Why Mark's Gospel Survived

Mark’s Gospel is short, raw, and famously ends in silence — no nativity, no resurrection appearances, no triumphant conclusion. So how did this rough first draft of the Jesus story survive when flashier Gospels came along? In this episode, we explore the surprising reasons Mark’s Gospel made the final cut. From apostolic name-dropping and Gentile appeal to performance-ready storytelling and possible Homeric influences, The B-Side Bible uncovers the overlooked genius of Christianity’s first Gospel.

Whether you're a theology nerd, a Bible history buff, or just love a good underdog story — this one’s for you.

Transcript

The B-Side Bible

Podcast Episode: Why Mark’s Gospel Survived

🎧 INTRO

🎙️ HOST (Mark Kerrigan):

Welcome Listeners

"They Didn't Teach That At School" has been renamed The B-Side Bible. The B-Side Bible is a playful nod to the forgotten, overlooked, and underappreciated parts of Christianity and the Bible — much like a B-side on an old vinyl record. While the A-sides are the polished, well-known stories you hear in sermons (think Noah, Moses, and Jesus’ greatest hits), the B-sides are the strange visions, fringe characters, obscure rules, and wild moments hiding in the background.

So, Welcome back to another episode of the, newly names,  B-Side Bible — the podcast that is your backstage pass to what didn’t make the sermon. Where we uncover all of the sacred oddities, quirky tales, and theological curveballs that rarely get the spotlight, but are just as fascinating.

Today’s episode takes us deep into one of the earliest — and arguably most overlooked — pieces of Christian scripture: the Gospel of Mark.

Todays episode is all about... the Gospel of Mark. Not just who wrote it or what’s in it but **why on earth it survived**. Because if you look closely, Mark’s Gospel is the weird uncle of the four Gospels.

It’s rough around the edges. Its abrupt. And it’s got a very human Jesus one who gets angry, makes mistakes, and even gets called crazy by his own family. Not exactly the image of Christ you'd expect to make the final edit.

So how did it make it into the official canon? And why didn’t it get left behind when the Gospels of Matthew and Luke came along and, let’s face it, tried to do a rewrite?

So how did Mark’s Gospel not only survive, but end up as one of the four cornerstones of the New Testament?

Buckle up — because this is a story of literary craft, historical timing, apostolic name-dropping, Gentile outreach, and maybe even a wink at Homer’s Odyssey.

Let’s break it down.

🎙️ SEGMENT 1: THE UNLIKELY HERO

We start by setting the stage. The Gospel of Mark was probably written sometime between 65 and 75 CE, during or just after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple — a turning point that shook the Jewish world and sent early Christians scattering.

Mark’s Gospel was the first to be written — before Matthew, Luke, and John — and it laid the foundation for how the story of Jesus would be told. It’s fast-paced, gritty, and abrupt. There's no Christmas story, no poetic prologue, and no tidy ending.

Then along came Matthew and Luke. They took Mark’s outline and expanded it. They added birth narratives, refined the language, smoothed the theology, and tried to present a more complete and divine Jesus.

And yet — Mark didn’t disappear.

He stayed in circulation. He kept getting copied. He kept being read aloud.

So why didn’t this rough draft get left behind?

Let’s find out.

🎙️ SEGMENT 1: THE UNLIKELY HERO

Let’s set the stage.

We’re in the chaotic years after Jesus' death. The Roman Empire is still in charge, tensions between Jews and Rome are boiling over, and in 70 CE, the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed. Christianity is still in its infancy — it doesn’t even have a Bible yet — just a collection of stories, letters, and sermons passed around like underground mixtapes. No one’s sure yet which writings will stick, which communities will survive, or even what being "Christian" really means.

Enter the Gospel of Mark.

Most scholars agree it was written sometime between 65 and 75 CE, likely during or shortly after that traumatic destruction of the Temple. That date matters. It puts Mark at the front of the line — the earliest Gospel we have. No nativity scene, no wise men, no extended theology. Just Jesus — on the move, in the mud, misunderstood, performing miracles, picking fights with the establishment, and heading toward a brutal end on a Roman cross.

Now, where exactly Mark was written? That's still up for debate. Some scholars say Rome, possibly during Nero’s persecution of Christians. Others suggest Syria or Galilee. But here’s the thing — it probably wasn’t written in Jerusalem. Which tells us something important: this Gospel was written for a scattered, possibly persecuted audience, maybe even one made up mostly of Gentiles — non-Jews who were trying to make sense of this new Jesus movement.

