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[Music] so i did put the hand out in the back uh from last time the calendar or the the map rather and so you can take that piece of paper and fold it in half and put it in your bible after the paul's missionary journey map so you've got the next piece if you want and i apologize i tried to upgrade the graphics and that's not me so if you know somebody who's good at graphics then we should talk uh because the circles are not as helpful as they could be but it does give you some sense of where did the apostles go what is happening in the first century beyond just the activities of paul as chronicled in the second half of the book of acts so next slide so i wanted to talk today about the other two gospel writers among others so john mark is the author of the the second gospel in your bible and what is widely regarded as the first gospel to be written john is a very common jewish name and mark was the most common roman name for men at the time so so very common names but both known by both a jewish moniker and a roman moniker there is very little limited confusion about his name and identity though because he is known as john mark so consistently uh we he stands out from others and and there's not a lot of other marks in the new testament or in the early church story so it's pretty easy to pull him out his mother is named mary so she's on the list of mary's and i didn't even include her on the list of mary's that i went through but his mother mary owned a house in jerusalem and it is apparently a house that was important in the life of the early church it is apparently a house that jesus visited at some point it's a it's a house that people came to and when peter is miraculously released from prison it is the house that he runs through the dark streets to go to and when he knocks on the door and the servant rhoda won't let him in that's mary the mother of john mark's house and rhoda almost certainly works for mary uh so uh so that house was important in the life of the church it was a place that people gathered to pray there is some belief in the early church that when jesus sends two disciples to prepare the passover and says when you go in the gate of the city you will see a young man or a man carrying a jar of water which is unusual women usually carried the jars of water at the time when you see the young man carrying the jar of water follow him to the house and when he goes into the house go in and ask for the upper room uh there are people in the other church that think that the young man was john mark carrying the jar of water and took led them to his mother's house and that it was at the house of mary the mother of john mark that the upper room was that they had the last supper in so that's that's a thread that is not tied to anything very strongly but there are people in the first four or five centuries of the church that thought that that might be true um so mark is the uh he has both a jewish name in a roman name and his mother is almost certainly jewish and his father doesn't figure in the story at all and so his father may have been deceased but there's a good likelihood that his father was a roman or at least a greek speaking culturally greek kind of a person and that that's the reason that he ended up with the name mark he's the nephew or perhaps the cousin depending on how you translated a barnabas there's a family relationship there that's out of colossians 4. he john mark is of course believed to be the young man who ran away at gethsemane as chronicled in mark's gospel mark has the odd little vignette of the young man who uh jumped out of bed in the middle of the night and chased off to gethsemane wrapped only in a sheet to see what was going on and when he sees jesus arrested someone tries to grab him and he runs away naked with and lets them have the sheet so that's a there's a story that's in the gospel of mark and it is widely believed for the last basically two millennia that mark is telling a story about himself although he doesn't name himself but that it's in the gospel of mark to give us a sense that mark was a witness to at least some of the events that he is chronicling in his gospel that he was there when jesus was arrested at gethsemane um so uh mark was sent later sent to antioch with barnabas uh when barnabas went up there to investigate the growth of the church at antioch and to see what was going on there uh he was subsequently selected to go on barnabas and paul's first missionary journey where of course he deserted them at perga and went home [Music] so when barnabas and paul got ready to go on another missionary journey and barnabas said let's take john mark paul said no way and paul was paul fired him and was so strong on that point that he and barnabas went separate ways and split up the thing and paul took silas and went to galatia and barnabas took john mark and went to cyprus which was where they had spent the first part of their first journey so barnabas functions as a guy that kind of reclaims john mark for service he's later employed by peter peter says that john mark becomes sort of like a son to him so he traveled with peter for so at some length it is widely believed that peter is the key source for mark's gospel mark is with paul in rome when he wrote colossians and philemon and later on when paul writes ii timothy the last epistle that he wrote john mark is the one guy that he asks timothy to bring with him when it comes to rome and he says he is very useful which is certainly not what paul's opinion was earlier he is the possible founder or the first major church leader of the church at alexandria a church that looms very large in the first couple of three centuries of the history of the church and john mark is believed to have had a major part in the foundation of that church he is the writer of what is widely believed to be the first gospel written a copy of mark's gospel was found in the dead sea scrolls library it is dated to belo before ad50 so his gospel is attested very very early and was written before the jerusalem council that's chronicled in acts so uh yeah the first the first council of jerusalem when they uh in the in acts yeah mark's gospel was written before that so if uh if if it was in the dead sea scroll collection by a.d 50 uh it was written in the 40s at least [Music] and and the jerusalem council didn't happen until 50. so uh so it's before mark's gospel seems to have been written before key events that happened in the book of acts so uh so there's very early attestation and evidence for mark's gospel and that he may have written that gospel as a while he was still a relatively young man and before the death of peter and so there are second century sources that say that peter read mark's gospel and approved it so that peter was alive and mark showed the gospel to him and peter signed off on it that yes this is correct and true and of course mark's gospel is the gospel of immediately that's the that's mark's favorite word and it's the word that should poke you every time you read mark's gospels how often does that word show up mark is the gospel of action it is written by a young man in a hurry and of course mark's gospel has the least amount of talking in the most amount of doing of any of the gospels so um so mark was somewhere that at the time of second timothy mark must have been somewhere in uh that timothy could bring him to rome when timothy was in ephesus so that maybe means the roman province of asia where ephesus was colossi laodicea it might mean somewhere in macedonia because you could semi-conveniently travel through macedonia to get to rome from ephesus there is some tradition that mark evangelized illyria which was northwest of greece and what is now albania and that would be a place that if timothy were coming from ephesus and going to rome he could have passed through it's on the other side of the adriatic sea from what is now uh uh italy um so it kind of fits uh geographically um peter of course says in writing his first epistle that he's writing from babylon a lot of people since then have believed that that by babylon he means rome and he's digging in rome he's poking rome he's saying something some kind of condemnation on rome but and that's based partly of course because the revelation in john when writing the revelation uses babylon as a symbol for rome but he uses lots of things very symbolically in revelation peter doesn't really write that way peter writes pretty straight up about where he is and what he's doing and what's going on so there's plenty of reasons to think that peter wrote his epistle from babylon that he really went there that he went east before he went west and if so there's a good chance that mark was on that trip with him uh where that fits in the timeline is hard to say but it would be before perhaps after peter was in antioch and before he passed through corinth maybe um so [Music] there is a strong tradition that after the deaths of peter and paul mark went to alexandria so um so he may have traveled south uh from rome down the italian peninsula and then across the mediterranean perhaps via sicily or malta uh to the north the coast of africa there is some tradition that mark's family is based out of cyrene where simon who carried the cross was also from in what is now libya [Music] and uh that he may have gone there first and evangelized some along the coast of africa or the north coast of africa before going to alexandria alexandria was the largest and most influential city in the eastern part of the empire there were people at the time who believed if you could plant a significant church in rome and alexandria you would have touched the two most influential hubs in across the whole empire and you would have made a major major mark on the empire alexander remained a very major city for the next several centuries and super influential in the roman empire and so it was a great hub for ministry alexander was very steeped in greco-roman culture but had a very large jewish population it was a major stronghold of paganism at the time and the story of the church in alexandria over the next several centuries is the story of conflict between the church and pagan authorities and pagan worship in that place the egyptian coptic church believes that mark came to alexandria in ad-49 holds him as the first bishop of alexandria and traces some of its liturgy to john mark they believe that some of their current liturgy which is very ancient very old was actually written by him [Music] the apocryphal book acts of barnabas has mark coming to alexandria around a.d 55 after barnabas is martyred in cyprus uh papias in the early 2nd century identifies the gospel with john mark and so it is pretty much everybody else down through the ages the one real exception to that is hippolytus in the early 3rd century went the the other direction from what we've seen on some of these other names many of these other names you see the early church saying you know all these mary's is too many we'll make them we'll we'll overlap a bunch of them these judases too many you know will try to make all these guys more or less the same the james's uh the idea that we can make two people one to simplify uh hippolytus in the early third century said uh went the other direction and said you know what there are three marks there is the john mark who shows up in acts and who wrote the gospel there is the mark who was the cousin or the nephew of barnabas and there is the mark the evangelist that paul sent for in ii timothy and those are three different guys hippolytus said that that hasn't ever gotten much traction but there is some early tradition that actually instead of trying to simplify by merging people into one instead with mark tries to split him up into multiple different people which is partly hippolytus was trying to figure out how is it that the guy that paul fired is the guy that paul later on says he's the one guy that i need and of course if you're the sort of person who believes in redemption that's not a crazy story right so but hippolytus was a little skeptical of that mark was believed martyred in alexandria about a.d he would have been in his 50s or maybe just past 60 or so the tradition says he was dragged through the streets by a mob perhaps on easter because easter in that year fell on the same day as a major pagan holiday so bottom right uh is a um a uh a picture that that tries to [Music] give you a sense of what that looks like it's a from an illuminated manuscript which was done from for a guy named john the duke of berry in europe between 1412 and 1416 but it's a sense that in the 14 early 1400s this is what people thought about the martyrdom of mark that he was pulled out of the church apparently during a service or on sunday and then dragged through the streets to his death by a mob so others hold that maybe he was martyred early in the second century that lives much longer annie that he had evangelized much of egypt by that time the church where his remains were held was sacked by islamic invaders in ad642 and there's a bunch of traditions that go with that but the one thing that seems