Paul Says That Mark Is Futile : No Res­ur­rec­tion In Mark’s Gospel

The whole of Chris­tian­i­ty rests on the ques­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion as its founder, Paul of Tar­sus writes : ​“And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is use­less and you are still guilty of your sins.” (1 Corinthi­ans 15:17, NLT) But the first of the four gospels, i.e., the Gospel accord­ing to Mark, appar­ent­ly did not receive Paul’s memo.

There is no res­ur­rec­tion in Mark’s gospel. And this is a very impor­tant point as we keep in mind that each of the gospels was ini­tial­ly divorced from each oth­er and were writ­ten in dif­fer­ent local­i­ties for dif­fer­ent audi­ences. There was no canon of the New Tes­ta­ment as we know it today in the first 70 years of Chris­tian­i­ty in the first century.

No Res­ur­rec­tion In Mark ?

The first per­son to canon­ise scrip­ture was the heretic Mar­cion and this was, accord­ing to most bib­li­cal crit­ics, the impe­tus behind the ortho­dox canon­i­sa­tion process.Perhaps it is also per­ti­nent to note that a gospel that pre­dates Mark, the so-called Say­ings Gospel or Q (quelle, which means ​“source” in Ger­man), which has been recon­struct­ed by schol­ars through the Syn­op­tic Prob­lem, has absolute­ly no cru­ci­fix­ion or res­ur­rec­tion nar­ra­tives in it. 

James Robin­son writes : 

…the Say­ings Gospel has no pas­sion nar­ra­tive or res­ur­rec­tion sto­ries.…1.

Bart D. Ehrman writes : 

Most strik­ing was the cir­cum­stance that in none of the Q mate­ri­als (that is, in none of the pas­sages found in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark) is there an account of Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion.2

The Gospel of Mark seems to sup­port the Islam­ic world­view as it stark­ly keeps silent or omits any men­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion. The gospel ends in verse eight with the women, in utter con­fu­sion, flee­ing the scene of the tomb, which was empty :

“Trem­bling and bewil­dered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said noth­ing to any­one because they were afraid.“3

The late Catholic Jesuit schol­ar John McKen­zie writes :

“…for Mark real­ly has no res­ur­rec­tion and no appari­tions, just the emp­ty tomb.”

Light­foot Pro­fes­sor of Divin­i­ty and New Tes­ta­ment schol­ar, James Dunn writes :

“… the ear­li­est Gospel (Mark) ends with­out any record of a ​‘res­ur­rec­tion appear­ance’,…“4

Dean at the Insti­tute of Pas­toral Stud­ies at Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty, Bri­an Shmisek writes :

“For our pur­pos­es, let us note that the ear­li­est gospel has no appear­ance nar­ra­tive and leaves many ques­tions unan­swered.“5

Chair of the Depart­ment and Cen­tre for the Study of Reli­gion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, John S. Klop­pen­borg writes :

“Mark, famous­ly, has no res­ur­rec­tion appear­ance sto­ries, only the dis­cov­ery of an emp­ty tomb.“6

Mark’s Faith Is ​“Futile”?

Essen­tial­ly, the gospel accord­ing to Mark has zero res­ur­rec­tion nar­ra­tive and so those — the ini­tial recip­i­ents — that read this gospel soon after it was writ­ten and put into cir­cu­la­tion, would not have had much belief in the res­ur­rec­tion as they were not made aware of it by the gospel that they were rely­ing upon.

The gospels accord­ing to Matthew and Luke, which would even­tu­al­ly sup­ply such infor­ma­tion would only come years later.

This would have been utter­ly anti­thet­i­cal to the gospel preached by Paul, which spec­i­fies the fun­da­men­tal impor­tance of the res­ur­rec­tion ; accord­ing to the words of Paul, the gospel accord­ing to Mark, with­out the res­ur­rec­tion, is in fact ​“use­less”.

Con­clu­sions

The orig­i­nal end­ing of Mark proved very dis­turb­ing to the ear­ly scribes of the Bible and it real­ly did not sit too well with them. So per­turbed were their the­o­log­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties, that they sought to smoothen the end­ing with their own ver­sion of an end­ing by append­ing to verse 8 the longer end­ing of Mark that extends from verse 9 to 20 and that cur­rent­ly remains part of the main text in the New King James Ver­sion. In fact, more cre­ative scribes added two oth­er ver­sions of the end­ing, i.e., the Freer Logion and the Short­er Ending.

North Amer­i­ca’s most emi­nent tex­tu­al crit­ic — the pro­tégé of Bruce Met­zger — Pro­fes­sor Bart Ehrman, writes :

Obvi­ous­ly, scribes thought the end­ing was too abrupt. The women told no one ? Then, did the dis­ci­ples nev­er learn of the res­ur­rec­tion ? And did­n’t Jesus him­self ever appear to them ? How could that be the end­ing ! To resolve the prob­lem, scribes added an end­ing.7

And that was how easy it was to mint the so-called ​“words of God” in Christianity.

In short, the gospel accord­ing to Mark – accord­ing to the gospel of Paul – is noth­ing but a use­less gospel, because with­out the res­ur­rec­tion, the faith of Chris­tian­i­ty is use­less, and the res­ur­rec­tion sim­ply does not exist in Mark’s gospel.

1. Robin­son, J. M. The Real Jesus of the Say­ings ​“Q” Gospel, Reli­gion Online, April 10, 1997[⤶]
2. Ehrman, B. D. (2003), Lost Chris­tian­i­ties (New York : Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press) p. 57[⤶]
3. Mark 16:8, NIV[⤶]
4. Dunn, J. D. G. (1985), The Evi­dence for Jesus (Louisville, Ken­tucky : The West­min­ster Press), p. 66[⤶]
5. Schmisek, B. (2013), Res­ur­rec­tion of the Flesh or Res­ur­rec­tion from the Dead : Impli­ca­tions for The­ol­o­gy (Col­legeville, Min­neso­ta : Litur­gi­cal Press), p. 61[⤶]
6. Klop­pen­borg, J. S. (2008). Q, the Ear­li­est Gospel : An Intro­duc­tion to the Orig­i­nal Sto­ries and Say­ings of Jesus (Louisville, Ken­tucky : West­min­ster John Knox Press), p. 84[⤶]
7. Ehrman, B. D. (2006). Whose Word is it?: The Sto­ry Behind Who Changed the New Tes­ta­ment and Why (Lon­don : The Con­tin­uüm Inter­na­tion­al Pub­lish­ing Group), p. 67[⤶]