But here’s the twist that turns our story upside down: although Mark came first, he didn’t become the favorite.

Cue Matthew and Luke.

They roll onto the scene about 10 to 20 years later — and it’s like someone handed them Mark’s script and said, “Okay, this is a good start... but let’s do a rewrite.”

And rewrite they did.

• Matthew added a Christmas special — complete with a genealogy, a virgin birth, and some very expensive gifts from wise men. He polished the story for a Jewish audience, turning Jesus into the new Moses.
• Luke went the extra mile: interviews, parables, poetic songs, and a birth story that could melt your heart. He wrote like a historian, even opening with “I myself have investigated everything from the beginning.” Shots fired, Mark.

But here's where things get really cheeky: both Matthew and Luke copied large chunks of Mark — like, word-for-word in places. Depending on how you count, over 90% of Mark shows up in Matthew, and around 60% in Luke. But they also cut bits out, rephrased awkward lines, and added their own touches. It’s like Mark wrote a gritty indie film, and Matthew and Luke came along and gave it the Hollywood treatment.

And yet — Mark wouldn't go quietly.

You’d think once the longer, cleaner, more polished Gospels arrived, Mark would’ve been retired, archived, or just quietly forgotten. But it wasn’t. Despite being rougher, shorter, and lacking the theological flourish of the others, Mark survived. More than survived — it was canonized, included alongside Matthew, Luke, and John as one of the four official Gospels of the New Testament.

And here’s the burning question: why?

Why did the early Church — with all its squabbles, politics, and power plays — decide to keep this raw, strange, and often misunderstood Gospel?

What made it important enough to preserve — not as a footnote, not as a source, but as Scripture?

Was it because of when it was written — its early arrival on the scene? Was it its supposed connection to Peter, Jesus’ right-hand man? Was it the way it flouted Jewish tradition, making it more appealing to Gentile converts? Or was it something deeper — maybe something in the way the story itself was told?

Well, that’s what we’re unpacking in this episode.

Stick around — because the more you learn about Mark’s Gospel, the more you realize… it’s not just a first draft. It’s a survivor.

🎙️ SEGMENT 2: THE APOSTOLIC BOOSTER CLUB

Alright, so Mark’s Gospel wasn’t the slickest. It didn’t have the birth story, the poetry, or the polished theology. But what it did have — or at least what people believed it had — was connections.

Big connections.

Let’s talk about the name that keeps coming up when scholars try to work out why Mark’s Gospel survived: Papias.

Now, Papias was an early Christian bishop writing in the early 2nd century — somewhere around 110 CE — and he’s one of our first sources to say something concrete about the Gospels. Unfortunately, most of Papias’s writings are lost, but bits and pieces were quoted by a later historian named Eusebius, who lived in the 4th century. Eusebius was kind of like the Christian Church’s official chronicler, and he quotes Papias as saying something along the lines of:

“Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered of what Peter had said or done.”

Boom. Just like that, we’ve got a direct line from Mark to Peter — Jesus’ closest disciple.

Now let’s pause for a second. Is this true?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Scholars have been wrestling with Papias’s quote for centuries. What did he mean by “interpreter”? Was Mark a literal translator — maybe Peter spoke Aramaic and Mark wrote in Greek? Or was he more like a scribe, jotting down Peter’s sermons and stories for a wider audience? Some scholars even suggest the word Papias used — hermeneutes — might’ve meant something closer to a narrative reteller or authorized speaker of Peter’s teachings. There’s also speculation that Papias might’ve been trying to give Mark more credibility at a time when people were starting to doubt it.

But here’s the thing: whether it was historically accurate or not, the idea stuck.

And in the early Church, apostolic connection was everything.

If your Gospel could be traced to an apostle — someone who actually walked with Jesus, talked with him, and witnessed the resurrection — you had a much better shot at being taken seriously. It was the theological equivalent of name-dropping Beyoncé at a Grammy party.

That’s why Matthew was linked to, well, Matthew the tax collector. Luke was supposedly connected to Paul, and John — well, tradition says John the beloved disciple wrote that one. So, for Mark, being seen as Peter’s right-hand man was his golden ticket. It gave his Gospel a kind of apostolic legitimacy, even if his writing style was a little rough around the edges.

