Saul and the Persecution

If Luke was not among those believers who were persecuted and had to leave Jerusalem, he could not have witnessed Stephen’s death. However, it would not be inconsistent with his explanation in Luke 1:1-4 that he could have researched his material concerning the events surrounding Stephen’s death and the persecution that followed. These things may very well have been supplied by Philip, who had ultimately settled in Caesarea after fleeing Jerusalem.

 

Whose is Mark’s Gospel?

What we know to be the Gospel of Mark is not signed, and neither is there any direct internal evidence linking the Gospel to any individual. However, does this mean the work is truly anonymous? That is, do we have no reasonable idea of who its author is? The answer to this question largely depends upon your personal bias. If one completely rejects early testimony of its authorship and clings to modern criticism stating the author is unknown, then for you the author cannot be known. However, if you are willing to accept ancient testimony as evidence of its authorship, then one can be reasonably certain that John Mark, Peter’s assistant, wrote the Gospel we know by his name.

 

Saul’s Conversion & the Body of Christ

Saul was a zealous persecutor of Messianic believers, but I don’t think he persecuted the Church for more than six or seven months, or from the mid 7th month of 34 CE to cir. 1^st month of 35 CE. Therefore, the reigning high priest would have been Caiaphas and from him Saul would have sought papers of extradition (Acts 9:1-2) in order to arrest Messianic believers at Damascus and bring them before the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem for judgment.

 

Who Wrote Mark’s Gospel?

Often scholars criticize the Greek syntax in the Gospel of Mark, concluding that the author of Mark didn’t know Greek very well. However, if one were to consider the syntax from a Semitic viewpoint, one would find that the order of the Hebrew (or Aramaic) verbs is preserved in Mark’s Gospel implying that the author translated it from the Hebrew (or Aramaic). In fact, the late Dr. Robert L. Lindsey,[1] when he attempted to translate the Gospel of Mark from the Greek to Hebrew, discovered that what had been poor Greek syntax had surprisingly become good Hebrew! Therefore, it would seem that at least Mark’s Gospel is not the result of a Gentile church writing down an oral tradition long after the Jewish Messiah had died and rose from the dead. Rather, it seems to be a very literal translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic original into the Greek, completely lacking an independent point of view. The Greek of Mark is completely dependent upon a Semitic mother tongue, which preserves the original Hebrew/Aramaic syntax and idiom, making the Greek clumsy with poor word order.