Appendix B: Style

Although not always apparent in the English translation or to the casual reader, many features of Mark’s writing style are not as common in (or are completely absent from) the other Gospels. Many of these features show more affinity to the spoken word than the written word, perhaps indicating that Mark’s Gospel was primarily an oral composition. The distinctive aspects of Mark’s writing style include:

1. Mark uses Aramaic words and phrases¹ with disproportionate frequency relative to the length of the Gospel.² Scholars debate why Mark included the Aramaic words in the Gospel; since Jesus spoke in Aramaic, everything he said could have been presented in this Gospel in Aramaic. So why were these particular words and phrases included untranslated? Notice that some of the Aramaic words are in the context of healing (for example, 5:41; 7:34), perhaps Mark felt it was important to include the actual wording because these had ritual or historical significance. It has also been suggested that the Aramaic phrases represent the (only) times where Jesus’ actual words (as opposed to a paraphrase) are preserved in the account, but there is no way to verify this.
2. While the Gospel of Mark is substantially shorter than the other three Gospels,³ the tendency in Mark is for an individual story to be longer than Matthew, Luke, or John’s account of the same event. For example, Matthew and Mark both contain stories of a woman who comes to anoint Jesus at a dinner, but Mark’s account has significantly more detail.⁴ Similarly, Mark tells the story of the hemorrhaging woman in 153 Greek words while Matthew uses only 48 words and Luke 110 words (5:25–34; Matt. 9:20–22; Luke 8:43–48). The story of a man healed from a demon takes 20 verses for Mark to relate; Matthew tells the story in a mere 7 verses, and the details that Matthew omits scrub the story of its political implications, which are front and center in Mark (5:1–20; Matt. 8:28–34).⁵ The details in Mark’s stories would have added vividness and drama and perhaps accounted for some of its popularity as an oral narrative. Since Mark not only includes more detail but also has a shorter text length, this means that Mark tells substantially fewer stories than the other Gospels.
3. Mark’s Gospel consists of episodes connected only loosely. (The technical term for this is parataxis.) About two-thirds of the verses⁶ in Mark begin with the word “and.” This is not a writing style that wins kudos from those who appreciate sophisticated literary creations, but it is a characteristic of oral narratives. The simple presentation may also be an appropriate manner in which to tell the story of a Son of God who chose to live an unadorned human life.
4. One of the most distinctive characteristics of Mark’s Gospel is the frequent use of the word euthys (“immediately”).⁷ This word is used 41 times in the Gospel, or, on average, more than twice per chapter (although it is concentrated at the beginning of the gospel, with ten occurrences in the first chapter). It creates a sense of a rapidly rushing narrative.
5. Mark features many instances of triple repetition, sometimes in an intensifying sequence.⁸ This may serve a theological purpose, especially since the number three was a symbol for God. It may also be a sign of an oral composition: groups of three are common to oral materials because they are easier to memorize and are pleasing to the ear.
6. Mark has a tendency to organize the Gospel by the type of material (miracles, controversies, parables),⁹ not by theme (faith, patience, repentance) or chronologically. It is important for the reader to realize that the material is thus organized (see the outline in the introduction).
7. Mark frequently uses foreshadowing, mentioning to the audience something that will not be more fully revealed until later in the narrative.¹⁰ Mark also foreshadows events that will not happen in the Gospel text but at a future point in history.¹¹ The fact that foreshadowed events are fulfilled within the text cultivates the trust of the audience, who then assumes that the events foreshadowed beyond the text will actually come to pass.
8. Mark frequently “sandwiches” a story in between two other sections of text with the goal of encouraging the audience to understand the center story in light of its surrounding material.¹² Recognition of this pattern is very important to understanding the purpose and point of the stories that Mark tells. The reader who is aware of this pattern will gain far more from her study of Mark’s Gospel, as the “meat” of the sandwich is typically explained in more detail by way of comparison with the “bread.” This pattern may also have made it easier to remember the story as it was being transmitted orally.
9. Mark’s Gospel includes a lot of questions.¹³ These are rarely straightforward requests for information but usually an indication of controversy; Jesus and his opponents frequently ask questions that spark debate and discussion.¹⁴ The questions engage the audience of the Gospel as they ponder the questions themselves. The questions also provide teaching opportunities for Jesus. Many of these questions, intended to entrap Jesus, end up “showcas[ing] the wisdom and cleverness of Jesus.”¹⁵ It is easy to imagine how these questions would have captured the attention of an audience listening to the Gospel orally.
10. Mark frequently uses the historical present tense, which means recounting events that happened in the past using the present tense. As one scholar writes, Mark “is especially fond of using the present tense to relay past happenings. Mark employs this ‘historical present’ over 150 times when other writers would have used the simple past tense.”¹⁶ This might have been particularly appropriate in oral story telling; it certainly creates a sense for the reader of being right in the middle of the action. Matthew and Luke will frequently change these verbs to the past tense.
11. The quality of Mark’s Greek is very poor: “Mark [writes] in an extremely plain, abrupt, often unidiomatic and dogged Koine [Greek] which has generally been made to seem falsely natural, even eloquent, in English translations.”¹⁷ To create the appropriate effect in an English translation, it would need to include actual grammatical errors. Other interpreters have understood Mark’s poor Greek as intentionally simple in a way that “serve[s] to make Jesus the contemporary of those who hear or read the account.”¹⁸ In either case, it is good for the reader to remember that she is not reading a polished literary text (compare Luke’s Gospel, where that description does fit).
12. Mark is also known for the use of irony, which often exists on multiple ­levels. For example, Jesus heals a leper and tells the leper not to tell anyone (1:44–45). In the first bit of irony, the leper disobeys the one who has healed him. In the next layer, Jesus himself has to act like a leper and live in the wilderness in order to escape the crowds. In the final layer of irony, Jesus’ efforts to escape the crowds fail, and they come to him in the desert. Irony plays into other themes that Mark develops, such as discipleship: while the Twelve repeatedly struggle to understand Jesus’ identity and teachings, despite his repeated efforts to teach them, the literally blind Bartimaeus is able to identify Jesus (10:47). In another example, the same Pharisees who watch Jesus closely so they can accuse him of Sabbath-breaking for healing someone on the Sabbath will then, ironically, begin on the Sabbath to plot Jesus’ death (3:6). The touch of the hemorrhaging woman, which, under the law of Moses, should have rendered Jesus ritually unclean, instead renders the woman healed (5:34). In 6:29, the disciples of John the Baptist come forward to claim his corpse and bury him; later, it is Joseph of Arimathea (15:43)—not one of Jesus’ chosen inner circle of disciples—who will request and bury his body; Jesus’ closest male disciples have fled (although the women will look on from afar). The irony in Mark’s Gospel reaches its climax with the death of Jesus, where Jesus is mocked with symbols of kingship (15:1–39); the reader understands that Jesus is the true king, making the mockery ironic. Irony is an appropriate literary device for a Gospel that teaches that you save your life by losing it (8:35) and that the Christ must suffer and die. It also would have created an affinity between writer and audience, because the audience, by recognizing the irony, attains the “insider” status that allows them to see themselves as part of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples and followers.
13. This Gospel is very much focused on deeds; Jesus does not say much. There is no Sermon on the Mount (see Matt. 5–7) or Farewell Discourse (see John 14–17). This may also be an indicator of an oral narrative. It creates a picture of Jesus as active and dynamic.