And remember — the early Church didn’t have a unified Bible. There were dozens of gospels floating around: the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of Peter… it was like the Marvel multiverse of early Christian writing.

So, Church leaders had to make choices. They had to decide which gospels were "in" and which were out. And in a climate filled with heresies, power struggles, and theological turf wars, apostolic backing was the equivalent of a big, glowing stamp that said: “AUTHENTIC.”

Mark had that, thanks to Papias. And Papias wasn’t just some random guy shouting from the back pew. He was respected. His opinion carried weight. He was close to the generation that came right after the apostles — and that made him part of the inner circle of memory-keepers.

But there’s another layer.

Remember, Peter wasn’t just any apostle. He was the apostle. The rock on which Jesus said he would build his Church. So if you’re an early Christian community trying to figure out which Gospel best reflects the teachings of the guy Jesus left in charge — and someone tells you, “Hey, this one? This one’s from Peter’s interpreter” — you’re going to sit up and pay attention.

Now, there are scholars who argue that Papias may have been exaggerating. Some even say he was trying to boost the profile of a Gospel that was in danger of being sidelined by the flashier, longer versions. And that’s totally possible. But whether it was clever PR or a real memory of Mark’s role, it was enough.

By the time we get to Irenaeus — another heavy-hitter in the second century — the link between Mark and Peter was basically gospel. Irenaeus, writing around 180 CE, affirms that Mark wrote down what Peter preached. He even goes a step further and says that each of the four Gospels was written under divine guidance and for a specific theological purpose. And yes — Mark is included.

And just a fun side note? Some early traditions say that Mark went on to become the first bishop of Alexandria in Egypt — a major Christian hub. Eusebius reports this too. Now, modern scholars are a bit skeptical about that claim — it might’ve been a later attempt to give Alexandria an apostolic origin story — but again, the tradition shows how important Mark became in the Christian imagination.

So, let’s recap:

• Was Mark the slickest Gospel? Nope.
• Was he the most complete? Definitely not.
• But did he have friends in high places? Oh yeah.
• Did those friends — and the early Church’s obsession with apostolic legitimacy — help keep him in the game? You better believe it.

Mark may have been rough, raw, and underappreciated by the Gospel writers who followed him, but with Peter’s name attached, he had something even better than a bestselling biography — he had apostolic endorsement.

And in a time when everyone was trying to separate the true message of Jesus from the fakes, that made all the difference.

🎙️ SEGMENT 3: A GOSPEL FOR GENTILES

Alright — so we’ve seen that Mark may have had some apostolic connections, thanks to Peter’s stamp of approval. But connections alone don’t guarantee survival. After all, loads of early Christian writings got the chop, despite claims of apostolic origin.

So what else helped Mark's Gospel hang on?

Here’s a big one: it spoke to the right audience — and that audience wasn’t strictly Jewish anymore.

Let’s step back for a second.

In the earliest decades of Christianity, Jesus' followers were primarily Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. His disciples were Jewish. The earliest Christian gatherings were basically reform synagogues that believed the Messiah had already come. But after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, everything started to shift. Big time.

The heart of Judaism — both spiritually and geographically — had been obliterated. The Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem, once the centre of the movement, was now scattered. And in its place, new Christian centres began to rise — places like Antioch, Alexandria, and cities across Asia Minor — areas filled not with Aramaic-speaking Jews, but with Greek-speaking Gentiles.

These Gentiles — former pagans, converts, the curious — were now joining the Jesus movement in droves. But they weren’t showing up with Torah scrolls and kosher kitchens. They came with Greco-Roman worldviews, questions, and customs. They needed a message that fit their world, and Mark’s Gospel… well, it delivered.

Unlike Matthew, who was obsessed with Jewish prophecy, or Luke, who sometimes tried to walk a fine line between traditions, Mark had a more rebellious streak. He wasn’t interested in making Jesus look like Moses 2.0. In fact, his Jesus kind of thumbed his nose at the traditions of the day.

Think about it:

• In Mark 2, Jesus lets his disciples pick grain on the Sabbath — a clear no-no according to Jewish law.
• In Mark 7, he declares all foods clean — which is a mic-drop moment if you’re keeping kosher.
• He hangs out with sinners, tax collectors, and unclean people.
• He’s constantly butting heads with the religious elite — the Pharisees, the scribes, the temple authorities.

