Many studies have argued the Gospel that came to be labeled “according to Mark” based some of its content on the Epistles of Paul. Here I’ll discuss this scholarship and its evidence. “Mark” is of course the earliest Gospel we have any surviving text or even any real evidence of. It was then used as a source by all the other Gospels now in the New Testament. So it’s particularly important to know if Mark (and we’ll continue to call him that, not otherwise knowing the author’s actual name) was writing independently of Pauline tradition, or actually mythologizing it.

It would be more accurate to say that the Gospels that came to be labeled “according to Matthew” and “according to Luke” are redactions of Mark, clearly intended originally to replace Mark—within the communities that produced, preferred, or promoted them. Only the Gospel that came to be labeled “according to John” actually used Mark the way other ancient authors used sources: writing his text in his own words, and simply following or altering what Mark said when it suited his purposes, or deliberately contradicting it to combat its message. John likewise used Luke this way, but even more to deliberately contradict and thus combat its message. Matthew similarly tried to combat and thus “fix” Mark by extensively adding material that would permit “reinterpreting” Mark as advancing a Torah-observant gospel—the exact opposite of what Mark originally intended.

Most of what Jesus is “known” for today comes from these later fabrications intended to override the original version of Jesus found in Mark. Mark gets mostly ignored. And yet his myth started it all, a lifetime after the fact, decades after Paul wrote his Epistles, which in turn were written decades after Jesus would supposedly have lived. And other than revelatory or theological data, and material not actually from or about Jesus, we actually can trace nothing in Mark to any sources prior. He appears to have created the whole thing. This is not a popular opinion in Biblical scholarship, which is still hung up on a desperate certainty that Mark must have been working from some collection of oral traditions; but that certainty is actually based on no evidence. And nothing based on no evidence should ever be treated as “certain.”

I demonstrate the mythic nature of Mark’s narrative—and why he was not simply collecting oral lore but constructing a deliberate, coherent mythograph from beginning to end—in Chapter 10 of On the Historicity of Jesus. I likewise demonstrate that attempts to “rescue” from Mark’s mythic narrative some kernels of supposedly historical fact all lack logical validity in Chapter 5 of Proving History.

All of this becomes more potent if we conclude Mark even as likely as not used Paul for much of his stories. So what is the evidence he may have done so?

Leading Scholarship

The principal works to consult on this (all of which from peer reviewed academic presses) are:

See also (as concurring):

By contrast, scholars purporting to argue the contrary, largely ignore nearly all of this literature. Even the few critical pieces in the Becker volume above, subtitled “For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark,” only address a few generic themes; not the extensive evidence generated from literary analysis. And likewise everywhere else. For example, Michael Kok, in a 2014 article and subsequent book, only addresses a few vague claims, such as by Joel Marcus (in “Mark—Interpreter of Paul,” New Testament Studies 46.4 [2000]: 473-87), that Mark “must” have gotten his theology of the crucifixion from Paul. Though on that point Kok is correct (it is not necessary that Mark did so; though the evidence does remain consistent with the thesis that he did), this is not the actual basis for the conclusion of literary dependence argued by the scholars just listed.

So what is? The answer is similar to what we find in Dennis MacDonald: an extensive, cumulative case from chapter-by-chapter literary analysis. As with MacDonald, who argues Mark derived a lot of his creative ideas from a careful reading of the principal epics of Homer (creating a new hero in Jesus by transvaluing the tales in Homer with new contexts and outcomes: see The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark and Mythologizing Jesus), the same cumulative case can be presented for a similar dependence on Paul.

MacDonald is routinely misunderstood of course (I’m pretty sure most of his critics never actually read his works). He did not argue that Mark created everything out of Homer; indeed MacDonald has produced an entire book demonstrating that Mark built principally on transvaluing stories in the Jewish Septuagint, merely merging this with his employment of Homer to create a new, syncretized story that spoke to the wider world that was Mark’s actual market (hence why he wrote in Greek). My peer reviewed case against historicity also does not depend on MacDonald being right about this (it affected no probability in my analysis); ditto the case for Mark’s dependence on Paul. But it’s still important to examine.

Likewise, no one argues everything in Mark reifies something in Paul, either; Mark wrote decades later and is reifying a whole Pauline tradition, most of which is lost to us but would have been well known to Mark, and by then Mark may have interpreted Paul in ways Paul would not recognize, and much of what Mark is doing is creative, taking inspiration from many sources, not just Paul.

Similarly, one can cherry pick weak examples from MacDonald’s case for Mark’s emulation of Homer; since most of his examples produce only plausibles, not proofs. But there are several very strong examples that prove the concept probable, which in turn warrants re-examining those weak examples with a thereby-stronger prior probability (see my old review). One cannot ignore that his argument rests on all his examples, cumulatively; not just the ones you think are weak. Likewise for the scholars arguing for Mark’s dependence on Paul: many of their examples are weak, mere plausibles; but some are strong; and the cumulative force of them all is considerable.

