Church of Rome, which he was also the first bishop of, and where he was crucified, and the Church of Alexandria, whose first bishop was Peter’s protege Mark. For this reason, these three churches are called, in the history of the early church, the “Petrine Sees.” In the fourth century, they were joined by Constantinople and the rebuilt Jerusalem, forming the Pentarchy, the five main autocephalous, self-governing churches that functioned by consent until the Great Schism of 1054 (the Church of Cyprus was also always autocephalous and autonomous, but not politically important).
• To the same extent that Peter sought to include and accept Paul once he became convinced of the repentant and regenerated Apostle’s sincerity, he also was responsible for keeping the charlatan Simon Magus, who tried to buy his way into the church for pecuniary gain, out, and then according to the same traditions this thread is leaning on, opposed the imposture of Simon Magus and his fake church/heretical proto-Gnostic cult, at every turn, and this is what, according to some sources, led to him leaving Antioch for Rome, because Simon Magus was trying to pass himself off as an apostle to that city.
  
• Also, most obviously, the commandment to “feed my sheep” while addressed to Peter as the fallible but loving servant-leader of the twelve, was clearly intended for all Apostles, and the Bishops and Presbyters and indeed even the Deacons, they ordained. It is a commandment to provide pastoral care, to be Pastors, to the congregation of the Lord, to love them, to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to catechize, to read the Scriptures and preach the Gospel, and most importantly, to nourish them with the body and blood of our Lord given for the remission of sins and life everlasting, while caring for the widows, the sick, those held captive, and burying the deceased, and additionally, propagating the faith by preaching the Gospel and converting people to Christianity, all of which amounts to a very full time job, which would have been impossible without the intervention of God in the indwelling person of the Holy Spirit, assisting the Apostles together with the heavenly host of angels.

On this last point, I propose that if an alternate attribution is to be given to the author of any New Testament or Old Testament scripture, it should be the Holy Spirit; while I do not believe that God dictated every word, I do believe the Bible is the divinely inspired written word of God, which prophesies, describes and interprets the Incarnation of the Word, in the person of Jesus Christ, and is the central record and repository of the revelation God has given us, culminating in the Gospel, that by believing in Jesus Christ, we can be resurrected unto everlasting life.

*not to be confused with the disturbing and more blatantly Gnostic and fraudulent Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which was attributed not to St. Thomas the Apostle, but to one of the third century Persian heresiarch Mani’s three disciples, who he named Thomas, Hermes and Buddha, and sent to Syria, Alexandria and India, respectively, to promote his Manichaean religion, which along with Arianism became one of the two main enemies of the Christian faith before the rise of Islam.

** Technically the son of Alfeus, so first cousin, but that was brethren in the first century.

 

[The Liturgist]

Perhaps it's best to leave it the way it is since Mark compiled it. Yes, it was Peter's teachings that he compiled, but as Papias indicates it was Mark who put it together giving it a final form not necessarily in order. This might give some insight into the discrepancies between the synoptics and John (assuming Markan priority), such as the when the cleansing of the temple occurred. If Mark is compiling, perhaps he put it in the wrong place (towards the end of Jesus ministry), which Matthew and Luke followed? At any rate, isn't it enough to know Mark was compiling Peter? What is changing the name of the gospel going to do?

That’s also extremely valid.

 

[The Liturgist]

Nothing - that would mean tampering with the Bible.
.

This is another key point, insofar as if we accept scripture as inspired, to a certain extent, the titles of the books, although some books (not many) have variant titles (Revelations is also called the Apocalypse of St. John or the Apocalypse, in the Septuagint some books are ordered differently, and 1 and 2 Samuel are 1 and 2 Kingdoms, and 1 and 2 Kingdoms are 3 and 4 Kingdoms), these variations are not semantically relevant to the content but are descriptive, and the integrity of the Bible would be compromised if we simply began randomly renaming things.

