Will Vaus

  Today, we are continuing our journey along Route 66, and we are stopping off to visit the Gospel of Mark…   AUTHOR   Who was Mark?   The Gospel itself does not contain any direct claim of authorship. None of the Gospels originally had a title. “The earliest evidence of Markan authorship is set forth by Papias (c. 60-130), the bishop of Hieropolis in Phrygia, in the vicinity of the New Testament churches of Colossae and Laodicea [in what is now modern-day Turkey]. We find this testimony in a primitive Christian fragment preserved by Eusebius” [1]  who was an early church historian. Papias writes,  “ Mark, who was Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he recollected of what Christ had said or done.” [2]   This view of Markan authorship of this Gospel was shared by nearly everyone in the early church. [3]  Furthermore, it fits with the fact that Peter refers to Mark as his son in the faith in 1 Peter 5:13.  ...

Today in our journey through the 66 books of the Bible we are starting into the 27 books of the New Testament, beginning with the Gospel of Matthew.   Matthew’s Gospel appears first in the New Testament, not because it was written first, but rather because it was the most popular Gospel in the Early Church.    In fact, the earliest book of the New Testament is not a Gospel at all. The earliest book is Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians.   At first, all the stories about Jesus circulated orally. It wasn’t until the first eyewitnesses began to die off that the Early Church thought about writing down more detailed accounts of Jesus’ life, ministry, his death, and resurrection.   Another thing to keep in mind is that none of the Gospels originally had titles. The titles came later. So, you might reasonably ask, where did the titles come from, these titles that suggest Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authors of the four Gospels we have in our Bibles? ...