Gospel according to Mark

 The Gospel According to Mark is generally accepted to have been written prior to the other three canonical Gospels, with most scholars dating it about 70 C.E. Various investigators have argued for a date as early as 63-64 or later than 70. J.J. Griesbach, in rejecting the "two document hypothesis" which emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, contended, however, that Mark was dependent on both Matthew and Luke for its material, which would necessitate a date considerably later.

While a range of six or eight years may seem trivial, Myers is undoubtedly correct when he argues that

Mark's vigorous criticism of the temple state and its political economy would obviously have been superfluous once the temple had been destroyed. I believe the general resistance to a pre-70 dating among scholars is an example of their (docetic) tendency to suppress the economic and political aspects of the text in favor of the theological.

Suh's dating of the Gospel between 68-70 is supportive of this premise when he writes:

Dating the Gospel after the destruction fails to account for the warning against fragility and the flight of those who are in Judea in all its extreme urgency. . . . To date it earlier than 68 is also to fail to account for the urgency.

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is mentally (physically) prepared to confess the Messiahship of Jesus, but Jesus recognizes that mental preparation alone is far from the spiritual commitment He requires. Just as Jesus was mentally and physically prepared for His return from the forty days of fasting in the wilderness, so, too, was He spiritually prepared for the ministry He was about to begin. When approached by Satan at that point in time, there was a synthesis of mental and spiritual preparation, and Jesus could not yield to the temptation to leave His divine post. But for Peter, in v. 33, there is not yet a synthesis of mental and spiritual. In our daily lives we struggle, as did Peter, to blend our understanding of the physical world which surrounds us with that of the spiritual realm we desire to apprehend. Satan takes full advantage of our mental-spiritual struggle and continually presents himself as stumbling blocks in our path toward a fuller relationship with God. Jesus could have retreated from Peter's personification of Satan--"Gosh, Peter, I think you have something there! Maybe this suffering and death stuff is a bit drastic." That would have meshed more closely with a Jewish concept of the Messiah in light of the Roman occupation and d
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Approximate Word count = 2221
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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