And also, suppose, hypothetically, that we someday find a complete Gospel According to Peter, and it stylistically aligns with his Epistles, and the slightly weird aspects of the Empty Tomb sequence are reconciled, and it turns out to be a book which was erroneously removed from scripture. I do not believe this to be the case; I regard the Athanasian canon as inspired (although the apocrypha, even some of the most Gnostic apocrypha, is still interesting to read, if approached correctly, and the Greek Orthodox scholar Metropolitan Kallistos Ware even quoted from some of it in his splendid, intimate theological study of Eastern Orthodox beliefs, The Orthodox Way), if we renamed the Gospel of Mark, that would cause confusion.

And as I have argued, there is no point, because the tradition that says St. Mark based his account on the teaching of St. Peter and that St. Luke based his account on the teaching of St. Paul does not say that Peter or Paul dictated the works to Mark or Luke.

And frankly, there is no evidence of that, because the literary style of the Evangelists Mark and Luke is so different from that of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and is frankly better. I believe that Peter and Paul delegated the task of writing down the Gospel, which was known to the apostles and verbally expounded by them, to Mark and Luke, due to their superior literary ability and also due to a lack of time owing to their extremely busy schedule. If the Gospel According to Thomas is either authentic or a corruption of an authentic document (I suspect the latter), the fact that it consists only of sayings of our Lord is telling, since in terms of their Apostolates, the four busiest* apostles appear to have been Peter, Paul, Thomas and John, and of these four, only St. John the Beloved Disciple, who was also the youngest of the twelve, a boy, according to many Patristic interpretations, at the time of the crucifixion, was the only one to write a Gospel, and other books, and one must consider that a key factor in him having the time to do all this is that he alone of the Twelve was not martyred, but he was exiled to Patmos, where he experienced and then recorded the apocalyptic Revelation.

* This is not to imply the other apostles were lazy; and indeed there is some evidence that St. Andrew had considerable success in parts of Greece and Turkey, but in many cases, the apostles were killed before they were able to establish the kind of ecclesiastical infrastructure that Peter, Paul, John and Thomas organized; for example, St. Bartholomew received the crown of martyrdom when he was skinned while planting the seeds of faith in Armenia, which would blossom three centuries later, and St. James the Great was martyred in Jerusalem, not long after St. Stephen the Deacon received the crown of becoming the first martyr. So in his case, he never made it into the mission field, but St. James through his martyrdom demonstrated theosis among the faithful Apostles who had received the Holy Spirit, and through his glorious martyrdom** St. James the Son of Zebedee has converted many millions since the first century, and continues to inspire faith to this day.

** As an aside, we Christians must fight the perversion of the word martyrdom and glorious martyrdom by Islamic terrorists. A martyr is someone who is killed, murdered or executed basically, for their beliefs; a soldier who dies in combat or a suicide bomber is not a martyr, although a soldier can still be a hero and worthy of extreme admiration, but there is still an obvious distinction. I realize I am likely preaching to the choir on this point, but when homicide bombers are lauded as holy martyrs by Islamic fundamentalists, and the news media picks it up and runs it as a story, I just find the whole thing extremely offensive.

 

[dqhall]

What do we have to do to get Mark's name off of Peter's Gospel?

I already read what Clement said years ago, so I knew Mark got that Gospel called Mark directly from Peter. Peter is the real author.

This website quotes even more sources, and proves without the shadow of a doubt that Mark was just a scribe.

"The authorship of the Gospels is a matter of considerable debate amongst skeptics and critics of the New Testament canon. Mark’s Gospel is an early record of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, but Mark isn’t mentioned as an eyewitness in any of the Gospel accounts. How did Mark get his information about Jesus? There are several historical clues:

Papias said Mark scribed Peter’s teachings
Bishop Papias of Hierapolis (60-130AD) repeated the testimony of the old presbyters (disciples of the Apostles) who claimed Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome as he scribed the preaching of Peter (Ecclesiastical History Book 2 Chapter 15, Book 3 Chapter 30 and Book 6 Chapter 14). Papias wrote a five volume work entitled, “Interpretation of the Oracles of the Lord”. In this treatise (which no longer exists), he quoted someone he identified as ‘the elder’, (most likely John the elder), a man who held considerable authority in Asia:

“And the elder used to say this, Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had followed him, but later on, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.”

