Date of the Gospel of Mark

The Date of the Gospel of Mark was contemporaneous with Jesus's ministry and his Resurrection, similar to a daily log or diary. Liberals unjustifiably peg the writing of the Gospel of Mark to the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70, based very loosely on the eschatological, end-of-the-world talk in Mark 13 . Mark was a Gentile and there is no reason to think he was in Jerusalem when the Jewish Temple was destroyed. Also, liberal logic for the Bible is that when a work is known to have been composed before a certain event, as in the Temple's destruction in AD 70, then liberals insist that is when the work was written (rather than long prior) in order to assign as late a date as possible.

Honest biblical scholars are not experts in the trickery of liberal style and, as a result, the scholars allow absurd claims of a late authorship to gain unjustified favor.

There are fourteen (14) reasons why the date of authorship of the Gospel of Mark was soon after the Resurrection, or even prior to it as an ongoing account:

• early in Paul's ministry, not long after the Resurrection, he quoted from the Gospel of Mark concerning "the sandals of whose feet I [John the Baptist] am not worthy to untie" Acts 13:25 (ESV) (taken from Mark 1:7 )
• the verb tenses in this Gospel are often in the present, as a daily log or diary would be rather than a historical account, and many translations convert to the past tense while others consider this a proper use of the historical present;
• this Gospel uses the "Markan sandwich" style whereby a narrative is described in the middle of another narrative, but the best and simplest explanation for this is that Mark described events as they occurred, with interruptions as they do occur in daily life while a retrospect account many years later would separate the narratives;
• the Gospel of Mark, without the Mark ending apparently added later, omits subsequent events after the Resurrection, implying that it was finalized with the Resurrection;
• the Gospel of Mark is concise and to-the-point, almost like notes, while a later work would have been (and was) more verbose;
• it would have been immensely helpful to have an eyewitness account circulate among early Christians, but secret from authorities who might have seized it;
• the Gospel of Mark contains remarkable detail early in Jesuss's ministry that would have faded in recollection if written long afterwards;
• the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, both written within decades of Jesus's ministry, copied extensively and independently from the Gospel of Mark which must therefore had been available far earlier;
• the availability of scribes made it possible, even likely, that a disciple of Jesus dictated regularly to a scribe as the events unfolded;
• the Gospel of Mark is by an eyewitness, many of who were killed or scattered soon after the Resurrection, and would not be expected to have a long, modern-type lifespan;
• this Gospel has no preface, introduction or background, just as a daily log or diary would not, and this implies it was not a book written later but rather an ongoing account written and circulated at the time (but without letter authorities know about it, lest they seize it);
• only this Gospel begins by calling itself "news", namely the "good news" ("gospel"), which suggests timeliness of the reporting rather than a retrospective or historical account;
• Mark introduces Rufus at Mark 15:21 , the only Gospel write to do so, and later Paul refers favorably to Rufus and his mother at Romans 16:13 ; and
• the Gospel of Mark uses εὐθὺς 41 times, compared with only 10 times in the rest of the entire New Testament, and the translation of εὐθὺς as "immediately ..." seems off: instead, it should be recognized as a term used for a contemporaneous account of events, as in "now ...", "at this time ...", or "at this moment ...."

Nonsensical Liberal Theories

With nonsensical liberal style, liberals have long asserted that the Gospel of Mark was written around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. But Mark, a Roman name for a Gentile, showed no interest in politics, Hebrew culture, conflicts with the Roman Empire, or the Old Testament as being consummated by Jesus. Nothing about Mark suggests that he would have been part of the armed conflicts around Jerusalem that included the fall of the Second Temple in AD 70.