Paradigmatic Example: Jesus on Taxation

In Romans 13, Paul writes up his own opinions about taxation, arguing Christians should dutifully pay their taxes. We know these remarks are just his own opinions; not only because he represents them in no other way and has to contrive arguments for them—yet never resorts to the most potent argument of all (“the Lord said!”)—but also because so far as we can tell, everywhere else when Paul had “a commandment from the Lord” on something he was arguing for, he said so. For example: 1 Corinthians 7:10-12, 1 Corinthians 7:25, 1 Corinthians 9:14, 1 Corinthians 11:23, 1 Corinthians 14:37, 1 Thessalonians 4:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:15 (see Ch. 11.6 of OHJ). So when we find a clever story about Jesus promoting the paying of taxes in Mark 12:13-17, where did Mark get that story? Why had Paul never heard of it, even after decades of “preaching Jesus” and engaging with other Christians, even the first Apostles, across a dozen or so provinces?

It’s quite obvious that Mark has taken Paul’s teaching and simply rewritten it into a pithier teaching from Jesus. Before Mark did that, there was no teaching from Jesus on the subject. Mark’s license to give authority to the teachings of apostles by attributing them to Jesus is a thing we will see many more examples of below; and many more are discussed in the literature cited above. And it’s the same as Matthew’s license in fabricating such elaborate discourses as The Sermon on the Mount, which mainstream peer reviewed scholarship has found to be a late invention of Greek authors that post-dates the Jewish War (see OHJ, pp. 465-68), and thus was never actually taught by Jesus. A conclusion all the more obvious from the fact that every parallel in it one might find in Paul comes from Paul’s own thoughts; Paul conspicuously shows no awareness of Jesus having ever said anything quotable on the same subjects. John likewise is generally agreed to have made up tons of speeches for Jesus as well. It’s what all other Gospel authors did. And if they all did it, we should assume Mark did too.

That Mark adapted Paul’s teaching about taxes into a teaching from Jesus is further confirmed by the Pauline Chiasmus (which we’ll get to shortly). It is the plainest instance of Mark doing this.

Paradigmatic Example: The Last Supper

Another example is “the last supper.” This began as a vision Paul had of Jesus relating to him what he spoke mystically to all future generations of Christians, as we see in 1 Corinthians 11:23-27. As Paul there says, he received this “from the Lord.” Directly. Just as he says he received all his teachings (Galatians 1:11-12; Romans 10:14-15; Romans 16:25-26). In Paul’s version, no one else is present. It is not a “last” supper (as if Jesus had had any others before), but merely “the bread and cup of the Lord.” And Jesus is not speaking to “disciples” but to the whole Christian Church unto the end of time—including Paul and his congregations.

The text in Paul reads as follows (translating the Greek as literally as I can):

For I received from the Lord what I also handed over to you, that the Lord Jesus, during the night he was handed over, took bread, and having given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in the remembrance of me.” Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, as often as you might drink it in remembrance of me.” For as often as you might eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Notably, “until he comes,” and not “until he returns.” This becomes in Mark (emphasis added):

While they were eating, having taken bread, and having blessed it, he broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “Take; this is my body.” Then, having taken a cup, and having given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, that never again shall I drink from the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God.” And having sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Mark 14:22-26

Notice what’s changed. Paul is describing Jesus miming some actions and explaining their importance. His audience is future Christians. Mark has transformed this into a narrative story by adding people being present and having Jesus interact with them: now “they were eating” (Paul does not mention anyone actually eating) and Jesus gave the bread “to them” (does not occur in Paul) and instructs them to “take” it (no such instruction in Paul); and Jesus gave the cup “to them” (does not occur in Paul) and “they all drink it” (no such event in Paul); and Jesus describes the meaning of the cup “to them” (no such audience in Paul).

Then Jesus says he will not drink “again” until the kingdom comes, a statement that fits a narrative event, implying Jesus drank, and here drank, and often drank, and will pause drinking until the end times. Likewise Jesus “blesses” the bread (which also doesn’t happen in Paul), implying the actual literal bread he has in his hand is thereby rendered special to the ones about to eat it; whereas in Paul that makes no sense, because no one is there to eat it, Jesus is just depicting and explaining a ritual others will perform in his honor, not that he is performing for them. So it is notable that all of these things are absent from Paul. There is no narrative context of this being the last of many cups Jesus has drunk and of Jesus pausing drinking or of his blessing the bread and giving it to people present. In Paul, the whole scene is an instruction to future followers, not a description of a meal Jesus once had.

This is how Mark reifies a revelation in Paul, relating Jesus’s celestial instructions for performing a sacrament and its meaning, into a narrative historical event. Mark has even taken Paul’s language, about Jesus being “handed over,” which in Paul means by God (Romans 8:32, exact same word) and even by himself (Galatians 2:20, exact same word), not by Judas, and converted it into a whole new narrative of a betrayal by “the Jews” (the meaning of Judas, i.e. Judah, i.e. Judea). Paul has no knowledge of a betrayal. Indeed in Paul, all of “the twelve” get to see Jesus right after his death and are recognized as apostles (1 Corinthians 15:5; see Proving History, pp. 151-55).

Mark in fact constructed his own Judah-as-betrayer narrative and integrated it into his equally fabricated “last supper” narrative from a pastiche of scriptures, including lost scriptures, wherefrom Mark gets whole chunks of his narrative (see Proving History, ibid.). We are only lucky enough to be sure of this because it’s exposed by 1 Clement, who clearly wrote before Mark’s narrative existed (or was known to the author of 1 Clement). Clement also has no knowledge of any betrayal by anyone, much less a Judah—and also is unaware of the destruction of Jerusalem, so this letter must predate 66 A.D., contrary to a much later tradition placing it in 95 (see OHJ, Ch. 8.5). More importantly, Clement frequently quotes scriptures, both ones we know and ones now lost, as being “the words of our Lord Jesus,” evidently under the belief that Jesus spoke through the ancient prophets, and thus their words are his words.

