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Gospel according to Mark

II. Conflicts in Understanding 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.

Thus, in approaching any commentary on the Gospel According to Mark, it is of great importance to determine the author's dating of the text in order that the inherent assumptions about history, if not explicitly stated, can be held up against the supposed context in which the Gospel was written according to the particular commentator. While we may reject Kelber's dating of the Gospel "in the aftermath of the Roman-Jewish War," it does permit us to understand his perspective when we compare his assertions to, say, Myers.

As we seek to uncover the historical/social setting of any document of antiquity, accurately dated or not, w...

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Gospel according to Mark. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:53, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692509.html