As the above evidence suggests, it seems likely that Mark’s Gospel was originally more closely tied to oral presentation rather than written composition. Perhaps this is because it was originally Peter’s memoirs, perhaps because Mark designed it to meet the needs of an almost entirely illiterate group of Christians, or perhaps for some other reason. Regardless, it seems to bear the marks of a text that was transmitted orally. The normal method for the audience to experience this Gospel would have been for them to have listened to it being read out loud, most likely in one sitting.¹⁹ Awareness of Mark’s likely history as an oral composition can nuance how some parts of the text are interpreted. For example, references to “to hear” (4:9, 12, 23) would have been understood the way references to “to see” are in a literate, visually focused culture; in both cases, they are metaphors for “to understand.”²⁰ In an oral text, keywords and repetition are generally appreciated more than they are in written texts, which are generally not read in one sitting or with the same awareness of this sort of detail.

Mark’s history as an oral composition may explain why it was included in the NT. Joanna Dewey argues that the reason Mark survived is that it worked so well for oral performance and was popular and therefore spread. In fact, it is likely that even after a written copy of the Gospel of Mark existed, oral performances independent of the written text persisted: “Even after it was committed to writing around 70 C.E., it continued to be performed orally, with minimal dependence on or even connection to manuscripts. In the process of being told and retold orally during the first century or two of Christianity, it became widely known orally to Christians in diverse parts of the empire.”²¹