The Gospel of Mark is rooted in Jewish tradition. It can be seen through out Mark’s entire Gospel. Mark starts off by naming the subject he will be talking about: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Readers living in the Greco-Roman world would not recognize “Christ” as a name, not even as a title that would have meaning to them. I find it interesting that the author of Mark would introduce Jesus with a title that would not have much meaning to the audience he was writing to. The author was living in a Greco-Roman society. The Gospel of Mark was the earliest Gospel written, somewhere around 70 AD. As I said before, readers living in the Greco-Roman world would not have recognized “Christ” as a name. “Christ” was a title in Jewish circles and the Greek equivalent was “messiah.” The term “messiah” could have meant a number of things to Jews in the first century. For some Jews, the term messiah was the future king of Israel, who would deliver God’s people from oppression. For other people, messiah was a cosmic deliverer from heaven, who would engage in supernatural warfare with the enemies of the Jews and would bring them victory. Mark beings his Gospel by calling Jesus the messiah, which is interesting because he never overthrew the Romans or arrived in a grand way. There is no reference prior to the New Testament that mentions a future messiah that will suffer and die for the sins of the people.

Another term that Jesus is called by in the Gospel of Mark is “son of God.” Most readers in the Greco-Roman world would probably associated this term as meaning that he was like other sons of God. Also that he was divinely inspired teachers or rulers whose miraculous deeds benefited the human race. Even kings with non-reliable public records were sometimes called “the son of God.” In Jewish circles, “the son of God” referred to someone who had an intimate relationship with God and was close to him. It is believed that he was chosen by God to perform a task, and relayed God’s message to people on earth. For many first century Jews, it referred to a human and was believed to be someone divine.

Through out Mark’s Gospel it is clear that the Gospel’s author has a certain image of Jesus and he is trying to make his audience see and agree with. Mark uses the stories found in 1:16-3:6 to help the audience see his image of Jesus. He starts out by telling the story of how Jesus gained some of his first disciples, Simon and Andrew. I think it is important how he uses the word “immediately” when he tells of how Simon and Andrew immediately drop their nets and followed him. It shows how they did not even hesitate to follow him. In Mk 1:20 again we see the world “immediately.” Again other disciples immediately drop their lives to become followers of Jesus. Next, Mark uses miracle stories to convince his readers. I think the placement of the miracle stories is important because he did not hesitate to tell the reader of Jesus’ miracles. The first miracle we see is Jesus performing an exorcism in the synagogue. Along with exorcisms, he performs healing miracles. He healed a leper of his leprosy. What is interesting about that miracle is that he tells the leper not to tell anyone what happened. Here we see Jesus being secretive of his deeds.