So when Clement says:

Remember the words of our Lord Jesus, for he said, ‘Woe to that man! It would have been good for him not to be born, rather than cause one of my chosen to stumble. Better for him to have a millstone cast about his neck and be drowned in the sea than to have corrupted one of my chosen’

1 Clement 46.7-8

He doesn’t even know about Judas. For several pages Clement’s whole discourse is on examples of betrayal; not one of which is the paradigmatic Christian betrayal narrative, that of Judas—which means that that legend had not yet formed; Mark probably invented it, as an allegory for his overall message and as a useful tale for missionaries to tell, precisely to meet the need Clement struggled to find examples for.

Here, Clement appears to conflate into one saying two different things Mark has Jesus say. But we know Mark must have written after, and Clement is the one quoting a complete coherent saying. In fact this appears to be a quotation from a lost scripture, whom Clement is again assuming is the voice of Jesus speaking through an ancient prophet. So Mark just clipped a line from this scripture and used it to form part of his Judas tale.

As I wrote of Clement’s quotation in OHJ:

This is clearly represented here as a quotation of one unified saying, yet in the Gospels it is two completely unrelated ones: one part spoken during Jesus’ ministry, in the presence of a group of children, about people tempting his followers to sin (‘Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea’ [Mark 9:42]…), another part spoken about Judas at the Last Supper (‘Woe to that man, by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man not to be born’ [Mark 14:18-21]…). Clement clearly does not know of the Judas story, and the phrase ‘Woe to that man! It would have been good for him not to be born’ was evidently never originally anything Jesus said about Judas, but a generic statement about those who lead the Lord’s ‘children’ to sin, meaning Christians (Jesus’ ‘chosen ones’…). Which means Jesus almost certainly never said this—because it reflects the concept of a church community, of ‘believers’ in Jesus that did not exist until after he had died.

OHJ, pp. 311-12.

So we can see clues here to how Mark is fabricating his story of the last supper, turning a ritual vision in Paul into a story of a historical meal, and integrating an allegory of betrayal throughout that was unknown to Paul, using other sources, e.g. lost and extant scriptures, to build that in.

Or Is Paul Just Using Rabbinical Terminology?

Some might challenge what I just argued by claiming Paul’s language in 1 Cor. 11:23 actually means he learned his account through witnesses, even though he doesn’t say that, and mentions no witnesses being present. The usual line is that the Greek word Paul uses here for “received,” parelabon (from paralambanô), is a “rabbinical” term for receiving a tradition orally from a distant teacher in the past, and does not imply a vision. That isn’t true. And it’s necessary to end this myth here and now.

There is no example anywhere in the New Testament of the verb paralambanô being used in the first-person singular to refer to oral tradition from a distant past teacher, Rabbinical or otherwise. In fact, so far as I can tell, there is no example of such a use in the whole of Greek literature. Whereas this is exactly the same word Paul uses in first person singular in Galatians 1:12, where he explicitly says he means a revelation—and then goes on to swear up and down that he learned nothing he preached from anyone prior. Paul’s probably lying about that; but the significant point is that Paul clearly taught that all his information came from visions, not conveyors of a tradition (“tradents”). Therefore he cannot mean tradents in 1 Corinthians 11:23. He can only mean what he repeatedly swears to in Galatians 1.

In fact, Paul’s phrase in Galatians 1:11, “I would have you know, brethren, the gospel” that he says he preached to them, but for a trivial change of particle (from gar to de), is literally word-for-word identical to the same phrase in 1 Corinthians 15:1, “I would have you know, brethren, the gospel” that he says he preached to them. Yet in Galatians he says “I did not receive [that gospel] from a man,” using that same word, paralambanô, again in the first person. So he cannot mean tradents in 1 Corinthians 15, either. Because he swore up and down in Galatians he didn’t learn anything that way. In fact, it’s clear Paul would have been declared a fraud if he had—his whole argument in Galatians entails only revelations were an acceptable source for whatever he preached about Jesus, that his congregations would have accepted no other claim. And so indeed Paul says, for several years he did “not consult any human being” about what he preached (Galatians 1:16); and even when he did meet others years later, he says “they added nothing” to what he preached (Galatians 2:6).

This means Paul cannot have meant he “received” the information about the Eucharist from tradents (whatever the truth was); he can only have meant he received it in a revelation. For when Paul says “I received from the Lord what I also handed over to you” in 1 Corinthians 11:23, he is using the exact same language as elsewhere, and talking about what he claims he had been preaching for years before consulting anyone. So he must mean the exact same thing he means when using that same language in 1 Corinthians 15 and Galatians 1: he only ever handed over to his congregations what he received directly from the Lord (which could include scripture, though Paul usually distinguishes revelations and scripture as his sources—and never mentions having any other source than these). Not necessarily all at the same time (Paul refers to ongoing revelations, e.g. in Galatians 2:2 and 2 Corinthians 12), but necessarily in no other way.