Irenaeus said Mark wrote his Gospel from Peter’s teaching
In his book, “Against Heresies” (Book 3 Chapter 1), Irenaeus (130-200AD) also reported Mark penned his Gospel as a scribe for Peter, adding the following detail:

“Matthew composed his gospel among the Hebrews in their own language, while Peter and Paul proclaimed the gospel in Rome and founded the community. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, handed on his preaching to us in written form”

Justin identified Mark’s Gospel with Peter
Early Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, wrote “Dialogue with Trypho” (approximately 150AD) and included this interesting passage:

“It is said that he [Jesus] changed the name of one of the apostles to Peter; and it is written in his memoirs that he changed the names of others, two brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder’….”

Justin, therefore, identified a particular Gospel as the ‘memoir’ of Peter and said this memoir described the sons of Zebedee as the ‘sons of thunder’. Only Mark’s Gospel describes John and James in this way, so it is reasonable to assume that the Gospel of Mark is the memoir of Peter. ..."

Is Mark’s Gospel an Early Memoir of the Apostle Peter? | Cold Case Christianity

Where did Peter get his Gospel from? Jesus is the source most often quoted by the Gospel writers. Mark wrote these things down and transmitted them to believers who passed them on too. How are Matthew, Mark and Luke similar? John wrote an original Gospel. He is not Peter.

 

[The Liturgist]

Should we assume that intellectual theft is OK by you as well? Doesn't matter what's legal when. It's the right or wrong of the thing, period. These personal conversations belong to Jesus and the Apostles His Father gave Him. They don't belong to people Jesus never knew... your ridiculous inference aside.
If someone made a tape-recording of your 'bestest day ever' and sold it on Amazon, wouldn't you be a little peeved?
Or would you just say (yawn) up to them to record it, edit it blah blah blah... if so, you're the sucker that's born every minute.
Intellectual Theft: Everything You Need to Know

After all, Mark sat in the sun for a good 20 minutes furiously scribing away. Peter only lived and breathed with Jesus 24/7 for 3 1/2 years after Jesus chose him from Galilee. Mark gets all the credit because he wrote it down... doesn't matter that Mark might've been struggling to write a bad sonnet on a good day... all those papyrus cuts definitely earned him a place in the hallowed halls of Christendom, and dragged his anonymous-pseudo-self into the light of Peter's Gospel.

“While that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s whose interpreter Mark was.”--Tertullian, Against Marcion

So I think it is really a stretch, and a disservice to both St. Peter and St. Mark, who was by all accounts among his closest disciples, with a relationship similar to that St. Paul had with Barnabas, Titus and Luke, to go so far as to suggest theft of intellectual property. We know from the style of the writing that Peter did not dictate it; the Gospel of Mark is devoid of Peter’s at times very challenging syntax, such as “No prophecy is of any private interpretation,” which has also been rendered in the Peshitta and translated into English and then expatiated in the Murdoch translation as “No prophecy is an exposition of itself.” Likewise, Luke, whose Gospel was based on the accounts of the Apostle Paul, wrote in a fluid manner, with a narrative momentum, something which St. Paul, while obviously a gifted preacher, appears to have lacked the talent for. The Petrine and Pauline epistles, while critical to the Christian faith, indeed, all of the Epistles, with the exception I would argue of the Epistles of James, the Epistle to the Hebrews*, and the Epistles of John**, which make respectively, make their point succinctly, and are stylistically elegant in the case of John and especially Hebrews, are not as well written as the four Gospels, Revelations, and Acts, which are sublime literary masterpieces in their own right. This is partially because the epistles are correspondence, which seldom attains or seeks to attain the literary prowess of integral narrative works, but when we consider the beauty of the Gospel of Mark and its immense subtlety (particularly with the shorter ending), has caused many Christians to select that Gospel as their favorite. Also in recent years it has become a favorite for purposes of evangelization.

