Date of the Gospel of Mark

The Date of the Gospel of Mark is unjustifiably pegged to the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70, based very loosely on the eschatological, end-of-the-world talk in Mark 13 .

In fact, at least five considerations point to a date soon after the Resurrection, or even prior to it in the form of a diary kept during the events:

• the Gospel of Mark omits subsequent events after the Resurrection;
• the Gospel of Mark contains remarkable detail that would fade if written long afterwards;
• the Gospel of Mark is concise and to-the-point, while a later work would be less terse;
• 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; and
• the Gospel of Mark is by an eyewitness, many of who were killed or scattered by years later.

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 was have been part of the armed conflicts around Jerusalem that included the fall of the Second Temple in AD 70.