Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 87

Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels, due to the fact that his audience was mainly Roman. When you belong to an imperial police state, you’re not as concerned about making intricate connections to a Hebrew past, and you’re not interested in lengthy philosophical dialogues. You want action. That’s why the Gospel According to Mark has fewer sermons and more movement. It’s a fast-paced, nonstop, continuous narrative, like an excited person telling the events “a mile a minute.” Romans would have been far more attentive to the Gospel According to Mark than to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, or John.

Mark explicitly describes the Roman Centurion, a military commander of a hundred soldiers, at the Crucifixion as making the proclamation, “Truly, this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). His Roman audience would’ve certainly perked up when that was said because it was an act of faith from one of their own kind.

Like Luke, Mark wasn’t one of the original Twelve Apostles. Matthew and John were Apostles, but Luke and Mark were 2 of the 72 disciples. The Apostles were there in person to witness all that Jesus said and did. The disciples often had to resort to secondhand information, told to them by other sources. Luke most likely received much of his information from Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mark undoubtedly used his friend Peter, the chief Apostle, as his source.