Before the Temple Fell: The Case for an Early Mark
Most scholars argue that Mark was the first Gospel to be written. This seems rather obvious, as both Matthew and Luke clearly borrowed from Mark. So where we place Mark in history will influence the dating of the other Gospels.
If Mark were shown to be a product of the early first century, a work produced before the fall of the Jerusalem Temple, then this would greatly change not just when the Gospels were written, but also various aspects of our understanding of these works.
Conventionally, Mark is dated to around the time of the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD. James Crossley, in his book, “The Date of Mark’s Gospel,” shows that since the early 20th century, when J. Moffatt tabulated the scholarly view on the date of the synoptic gospels in 1911, the majority view that the Gospel of Mark was written between 65-75 AD really hasn’t changed.
Maurice Casey expands on this a bit and states that in Europe, Mark is usually dated between 65-69 AD, just prior to the destruction of the Temple, whereas in the United States, it’s usually dated slightly later, up to 75 AD.
Regardless of when Mark is dated, there are really two main arguments. First, external evidence. When do we have an outside witness to the text? This would give us the latest date at which it could have been written. Second, internal evidence. These would be clues within the text that can tell us when it was written, such as events that were happening, being referred to, or that may or may not have occurred. One of the big focuses here is whether Mark spoke of the temple’s destruction. If he did, then a post-70 date is most plausible. If he didn’t, then a pre-70 date becomes more plausible.
For Mark, much of this centers on chapter 13. Scholars often refer to this section as the Olivet Discourse, while others call it the Little Apocalypse. This passage is also seen in Matthew 24 and Luke 21.
External Evidence
The earliest extant reference to the Gospel of Mark is in Irenaeus’ “Against Heresies.” We only get a brief mention here that states, “After their death/departure Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, handed on his preaching to us in written form.”
This passage doesn’t help us too much, though. Against Heresies was written in the late 2nd century, between 160 and 180 AD, so we know that Mark must have been written by then. But that’s already a century after the conventional dating.
Irenaeus does give us a general date for when Mark was supposedly authored, but it turns out that we don’t know for sure what Irenaeus meant here. What he tells us is that after Peter, Mark handed on his Gospel. The problem is that we don’t know whether Irenaeus meant this occurred after Peter died or after Peter left Rome. The reason for this is that the word used here is exodos, which can mean both.
Exodos literally means departure, but it was also figuratively used for death. Conventionally, scholars have read this word in the latter manner, and thus conclude that Irenaeus was saying that Mark was produced after Peter died, which tradition would place under the persecutions of Nero in 64-65 AD. This would then place Mark’s earliest date at 65 AD.
There are some issues with this reading. Irenaeus, while speaking of death, generally used the word thanatos. This would lend credibility to the idea that what he meant here then was more along the lines of Peter departing from Rome.
And then we have a larger issue here: either way, Irenaeus doesn’t necessarily even tell us when Mark was written. Instead, he only tells us when it was supposedly handed over.
Historically speaking, this doesn’t leave us with much. There are a few other church fathers who mention similar ideas concerning the writing of Mark, but they don’t add much to the discussion. Instead, we have to go a bit further back.
While Irenaeus is our earliest extant mention of Mark, the earliest verifiable reference to Mark is by Papias, who was quoted in Eusebius’s History:
“And the Elder used to say this, ‘Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered not, indeed, in order, of the things said or done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had he followed him, but later on, as I said, followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so that Mark did nothing wrong in thus writing down certain matters as he remembered them.”
As Crossley argues, Papias was writing in the first decade of the second century. This would push Mark’s latest date to 110 AD. However, when viewed in context, Papias is referring to something he received from “the Elder.” Some have assumed this was John the Elder, but it doesn’t necessarily matter here, as, regardless of who the Elder is, we have to place this information before even Papias’ writing, since this tradition was handed down to him.
We could probably argue, then, that the Gospel of Mark was written by the end of the first century, at which point it had firmly been attached to a Mark associated with Peter. We do have to be careful here, though. Is Papais writing about the Gospel of Mark we have today, or was this in reference to some other text?