Some also try to claim Paul’s use of the Greek preposition apo for “from” in 1 Corinthians 11:23, instead of para (as in Galatians 1:11), indicates an ultimate and not immediate source. But there is no evidence of such a distinction between those words in Paul, nor any evidence of it being common elsewhere in a first-person construction like this. To the contrary, were that what Paul meant, he would sooner say “we” received it from the Lord, not “I” received it from the Lord. Or he would say it in the third person with a different verb, for example saying “as was handed down” or “as the Lord handed down,” on the model of Luke 1 or Acts 6 (and those passages use a distinctively different word, paradidômi, “hand down, transmit”). Instead, Paul’s actual wording establishes himself as a direct tradent: from the Lord, to him, to them. Just as in Galatians. Which implies a vision, not a tradition.

It was thus Mark who first converted this abstract lore of Paul’s (and possibly even Peter’s) revelations into a narrative of an event in history attended by the first apostles. No such concept appears before.

Paradigmatic Example: The Pauline Chiasmus

Mark 12:25 has Jesus say, “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” Notably, Paul had no knowledge of such a saying when he had to struggle to justify his view of the resurrection as being an abandoning of fleshly life and entering into uncorruptible celestial bodies (1 Corinthians 15:36-54; see my most thorough discussion in The Empty Tomb and its associated FAQ; Mark also lifts Paul’s distinction between bodies made by hands and those not, and puts it into the mouth of Jesus, by metaphor making exactly the same point as Paul regarding the nature of the resurrection—almost verbatim). So where did Mark get the idea that Jesus said this thing about angels and marriage? It seems quite evidently from Paul. By inventing a simple proverb for Jesus to have uttered, Mark is simplifying Paul’s discourse into a single line, as anyone who can figure out why “they will neither marry nor be given in marriage” and what it means “to be like the angels in heaven” will have sussed Paul’s entire discourse on the resurrection body. Thus illustrating again how Mark adapts Paul’s teaching by simplifying it into a story about Jesus.

But there is something even more remarkable about this parallel: it comes in the middle of a chiasmus Mark has constructed within Mark 12 that demonstrates his dependence on Paul. This was first discovered by Michael Turton and is used to significant effect under peer review by David Oliver Smith. As I showed in OHJ (Ch. 10.4), Mark is fond of chiastic structure and uses it often. And here we have an instance that demonstrates Mark’s knowledge of Paul’s Epistles. I here adapt this model from Turton’s demonstration:

A
Romans 8:31-38, References Psalm 118, verse 6; then warns of persecution and denounces all religious authorities but Jesus = Mark 12:10-12, Quotes Psalm 118, verses 22-23; then mentions the religious authorities want to kill Jesus.

B
Romans 13:1-7, Paul exhorts to obey your government and pay your taxes = Mark 12:13-17, Jesus declares “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”


C
1 Corinthians 15:12-34, Paul confronts those who deny resurrection = Mark 12:18-23, Jesus confronts the Sadduccees who deny resurrection.


C’
1 Corinthians 15:35-50, Paul answers what the resurrection body is like, after declaring the folly of those who don’t know (15:36) = Mark 12:24-27, Jesus answers what the resurrection body is like, after declaring the folly of those who don’t know (12:24).

B’
Romans 13:8-10, Paul explains how love fulfills the Law = Mark 12:28-34, Jesus explains how love fulfills the Law.
A’
1 Corinthians 15:24-28 references Psalm 110, verse 1 (in 15:25), and declares Jesus will defeat all enemies and authorities = Mark 12:35-40, Quotes the exact same verse in Psalm 110, then preaches to beware of the religious authorities.

These coincidences and parallels are so statistically improbable as to render any other explanation effectively impossible: Mark is adapting and playing off of specific content in Romans and 1 Corinthians.

Thematic Examples

Scholars have long suspected Mark knew the Epistles because Mark is full of memorably Pauline themes.

Paul of course equated Jesus with both the Passover and the Yom Kippur sacrifice, both rolled into one (his death atones for all sins like the Yom Kippur, and saves us from death like the Passover lamb), even though they are months apart in the Jewish ritual calendar. And yet Mark also merges the two themes into one: having Jesus die on Passover (indeed at the very same hour as a temple sacrifice) and enact at the same time a Yom Kippur ritual (with Barabbas as the scapegoat; see OHJ, pp. 402-08).

Likewise Mark reifies Paul’s theme of a Torah-free Gospel (by use of metonymy, one feature standing in for all): Mark 7:15 says “nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them,” and in 7:19 that Jesus “declared all foods clean,” just as Paul says “I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean” (Romans 14:14) and “all food is clean” (Romans 14:20). Indeed, Mark 7 has Jesus speak of the clean and unclean, and literal washing, transferring it to a message about internal cleanness replacing literal cleanness, exactly as Paul does in Romans 14. Extending the same reasoning to every other Torah command would then form a major component of Mark’s community’s mission—which was also Paul’s.

