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Who is the Author?
The authorship of the Gospel of Mark has been an issue up for debate throughout church history and especially with the rise of form criticism in the last two centuries. The Gospel itself is anonymous. There is no name attached to it, as opposed to the letters of Paul. There is a strong early tradition that Mark (or John Mark) was the author—as such, most conservative scholars agree that he penned the book. Mark was a close companion of the Apostle Peter (Acts 12:12, 25). Mark himself was not one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus. But the tradition has held that Mark’s account is based on the eyewitness of Peter. The early church father Irenaeus (c. A.D. 180) wrote, “And after their [Peter’s and Paul’s] death, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself also handed down to us in writing the things preached by Peter” (Against Heresies, 3.1.2).1
In the book of Acts, we meet Mark multiple times. He joined Paul and Barnabas on their way to Antioch from Jerusalem (Acts 12:25) and then he shows up again with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:5). There was an argument between Paul and Barnabas over Mark’s presence with them. Mark had left them in Perga to return to Jerusalem. Paul refused to allow Mark to accompany them on their second missionary journey (Acts 15:36–39). Barnabas ended up separating from Paul and took Mark with him (they were cousins) and headed toward Cyprus. Mark shows up again in two of Paul’s epistles where he sends Mark his greetings (Col. 4:10; Phil. 24). It seems that Mark was making his way back into Paul’s confidence. At the end of Paul’s life, as Paul was imprisoned in Rome, he wrote to Timothy requesting that Mark be brought to him because “he is helpful to me in my ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11).2