Papias also speaks of a work by Matthew; however, he says it was written in Hebrew or Aramaic. This does not match the text that we have today. So it is possible that Papias was speaking about texts that we simply don’t have today. Any argument we base on Papias, thus, has to be taken with a grain of salt.
All of this does raise another question, though. How certain can we be about the authorship of Mark?
Authorship
To attribute this Gospel to a Mark isn’t far-fetched. For one, Mark was one of the most common names in the Roman Empire. Just statistically, it’s not improbable. It’s a name that fits well within the time and place.
Going beyond that, it’s well attested that a Mark was the writer of this Gospel. We have no converging views. That Mark was the writer of the Gospel bearing his name is rather early and, as we saw, was quite possibly cemented by the end of the first century.
That the Gospel was related to Peter in some manner is also quite well attested. What should be highlighted here is that even though this material, or some of it, supposedly goes back to Peter, the Gospel is still attributed to an unknown person named Mark. Someone who, as we saw with Papias, never heard Jesus speak, never followed Jesus, and didn’t know him in any way.
Casey argues that, when we put this together, it’s rather good evidence that someone named Mark was truly behind the Gospel, and that this was so well established that the connection with Peter had to be exaggerated, as by Papias.
Part of the reason is that it is clear not all of the Gospel could have come from Peter’s memoirs. There are portions of the Gospel where Peter would have been absent, and yet we still have material there. There is also the issue that Mark is “not in a convincing historical order.” As Papias said, the story is not laid out in order. Instead, when we examine the Gospel, we see distinct groupings around themes.
Casey concludes, and I think it’s a rather safe conclusion, that an unknown Christian called Marcus (Mark) wrote the Gospel attributed to him. He didn’t know Jesus and wasn’t present during Jesus’ ministry. It’s probable Mark heard Peter preach, but it probably wasn’t often, and Mark definitely didn’t know Peter well. This would explain why the Gospel was attached to an unknown individual. It was just too firmly established, and later on, the connection with Peter had to be played up to justify this.
None of this really gets us any closer to dating Mark, though. External evidence most likely pushes authorship into the first century, and certainly establishes it by the end of the first decade of the second century. So now we must turn to internal evidence.
Internal Evidence
While the external evidence doesn’t get us all that far with dating Mark, the internal evidence helps us get a better handle on it.
Most often, this discussion centers on the year 70 AD and Mark 13. What we have to realize is that the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD was one of the most important events for the Jewish population, and in turn, for Christianity, which was still part of Judaism. It was an event that changed their world. The importance of this event can’t be stressed enough.
But does Mark 13 point to this event? Let’s look at verses 1 and 2:
“As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’”
Obviously, these verses refer to the destruction of the Temple, but the question scholars pose is whether this was a real prediction by Jesus or was it a pseudo-prophecy written after the fact?
One of the things almost all scholars agree on about Jesus is that he had some sort of eschatological message, a message regarding the end times. In this context, a prediction of the Temple would make sense. This means it wouldn’t be contrary to the teachings of Jesus and, in fact, would fit well with what we know about his overall ministry.
On the other hand, we do know that pseudo-prophecies did occur. We even have a technical term for this, vaticinium ex eventu, or prophecy from the event. Literally, a prophecy made after the event. There are a few key elements here, though, that can help us decide which scenario is more likely.
When examining a pseudo-prophecy, since it is created after the fact, we don’t expect major differences. After all, the person writing the supposed prophecy knows what actually occurred. That doesn’t mean the prediction will be perfect, or that there won’t be some vagueness in the prophecy. But it does mean we shouldn’t have any unexplained differences.
If we look at Mark 13:1-2 in light of the Temple’s destruction, we have an issue. First, and most obvious, is that the entire Temple wasn’t destroyed. Not every stone was “thrown down,” and there are many stones left upon one another, such as the famous “Wailing Wall,” that remains standing to this day.
Second, Josephus, in War VI, 250-84, tells us that the Temple was burnt down. While Mark doesn’t tell us exactly how the Temple was to be destroyed, to omit the fact that it was burnt down, which stands in contrast to the idea that the stones were thrown down, seems a bit unreasonable.
