Mark 1:1

Note

Mark opens his book with no genealogy and no birth story, only the word "gospel." His first line has no verb at all; it stands over the book like a title.

Matthew begins with "the record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1). Mark gives one line and moves at once to the prophets' words and to John the Baptist in the wilderness (Mark 1:2–4). What "the beginning" refers to has been read two ways. John Wesley takes it narrowly: "the beginning of the Gospel is in the account of John the Baptist, contained in the first paragraph; the Gospel itself in the rest of the book" Wesley. Many readers take the line as the title of the whole book, so that everything Mark tells, from the Jordan to the empty tomb, is the beginning of the good news.

The noun euangelion stands in the genitive (euangeliou), hanging on "beginning," and it governs a genitive of its own, "of Jesus Christ." That phrase can be read two ways: the gospel about Jesus Christ, with Him as its content, or the gospel Jesus Christ proclaimed, with Him as its herald. Mark shows both. In Galilee Jesus "proclaimed the gospel of God" (Mark 1:14); later He binds Himself and the message together, "for My sake and for the gospel" (Mark 8:35). archē, "beginning," has no article, which adds to the feel of a heading. Mark uses the noun eight times, counting 16:15 in the longer ending, and never uses the verb euangelizomai. Some scholars think this opening line helped the word become the name of a kind of book: a Gospel.

The BSB supplies a verb, "This is the beginning," to make an English sentence. The KJV keeps the Greek bare, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;" and the LSV, following the missing article, writes "A beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God." Each choice is honest to something: the BSB to English, the KJV to the shape of a title, the LSV to the Greek grammar. A few early manuscripts lack "the Son of God," but most have it, and all five of the app's translations include it.

In the Catena, Pseudo-Jerome explains that the word means good tidings and that it belongs "to the kingdom of God and to the remission of sins," and adds: "the four Gospels are one, and one Gospel in four" Pseudo-Jerome. Bede compares the openings of Matthew and Mark: one begins with the Son of David, the other with the Son of God, because "it was the work of Divine power to preach the Gospel to the world" Bede. Matthew Henry says that Christ in His gospel comes among us "bringing with him a treasure of grace, and a sceptre of government" Matthew Henry.

"Beginning" and "good tidings" had stood together in a public text two generations before Mark: the calendar inscription of Asia called the birthday of Augustus the beginning of the good tidings (euangelia) that came through him the Priene calendar inscription. Mark gives the words to someone else: not the emperor, but Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As for the writer, Eusebius records Papias's report that Mark, Peter's interpreter, wrote down what Peter taught Eusebius, Church History 3.39.

Mark calls all of this "the beginning." The news does not stop at the last page of his book; it is the opening of a story that goes on to whoever hears it now.