The time is fulfilled

When John had been put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, and the first thing he did was to announce news. Mark, who opened his book with “the beginning of the gospel” (Mark 1:1), sets down that first proclamation in two verses.

What has come near

“Proclaimed” is kērussō (κηρύσσω), the word for a herald crying out his message. What Jesus cried out is held in two Greek perfects: the time has been fulfilled (πεπλήρωται), the kingdom has come near (ἤγγικεν). A Greek perfect speaks of something done whose result still stands. The appointed time is full, and the kingdom of God is already at the door. The BSB says the kingdom “is near”, the KJV that it “is at hand”; the LSV keeps the tense, “has come near”.

The word for kingdom, basileia (βασιλεία), means a king’s reign before it means a territory. Jesus is saying that the news Isaiah’s herald brought to Zion, “Your God reigns!” (Isaiah 52:7), is now coming true. Origen puts it simply: “For by the kingdom of God is to be understood that in which God reigns” Origen. And Pseudo-Jerome explains why Jesus began only when John was silenced: “first, John in prison, the Law in Judaea; then, Jesus in Galilee, Paul among the Gentiles preaching the Gospel of the kingdom” Pseudo-Jerome.

Manuscripts and translations

In verse 14 the BSB reads “the gospel of God”, the KJV “the gospel of the kingdom of God”. The oldest manuscripts have the shorter text; the later manuscripts the KJV follows add “of the kingdom”. Either way, verse 15 at once says what the gospel of God is about: his kingdom.

In word and in deed

Matthew sums up the same work in one sentence and writes it twice, before and after the Sermon on the Mount and the miracles that follow it (Matthew 9:35):

Matthew likes to call the news the gospel of the kingdom, and in it teaching, proclaiming and healing go together. Chrysostom says of the healings that “because the eternal kingdom He preached was not seen, by the things which did appear, He made sure that which as yet did not appear” Chrysostom. Matthew Henry sees the healings as signs that Christ, “by thus curing bodily diseases, showed that his great errand into the world was to cure spiritual maladies” Matthew Henry.

The news carries a call. Repent and believe are both present imperatives, which many commentators read as a summons to a life of turning and trusting rather than a single gesture. And the trust rests on the news itself: believe in the gospel (ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ).

In the dictionary of verses, Mark 1:15 and Matthew 4:23 open onto the Greek of these summaries, their translations and what the commentators made of them.