This contrast between Mark and the actual destruction of the Temple is one of the primary reasons some scholars date the Gospel to before 70 AD. But then the question arises: is it reasonable to assume that someone would make such a prophecy at all?
The answer is a resounding yes. Going back to Josephus’ War VI 300–309, Josephus reports on a different Jesus, a Jesus, son of Ananias. For four years prior to the outbreak of the War, he predicted the downfall of Jerusalem and the Temple. Josephus tells us that the Roman procurator at the time, Albinus, had Jesus brought forth and dismissed him as just a madman.
Expanding on this a bit, such a prophecy also makes sense in the context of eschatological teaching, as the destruction of the temple was, at times, a feature of such teaching. Dean Ulrich, in his article, “How Early Judaism Read Daniel 9:24-27,” notes that while this passage was applied to Antiochus IV in the second century BC, it was also read in more than one context.
Ulrich further argues that the Gospel writers would have known that Daniel 9 was, in fact, speaking of the Antiochene crisis, but also believed that the situation would repeat: that the desolation and destruction of the Temple would play out once again.
The question that Ulrich attempts to address here, then, is whether or not the Gospel writers were doing something new here in their interpretation, or if this sort of reading was already present in interpretations of Daniel 9. What he concludes is that the Gospel writers weren’t doing anything unprecedented, but were following the examples given in the Septuagint as well as other Second Temple Jewish writings.
Having such a prophecy on the lips of Jesus or another individual prior to the actual destruction of the Temple fits well with what we would expect. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the prophecy goes back to Jesus himself; that is an entirely different question. But it does show that such a prophecy was not unexpected during the first half of the first century.
The Desolating Sacrilege
Now that we have established that such a prophecy fits the period before 70 AD, we can look at the next major point in Mark that is often discussed in relation to its dating: the desolating sacrilege.
There are three primary views here, but only one that fits the correct period. For the sake of fullness, we will touch on each.
The view most distant from our time period, though it has come up every once in a while, is that the Bar Kokhba Revolt is the background to this passage. But there are two critical flaws with this proposal. One, there was no Temple, and thus nothing could have been set up there during the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Two, Jerusalem, while it mattered symbolically, played no major military role during the Bar Kokhba Revolt, nor does it appear that Rome began rebuilding Jerusalem as a Roman colony until after the Revolt. There is just no reason to assume that this passage is pointing to the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
The First Jewish War doesn’t fare much better. As with the Bar Kokhba Revolt, there is no event that fits Mark 13:14: “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains.”
Not only was there no event during the First Jewish War that could be seen as fulfilling the idea of desolation here, but the inhabitants of Judea also didn’t flee to the mountains. Instead, many fled to Jerusalem, which the Romans then besieged.
There is one other event that seems to fit this prophecy, though: the Caligula Crisis around 40 AD, when Caligula set out to install a statue of himself in the Temple in Jerusalem. According to Lester Grabbe, in his book, “Judaism From Cyrus to Hadrian,” “Had he [Caligula] succeeded, his actions would have been the equivalent of the destruction under Antiochus IV; only its failure has kept it from full notoriety.”
As James Crossley points out in his book, “The Date of Mark’s Gospel,” this similarity was also noticed by Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of the event, as well as Josephus. In both of their writings, we see distinct echoes of the Maccabean crisis with Antiochus IV, the event that brought forth the first desolating sacrilege as reported in Daniel. For instance, in Philo’s “Gaium” 117 and 192, as well as in Josephus’s “Antiquities” 18.265 and 271, we see Jews prepared to die for their traditions during the Caligula crisis, a pattern that recalls the Maccabean martyrs. We also have the Jewish threat of rebellion in “Gaium 226” and “Antiquities” 18.261f., and 264.
If the Caligula Crisis is behind Mark 13:14, it could also explain the unusual grammar here, which Matthew 24:15 actually cleans up when recounting this same passage. What stands out in the Greek is that Mark uses the masculine participle hestekota (set up) while referring to the neuter bdelygma (sacrilege).
