Bible In One Year Day 300 (2 Maccabees 3, Sirach 45-46, Proverbs 24: 8-9)

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The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple - Raphael

Day 300:  Conversion of Heart

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A Daily Defense 

DAY 300 The Dating of Mark

CHALLENGE: “Mark’s Gospel isn’t reliable. It was written long after the events, and by a non-eyewitness.”

DEFENSE: Mark was written within living memory of the events it records, and it’s based on eyewitness testimony.

We elsewhere deal with the fact that Mark wasn’t an eyewitness (see Day 44). Biographies are written all the time by people who aren’t eyewitnesses, and Mark was in an especially good position as a biographer because he based his Gospel on the testimony of an eyewitness: Peter.

Thus the first-century figure John the Presbyter stated: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely (Eusebius, Church History 3:39:15).

This is the earliest statement about the composition of Mark, dating from only a few decades after it was written.

It helps us pin down when Mark was written, because there is a literary relationship between Mark and Luke. Enough of Mark is found in Luke, often in the same words, that it is highly probable either Mark used Luke or Luke used Mark.

Since Mark is said to be based on his memories of Peter’s preaching (not on Luke) and since Luke acknowledges prior written sources (Luke 1:1), almost all scholars conclude that Luke used Mark.

Since we have good reason to think that Luke was written in A.D. 59 (see Day 217), Mark would have been written earlier than this.

Mark did not become one of Peter’s traveling companions until after he ceased being one of Paul’s. The latter event, recorded in Acts 15:36–39, took place in A.D. 49. Therefore, Mark was written some time in the A.D. 50s.

Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist