John Mark

John Mark is a figure of the New Testament, named in the Acts of the Apostles as an assistant who accompanied Barnabas and Paul on missionary travel in the first century. According to Acts, he was the son of a woman named Mary whose house in Jerusalem was a gathering place for the earliest Christian community; the apostle Peter, after his escape from prison, went to that house and found many gathered in prayer, and a servant girl named Rhoda is mentioned in the same episode. John, who was also called Mark (a Jewish name paired with a Greek or Latin one, a pattern common among Jews of the period), later left Jerusalem with Barnabas and Saul when they returned to Antioch, and he went with them as their helper when they set out on what is usually called the first missionary journey. They proclaimed the word in the synagogues of Salamis on Cyprus—Barnabas himself was a Levite from Cyprus—and then crossed to the mainland. At Perga in Pamphylia, John Mark withdrew from the work and returned to Jerusalem. When, some time afterward, Barnabas proposed to take him again, Paul objected because of that earlier departure. The disagreement was sharp enough that Barnabas and Paul separated: Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus, while Paul chose Silas.

Later letters in the New Testament mention a Mark in connection with Paul and with Peter, and these notices are widely, though not universally, taken to refer to the same man. In Colossians, Mark the cousin of Barnabas is with Paul and sends greetings; the community is told to welcome him if he comes. In Philemon he is listed among Paul's fellow workers. In 2 Timothy, Paul, writing as a prisoner, asks that Mark be brought to him because he is useful for ministry—an indication, if the same person is meant, that the earlier rupture had been healed. 1 Peter conveys greetings from Mark, called my son, from Babylon, a name often understood in early Christian usage as a cipher for Rome. Whether every one of these Marks is John Mark of Acts cannot be proved from the texts alone; the cousin relationship in Colossians is the principal internal link between the Mark of the Pauline circle and Barnabas, and thus to the John Mark of Acts. The events belong to the mid-first century; no New Testament passage supplies a year of birth or death.

Christian tradition has frequently identified John Mark with Mark the Evangelist, the name attached to the second Gospel, and with the Mark whom later Alexandrian legend made the first bishop of that city. Papias of Hierapolis, writing in the early second century and quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, described Mark as the interpreter of Peter who wrote down what he remembered of the Lord's words and deeds. That notice does not name John, and it does not settle whether the evangelist, the companion of Paul, and the associate of Peter are one person. A further, highly speculative tradition has taken the unnamed young man who fled naked at Jesus' arrest in Mark 14 as an autobiographical hint, and some later piety has associated Mary's Jerusalem house with the upper room of the Last Supper; neither claim is in the New Testament or in any early, independent witness. Hippolytus of Rome, in a list of the Seventy Apostles, treated John Mark, Mark the Evangelist, and Mark the cousin of Barnabas as three distinct men, assigning John Mark a later role as bishop of Byblos. Modern historical criticism remains divided: some scholars regard a single Mark as the most economical reading of the New Testament names; others consider the identifications traditional rather than demonstrable, or distinguish the Jerusalem companion of Barnabas from the author of the Gospel.

No contemporary source records a year of birth or death for John Mark, nor a place of burial independent of later legend. His family is associated with Jerusalem in the mid-first century; nothing reliable is known of a wife or children, and he is not documented as a member of any later religious order. Stories that place his martyrdom in Alexandria, that transfer relics to Venice, or that make him founder of the see of Alexandria belong to the hagiography of Mark the Evangelist and should not be assumed for John Mark unless the two figures are taken as identical. He is venerated as a saint in churches that accept the traditional fusion of names. Where he is equated with the evangelist, the principal feast is 25 April in both East and West; where he is remembered separately among the Seventy Apostles, some Eastern calendars keep 27 September. Patronages famously attached to Saint Mark—Venice, notaries, and others—likewise depend on that identification. What can be said with confidence is more limited: in the generation after Jesus, a Jewish Christian from the Jerusalem community, known as John and as Mark, took part in the first expansion of the church beyond Judea, failed or withdrew at a critical moment, and, if the later letters are trusted, was restored to useful service among the apostles.