Mark 10:1-12 has Jesus also teach the same thing about divorce that Paul did. Though in this case Paul does say he has that teaching from Jesus (likely, as we just saw, from some revelation or spirit conversation). But Mark still inaccurately has Jesus mention women divorcing husbands (Mark 10:12), as Jewish law did not provide for women to initiate a divorce (see Divorce in the Bible and Divorce in Judaism); whereas Paul, working with Gentile congregations, assumes they could as a matter of course in his own teachings on divorce (in 1 Corinthians 7). Mark then has Jesus teach essentially what Paul did. Which shows Mark has gotten Jesus’s teaching through the filter of Paul. Just as Paul says, “A wife must not separate from her husband, but if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband,” Mark’s Jesus says “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her and if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” It’s the same teaching. Yet this specific form of it can only have come from Paul, not Jesus.

Another example is how Mark 14:36 puts in the mouth of Jesus Paul’s repeated duplicative “Abba, Father” (despite both words meaning the same thing, in Romans 8:15 & Galatians 4:6), and does so in a similar context: Mark has Jesus utter it in a prayer for strength to endure and not fall away from his faith in God’s salvation; and Paul references it in discussing precisely the same subject (Galatians 4:7-20 & Romans 8:16-30). In fact the parallels are so apposite, the otherwise inexplicable narrative in Mark (why is Jesus, who well knows who he is and what will really happen, at all concerned about this?) makes more sense when read in light of these passages in Paul, as if Mark knew a reading of Paul would complete one’s understanding of what he was narratively portraying: Jesus as a model for the ideal Christian believer, and as a fellow heir to the promise of resurrection.

Similarly, Mark 8:31-33 crafts Jesus’s rebuke of Peter after Paul’s rebuke of Peter (Galatians 2:11-14). The many congruences are well analyzed in Dykstra (Mark, pp. 97-99). For example, Paul says, “Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God?”; Jesus says, “You are not thinking of the things of God but of the things of man.” Then Mark 8:34-37 adapts material from Philippians 3:7-8. For example, Paul says, “Whatever gain [kerdê] I had, I counted as a loss [zêmian]” and “I suffered the loss [zêmian] of all…that I may gain [kêrdêsô] Christ”; Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain [kêrdêsai] the whole world and lose [zêmiôthênai] his life?” rather than, Jesus explains, “losing” all for Christ and his gospel in exchange for eternal life. The links continue (as summarized by Dykstra), but you get the point.

And on and on…

These curious parallels continue. For instance, have you ever wondered where Mark got the idea of inventing a whole narrative sequence of Jesus emulating Moses in miraculously feeding the multitudes in the desert and crossing and manipulating the sea? Just read Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:1-4:

Our ancestors were all under the cloud and they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

The coincidence is improbable even unto itself; even more so in conjunction with all the other examples, above and below. As I show in OHJ, this sequence in Mark is elegantly constructed and definitely fictional (pp. 412-18). We can see now he was allegorizing the teachings of Paul. By contrast, Paul has no knowledge of any such stories about Jesus. The direction of influence is thus apparent.

Likewise, Mark 4:9-20 describes spreading the Gospel as like “sowing” seeds, exactly as Paul does (1 Corinthians 9:11); equates evangelizing as cultivating a field, exactly as Paul does (1 Corinthians 3:9); uses the “root” as a metaphor for one’s inner depth of commitment, exactly as Paul was believed to have (Colossians 2:7 & Ephesians 3:17); and uses the same words in the same metaphor of increasing one’s agricultural yield by spreading the gospel on good ground (auxanomena, “increasing,” and karpophorousin, “bearing fruit,” in Colossians 1:5-10). Which is another case where “Paul” is speaking his own mind, in his own words and his own metaphor, which Mark has converted into something taught by Jesus. The author of Colossians had no idea Jesus ever could be quoted in that passage, because Jesus never said any of that. Mark invented it—using Colossians.

Likewise Mark 12:1-11 relates the parable of the wicked tenants, in which “the beloved son” they kill (obviously Jesus) after several other messengers had been sent and abused (obviously the prophets of old), specifically because this son is the designated “heir,” and so they will inherit, which is a peculiar detail to add, unnecessary to the story. Indeed it would be weird that mere renters would think they were next in line to inherit the property. But this all tracks exactly the teachings of Paul: the Epistles often describe Jesus as God’s “heir” (e.g. Hebrews 1:2, Romans 8:17, Galatians 3); and with respect to the parable’s message, in Romans 11:1-10 Paul speaks on the same subject, quoting scripture in verse 3, “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me.” This is then immediately explicated using a similar tending-to-agriculture metaphor (Romans 11:11-24), teaching exactly the same lesson as Mark’s parable. Basically Mark’s entire parable comes out of Romans 11. Paul, meanwhile, had never heard of it, and thus never knew he could have quoted Jesus to bolster his teaching the same point. Because Mark invented it—using Romans.

Even overall Mark’s whole Gospel feels like it has been inspired by Paul’s teachings. Its narrative is inordinately concerned with Gentiles and the criticism of Jewish legalism. Jesus is portrayed as constantly trashing Jewish laws and traditions, embarrassing and pissing off their advocates, even while justifying it all as a superior actualization of Judaism—just as Paul does throughout his letters (see Dykstra, Mark, pp. 82-90). And Jesus visits Gentile lands, dines with Gentiles, interacts with Gentiles favorably quite a lot, and Mark has even carefully structured his whole book to emphasize this fact (see OHJ, pp. 414-17, with further support in Dykstra, Mark, pp. 69-82, 131-32). It’s all an important part of Mark’s message—which makes little sense as history, but perfect sense as a narrativization of Paul’s mission and theology.