And perhaps most dramatically, in Mark 3:21, Jesus’ own family tries to restrain him, saying he’s “out of his mind.” Imagine that. The Messiah, the Son of God… and his own relatives think he’s lost the plot.

So what are we seeing here?

We’re seeing a Jesus who doesn’t play by the rules. A Jesus who’s not afraid to challenge sacred traditions. A Jesus who, to many Jews of the time, would have been shocking — maybe even offensive.

But to Gentiles? Especially those who were already outsiders to Jewish custom and law? This Jesus made a lot of sense.

He wasn’t bound by religious minutiae.
 He spoke in parables and riddles.
 He healed, he travelled, he preached.
 And he welcomed everyone — no circumcision, no dietary codes, no genealogy required.

For Gentile believers trying to understand how to follow Jesus without becoming Jewish first, Mark’s Gospel was a breath of fresh air.

Now, this has led some scholars to argue that Mark’s Gospel isn’t just Gentile-friendly — it’s actually anti-Jewish. That’s a hotly debated topic, and the term “anti-Semitic” is rightly treated with caution. But there’s no denying that Mark sometimes paints Jewish leaders in a pretty unflattering light. The scribes and Pharisees are almost caricatures — stiff, rule-obsessed, and always missing the point.

But again — if your audience is primarily Gentile, and they’ve faced criticism or rejection from Jewish communities, that framing might have made the message more relatable.

It’s also worth noting that by the time Mark was writing, the split between Judaism and Christianity was well underway. The synagogue and the church were drifting apart. Christian preachers were being kicked out of synagogues. Jewish Christians were being labelled heretics. And there’s even evidence that Jewish authorities issued formal bans on those who were following “the Way.”

So Mark’s Gospel reflects a community that’s defining itself against Judaism, rather than within it.

And that helps explain another thing: why Matthew and Luke made changes.

Matthew, for example, goes out of his way to bring Jesus back into the Jewish fold. He constantly quotes Hebrew scripture. He says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). He adds five long teaching sections, echoing the five books of the Torah. It’s a clear attempt to reclaim Jesus for a Jewish audience.

Luke, on the other hand, takes a slightly more balanced approach — but even he softens the edges of Mark’s rebellious tone.

But Mark? Mark doesn’t care. His Jesus is fiery, unpredictable, deeply human, and laser-focused on the Kingdom of God, not religious respectability.

And guess what?

For Gentile converts, that message was gold.

It meant they could be part of the story without changing their entire identity.
 It meant the Gospel was for them — not just for some exclusive inner circle.

And that may be one of the biggest reasons why Mark’s Gospel refused to disappear. It had already embedded itself in the life of Gentile churches. It was being read, retold, and performed in communities that no longer felt tethered to Jerusalem, but were building a new kind of Christianity — one rooted in the wider Greco-Roman world.

It was short, sharp, and deeply accessible.

And, for Gentiles who were learning to walk the way of Jesus in a world of temples, emperors, and philosophical schools, Mark made Jesus feel like someone they could actually follow — not a distant divine figure, but a radical teacher, a healer, a sufferer, and yes — a saviour.

🎙️ SEGMENT 4: A GOOD STORY STICKS

Let’s be honest — theology is important, but if you want something to survive across generations, especially in the ancient world, it needs one critical thing:

It has to be a good story.

And Mark? Mark absolutely nailed that part.

If you’ve ever read the Gospel of Mark straight through, you’ll notice something right away: it’s fast. It’s punchy. It’s relentless. There’s no slow build-up, no extended backstory, no frills. Jesus is on the move from the first chapter — preaching, healing, exorcising demons, rebuking storms, feeding crowds, confronting religious leaders, and heading straight toward Jerusalem, where everything unravels in spectacular, heartbreaking fashion.

The word “immediately” — euthys in Greek — shows up over 40 times in just 16 chapters. Mark’s not interested in subtle transitions. He wants momentum. He’s writing a thriller, not a textbook.

And here’s why that matters: in the first century, most people didn’t read the Gospels — they heard them.

Think about the world Mark was writing for. Most people were illiterate. They didn’t own scrolls, let alone books. There were no Bibles sitting on shelves, no apps, no podcasts — sorry, Mark. If you wanted to spread a message, you had to rely on oral transmission. That meant storytelling — vivid, memorable, dramatic storytelling.