It should also be noted that the concept of intellectual theft as we now know it, or intellectual property, did not really exist as such in antiquity. One reason why there are so many psuedepigraphical works from antiquity is that authors, for reasons of modesty, would attribute their writings to someone from history they admired, which is why we have in the Bible books like the Wisdom of Solomon, which Solomon probably didn’t write, and in the realm of New Testament apocrypha, the Odes of Solomon, which he almost certainly did not write. And then we have the very important writings of a fifth century theologian who, out of modesty, wrote under the name of St. Dionysius the Aereopagite, who St. Paul converted to Christianity and who was the first leader of the Christians in Athens. However, he almost certainly did not write the works attributed to him, which have been dated, based on their content, to the fifth century, insofar as they are responses to the theological content thereof.

There are some examples of apparent psuedepigrapha, which is nonetheless clearly divinely inspired, in the Gospels themselves. In Mark, we have the longer ending, Mark 16:9-16, which is important, but is missing from the early manuscripts and lacks the stylistic elegance of the rest of the text. However, I have no doubt as to its inspiration.

Likewise, and even more startling, something most people who have not had a theological education at a good seminary or who are profoundly autodidactic, have even heard of, and that is the scholarly consensus that, again, based on manuscript history and other factors, the pericope in the Gospel of John concerning the woman who was to be stoned for adultery, where our Lord said “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” is as far as we can tell, an interpolation. It is undeniably inspired; I think it is one of the most important and widely accepted teachings of Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and incarnate Word of God, and it was not evidently part of the original Gospel According to John, based on manuscript evidence and other factors. Where did it come from? Did St. John, or someone else, write it? And who inserted it into the Gospel According to John? Whatever the answer, it did not concern the church then, and it does not trouble me now, because whatever happened was clearly the providence of the Holy Spirit. Like I said earlier, if anyone other than the attributed authors deserves credit, it is God the Holy Spirit. We also have numerous other cases like this; for example, the Pentateuch is commonly attributed to Moses, but in Deuteronomy, the death of Moses is described, which indicates at least one other author. Additionally, the narrative of these books, which the Jews group together as the Torah, flows seamlessly into a sixth book, the Book of Joshua.

And in the New Testament, we even have an epistle the authorship of which is unknown, that being Hebrews. This epistle is commonly attributed to Paul, but internally lacks such attribution; the content is Pauline, but stylistically it is much more elegant, and conceptually concise, than the somewhat meandering train of thought that characterizes the Pauline epistles (an eccentricity I find humanizing and endearing). Some people say that this is because Paul originally wrote it in Hebrew (by which one assumes they mean Second Temple Judean Aramaic, because Hebrew was a dead language in the mid first century, used only in the synagogue, and then alongside Aramaic, and this had been the case for such a long time that portions of the Old Testament, such as the Book of Daniel, are written in Aramaic, and many common “Hebrew” phrases, like Bar Mitzvah, are actually Aramaic (Bar means son in Aramaic, whereas in Hebrew the equivalent is Ben), and while Hebrew originally had its own writing system, a related form of which is still used by the Samaritans, Hebrew, used as a liturgical and scholarly language like Latin until revived very recently as a vernacular tongue in Israel, has been written for the past 25 centuries in Imperial Aramaic script, outlasting the empire that originally devised those letters by a considerable margin). However, we know this is not the case; text translated from Aramaic into Greek can easily be identified by philologists, and vice versa, and it has been shown that the entire New Testament was originally written in Greek, although there is an Aramaic substrate, in that the authors are paraphrasing in Greek conversations that happened in Aramaic, and sometimes an Aramaic phrase is present (for example, anathema). So who wrote Hebrews is something of a mystery, but since it is obviously inspired, and offers important insight on essential Christian theological themes.