In fact, Mark’s entire choice of Galilee as the land Jesus comes from and spends most of his time in—and after his resurrection tells his followers to go to to find him (Mark 16:7)—may have been inspired by this very connection: for it was known as “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 9:1) precisely because of its peculiar Gentile connections and presence. Mark’s messaging could hardly be clearer. And indeed, the fact that it was so-known in a prophecy that the messiah would indeed come from there (Isaiah 9:1-7) would give Mark a double cause for choosing it as his primary setting.

Specific Examples

There are many more examples. Just consider the following list, adapted from a list collected by Michael Turton that David Oliver Smith also subsequently worked from, and which I’ve expanded with a few examples from other scholars I listed, especially Dykstra and Nelligan:

  • Mark 1:1 uses Paul’s phrase “the beginning of the Gospel” verbatim (Philippians 4:15); and “Gospel of Christ,” otherwise unique to Paul (e.g. Romans 15:19, 1 Corinthians 9:12, 2 Corinthians 2:12, Galatians 1:7, 1 Thessalonians 3:2).
  • Paul then goes on to talk about how he was sent forth to preach it; likewise Mark immediately follows with a quotation of Isaiah declaring God hath sent his messenger, only switching the reference from Paul to John the Baptist introducing Jesus, the Gospel-reified. Dykstra also makes a good case that Mark has modeled his John the Baptist after Paul (Mark, pp. 147-48).
  • Mark 1:14 uses Paul’s phrase “Gospel of God,” verbatim (Romans 15:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:2), and when introducing the rest of his narrative purpose (just as Paul does in Romans 1:1).
  • Mark then immediately juxtaposes the Gospel with manual labor (in Mark 1:16-20) just as Paul does (in 1 Thessalonians 2:9).
  • Mark 1:29-31 indirectly reveals Peter was married, just as Paul indirectly reveals Peter was married (1 Corinthians 9:5).
  • Mark 2:16 describes Jesus being wrongly chastised by Pharisees (Mark’s principal stand-in for any arch-conservative Jews) for eating and drinking with “sinners and tax collectors” (i.e. Gentiles), just as Paul describes Peter being wrongly chastised by conservative Jews for doing the same thing (Galatians 2:11-14). Mark and Paul’s message is the same.
  • Mark 3:1-5 borrows themes and vocabulary from Paul’s discussions of the very same issue: Jesus looks upon his Jewish critics “with anger [orgês] and grieved [sullupoumenos] at their hardness [pôrôsei] of heart”; in Romans 9 Paul said he was for that very same reason grieved [lupê, v. 2] and God was for that very same reason angry [orgên, v. 22] at their hardness [v. 18], which Paul later describes with the same word used by Mark [pôrôsis, 11:25].
  • Mark 4:10-13 relates Mark’s model for the whole Gospel as disguising deeper truths allegorically within seemingly literal stories (“parables”); and in doing so declares that the uninitiated will not be allowed to see or hear the real meaning, just as Paul says (in e.g. Romans 11:7-10, 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, etc.).
  • Mark 6:7 imagines Jesus sending missionaries in pairs; Paul often says he was paired with someone on his missions (1 Corinthians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 9:6; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Philippians 2:22; Philemon 1:1).
  • Mark 6:8-10 has Jesus assume missionaries will be fed and housed by others, reifying into visceral and poetic terms Paul’s mention of the fact that “the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14).
  • Mark 7:20-23 lists as the sins that make one unclean “sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.” Accordingly, Paul says, “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) and likewise those who pursue “envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice” and are “gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful” (Romans 1:29-31); and elsewhere says those will be excluded from the kingdom who pursue “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” (Galatians 5:19-21). The other lists are nearly identical, Mark only ending with the catch-all “arrogance and folly” to encompass the otherwise-unmentioned idolatry, God-hating, insolence, drunkenness, strife, boasting and gossiping and so forth (while lewdness is a catch-all that would include “men who have sex with men” and “orgies” etc.).
  • Mark 7:26-29 reifies into a whole story the sentiment of Paul that God’s rewards must go to the Jew first, the Gentile second (Romans 1:16).
  • Mark 8:12 has Jesus lament to the Jews, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it,” reifying Paul’s declaration of the very same thing, that only in their folly “Jews demand signs,” which renders the Gospel “a stumbling block” to them (1 Corinthians 1:22-23).
  • Mark 8:15 has Jesus warn against “the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod,” thus reifying into allegorical story-form Paul’s more general warning against “the leaven of malice and wickedness” (1 Corinthians 5:8).
  • Mark 8:17-18 has Jesus declare, “Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?” echoing Paul’s citation of scripture on the same point, that only insiders will correctly see and hear, and thus “get the point” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10); a concept I just noted Mark had reified earlier in Jesus’s explanation of secret teachings (Mark 4:10-13), which really is a key to Mark’s entire Gospel, including the scene in Mark 8, which isn’t really about Jesus having historically created food, but is an allegory for the Gospel itself.
  • In that same passage, Mark has Jesus seemingly quote Isaiah 6:9, just as Paul does in making the same point in Romans 11:8. But in Isaiah the order is hearing, then seeing; Paul switched the order to seeing, then hearing. Thus the fact that Mark also did that further evinces his reliance on Paul.
  • Mark 9:34-35 has Jesus say, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and the slave of all” (and Mark 10:43-44 likewise); Paul said he was the “last” of those chosen and “the least” of the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:8-9) and had made himself “a slave to all” (1 Corinthians 9:19).
  • Mark 9:43-47 has Jesus advocate cutting off your hand or foot or eye that provokes you to sin, lest you be cast into hell; but this may be an allegory for banishing members of the community who provoke brethren to sin—because Paul likened the brethren to limbs of a body (1 Corinthians 12:12-31), and recommends banishing sinners from the community, literally “handing them over to Satan for destruction of the flesh” (1 Corinthians 5:4-7), just as Mark has Jesus speak of sinners being cast into hell to destruction.
  • Mark 9:50 has Jesus declare “be at peace with each other,” which teaching comes from Paul, not Jesus: Paul says “be at peace with each other” (1 Thessalonians 5:13), again without any knowledge of Jesus having said this.
  • Mark 10 has Jesus give the same reason God burdened the Jews with Torah law that Paul does (e.g. in Romans 7 and Galatians 3).
  • Mark 11:22-26 has Jesus claim faith can move mountains, as long as one has belief and forgiveness in one’s heart. Paul wrote, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).
  • Mark 12:35-37 quotes the same messianic verse that Paul does (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).