Casey argues that the reason for the masculine participle here is that it “refers to a masculine person (Caligula), and the Greek word for statue (andrias) used for Caligula’s statue by both Philo and Josephus is masculine too.”
The author of Matthew changes this to the proper Greek by using the neutered form, hestos. Matthew also clarifies the prediction by referencing Daniel. Continuing along this line, when we get to Luke, this really is no longer an issue, as he, instead, alters the prophecy completely by stating in 21:20 that “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.”
Looking at this progression in the text, which ends with Luke’s passage that appears to be a clear reference to the First Jewish Revolt and the eventual destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, it would appear that, in Mark, the most probable event being referenced is the Caligula Crisis around 40 AD. It is the one event that fits where the desolating sacrilege, a repeat of the Antiochus events, makes sense.
It also makes sense why Luke later removes this portion of the prophecy and rewrites it. Luke was aware that the Caligula Crisis did not lead to a desolating sacrilege, as no statue was ever set up in the Temple. He would have known that the Temple wasn’t destroyed until 70 AD, after the Roman army surrounded Jerusalem. Given this knowledge, it would make sense to reinterpret the prophecy, as Daniel had done with the one in Jeremiah.
Concluding a Date for Mark
That Mark had the Caligula Crisis in mind suggests his Gospel was written before Caligula’s death in 41 AD. Caligula’s death would have ended the potential threat of a foreign statue being erected in the Temple in Jerusalem, and thus rendered the prophecy of a desolating sacrilege rather moot.
But does the rest of Mark hint at such an early dating? There are good reasons to think so. One of the main reasons is that Mark’s treatment of Jewish Law fits well within this timeframe. If we look at the Christian movement, we have to keep in mind that it began as a Jewish sect.
The earliest followers of Jesus were Jewish. The first missionary work done was among Jews. Jesus is recorded as having said, in Matthew 10:5-6, “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
While a Gentile mission wasn’t far off, as we see with Paul, it did take time for the mission to become more Gentile focused. Mark appears to have been written prior to this Gentile focus, for several reasons.
The main reason here, as Casey puts it, is that Mark “makes a number of comments which presuppose knowledge of Jewish Law perfectly possible at a relatively early stage of the Gentile mission, and increasingly improbable as time went on.”
One really good example of this is Mark 2:23-3:6. This is one passage that Casey argues, in his book, “Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel,” derives from an Aramaic source. Besides the idea that this passage was written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, he also argues that the entire situation being described would have made sense within a Jewish context and thus didn’t need to be explained any further.
According to Casey, Mark takes it for granted that his readers would have understood the system of Peah. Peah was a social security system in Israel, where it was allowed for people to pluck grain from other people’s fields because they were poor and hungry. As per this system of Peah, grain would be left on the edges of every field for this very reason.
This system itself was Biblical, as spelled out in Leviticus 23:22. A Jewish audience would have understood this, so no further explanation was needed. But we need to push this a bit further: in this story, the Pharisees appear to have an issue with this process because it was occurring on the Sabbath.
What we see here is an interfaith debate regarding the interpretation of the Law. It was permissible to eat on the Sabbath, but how much work could go into food preparation was debated. For instance, Philo of Alexandria, in Mos. 2.22 is of the view that plucking food was prohibited on the Sabbath. Later Rabbinic views would also prohibit plucking, such as seen in Shabbat 9.17. While Rabbinic views are the closest we have to Pharisaic thought, these interpretations were recorded only much later, so we don’t necessarily have a first-century view here.
Regardless, this shows that there were different views on what was permitted on the Sabbath, and such an intra-Jewish debate makes perfect sense during this time period. Moreover, it shows that the author of Mark understood this Jewish environment that would produce such arguments, and that his audience did not need it explained.
This all becomes a bit clearer when we compare Mark with Matthew 12:1-8. Here we see one keyword being added. In Mark, we are told that the disciples plucked grain. In Matthew, we are told that the disciples plucked grain and ate it. The author of Matthew feels the need to further clarify what was occurring. Crossley sums this up nicely: “Mark could assume what Matthew and Luke could not.”
Taking all of this into consideration, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Mark was most likely written around 40 AD.
