The Author of Mark’s Gospel Created Jesus Fantasies

Matthew, Luke, and John did too, but none of them knew how to write history                                                                      

 

                                                                                                            

One of my favorite challenges to church folks is: Please read Mark’s gospel—all at one sitting. No such nonsense as a chapter-per-day: that’s as much as admitting lack of interest. Leave the TV off for an evening, and really focus on Mark’s gospel. Read the whole thing carefully, thoughtfully; this will take about as much time as watching a movie. Have a notepad handy, to write down items that sound goofy, farfetched—things that just don’t make sense. If ever I could find a devout Christian willing to do this, I’d love to engage him/her in a conversation about the problematic texts. Mark’s gospel is chock full of theological problems—and absurdities. Please, believers, face them head-on!

 
If this challenge were accepted—and that notebook is full of distressed comments—many of the devout would ask their clergy for clarification: how could there be so many problems? The clergy might refer them to commentaries written by theologians determined to explain away the problems—to erase the embarrassments. This might bring relief, but it is not entirely honest. It’s a good idea to seek an analysis of Mark’s Jesus-fantasy done by secular scholars who don’t hesitate to tell the truth.    

Just a few days ago, Dr. Richard Carrier—whose specialty is the literature of the ancient world—published a long article, All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark (30 July 2024). Dr. Carrier is also one of the top Jesus scholars of our time. In this article, he catalogues the many fantasy elements in the sixteen chapters of Mark’s gospel. A careful study of this article makes it very clear that the author of Mark’s gospel didn’t have a clue about what it means to write history. His lack of this skill was shared by the writers of the other gospels. 

My fantasy—in any theoretical discussion of Mark with people who have bothered to read it carefully—is to ask them to explain the theological problems presented in Mark chapters 1, 4, 5, 9, 13, 14 and 16. Carrier’s thorough survey makes it clear that every chapter of Mark swarms with problems and absurdities. If you can find any churchgoers who are willing to study this first gospel carefully, send them the link to the Carrier article. It’s a powerful educational tool, a real eyeopener. 
 
Devout readers—with curiosity and skepticism fully engaged—will be puzzled by Mark 1. We read that John the Baptist was “…proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (1:4)—and that Jesus showed up to be baptized. Jesus had sins to be forgiven? When Matthew copied this text, he added Jesus-script to the effect that it was just for show. Nor is there any hint in Mark 1 that Jesus had arrived on earth via a miraculous virgin birth. When he emerges from the water, a voice booms from heaven, “You are my Son, my beloved son, with you I am well pleased.”  (1:11) Mark seems to have assumed that this was the moment Jesus was designated god’s son—after baptism for repentance of sins. 
 
In fact, Carrier identifies twenty fantastical things in Mark, chapter one. It is important to pay close attention to all 45 verses in Mark 1. Right at the outset, the careful reader can detect that there is precious little history here.  

The next major stumbling block I urge devout readers to consider is Jesus-script in Mark 4, in which he tells his disciples privately that parables are meant to prevent people from understanding and repenting:

“And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret [or mystery] of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything comes in parables, in order that ‘they may indeed look but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand; so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’” (4:11-12)

What in the world was Mark thinking? This makes no sense whatever, and devout scholars have been struggling with this text for a long time. 

In Mark 5 we find the truly bizarre story of Jesus’ confrontation with a man possessed by demons. The demons recognize Jesus as a being from the spiritual realm, and beg that he not expel them from the country. Presumably by uttering magic spells, Jesus sends the demons into a great herd of pigs. Carrier notes the strangeness of this episode:

“…when they beg Jesus not to make them leave the country (χώρας), Jesus is okay with that idea, and lets them instead magically murder two thousand pigs (5:11–13). It is not explained where they then went, or why they would have wanted to live inside two thousand pigs, or why they wanted to immediately kill the bodies they were just allowed to inhabit—or why Jesus would want any of this.” 

This story survives as a remnant of ancient superstition, another failure of Mark to deliver history. But it has staying power: to this day the Vatican maintains a staff of exorcists. 

Two of the most famous stories in Mark are the Feeding of the 5,000 (chapter 6) and the Feeding of the 4,000 (chapter 8), both miracles performed by Jesus, who—so the story goes—was able to conjure food supplies. Carrier’s careful analysis of the details shows just how contrived and silly both stories are: they make no sense, but were meant to appeal to gullible readers. 

At the very end of Carrier’s article he provides a link to an article he wrote in 2020, Formalized Gullibility as a Modern Christian Methodology, in which he wrote: 

“Believing a ridiculous story (and every Gospel is throughout ridiculous, by every standard historians apply in any other field), simply because its author was smart enough to color it with realistic details, is the very definition of gullible. It declares you will believe any obvious liar as long as they are good at it. And by framing this gullibility as a formal methodological principle, you are essentially declaring allegiance to gullibility as a methodology.”

It would be welcome indeed if Disney—or any other movie enterprise that specializes in fantasy—were to make a Gospel of Mark movie, with heavy focus on its overwhelming commitment to miracle folklore and magical thinking. If the devout flocked to the cinemas, they might be able to grasp just how massively the gospels fail to qualify as history. 
 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 
 
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.