The Essential Gospel : Introduction
I have started reading Barclay’s study guide - On the Gospel of St.Mark.

This Gopspel is one among the synoptic gospels and the most important amongst them.

Why ? - Only because the other gospels were written from this and theologians have it that this is earliest account of Jesus that survives now.

But how? How did they deduce that Mark was the first of the Gospels? Barclay explains this in great detail. But I’ll just pen down the vital statements.

St.Mark’s Gospel can be divided into 105 sections.
Of these 93 occur in St.Mathew’s gospel and 81 in St.Luke’s.

St.Mark’s gospel has 661 verses.
Of these St.Mathew reproduces 606, St.Luke reproduces 320.

There are only 24 verses in St.Mark’s gospel that do not occur anywhere in the others.

A close examination of the order of events depicted in the other gospels tells us that they had St.Mark’s gospel before them when they wrote.


Who was Mark ?

(Much as I hate to refer to the apostle with his first name, I’ll continue the writing using that. Partly because all these years I’ve been referring to him as Mark and not St.Mark. Have you noticed that we never call our thirumenis or bava thirumeni by their first name but we refer to Jesus , Mary and the apostles with their first names. Why ?)

He was the son of a well-to-do lady in Jerusalem and his house was the meeting place of early church. He was also the nephew of Barnabas (Barnabas and Paul had set out on missionary journey). It is said that Mark founded the church in Alexandria (Egyptian Orthodox?).
Mark was very close to Peter and his gospel is nothing more than the preaching material of Peter. The picturisation is vivid; very clear, as a reader we would feel as though things are just happening before us. This is because it is almost an eye-witness account of Jesus’s life.