Study The Church

Mark, the Gospel writer's biography

Several years ago, I gave a one-hour seminar on an overview of the New Testament. We were going through the authors of the different NT books, and I asked which ones were Apostles and which were not. Matthew? Everyone said yes. Mark? One person yelled out “yes” and it was the pastor. So, since some confusion exists over the biography of Mark the Gospel writer, we will start there: Mark (aka John Mark) was not an Apostle. But who was he?

We do not have any concrete details of his life while Jesus was alive. We do pick up pieces of information of his later life in Acts and also here and there in the epistles, but that information is after the ascension of Jesus. (Some scholars believe that we can place Jesus at the house of Mark’s mother for the Passover meal and even Mark at the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus was arrested. To read more, go here. For this article, we will assume that Mark was roughly 20 years younger than Jesus. We will trace the rest in a timeline fashion. (Dates are approximate.)

AD 30: Ascension of Jesus
AD 43: Peter was arrested and place in jail by King Herod Agrippa I (this was the grandson of Herod the Great; this Herod died in AD 44). During the night, an angel released him and he went to Mark’s mother’s house (Acts 12:12-17). This indicates that Mark’s mother’s house was a central location for the early Christian movement in Jerusalem (and had been since the Last Supper meal, and perhaps a place of pilgrimage for early Christians).
AD 46: Paul and Barnabas went on a mission trip (prior to the one known as Paul’s First Missionary Trip) and traveled through Jerusalem. While there, they decided to take Mark with them (Acts 12:25), and the three traveled to Antioch (Acts 13:1).
AD 48: Paul, Barnabas, and Mark left on the First Missionary Trip. (Acts 13:5) Later that year or the next year, Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem (Acts 13:13).
[AD 50: The Council of Jerusalem is described in the first part of Acts 15.]
AD 50 or 51: Paul decided to go on his Second Missionary Trip. Barnabas wanted to take Mark, but Paul rejected his idea. The two split up, with Barnabas and Mark going to the island of Cyprus and Paul and Silas staying moving north along the coast. [Why was Barnabas so persistent in taking Mark? Perhaps because they were cousins, which is stated in Colossians 4:10.]
AD 50s to early 60s: Paul and Mark reconcile, as seen in Paul referring to him positively in Colossians 4:10, II Timothy 4:11, and Philemon 24.
Late AD 60s: After the deaths of Peter and Paul during the Nero persecution (mid-AD 60s), Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark. Papias of Hierapolis (d. 130) wrote that Mark was the secretary of Peter, and, therefore, the Gospel consists of mainly Peter’s memories.
**Bonus: According to the Coptic Church (the Oriental Orthodox church in Egypt), in between the years 30 to 43, Peter traveled much and took Mark along with him (see Peter’s travels in I Peter 1:1). The Coptic Church teaches that Mark wrote the Gospel while on this long journey, finishing it by AD 43. Mark then went to Alexandria and founded the church there, becoming its first bishop. He was martyred in AD 68. Note: this does not match with the account above of Mark traveling with Paul and Barnabas in the early 50s.