Was Peter Behind the Gospel of Mark?

Exploring the case of Professor Helen K. Bond

Peter’s connection to Mark’s Gospel tends to raise the eyebrows of biblical critics.

The potential link between the apostle and Mark is an early one. It is found in the writing of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis (60-130 AD), who records a tradition that Mark was the hermeneutés - a ‘translator’ or ‘interpreter’ - of Peter in Rome.¹

Yet, for many, this tradition is doubtful. For a start, almost the entirety of Papias’ works are lost. Without a direct quotation of Mark, this makes it difficult for us to substantiate a connection between Papias and the Gospel.²

And in what we do have, Papias does not come across as the most reliable of sources. While there is little material for us to make a thorough assessment, sceptics of the Bishop often point to his narration of Judas’ death, which is palpably legendary.³

Not all scholars have such a negative approach to Papias. Most notably, Richard Bauckham has made a number of arguments trying to revive his reputation.⁴ Yet even if we put the evidence of Papias to one side, it is not all we have to go on.

My Doktormutter, Professor Helen Bond, has argued (on quite separate grounds) that Peter’s connection to Mark’s Gospel is not far-fetched as some suppose.

The full argument is spelled out in her chapter, “Was Peter Behind Mark’s Gospel?”, in her co-edited volume, Peter in Early Christianity.⁵

In this post, I content myself to note just three of her key considerations.

1. Social & Personal Memory

One common objection to the idea that Peter is behind Mark is that very little in the Gospel stands out as vivid, eyewitness memory. Joel Marcus, for example, notes that many of the stories lack the kind of detail expected of a participant.⁶

Yet this observation may fail to grasp the interaction of social and personal memory. Assuming that the Gospel was written in Rome, it is plausible that the Christians in Rome were eager to draw on the memories of Peter when he visited the city.⁷

Yet, as Bond points out, it is likely that the Roman Christians already possessed a communal memory of Jesus before Peter arrived. And we have no evidence that Peter imposed his memory or that his personal memory would have eclipsed theirs.

In other words, we need not think of Peter’s participation in the memory of Roman Christians in all-or-nothing terms. If Peter’s memories were absorbed into the social memory of the Church, this may explain why the Gospel looks as it does.

While on the topic of social memory, Bond applies a further insight. Social memory scholar Jan Assmann notes that around the forty-year mark in a community, the social memory faces a Traditionsbruch (‘break in tradition’).

This is a crisis in the community, catalysed by the dying out of the first generation, which leads a community to commit its memory in a more stable form.

A Traditionsbruch would help to explain why the (primarily oral) Jesus tradition was committed to writing, and would broadly support the mainstream dating of Mark’s Gospel, around 70 AD. At this point, around forty years after the death of Jesus, most of the earliest followers of Jesus were dying or had already died.

For Bond, it may have been that Peter’s death itself that caused a Traditionsbruch for Roman Christians. If it did, and Mark was written (in part) “to take the place of the revered leader… [then] Mark’s suitability for the task, we may assume, lay precisely in his connection (whatever it may have been) to Peter.”⁸

2. Mark as an Ancient Biography

Bond has already suggested that Peter’s memory would not necessarily have eclipsed the (pre-existing) social memory of the Roman Church.

Yet, it might be argued, if the Gospel of Mark is a Graeco-Roman biography - a genre which often drew on eyewitness testimony - not simply a reservoir of social memory, would we not expect some clues as to Peter’s source as an eyewitness?

Bond argues that we would not. Drawing on the eminent scholar of ancient biography, Thomas Hägg, she notes that professional biographies often don’t focus on the details of a subject’s life:

“[Mark’s] lack of intimate details relating to Jesus, his lack of references to sources, his lack of specifics relating to time and place would all have been within the acceptable boundaries of the biographical genre, and would not have seemed particularly surprising to his audience…”⁹

In short, Mark’s lack of detail need not be seen as the product of the wearing down of a long process of tradition (as the form-critics once supposed), but rather as a result of the genre in which Mark was writing.

To illustrate this point, Joel Marcus notes that Mark’s story of Peter’s call lacks any explanation of why Peter and Andrew decided to leave their old lives to follow Jesus, which we might expect of a “genuine personal reminiscence.”¹⁰

Yet as Bond point out in response, Marcus is here confusing a “a “genuine reminiscence” (in the sense of an event told for its own sake) with a story retold as part of an ancient bios.”¹¹

Within Mark’s bios, the purpose of the narrative is not merely to account the details of Peter’s experience but to “[raise] the call to discipleship to a level of abstraction that would include his audience.”¹² To demand more of Peter’s personal reminiscence in the Gospel is simply to make a category mistake.

3. Mark’s Portrayal of Peter

Finally, it is often supposed that Mark’s negative portrayal of Peter precludes Peter as a source for Mark. For example, Bart Ehrman disregards the connection between Mark and Peter, in part, because “Peter comes off as a bumbling, foot-in-the-mouth, and unfaithful follower of Jesus...”¹³

In recent scholarship, the idea that Peter is portrayed has been sustained by the influence of literary theory. Applying the same methods which literary theorists apply to fiction, Markan scholars often assume it is possible to make sense of Peter as a coherent character within a “unified story world.”¹⁴

Yet as Bond points out, the Gospels cannot be fully analysed as fiction. They are Graeco-Roman biographies, which draw on disparate sources in the presentation of Christ. And their interest is not on a “coherent” Peter but on Christ.

When read as an ancient biography, we can see Mark’s Peter in a more sympathetic light. For one thing, we do not have to resolve competing presentations of the apostle. In one scene, Peter may misunderstand Jesus; but in another, he is on the mountaintop, chosen as the one to whom Jesus’ identity is revealed.

Moreover, although Peter is sometimes presented negatively, it is often to highlight Jesus’ character. For instance, Peter’s denial of Jesus’ in the trial scene (which itself has intimations of hope) is contrasted with Christ’s affirmation of his own identity.

This technique of synkrisis, or comparison, is common in ancient lives. Its focus is not Peter, a minor character, but on Jesus.

In short, Peter is not the simplistic coward or fool that some scholars have made it out to be. If his purpose in the narrative is to highlight the difficulty of following Jesus, then he is a character with whom Christians (then and now) can sympathise.¹⁵

Some Concluding Thoughts

Bond’s case may not appear convincing to all. My guess is that, for some, it will seem to depend too much upon a Roman provenance of the Gospel - and perhaps too subtle an assumption about Peter’s activity there, of which we know so little.

Even so, there is much value to her case in exposing the flawed reasoning of some scholars who reject the link between Peter and Mark. As she suggests, even if Papias is not accurate, there may yet be good reason to imagine Peter behind the Gospel.

1. This passage is quoted in Eusebius of Caesaria, Ecclesiastical History, 3.39.

2. So Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus Before the Gospels (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 114.

3. On this passage, see Ehrman, Before the Gospels, 29.

4. See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017).

5. Helen K. Bond, “Was Peter behind Mark’s Gospel?” in Peter in Early Christianity, eds. Helen K. Bond, Larry Hurtado (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 46-61.

6. See Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 24.

7. Bond’s argument assumes the Roman provenance of Mark. For a recent argument for this traditional view, see Adam Winn, The Purpose of Mark’s Gospel. WUNT 245. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).

8. Bond, “Peter",” 24.

9. Ibid. 55.

10. Marcus, Mark, 28.

11. Bond, “Peter,” 56.

12. Ibid. 56.

13. Ehrman, Before the Gospels, 116.

14. Bond, “Peter,” 58.

15. See Bond, “Peter,” 56-59.