pretty common to them is that his head ended up separate from his body his body was stolen in 828 by some venetian merchants who came to alexandria and conspired with some local greek monks and they smuggled his body out of out of egypt and took it to venice at the head of the adriatic sea where it was greeted with great joy and now uh is believed held in saint mark's cathedral the main cathedral in the city of venice um saint mark's coptic orthodox cathedral in alexandria claims to still have his head so there's a church the church of saint pudentiana in rome was built over a first century house that the people in that church claim was the house that mark wrote his gospel in and the monastery of saint mark in jerusalem is built over the foundations of a large first century house and at the bottom left is uh a syriac inscription from the 6th century that around 8 1520 was found underneath a major layer of plaster and covered over when it was the plaster was removed the sixth century inscription says this is the house of mary mother of john mark proclaimed a church by the holy apostles under the name of the virgin mary mother of god after our lord jesus christ went up to the heavens it was rebuilt after the destruction of jerusalem by titus in the year 73. so they believe that the monastery in jerusalem is built over mary's house and that that is the place that john mark lived as a young man and that that is the house that peter was refused admittance to uh by the servant girl rhoda and that it might have been the house with the upper room where the last supper happened um so but it was a significant early meeting place for the church um you can see the uh uh the image at the top right there is a marked evangelist by a guy named il purdenone in the early 1500s and he has a lion looking over his shoulder in the other the top left there is a winged lion it is the wing lion that is the sign of john mark the gospel writer the way that you get a winged lion connected to john mark the gospel writer and lions show up a lot in art that has mark a very common motif is because at some point in the first millennia anyway at some point the four gospel writers became associated with the four living creatures of revelation and mark became associated with the winged lion of those four uh and the winged lion uh that the it was believed at the time that the lion was an animal that slept with its eyes open and that this was symbolic of jesus who was raised from the dead and that the lion was kingly and this is symbolic as jesus the resurrect therefore jesus the resurrected king and so that became associated with mark because of some of the themes of his gospel uh matthew is long associated with the winged man the angel uh the uh the the winged creature that has the face of a man uh as a symbol of uh christ is god incarnate luke is associated with the winged ox or bull which is associated with the idea that christ is the perfect sacrifice and the priest by whom we connect with god and john is the winged eagle the the winged creature with the face of an eagle because his gospel kind of soars over the other sand is about the logos the divine in any case that's a tradition that you see in uh in the art that comes out of this so in the bottom right you've you've got there's a there's this this is sort of the church on the right side here and there's a guy inside leading worship or something and so mark is being dragged out the door of the church and into the street by the mob in the mob is a group of people of various races which is very alexandria of the moment and they they have weapons to beat him and are intent on dragging him to his death but you know the picture looks more like europe in the 1400s but alexandria was a very urban heavily big city at the time so anyway so this is a uh this is a picture kind of from renaissance europe of what this might have looked like and it says a bunch of things about renaissance europe uh in the way that the uh at the art of us that the oddest artist has chosen to uh depict this but this is an illuminated manuscript right this is a manuscript that had the text of mark's gospel among other things in it and the artist added these pictures along the way to make it interesting to read a picture book very very common in that era so but as paul said mark was ultimately useful the gospel writer the witness to the arrest of jesus in gethsemane the partner of barnabas the servant and sort of son of peter the helper of paul and the probable first leader of the church at alexandria john mark the fourth in my order of talking about gospel writers is of course luke who wrote the third gospel in your bible and is almost always portrayed writing even though once again these guys are writing in bound books which is not the way that luke would have done it but the one on the right is saint luke by guido rennie in 1621 and i i thought a very interesting portrait and the other is in at left there is an altarpiece it was done by a guy named andrea mantegna in the 1450s in milan so he is uh always almost always depicted writing or with a book and of course he's often depicted with an ox or a bull which are sometimes winged in keeping with the four wing creatures theme there is some early tradition that he was a painter which would make him truly kind of a renaissance man since he was a doctor and a historian and so if you add artistic talent onto the top of that that's a pretty amazing person so luke says at the beginning of his gospel that he is not an eyewitness to jesus and so he says that he was not present for any of the things that happened in the gospels but he's a very careful chronicler with a great eye for detail he's a man of serious culture steeped in greek thinking he is almost certainly not a jew paul says he is not of the circumcision which means that if he was a jew he was a very hellenized culturally distant jew but it's likely that he was greek or that he was at least of the greek culture he is a very stylish storyteller his authorship of luke and acts is universally accepted in the early church and he wrote more of the new testament than either paul or john depending on how you count this the official figure is usually about 27.5 percent of the new testament is written by luke he is probably the only new testament author who's a gentile it was not jewish so and he you know he is a historian he's been controversial for a long time but his geography his titles for people his culturally cultural details are right right down the line he is never incorrect on those kinds of things so uh very little is known