And Mark delivered just that.

Joanna Dewey, a scholar who’s done some brilliant work on the Gospel of Mark as oral performance, argues that one of the main reasons Mark’s Gospel survived was because it was just so performable. It’s easy to imagine someone standing up in a crowded house church, dimly lit by oil lamps, and launching into:

“The beginning of the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…”

And from there, the action doesn’t stop. You’ve got demons screaming, pigs flying off cliffs, blind men seeing, storms being silenced, and people being raised from the dead. It’s basically theatre. Compact, dramatic, and emotionally charged.

Now imagine you’re a first-century Christian living in a Roman city. Maybe you’re a freed slave. Maybe you’re a merchant’s wife. Maybe you’re a Greek convert curious about this Jesus guy. You walk into a small gathering of believers, and someone performs the Gospel of Mark — not reads it, performs it — like a stage play.

And what do you hear?

You hear about a man who healed the broken, challenged authority, loved outsiders, and stood up against power. You hear about someone who suffered unjustly, was misunderstood even by his friends, and who, in the end, was brutally executed — not as a loser, but as a victor through suffering.

That’s a story that sticks.

It grabs your attention. It breaks your heart. It gives you hope.

And that’s the genius of Mark.

It’s short enough to be memorized.
It’s dramatic enough to be performed.
And it’s flexible enough to be adapted for different communities, languages, and cultures.

Now, here’s the cool part: performance wasn’t just a side gig in the ancient world. It was central to how people experienced literature, religion, even law.

There were four main types of storytellers in antiquity:

1. Entertainers — think street performers, actors, minstrels.
2. Religious figures — like priests or prophets telling sacred stories.
3. Educators — who taught through fables and moral tales.
4. Family storytellers — mothers, nursemaids, grandparents.

Mark’s Gospel could’ve easily been used by any of them. In fact, Dewey points out that synagogue worship already included storytelling, especially of sacred history. So when Christians began forming their own gatherings, they naturally carried over that tradition.

And because Mark's Gospel was so tightly crafted — filled with memorable scenes, strong characters, and clear conflict — it would have been a favourite for early Christian preachers and performers.

Imagine trying to recite the Gospel of Matthew from memory — all 28 chapters, full of dense teachings, parables stacked on top of each other, and five long discourse sections. Not exactly performance gold.

But Mark? Mark is made for the stage.

• A demon-possessed man screams, “What do you want with me, Jesus of Nazareth?”
• A bleeding woman reaches out in desperation to touch his cloak.
• Jesus, angry and grieved, heals a man’s shriveled hand in front of furious Pharisees.
• A centurion at the cross says, “Truly, this man was the Son of God.”

Boom. Beat after beat after beat. It’s emotional. It’s visual. It moves.

And that performance edge may have given Mark an advantage that no amount of theology could replace.

Now here’s where it gets even more interesting.

Some scholars believe that Mark’s Gospel was actually designed as a performance text. That it wasn’t just written to be copied and stored, but to be acted out loud in early Christian worship settings. And if that’s the case, then Mark wasn’t just a Gospel writer — he was a playwright, a narrative architect who understood that the way you tell the story can be just as important as the content itself.

Think about how powerful that is.

It’s not the longest Gospel.
 It’s not the most theologically sophisticated.
 It doesn’t have the resurrection appearances that Matthew, Luke, and John give us.

But it was probably the first Gospel ever heard by hundreds — maybe thousands — of early Christians.

And for many of them, that first dramatic encounter with the story of Jesus — raw, rapid, and unforgettable — would’ve shaped their entire faith.

So yeah — good theology matters. But a good story? That sticks. And Mark knew how to tell one.

🎙️ SEGMENT 5: HOMER, IS THAT YOU?

Alright. Now we’re getting into the juicy stuff.

If you thought the Gospel of Mark was just a humble little scroll scribbled by an early follower of Jesus, think again. Some scholars believe that Mark was doing something far more clever — and far more literary — than we usually give him credit for.

Let me introduce you to a theory that’ll either blow your mind or have you reaching for a glass of wine: Mark may have been riffing on Homer.

Yes — that Homer. As in The Iliad. The Odyssey. The godfather of ancient epic poetry.

