It is commonly thought that the writer of the second Gospel set out deliberately to make an abridgement of the first. A reader notices that the same events appear in both, apparently told the same way, that Mark’s is shorter, that various parables and discourses which add greatly to Matthew’s beauty and fullness are left out by Mark, that his story moves quickly, and that he dwells on incidents more than on words. What could be more natural than to suppose he was picking out the main points in the life of Jesus and discarding the rest?
But the difficulties in this supposition grow at every step for anyone who gives the Gospel the same close attention he would give any ordinary document. Careful readers are struck by the vividness of Mark’s style; he never merely records an incident but surrounds it with the circumstances that made it striking to those present. His wish for brevity does not stop him giving two stories of the same kind, as with the two miracles of the loaves. He often includes details that an abridger aiming only at condensation would surely have dropped had he found them in his source. These points are so obvious that I do not wonder that some who once searched for a single Gospel out of which the others might have been made were often inclined to the opposite view — to fix on Mark’s history as nearly answering to their idea of the primitive one.
The modern school rightly turns us away from all such speculation and directs us to the actual books we possess, urging us to face their contents honestly and observe their great and startling differences.
Following that precept, I must notice in Mark not merely an occasional departure from Matthew, but the omission of what we found most characteristic of Matthew. It is not that Mark leaves out a parable or a memorable discourse; it is that the feeling which filled Matthew’s mind and colored all his language seems not to be present in Mark in the same way at all. If Matthew’s repeated, seemingly unintentional phrases, allusions, and quotations indicate anything, his ruling purpose was to present the Gospel as the fulfillment of what went before; and if the absence of such things in Mark — in the very places where Matthew put them — indicates anything, this was not Mark’s ruling purpose. If we suppose he had Matthew’s narrative in front of him, the fact is all the more remarkable: no plan of shortening the earlier history could have prompted omissions like these.
Do not forget that the whole Sermon on the Mount is missing from Mark. What a monstrous omission for someone selecting the important parts of the divine history! Yet what a natural and necessary omission for one who did not aim to bring out the Fatherly kingdom as the thing Christ came to reveal, but had another object that his readers could not have grasped if he had lingered on the theme Matthew illustrated so fully. I have already said what I take his object to be. I made the first verse of his Gospel the text of this whole lecture, because it announces, more distinctly than any verse I could find in Matthew or Luke, what was common to all the Evangelists. But a thing may be both common and special. It may be absolutely necessary that there be an Evangelist who sets forth Christ Himself simply in His own person, as King of the nation and Lord of man, and who, to do that work properly, does not give the same prominence to the mystery of His relation to the Father which those acts implied. When we come to the history of the Apostolic Church we may find a class of people standing midway between the Jewish and Gentile worlds — people with whom a respectable tradition connects Mark — for whom this treatment was peculiarly necessary; whose deepest needs would not otherwise have been met, who would not have felt Judaism fulfilled or its connection with the outer world established, and who would not have been freed from some of their most dangerous tendencies, unless the Gospel of the Son of God had been given to them in this simple, direct form. We may also find, in later Church history, that this view of the Gospel has shaped a whole age almost to the exclusion of any other — the cause of all its strength, and its exclusiveness and corruption the source of all its weakness. This is not the moment to take up either subject; I mention them only to gain a hearing and to lead you to read Mark’s Gospel with this thought in mind. You will not expect me to go over ground minutely that I have already covered. I will add only a few more hints to those already given, to help you feel that Mark carries out — by his omissions as much as his statements, by his differences from Matthew as much as his resemblances — the intention he announces so simply at the opening of his Gospel.
In the first chapter we are told nothing of a son of David or a son of Abraham. There is no genealogy, no account of a divine conception, no journey into Egypt, no kings from the East coming to worship, no children murdered for His sake. The Gospel begins with John preaching in the wilderness, announcing one coming after him who is mightier because He will baptize with the Holy Ghost, and baptizing that mightier one, who as He rises from the water is declared the beloved Son. The Temptation is treated very briefly. It could not be left out, but since Matthew’s details of it mainly illustrate the Son’s relation to the Father, His trust and dependence, they suited Matthew’s object wonderfully — while in Mark they would have broken the coherence and made his aim less clear. I want to avoid over-refinement, but I cannot think Mark’s phrase “and He was with the wild beasts” is meaningless. I believe he especially wishes to show the Son of God as ruler of nature, the Person in whom the original grant of dominion to man is fulfilled. And since the Temptation opens the ministry, it was fitting that this side of His character and office, as well as His perfect obedience, be set forth.
This hint, once given, will help you — not to find in Mark something you had not seen, but to account for your own impressions of him. You will find him recording every exercise of our Lord’s power distinctly and minutely; making us feel, more than the other Evangelists, the wonder of onlookers at a teaching bound up with power over unclean spirits; insisting on the Son of Man’s lordship over the sabbath; treating the call of the disciples and the ordaining of the Apostles as instances of His authority; recording parables — the sower, the man casting seed into the ground, the mustard seed, the vinedressers — that describe His personal influence and mysterious government; omitting nothing that can illustrate the nature of His kingdom and His relation to human beings, the doubts that such power could belong to one called the carpenter’s son, the proof that it did belong to Him, that He could confer it on men, and that they would afterward exercise dominion in His name under Him; and passing by everything that does not bring this truth to light. So while the outward resemblance between him and Matthew is very strong, there is a lively and continual contrast in the design and effect of their narratives. Their closing chapters show the difference perhaps more fully than any others. “All power is given to Christ in heaven and earth,” and the disciples are to go and baptize the nations — thus Matthew ends. Mark adds that signs shall follow those who believe: in His name they shall cast out devils, speak with new tongues, take up serpents, drink deadly things unharmed, and lay hands on the sick, who shall recover. Matthew’s words speak of humanity remade, brought back into submission and communion with God. Mark’s speak of new powers and energies given to the witnesses of this redeemed order, so that they may testify of Christ, the healer and caster-out of devils, as the true Lord of the race. So Mark cannot stop where Matthew stops, at the Resurrection as the fulfillment of past hopes; he alludes to the Ascension — though only alludes to it. Another Evangelist was needed to set forth the mystery of that fact and its bearing on the after condition of the universe.