of his background or life of the four gospel writers we know the least about luke much less than we know about matthew the the bit about him being an artist and a painter uh goes back to the 8th century but not apparently earlier but from the 8th century there's a belief that he painted icons he painted little pictures of mary peter and paul and others and that he did so from life that he met these people and sat down and sketched them out and then made paintings that were passed around in the early church there's not any evidence for that before the 8th century but as a result of that in medieval europe the painters guilds called themselves the guilds of saint luke the guilds of saint luke they the the painters guilds called themselves the guilds of saint luke they named their their organizations after him in the belief in medieval europe that he had also been a painter that he had also painted on the side so hard to know whether there's any truth to that there's no evidence before the 8th century about that there's nothing that exists or that that has been passed down but but that is a tradition that is stuck and you can find medieval paintings of luke painting uh there's there's quite a few of those what we do know is that when paul gets to troas on his uh second missionary journey uh that uh that he joins paul there uh and he may have joined paul because of paul's medical needs that paul paul needed some kind of medical care paul paul is a guy who's a high stress guy who drove his body very hard and on top of that had whatever his thorn in the flesh was and is always depicted with a stooped back and so the likelihood that paul needed some kind of ongoing medical care is is you know that's a real likelihood there there's a real possibility that that was part of what happened uh for some reason luke stayed in philippi when they got to philippi which has led some people to believe that maybe he was from philippi maybe he was a local guy but the church that the beginnings of the church lydia the seller of purple cloth the jailer and his family those people that paul left behind when paul leaves philippi luke is left there which might make him the first pastor of the church at philippi so uh for whatever reason when paul returned to philippi on his way uh headed eventually to go back to jerusalem luke rejoins him and travels with him after that luke is with him apparently in jerusalem he's with him in his two years of imprisonment in caesarea it's possible that luke used that time to go venture around go up to jerusalem go to galilee go talk to people he might have been able to meet mary and others at that time in that he wrote his gospel during those two years it became very evident early in that time that felix had no intent of disposing of paul's case and that paul was going to be there perhaps as long as felix was so they would have given luke some freedom to go places to go visit things to be gone for a month and know that when he got back that paul wasn't going to be gone or that something wasn't going to have happened because felix seemed extremely uninterested in bringing the case to any resolution he traveled with paul to rome and stayed there with him for the two years that he was under house arrest there and that may be when he wrote the book of acts and that may be why the book of acts ends the way that it does because luke wrote it while paul was under house arrest and when they got to the end of the two years he ended it thinking that you know i'll write later about what happens after because i don't know where we're going to go what we're going to do and luke is with paul at the end in second timothy chapter 4 only luke is with me so when paul is in the dungeon under the sentence of death luke is there so in second corinthians chapter eight but thanks be to god who put into heart the heart of titus the same earnest care i have for you for he not only accepted our appeal but bring being himself very earnest he is going to you of his own accord with him we are sending the brother who is famous among all the churches for his preaching of the gospel people always wondered who's the brother there are some translations of this that it's not the brother it's his brother titus's brother there is an early tradition that the brother of titus was luke they were both gentiles and maybe they were related that's not very strong but it would help answer an interesting question which is why is titus not mentioned even once in the book of acts in all the places in the second half of the book of acts all the people that are traveling with paul all the people that paul is invested in titus isn't mentioned once but titus paul writes a letter to him that's part of the canon titus is mentioned several times in paul's letter well if titus was luke's brother then luke probably wouldn't mention him because that would seem unseemly and so they're culturally that's a fit in any case that's a long shot but but that is the thing that people down through the ages have spent some time pondering and thinking about so what did luke do after paul's death in a.d 64 or thereabouts he seems to have gone to boesha in northern greece primarily to the city of thebes which is west from philippi and thessalonika aways in well north of athens and surrounded by bowie she is an area of greece that's kind of surrounded by mountains and high hills and so it's a big flat area in northern greece that is geographically distinct from the rest of greece so as a mission's target it's a good idea it is believed that luke died in thebes of boesha in a.d 84 or maybe in 1893 or maybe just when he was 84 and then he was buried there and that he may have been martyred by being hanged from an olive tree there is a roman style tomb in thieves that still exists it's from the first century and is believed to be associated with luke it's empty the uh his relics are believed to have been removed to constantinople in uh 356 or 357 a.d and some then uh on to rome uh saint peter's basilica in rome claims to have his head but so does a church in prague and there is an abbey in padua italy that claims to have the body of luke in any case the abbey in padua the remains that are there have been carbon dated to sometime between the first and fifth century and they are of a syrian man who died probably in his seventies so maybe in in case luke is a great writer a great historian a reliable and very useful companion of paul a very astute observer and chronicler events and a trustworthy guy for us to read and listen to his details are consistently right down the line [Music] you