However, the bishops of antiquity were far more concerned about the provenance of Hebrews than they were about the Longer Ending of Mark, or the Adultery Pericope in the Gospel according to John. And for this reason, it nearly did not make the final canonical cut, but was one of several controversial books who St. Athanasius, who was, by the way, the most illustrious Bishop of Alexandria since St. Mark, included it in his canon list for the New Testament, which was the list which proved definitive, to the point that even Martin Luther, as popular and influential as he was, was not able to delete Hebrews, Jude, James and Revelations from the canon (so he did the next best thing he could think of and put them at the back of the book, which in the case of Revelations actually works extremely well, because the Bible as an integral whole really works beautifully if it opens with Genesis and concludes with the Revelations, the account of the Apocalypse by St. John the Beloved Disciple).

I am of the view that just as Christ is head of the Church, God also works in the person of the Holy Spirit to protect the sacred scripture, by causing potentially deleterious modifications such as the reordering of the New Testament books by Martin Luther, to not cause harm, but actually be beneficial.

But returning again to St. Mark, even bearing in mind, as I have shown, that intellectual property wasn’t really a thing in the first century (except impersonation), I don’t understand why you dislike him to the point where you are accusing someone chosen by St. Peter as a disciple, and entrusted with composing a Gospel, which is probably the oldest written Gospel still in use and in continuous use (the Gospel according to Thomas, if it is authentic, and if it has not been adulterated with Gnostic content, was still lost for over a millennium until its accidental discovery by Bedouins at Nag Hammadi in the late 1940s, and the Gospel of the Hebrews has been lost for I think 1400 years or so, with only a few fragments surviving as quotations in Patristic writings), and therefore quite possibly the first written Gospel, which would have prompted Matthew, Luke and eventually John, to write their own accounts to include additional information Mark omitted, concerning the details of the Nativity, the Resurrection, and in the case of John, questions of Theology and Christology on an advanced level, of what would amount to a grave sin of moral turpitude.

I would lastly note that of all the controversies about the New Testament canon and what should go in and what should be kept out, that loomed over the early church until the universal adoption of the Athanasian Canon, which really only happened around the year 500, neither the name of the Gospel of Mark nor its inclusion were controversial. Neither did anyone doubt that he was the first Bishop of Alexandria.

 

[The Liturgist]

By the way @Ligurian I do want to thank you for the link to Cold Case Christianity; that is a cool website I am going to enjoy reading, even though I am well acquainted with the material, I like his presentation. However, I would note that he does not draw the conclusion you drew; he does not accuse Mark the Evangelist of having ripped off the intellectual property of Peter the Apostle. He simply reports the traditions from the early church which anyone who has studied Patristics and Church History at length* is going to know about.

*This number is smaller than you would think, even among ordained pastors with MDivs (Master of Divinity degrees) from well respected seminaries. There is a prominent liberal United Methodist elder who runs a blog called Hacking Christianity, which I read but disagree with most everything he has to say, who, when one commentator of a more traditional perspective quoted St. Vincent of Lerins, who was a contemporary of St. Augustine roughly speaking, in the early fifth century, did embarrass himself by referring to Vincent of Lerins, who is extremely well known and well regarded among the Latin speaking Church Fathers (who as a group are less numerous than the Greek fathers during the first few centuries), as being an irrelevant obscure 19th century Roman Catholic; to his credit, the author of the blog did admit his error and his embarrassment, but the incident goes to show that many highly trained ministers and theologians don’t study Patristics or early church history all that much.

