If John used Mark’s Gospel as a template for his, it may be because John was Mark

“John sequenced his own narrative in and around the elements in Mark’s narrative so that the two Gospels fit together like puzzle pieces”. Jimmy Akin My (Damien Mackey’s) line of thought here is that, since John, as John Mark, may have written the Gospel of Mark on behalf of his untutored good friend, Peter: Gospel of Mark a collection of Saint Peter’s discourses (2) Gospel of Mark a collection of Saint Peter's discourses | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu then a fairly recent (2014) suggestion by Jimmy Akin, that John may have used the Marcan Gospel as a template for his Gospel of John, if correct, would be due to the fact that John was now using his original, simplified Gospel written for Peter as the foundation for his own personal, and more sophisticated Gospel. Let us hear Jimmy Akin tell the story (without his attempting to connect Mark and John as the one same Evangelist): https://jimmyakin.com/2014/11/did-john-use-mark-as-a-template.html Did John Use Mark as a Template? …. Isolated Evangelists? In the last several decades, it has become fashionable in biblical scholarship to say that the Evangelists were all writing for individual communities and that their Gospels were not intended to be widely circulated, so they wrote with little awareness of each other’s work. According to a common view: • Mark wrote first and so didn’t know the work of any other Evangelist. • Matthew knew Mark but not Luke or John. • Luke knew Mark but not Matthew or John. • John didn’t know any of the other three Evangelists’ work. Of course, like everything in biblical scholarship, each of these claims is disputed. British scholar Richard Bauckham published a major assault on the idea that the Gospels were written for narrow, isolated communities in a book that he edited and co-authored with several other individuals, entitled The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (New Testament Studies). It’s awesome. Did John Know Mark? One of the essays that Bauckham contributed to the book is entitled “John for Readers of Mark.” In this piece, he argues that John not only knew Mark but that you can show this because John seems to have used Mark as a template or an outline. In other words, John sequenced his own narrative in and around the elements in Mark’s narrative so that the two Gospels fit together like puzzle pieces. If this view is correct, you should be able to make a table using parallel columns to show how the two Gospels fit together. Bauckham did not provide such a table, and though he provided impressive arguments for his proposal, he did not go through the entirety of the two Gospels or test the proposal against the ideas that John might have used Matthew or Luke rather than Mark. I decided to continue Bauckham’s investigation along these lines. How Mark and John Fit Together First, here is the table I came up with of how the two Gospels fit together (italics and parentheses indicate material that is in a different sequence in one Gospel than the other): No. Section Mark John 1. Prologue — 1:1-18 2. John the Baptist, Jesus’ Baptism, & Testing 1:1-13 — 3. Early Ministry I — 1:19-2:12 4. Clearing the Temple (11:11-25) 2:13-22 5. Early Ministry II — 2:23-4:43 6. The Official’s Son — 4:44-54 7 Galilean Ministry I 1:14-6:6 — 8. Sending the Disciples 6:7-13 — 9. Fate of John the Baptist 6:14-29 — 10. Visit to Jerusalem — 5:1-47 11. Disciples Return 6:30 — 12. Feeding the Five Thousand & Walking on the Water 6:31-53 6:1-71 13. Galilean Ministry II 6:54-9:50 7:1-9 14. Judean Ministry I 10:1a 7:10-10:39 15. Transjordan Ministry 10:1b-31 10:40-42 16. Judean Ministry II — 11:1-57 17. Travel to Jerusalem 10:32-52 — 18. Anointing with Oil (14:1-11) 12:1-8 19. Triumphal Entry 11:1-10 12:9-19 20. Clearing the Temple 11:11-25 (2:13-22) 21. Before the Supper 11:27-13:37 12:20-50 22. Anointing with Oil 14:1-11 (12:1-8) 23. The Last Supper 14:12-26 13:1-14:31 24. Extended Discourse — 15:1-17:26 25. After the Supper 14:27-52 18:1-12 26. Before Annas — 18:13-23 27. Before Caiaphas 14:53-65 18:24 28. Peter’s Denial 14:66-72 18:25-26 29. Before Pilate 15:1-15 18:28-19:16 30. Crucifixion & Burial 15:16-47 19:17-42 31. Resurrection Narrative 16:1-8 (or 16:1-20) 20:1-21:25 Did John Use Mark as a Template? I then went through the table, looking for evidence for and against the proposal. Here is a summary of my findings (most of these points I got from Bauckham, but some—especially those regarding the Last Supper—are original to me): • John’s prologue introduces John the Baptist (John 1:6-8, 