The book of Mark:
remarkable for a number of reasons

By Tomás de los Santos

It is a basic dogma of fundamental Christianity that the Bible is without error. This conclusion is reached by reasoning that God, a perfect being, cannot be the author of any falsehood, and does not err like humans do. It follows then that the Bible, as the word of God, is without error. Any perceived inconsistencies in the Bible are attributed to one's lack of understanding, the cure for which is a deeper study into the Word, and guidance from the Holy Spirit.
How true is that? Admittedly, if the Bible was written by a perfect being, albeit delivered by inspired prophets, then it must be inerrant. If, on the other hand, the Bible is a collection of books written by mere mortals, at different times and over the course many centuries, then one would expect to find errors. Indeed, if the latter case is true, there should be a wide variety of errors, including misquotes and contradictions. In fact, the Bible contradicts itself many times, and on many different subjects. Let's have a look at the Bible and consider one such contradiction, which appears to be irreconcilable, and happens to be on a rather touchy subject: that regarding Mary's attitude towards her son, Jesus.
Let's look at a passage in Luke first, where the writer tells us that Mary knows that Jesus is the Son of God:
"In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth . . . to a virgin . . . [named] Mary . . . and said . . . Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. . . . He will be great and will be called the son of the Most high . . . and Mary said, My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (Lk. 1:26-35, 46-47 NIV).
Now let's compare what Mark has to say about who Mary thought Jesus was:
"He appointed twelve -- designating them apostles -- that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons . . . when his family (meaning Jesus' mother and brothers [Mk. 3:31]) heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, 'He is out of his mind'" (Mk 3:14-21 NIV).
The writer of the book of Mark makes it clear that Mary does not know Jesus is God. Instead, she thinks that her son is insane, and in need of therapy. This can hardly be the same Mary we find in the Gospel of Luke who knew even before Jesus was born that he was the son of God because God's angel, Gabriel, told her so. How could Mark's Mary have forgotten about her being visited by an archangel, no less, and the divine nature of her pregnancy? The failure of Mark's Mary to recognize that Jesus was the son of God is totally at odds with Luke's Mary. Indeed, the two cannot be reconciled. Either Mark's Mary is a false Mary, or Luke's Mary is. Perhaps both are.
So what happened? Why the discrepancy? Keep in mind that the selection of which books were put in the Bible was a process that went through several stages and took many centuries. Before the final selection (canon), the "gospels" existed as handwritten manuscripts, on papyrus or maybe vellum, copied and re-copied over the years. Moreover, there were many "gospels" floating around, not just the four that we are familiar with. The four that we have in our Christian Bibles are those that "made the final cut."
Of the four, Mark was probably the earliest. Many scholars believe it to have been written around 70 A.D., or thereabouts. At the time Mark was written, it was still supposed that the end of the world was near, and that Jesus would return any day soon in clouds of glory. There was no need for any biography to qualify where Jesus came from. Instead, all that was needed were words of warning to be alert and wakeful, and to watch, "for ye know not when the master . . . cometh" (Mk 13:33-37 KJV).
According to many scholars, it was around 20 or so years after Mark that the authors of Matthew and Luke got around to writing their own gospels (in which they included most of Mark). By then, it had become embarrassingly clear that the world was not ending and that Christians might be in for a long wait. So, new evidence was needed to show that this now tardy prophet was indeed the Messiah, the Christ -- the "anointed one" -- for whom everyone had been waiting. More importantly, evidence was needed to encourage people to continue waiting. So, the writers of Luke and Matthew, appreciating this urgent need, added to the story they took from Mark to include biographical information such as ancestries and childhood stories, and, of course, birth stories.
The additional "evidence" was designed to qualify the figure of Jesus as the awaited-for Messiah by including additional elements that would satisfy the beliefs of those the writers wanted to convince. On the one hand, Luke, as did Matthew, wanted to appeal to those of Jewish persuasion who were waiting for a messiah with a Davidic lineage -- and so included a genealogy tracing Jesus' lineage from Joseph to David (and later we'll visit the genealogies of Luke and Matthew to see how thoroughly messed up they are). On the other hand, Luke and Matthew wanted to appeal to the pagan masses that believed in a variety of "mystery" religions -- a common characteristic of which is a savior-hero, born of a supernaturally impregnated virgin.