Associate Professor of New Testament, Tyndale Seminary
The Gospel Plot When we read any book of the New Testament it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. We are often used to hearing or reading short snippets in isolation. What we can overlook, when we read it this way, is that Mark gives his account of Jesus’ mission a clear…
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A Crucified Messiah If we ask who Jesus is in Mark’s Gospel, one of the first answers to come to mind will usually be the Messiah. Indeed, this is the title Mark gives to Jesus in the opening sentence of his narrative. Although the people around Jesus within the story do not have the advantage…
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In Mark’s Gospel Jesus announces that God is conquering the perversity of a broken creation and restoring it to life and harmony under his reign as king. Mark assumes that this restoration will not be “good news” for everyone. Those who are not sheltered by the cross, who have not joined Jesus in the new…
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The First Written Gospel If we had been part of Mark’s first audience, we would not have picked a bound book up from the shelf of a library or bookstore. In fact, we would not likely have been reading it at all. For years we would have been used to hearing the stories of Jesus…
Read MoreMany of my blog posts begin life as answers to my students’ questions. This one is no different. A student asked a good question about how we know Mark wasn’t written much earlier than AD 65 or so. Here is my (lightly edited) reply. The starting point for dating Mark is that our earliest church…
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Ian W. Scott 