Introduction: Getting to know the Gospel of Mark

Introduction: Getting to know the Gospel of Mark

Exploring the text
Mark’s Gospel is probably the best known of all the Gospels. There is something about its lively, punchy style that draws us right into the story it is telling. Mark’s Gospel, more than any other, encourages us to enter imaginatively into the world of Jesus: to walk with Jesus and his disciples, to feel the anger of the authorities and the wonder of the crowd, to see Jesus’ miracles and hear his preaching. Mark’s style of writing is vivid (he uses the phrase ‘and immediately’ more than any other Gospel writer), fresh and animated. It draws us into its story and encourages us, who read it in the twenty-first century, to respond to ‘the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Mark 1.1) just as much as it did its readers in the first century...