There is actually a great deal more than that. If one surveys all the literature I listed at the beginning, one will find numerous other parallels analyzed (e.g. on shared vocabulary, see Dykstra, Mark, pp. 143-47), as well as further and corroboratory analysis of the examples I have listed. The extent of them is simply too vast to be accidental.

It’s thus also notable that many of Mark’s central constructs about Jesus can be derived from Paul: Jesus’ crucifixion and burial; his rising “on the third day”; his status as a “son of David”; engaging the Eucharist the night he is delivered up, even reimagining that deliverance as a betrayal by using a play on Paul’s choice of words; and, as we already saw, the idea of there being “twelve” first apostles, led by a Peter, whose right-hand men were a James and a John; and so on. Even Jesus’s having family. For even if Mark understood Paul to mean only cultic family, for instance, Mark could still get the idea of a literal family from it to teach what having a cultic family meant—which is precisely what Mark does with the device (Mark 3:31-35 & Mark 6:1-2, the only appearances Jesus’s family ever make in Mark’s Gospel), showing no knowledge of any brothers of Jesus subsequently being apostles, but imagining Jesus had simply renounced them.

Frankly, when you add everything up, it looks like Mark’s only source of knowledge about Jesus are the letters of Paul. Combined with a creative reading of ancient scriptures, and his own imagination, he appears to have required none other.

Parables & Miracles: A Markan Invention

Depicting Jesus as teaching through “parables” appears to be an invention of Mark. It’s nowhere in Paul (or 1 Peter or Hebrews or 1 Clement or any earlier account of how and what Jesus taught). Mark is thus the most likely inventor of that technique, which later Evangelists picked up and riffed on, building their own parables on Mark’s model and attributing them to their versions of Jesus. Occam’s Razor leads to no other conclusion. No evidence of any kind leads to any other conclusion.

Most scholars still confidently assume parables were distinctive of Jesus…on a basis of no evidence at all, and some evidence against. More likely the parable was simply one of the innovative ways Mark chose to “reify” the teachings of Paul and the Pauline community by creating a version of “Jesus the clever preacher,” in much the same way as other ancients relied on cleverly contrived sage myths (from Aesop to The Seven Sages to legendary Rabbis) to communicate their own thoughts, values, and mores. It’s how Mark even composed his own Gospel, as merely a system of parables featuring Jesus as a character (as rightly argued in J.D. Crossan’s The Power of Parable).

This ancient practice of invention was literally a mainstay of Greek education at the time, taught everywhere at the composition stage of learning, which we know all the Gospel authors had gone through, for they could not be composing such literary works without it, and their techniques match what was taught in schools of the time (see OHJ, pp. 397-98), and resemble how other ancient authors composed fiction about both mythical and historical persons (see OHJ, pp. 218-19), albeit with a strong syncretic influence from Jewish literary traditions and techniques as well (such as found in Deuteronomy, Daniel, the Kings and Samuel literature, and more recent novels and mythography, too, from Tobit to the Biblical Antiquities).

Mark also invented all the miracle stories, which subsequent Evangelists again riffed on, constructing new like tales from Mark’s model. Because Paul has no knowledge of Jesus having worked miracles or exorcisms. In fact, Paul says Jesus abandoned all his powers in the incarnation (Philippians 2:6-7), and worked no wonders or signs (1 Corinthians 1:21-24). Rather, Paul implies Jesus acquired these powers after his resurrection (Philippians 2:9-10), and thus bestowed them upon those living “in Christ,” thereby sharing his spirit within his new body, the Church. Hence the only miracles and exorcising of demons (which Paul calls works “of power”) that Paul has any knowledge of are the eschatological powers now manifest in the Church (cf. 2 Cor. 12:12, 1 Thess. 1:5; a conclusion corroborated by Hebrews 2:3-4), which include exorcism, healing, and prophecy. So Mark must have invented the idea of Jesus as exorcist and miracle worker, as a model for, and based on, Christian missionaries. There is no evidence of any such notion prior.

