ABSTRACT
Rowlandson's plight may give us a useful comparative vantage point for approaching the thorny question of the genesis of the Gospel of Mark and its striking deviations from the previously dominant modes of portraying Jesus. There is only one place in the entire Gospel in which the author appears to be referring to real individuals who are contemporary with, and known to, the author himself. The handful of places in the Gospel in which the text provides asides and explanations of Jewish customs are not, in my opinion, original to the text. Helmut Koester offers solid literary reasons for concluding that canonical Mark may not perfectly represent the original text. Mark's adoption of a biographical format had implications for content as well. The representation of Jesus as a teacher via both oral tradition and written sayings-collections meant that the tradition prior to Mark probably lacked genuinely biographical information.