Now before you roll your eyes and think, “C’mon, Mark was a fisherman’s scribe, not a Greek poet,” let’s pause. Because this theory, while a little controversial, actually makes a lot of sense if you know your way around the ancient world.

Let’s start with some context.

In the first century CE, Homer was everywhere. His epics weren’t just popular stories — they were the cultural backbone of Greco-Roman education. Boys in school memorized huge chunks of the Iliad and Odyssey. Philosophers quoted him. Artists painted scenes from his tales. He was like Shakespeare, Tolkien, and Marvel all rolled into one. His characters were legends. His structure? Legendary. His themes — adventure, heroism, sacrifice, identity — were the narrative blueprint for generations of writers.

So if you wanted to write something that felt important — that sounded like truth — you might just borrow from the master.

Enter: Mark.

In the early 2000s, a scholar named Dennis R. MacDonald published a groundbreaking — and yes, highly debated — book called The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. His thesis? That Mark intentionally modelled parts of his Gospel on the Odyssey, using familiar Homeric storytelling techniques to give his Gospel a kind of cultural resonance for a Greco-Roman audience.

Now, MacDonald isn’t saying Mark plagiarized Homer or turned Jesus into Odysseus. He’s saying Mark used what his audience knew to help them understand something new — the story of Jesus.

So what kind of parallels are we talking about?

Let me give you a few:

• Sea journeys. In The Odyssey, Odysseus is constantly crossing stormy seas, battling monsters, trying to get home. In Mark, Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee multiple times — and in one famous scene, he calms a raging storm with a word. That’s not just a miracle — it’s a literary echo. It places Jesus in the realm of the heroic.
• Recognition scenes. In Homer, characters often go unrecognized until a dramatic moment of revelation. Think of Odysseus returning home in disguise and being recognized by his old dog or his nurse. In Mark? No one really understands who Jesus is — not the disciples, not his family, not the crowds. It’s only at the very end, at the foot of the cross, that a Roman centurion looks up and says, “Truly this man was the Son of God.” It’s a stunning reversal — and it fits perfectly with the Homeric model.
• Sleeping followers. Odysseus has crewmates who constantly fall asleep or fail to follow instructions. Jesus? His disciples keep falling asleep in Gethsemane, even when he begs them to stay awake. That parallel isn’t accidental. It’s a literary trope being reused, flipped, and reimagined.

MacDonald goes even further, pointing out structural similarities, such as:

• Jesus’ exorcisms mirroring Odysseus’ encounters with monsters.
• Feeding miracles that resemble ancient hospitality scenes.
• A journey motif where the hero is misunderstood, tested, and transformed — only to be recognized at the climax.

Now, to be clear: not all scholars buy this theory. Some think MacDonald overreaches, seeing connections where there are just coincidences. Others say, “Well, sure, there are similarities — but Homer was so embedded in the culture that any dramatic narrative is going to reflect his influence to some degree.”

And that’s a fair point. This isn’t about saying Mark copied Homer — it’s about understanding that Mark was a writer who knew his audience.

If you're telling your story in a world where The Odyssey is the gold standard for heroic literature, you don’t ignore that. You tap into it. You remix it. You flip it on its head.

So instead of a clever, sword-wielding Greek warrior, Mark gives us a suffering servant who defeats death not by killing, but by dying. Not by conquest, but through compassion. It’s Homeric storytelling with a cruciform twist.

And guess what?

It works.

Because when early Gentile converts heard the Gospel of Mark, they weren’t just hearing a Jewish preacher’s memoir. They were hearing a familiar kind of story — a tale of a misunderstood hero, a fateful journey, a tragic ending that somehow becomes triumphant.

That’s powerful.

That’s sticky.

And it’s one more reason why Mark’s Gospel survived.

Because in a world where stories shaped identity, and where Homer’s voice still echoed in every port, market, and lecture hall, Mark’s Gospel didn’t just introduce Jesus — it introduced him in the language of the culture’s greatest narrative traditions.

It was a literary mic drop. And people remembered it.

🎙️ SEGMENT 6: DESPITE THE ODDS

So here we are — the end of our journey with the Gospel of Mark.

We’ve looked at how it came first, how it inspired others, how it spoke to Gentiles, how it was built to perform, and even how it might have borrowed a few narrative tricks from Homer. But now comes the big question:

How did it survive?