Hence when we look at the order of development, first we have Paul saying Jesus’s victory over the forces of evil accomplished by his death was evinced by believers performing miracles; then Mark borrows those same motifs to have Jesus perform those miracles. From Paul, to Mark. When I first wrote this article I had not yet read Robyn Faith Walsh’s Origins of Early Christian Literature. Now I can quote it:

[In Paul’s letters Mark] finds talk of Jesus as Christ, possessing divine pneuma (Rom. 8:9; Mark 1:10); a divine lineage of Abraham (Rom. 3, 4, 9; Mark 1); “pneumatic” demonstrations (1 Cor. 2:4-5; Mark 2:8, 5:1ff., 5:41ff.), including divination; demonstrations of power over demons, archons, and unclean pneuma (Rom. 8:38-39; 1 Cor. 15:24; Mark 1:23, 39, 5:2ff., 7:25): Jesus as a prophet for a new age (Rom. 3:21-22; Mark 1:1-15) or a New Adam (1 Cor. 15:45; Mark 1:12ff.); a failure to recognize Jesus as the messiah during his lifetime (1 Cor. 2:6-8; Mark 4:41, 6:2, 8:29, 11:27ff.); and an active principle of God’s pneuma bounding people “in Christ” through baptism (Rom. 6; Mark 1). He even finds talk of fellowship meals and a meal hosted by Jesus anticipating his death (the so-called Last Supper) with dialogue (1 Cor. 11:23-25; Mark 14:22-25) and mention of other characters like James and Peter (e.g., Gal. 2; Mark 3:20-21, 31-35, 8:31-33, 14:26, 66). The proper interpretation of Judean law and allegory also looms large in these letters (e.g., Gal. 1:6-11; Rom. 1:16-17, 1 Cor. 9:16; Mark 1:1, 2:18ff. [and one might add Mark 4:10-13–ed.]), as one might expect from a Pharisee.

Walsh, Origins, p. 132

So what Paul says the Christians were doing in general, Mark has Jesus do in particular, as a model. As I explained in both On the Historicity of Jesus and Proving History:

Mark’s Gospel’s main function is to illustrate what the gospel means and to provide a system of models for Christian life (particularly missionary life) and for use in teaching its social ideals and theology. In many scenes in Mark’s Gospel, for example, Jesus is made to say and do things that symbolize how Christians, especially Christian missionaries, are to behave or think. He gives us a model of what baptism means (adoption by God, and symbolic death and rebirth); a model of how to face martyrdom (the trial and crucifixion); a model of how to react to family pressure (one must follow Jesus and leave any stubborn family behind and adopt instead one’s new kin group: Mk 3.31-35); models of healing and exorcism; even models of what not to do (such as doubt or fear or the military messianism of Barabbas, or the internecine betrayal of a Judas—or any putting of self before the group, the message of Mk 10.35-45).

As I concluded in Proving History, ‘that Jesus had enemies who slandered him, that Jesus went to parties with sinners to save them, that Jesus’ family rejected him’, are all stories that reflect the realities of Christian missionaries and the situations they face, so Mark is crafting these stories to model how they are to deal with them.

OHJ, pp. 442-43 (cf. PH, p. 156)

Mark invented the miracle stories to the same purpose: in some cases as models for missionaries who likewise performed them (and thereby faced the same problems of miracles failing to succeed or evoking accusations of insanity or Satanic influence, and so on), but also as allegories for the message of the Gospel (the power of the Christian community to feed the poor reified as a miraculous multiplying of loaves and fishes, of faith moving mountains reified in walking on water and calming storms, of God’s cursing of the temple cult in the image of a fig tree, and so on). I analyze numerous examples in Ch. 10.4 of On the Historicity of Jesus. Mark is weaving these stories to convey a deeper meaning than the literal narrative pretends. And he is doing it creatively, using models from the Septuagint (e.g. Moses and Elijah) and other pagan and Jewish lore.

If most of it is like this—fiction Mark has obviously contrived for his own purposes and from various literary and contemporary models—why should we assume any of Mark is anything else but more of the same? Wholesale invention of discourses for Jesus, miracles for Jesus, storylines for Jesus, is unquestionably a fact, as much in Mark as in dozens of other Gospels. So “it can’t have happened” is no argument against concluding it did.

Conclusion

Mark composed his mythical tale of Jesus using many different sources: most definitely the Septuagint, probably Homer, and, here we can see, probably also Paul’s Epistles. From these, and his own creative impulses, he weaved together a coherent string of implausible tales in which neither people nor nature behave the way they would in reality, each and every one with allegorical meaning or missionary purpose. Once we account for all this material, there is very little left. In fact, really, nothing left.

We have very good evidence for all these sources. For example, that Mark emulates stories and lifts ideas from the Psalms, Deuteronomy, the Kings literature, and so on, is well established and not rationally deniable. That he likewise lifts from and riffs on Paul’s Epistles is, as you can now see, fairly hard to deny. By contrast, we have exactly no evidence whatever that anything in Mark came to him by oral tradition. It is thus curious that anyone still assumes some of it did. That Mark’s sources and methods were literary is well proved. That any of his sources or methods were oral in character is, by contrast, a baseless presumption. Objective, honest scholarship will have to acknowledge this someday.

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