 

[public hermit]

I am of the view that just as Christ is head of the Church, God also works in the person of the Holy Spirit to protect the sacred scripture, by causing potentially deleterious modifications such as the reordering of the New Testament books by Martin Luther, to not cause harm, but actually be beneficial

I think your point about giving final attribution to the Holy Spirit can't be said loud enough. I can remember when I first learned that a good many scholars questioned the authorship of some of the Pauline epistles, e.g. Ephesians. It really bothered me, but then it dawned on me that the truth value of any given text did not depend so much on the author, but on the Holy Spirit.

For example, either we are created in Jesus Christ for good works that God prepared beforehand to be our way of life, or we are not (Ephesians 2:10). The truth value of that claim ultimately does not depend on the author, no matter who wrote it, but on the Holy Spirit. Either it's true or it isn't, knowing or not knowing the "writer" isn't going to settle that question.

It is good that we have so much material to show the authorship of much of the NT, but if our faith somehow rests on correct attribution we're missing the point, I think, unless we settle on divine inspiration via Holy Spirit.

 

[The Liturgist]

Where did Peter get his Gospel from? Jesus is the source most often quoted by the Gospel writers. Mark wrote these things down and transmitted them to believers who passed them on too. How are Matthew, Mark and Luke similar? John wrote an original Gospel. He is not Peter.

Matthew and John were members of the twelve. It was historically thought Matthew wrote his Gospel first, in Aramaic, for a Jewish audience, and translated it, but the current scholarly consensus is that of the four canonical Gospels Mark is the oldest. However, there is a compelling argument that Matthew did write a Gospel in Aramaic, possibly the Gospel of the Hebrews, but it was lost, and subsequently, he with the assistance of a fluent Greek speaker effectively facilitated a complete rewrite in the Greek language, which includes additional information gleaned from Mark and Luke, which makes Matthew in its present form the newest of the Synoptics. This view is advocated by Robert Aldridge in his work The First Gospel, but this is still fairly bleeding edge scholarship and not the mainstream consensus.

The mainstream consensus is presently, basically, something along the lines of Markan priority followed by some process by which the additional information specific to, and also shared between, Luke and Matthew, got in there, such as the Q source hypothesis. And there are also some who still insist Matthew was written correctly, owing to tradition, and also, that being the opinion of St. Augustine and other important Patristic figures.

I kind of like the Aldridge hypothesis because it reconciles this information, but I don’t believe we are close to being able to verify it, or that it is entirely correct.

 

[The Liturgist]

I think your point about giving final attribution to the Holy Spirit can't be said loud enough. I can remember when I first learned that a good many scholars questioned the authorship of some of the Pauline epistles, e.g. Ephesians. It really bothered me, but then it dawned on me that the truth value of any given text did not depend so much on the author, but on the Holy Spirit.

For example, either we are created in Jesus Christ for good works that God prepared beforehand to be our way of life, or we are not (Ephesians 2:10). The truth value of that claim ultimately does not depend on the author, no matter who wrote it, but on the Holy Spirit. Either it's true or it isn't, knowing or not knowing the "writer" isn't going to settle that question.

It is good that we have so much material to show the authorship of much of the NT, but if our faith somehow rests on correct attribution we're missing the point, I think, unless we settle on divine inspiration via Holy Spirit.

Indeed, I think this is an important point which is overlooked. And it is not just the writing where we see inspiration, but in the editing. Who put the adultery pericope in the Gospel according to John? We don’t know and we probably have no way of knowing. But it adds tremendously to the value of the work, and is clearly an authentic, inspired bit of text. Likewise, the final canonical cut made by St. Athanasius I feel is inspired. If you look at what he included that was controversial* , the inclusions he made were bold, but important. He deprecated the Shepherd of Hermas, precluding it from being read in church but allowing its use for catechetical purposes and edification, which seems proper. And the books that some people wanted included, which he excluded, like 1 Barnabas, just do not feel right at all. Even some which lack doctrinal error and may be historically accurate, like the Acts of Paul and Theclas, just don’t feel right.