Because let’s be real: Mark’s Gospel was almost eclipsed.

From the moment Matthew and Luke hit the scene, Mark started getting overshadowed. These newer Gospels were longer, more detailed, more polished. They wrapped Jesus in layer upon layer of prophecy, poetry, and purpose. They included birth stories, resurrection appearances, family trees — all the things Mark left out.

And here’s the kicker: both Matthew and Luke seemed to treat Mark like a rough draft.

They took his outline and edited freely. They cut the awkward bits. They added clarifications. They rebranded the story of Jesus to fit their theological agendas. In fact, some scholars believe Matthew wasn’t just building on Mark — he was trying to replace him altogether. One scholar even called Matthew’s treatment of Mark “savage redaction.”

And yet… Mark wouldn’t go away.

Despite being shorter.
 Despite being theologically rougher.
 Despite ending — at least in its earliest version — with the women running away from the empty tomb, afraid and saying nothing to anyone.

Despite all that, Mark’s Gospel endured.

Why?

Well, by now we’ve got a pretty good idea:

✅ It came first — and first impressions matter.
 ✅ It was probably linked to Peter — and name recognition opens doors.
 ✅ It spoke to Gentiles — who were quickly becoming the majority of the Church.
 ✅ It was designed for performance — which made it ideal for oral tradition.
 ✅ And it echoed cultural forms — making it accessible to the Homer-loving world around it.

But beyond all of that, here’s what I think really sealed the deal:

Mark’s Gospel told the truth.

Not just in a factual, historical sense — but in a deeply human, emotionally raw, profoundly spiritual sense. It told the truth about Jesus.

It showed us a Jesus who:

• Got angry.
• Needed rest.
• Was misunderstood.
• Got frustrated with his friends.
• Faced fear.
• Felt abandonment.
• Died feeling forsaken.

There’s no Hollywood polish. No triumphant soundtrack. Just this aching, beautiful portrayal of a man on a mission — misunderstood by everyone, faithful to the end.

And that kind of Jesus? That Jesus resonates.

Especially in times of pain. In times of persecution. In times when faith isn’t about triumph, but about holding on. About being faithful even when things don’t make sense.

That’s the Jesus Mark gave us.

And that Jesus mattered.

It’s easy to see why the early Church might have been tempted to leave Mark behind — to go with the more polished versions. But they didn’t. Because despite the odds, Mark’s Gospel became too important to ignore.

And as the canon began to form — with figures like Irenaeus insisting on a fourfold Gospel, and Church leaders gathering to decide what counted as sacred — Mark had earned its place. Not because it was the flashiest. But because it was foundational.

It was the first voice.

It was the story that started it all.

And even though it had been redacted, reshaped, and reimagined by others, the original still carried a power that couldn’t be denied.

So the next time you read the Gospel of Mark, or hear it in church, or come across one of its raw, fast-paced scenes, remember this:

You’re not just reading one of four Gospels.

You’re reading...

The one that got things moving.
 The one that shaped what came next.
 The one that spoke to the outsiders.
 The one that said, “This is Jesus — and this is the story.”

It wasn’t supposed to survive, but it did because:

·       It was the first.

·       It had a connection to Peter.

·       It appealed to Gentile audiences.

·       It was powerful to perform.

·       And it told a story that felt true.

True not just in facts — but in feeling.

It gave the early Church a very human Jesus. One who struggled. One who suffered. One who didn’t have all the answers, but walked the path anyway. For early Christians facing persecution, rejection, and uncertainty, that Jesus mattered.

So despite every reason to fade away, Mark’s Gospel stood its ground.

Because it wasn’t perfect. But it was real.

And that was enough.

🎙️ HOST:

That’s it for this episode of The B-Side Bible. I hope you’ve enjoyed diving into the wild, wonderful, and sometimes overlooked world of the Gospel of Mark — the first, the fiercest, and the most unexpectedly enduring of the four Gospels.

If you liked this episode, don’t forget to share it with someone who loves a good underdog story. Or maybe someone who thinks Homer’s only legacy is The Simpsons.

Next time, we’re heading into even deeper waters — Revisiting an old friend, Mary Magdalene and, following that, the most contriversioal of the missing gospels, the gospel of judas. 

Until then — stay curious, stay questioning, and keep looking for the stories on The B-Side Bible.

I’m Mark Kerrigan

Thanks for listening

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