Arthur J. Bellinzoni - The Building Blocks of the Earliest Gospel: A Road Map to Early Christian Biography

A ROAD MAP TO EARLY CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY

By Arthur J. Bellinzoni

A s an undergraduate at Princeton University, I first developed a special interest in the Gospel of Mark. I wrote my two-semester senior thesis for my religion major under the guidance of Professor W. D. Davies on The Gospel of Mark in Recent Scholarship ( 1957 ). I was convinced at the time that Mark was the earliest gospel and that, as such, it was closer in time to Jesus and, therefore, more reliable in the quest for the historical Jesus. That is still partially true: the Gospel of Mark is certainly our earliest written gospel, but the issue of its historical value is far more complicated, as we will see in this volume.

My interest in the Gospel of Mark persists, even after sixty years. After the publication of my comprehensive study The New Testament: An Introduction to Biblical Scholarship (Eugene, Oregon: WIPF & STOCK, 2016 ), I vowed that my writing days were behind me. That delusion lasted for about two weeks, until I felt compelled to write a book that would introduce the average layperson to the probable process that resulted in the Gospel of Mark. I wanted to afford the reader some understanding of the building blocks of the gospel, the presumably oral and largely written material to which the evangelist had access and which he wove into a literary narrativea story.

A friend of mine recently remarked it would be wonderful if someone could write a book about the Bible that could bridge some of the differences between more conservative and more liberal Christians. I had this challenge very much in mind in writing this book, but I am not really confident it is possible to build such a bridge because conservative and liberal Christians probably start out with different assumptions about what the Bible is and what it is not. I do not believe the Bible is inerrant, perfect in every detail, even in the original Hebrew and Greek, and certainly not in any English translation. If anything, I might say the Bible is perhaps something more like The Word of God in the words of men.

My interest in the Gospel of Mark persists to this day. The fact that Mark is the earliest gospel may mean it has the least-developed theology and that it, therefore, reflects a more primitive and less-developed christology than the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. Clearer access to that less-developed Christianity may, in itself, be of merit.

I like to believe people will use this volume as a basis for discussionchurch groups, seminarians, college students, reading groups, etc. I hope to introduce my readers to questions for which we do not know all of the answers in order to generate thinking and conversation.

Although I am ultimately responsible for everything in this book, I have been assisted by two good friends whose contributions I want to acknowledge. Dr. Marvin A. Breslow, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Maryland and my roommate for four years at the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, read the manuscript and made innumerable corrections and invaluable suggestions. Only I can appreciate the value of his contribution. Dimitrios Dimopoulos contributed his technical skills in ways that were invaluable. I can barely type, no less unravel the intricacies of a computer for formatting, correcting, printing, and copying such a long manuscript. Both mens contributions are evident on almost every page of this book.