And then once you start getting into serious apocrypha, like the Odes of Solomon, or the “Gnostic Gospels”, things start to get in some cases very uncomfortable, and there is a clear disconnect that begins to appear between the more extreme apocrypha and the ecumenical, Nicene Christian faith as we confess it as Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox. And then sometimes it gets so bizarre one wonders if the ancient Roman Empire had LSD (there is an extremely overrated poem that was found at Nag Hammadi called THUNDER: Perfect Mind, which I believe was made into a music video in the 80s with some involvement from Ridley Scott, a purpose which I would simply say it is quite well suited for).

*an easy way to do this is to look at the Etheridge Bible, which is a translation of the East Syriac version of the Peshitta, which predates the Athanasian canon and contains only what in the fourth century were the least controversial books in the New Testament), and then look at the Murdoch Bible, which was made two decades later and is a translation of the West Syriac Peshitta, which was translated by the Syriac Orthodox Church, and differs from the Eastern one only in one verse, and which also adds all of the books of the Athanasian canon, which were translated by the Syriac Orthodox after their schism from the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chalcedonian Orthodox churches, so that their Bibles, and the Coptic Bibles being translated by what became the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, who they have always been in close communion with, would use the Athanasian canon)

 

[Ligurian]

Nothing - that would mean tampering with the Bible.

I don't think there are many who dispute that Peter was the source of Mark's information; but Mark wrote it all down and compiled the Gospel. To call it the Gospel of Peter would confuse it with another book of that name which was not considered to be authentic and is not in the canon of Scripture.

maaann...
How 'bout calling it ... The Gospel of Peter, tr. by Mark

I'm sorry, I can't quite wrap my head around that poor excuse for creating myth out of history. Doesn't the church even care that Peter is the first Apostle Jesus chose? Peter was specifically chosen by Jesus to feed His flock. People entirely dismiss what must have been Jesus' reasoning for doing both, and seem to want to abrogate the choice itself, and replace Peter with some not-chosen scribe/translator.

I think I hear this echo in the people who refuse to consider any Real History that would mean replacing "the set of lies agreed upon" for millennia. So that, rather than getting rid of the lies, we validate lies by bobbling the collective head.

If only there were some courageous publisher (gasp) who would take the risk, step out of line, pitch the smothering box of man's traditional lies... and actually publish "The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth" of The Galilean Apostles.

Apart from this thinly veiled obfuscation, people have this overwhelming tendency to consider "the canon" to be infallible and they pretend to themselves, and to anyone who cares to listen to them, that this "infallible canon" equals the very Word of God Itself. Because their thought process is linked to hive mind, they cannnot add overall discernment to their faith in canon unless the canon wills it. (exaggeration to prove a point)

"According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament Canon."
St Jerome and the Canon

And no matter how many times you show them that canon wasn't even set until the 1500s, they still remain unable to think beyond the catholic-mandated canon.

Ancient Canon Lists

 

[HatGuy]

that Mark was just a scribe.

Scribes also ought to get credited. You say "just a scribe" as if scribes don't matter. It might come as a shock, but a lot of scribes were involved in writing books of the Bible, from the Old to the New Testament. The NT appears to be a team effort. The apostles led the effort, but they didn't do everything.

 

[Ligurian]

Actually St. Mark is; according to the same tradition you are following that declares Mark as having based his Gospel on a narrative of Peter, he was not one of the Twelve, but he was a member of the supporting community of close followers, more than that, even; he is traditionally counted among the Seventy, along with the other New Testament authors.

You know what Jesus said about your traditions, right? Well, I'm thinking He'd've had even less flattering sayings about "Pope Francis at the end of a canonization ceremony for Mother Teresa." We know that Jesus taught against that pater label. Nor does Jesus approve of idols.

Peter(tr.Mark) 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

Matthew23:9 And call no [man] your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Revelation2:20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce My servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

Mark isn't said, by the many people who were first-hand witnesses, to've had any Gospel to write, apart from plagiarizing what Peter said... which Mark may not have actually done, but canon sure makes it look like he did.