15) and can be seen as interacting with the beginning of Mark (Mark 1:1-13). • John 1:19-4:43 can be seen as fitting between Mark 1:13 and 1:14. • In John 1:19-34, John the Baptist gives an account of his own ministry and of how he identified Jesus as the coming one that reflects Mark 1:1-13. • The fact that John does not directly record the baptism of Jesus (a major event!) suggests that his audience already had a written account of it. • John 3:24’s reference to an incident that occurred when “John had not yet been put in prison” seems to be intended to clarify when the events of John 1:19-4:43 fit into Mark’s outline. • In Mark 6:7-13, Jesus sends the disciples on a mission from which they will return in Mark 6:30. The material between these verses is thus a time when Jesus does not have the disciples with him. This period seems to be reflected in John 5:1-47, which is a period in which the disciples are not mentioned. Further, in both John and Mark, these sections contain material recording or referring to the death of John the Baptist, with John seeming to presuppose that the audience already knows how the Baptist died (presumably from Mark’s account). • John 7:1a seems to summarize a continuation of the Galilean ministry that is recorded in Mark 6:54-9:50. Further, John 6:4 and 7:2 imply a period of six months spent in Galilee that John does not otherwise record and that seems to correspond to Mark 7-9. This period is the last time that Jesus will be in Galilee until after the Resurrection. • Mark 10:1a and John 7:10-10:39 record a period in which Jesus ministered in Judea. • Mark 10:1b-31 and John 10:40-42 record a period in which Jesus ministered in the Transjordan. • The way that the Last Supper is recorded in Mark 14:12-26 and John 13:1-14:31 suggests supplemental intent on John’s part. John omits virtually everything Mark records happening before and at the supper and provides additional material about it not found in Mark. Even when he records the one event that the two have in common (Jesus’ prediction of Judas’s betrayal) John provides supplementary detail not found in Mark. Also, the events that John narrates seem to interweave easily with the events that Mark records. The fact that John does not record the institution of the Eucharist (another major event!), which he has already foreshadowed in John 6:26-71, is strong evidence that his audience already had a written record of its institution. • John’s supplemental intent may be illustrated by his giving names to figures that are otherwise unnamed in Mark (e.g., Peter and Malchus in the incident where Peter cuts off Malchus’s ear; cf. Mark 14:47, John 18:10). • John 18:13-23 discusses the relationship between Annas and Caiaphas, provides additional detail about how Peter got into the courtyard of the high priest, and preserves an account of Jesus’ appearance before Annas, which is not mentioned in Mark. All of these may be seen as an effort to supplement Mark’s account. • John 18:24 refers, in a single verse, to the appearance of Jesus before Caiaphas, which is described in detail in Mark 14:53-65. This may be evidence of John taking Mark’s account as read. • In John 19:7, the Jewish authorities charge Jesus before Pilate with making himself out to be the Son of God. This charge is not found in John’s account of Jesus’ appearances before the Jewish authorities, but it is found in Mark’s account (Mark 14:61-64). On the other hand: • The clearing of the temple and the anointing with oil are placed differently in Mark and John. • John records Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s denial as occurring during the Last Supper, but in Mark it appears just after the supper. These differences could be counted as evidence that John was not using Mark as an outline, but it also can be understood in other ways, such as John providing additional clarity on precisely when these events occurred (or, in the case of the clearing of the temple, that it happened more than once). The dislocation of these events thus does not overcome the positive evidence that John used Mark. …. [Mackey: Jimmy Akin next proceeds to test John in the same fashion against Luke and Matthew, and finds that these do not stack up at all like as was the case with Mark]. Conclusion It thus appears that John more likely used Mark as a template than either Luke or Matthew. I thus think Bauckham is right: John likely meant his Gospel to interweave with Mark’s Gospel. Of course, this doesn’t mean that John didn’t know Matthew’s or Luke’s Gospels. He may have; he just doesn’t seem to have used them as a template the way he did Mark’s. ….