The Gospel of Mark contains scarcely any material which is not also contained in one or both of the other two Synoptic Gospels. The loss of Mark would not diminish appreciably the number of facts that we know about Jesus. Nevertheless, the Second Gospel is of the utmost importance; for although it narrates for the most part only the same facts as are also narrated elsewhere, it narrates them in a different way. Indeed the very brevity of the Gospel adds to its special value. A picture is sometimes the more impressive by being limited in extent. Read the Gospel of Mark, not piecemeal but as a whole, and you obtain an impression of Jesus which can be obtained from no other book.
=(1) Papias on Mark.=--As in the case of Matthew, so in that of Mark it is Papias of Hierapolis who provides the earliest information about the production of the Gospel. Again also the words of Papias are quoted by Eusebius (Church History, iii, 39, 15). The passage from Papias is as follows:
"This also the presbyter said: 'Mark, on the one hand, being an interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately as many things as he remembered, yet not in order, the things which were either said or done by the Lord.' For neither did he hear the Lord nor did he follow him, but afterwards, as I said, he followed Peter, who carried on his teaching as need required but not as though he were making an ordered account of the oracles of the Lord; so that Mark committed no fault when he wrote some things as he had remembered them. For he had one care--that he should not leave out anything of the things that he had heard, or represent anything among them falsely."
=(2) Antiquity of the Papian Tradition.=--It will be observed that Papias is here represented as quoting from "the presbyter." Probably, however, it is only the first sentence that is quoted; the rest seems to be an explanation by Papias himself. By "presbyter," or "elder," Papias means not an officer in the Church, but a man of an older generation. The tradition is therefore very ancient. Papias himself lived in the former half of the second century; a man of a still older generation would probably have acquired his information about Mark well before A. D. 100. Such information is not to be lightly rejected.