Skip to main content
It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.
For more resources on the Synoptic Gospels please see the LibGuide of the same name HERE
 
-
Anchor Bible Commentary: Mark 8-16 by Joel MarcusUnfortunately Yale University Press has only digitized the second volume of this two volume work on the Gospel of Mark:
"In this volume New Testament scholar Joel Marcus offers a new translation of Mark 8–16 as well as extensive commentary and notes. He situates the narrative within the context of first-century Palestine and the larger Greco-Roman world; within the political context of the Jewish revolt against the Romans (66–73 C.E.); and within the religious context of the early church’s sometimes rancorous engagement with Judaism, pagan religion, and its own internal problems. For religious scholars, pastors, and interested lay people alike, the book provides an accessible and enlightening window on the second of the canonical Gospels." Yale University Press
-
The Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary: The Gospel According to St Mark by C. E. B Cranfield"The last fifty years have seen a shift of emphasis in New Testament scholarship. When the task was to establish the text and to discuss the authenticity of the documents, linguistic and historical considerations came first. Now that these things are approaching a settled state it has become possible, and necessary, to give more attention to the theological and religious content of the New Testament. Hence the New Testament is re-examined by scholars in this new series. Each volume takes a book of the New Testament and, after an introduction on general matters, goes through the text in great detail, commenting especially on theological matters, relating the contents to the life and worship of the early Christian communities. It is assumed that students have their own Greek text beside the open commentary. The text on which the commentary is based is the Kilpatrick-Nestle edition." - CUP
-
Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture: Mark by Mary Healy""Though Mark's Gospel is the shortest Gospel in length, it is certainly not short in profound insights on the life and teaching of Our Lord. Mary Healy plumbs the depths and unwraps the riches of this Gospel for both the serious scholar and the novice alike in her easy-to-read and lucid style. With the incisiveness of a surgeon and the clarity of a scholar, she pulls back the curtain on the first century and the ministry of Jesus Christ. This commentary on Mark will fill an important place in my library!" -Steve Ray
-
Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Matthew, Mark by Darrell L. Bock; David L. Turner"The Cornerstone Biblical Commentary series is the product of nearly 40 scholars, many of whom participated in the creation of the NLT. The contributors to this series, who are well-known and represent a wide spectrum of theological positions within the evangelical community, have built each volume to help pastors, teachers, and students of the Bible understand every thought contained in the Bible. In short, this will be one of the premier resources for those seeking an accessible but fairly high-level discussion of scriptural interpretation." - Tyndale Press
-
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Mark by Mark L. Strauss"This series is designed for those who know biblical languages. It is written primarily for the pastor and Bible teacher, not for the scholar. That is, the aim is not to review and offer a critique of every possible interpretation that has ever been given to a passage, but to exegete each passage of Scripture succinctly in its grammatical and historical context. Each passage is interpreted in the light of its biblical setting, with a view to grammatical detail, literary context, flow of biblical argument, and historical setting. While the focus will not be on application, it is expected that the authors will offer suggestions as to the direction in which application can flow." - Zondervan
-
Hermeneia, A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible: Mark by Adela Yarbro Collins"Professor Adela Yarbro Collins brings to bear on the text of the first Gospel the latest historical-critical perspectives, providing a full treatment of such controversial issues as the relationship of canonical Mark to the "Secret Gospel of Mark" and the text of the Gospel, including its longer endings. She situates the Gospel, with its enigmatic portrait of the misunderstood Messiah, in the context of Jewish and Greco-Roman literature of the first century. Her comments draw on her profound knowledge of apocalyptic literature as well as on the traditions of popular biography in the Greco-Roman world to illuminate the overall literary form of the Gospel. The commentary also introduces an impressive store of data on the language and style of Mark, illustrated from papyrological and epigraphical sources. Collins is in constructive dialogue with the wide range of scholarship on Mark that has been produced in the twentieth century. Her work will be foundational for Markan scholarship in the first half of the twenty-first century." - Fortress Press
-
Immersion Bible Studies: Mark by Emerson B. Powery"Journey inside the pages of Scripture to meet a personal God who enters individual lives and begins a creative work from the inside out. Shaped with the individual in mind, Immersion encourages simultaneous engagement both with the Word of God and with the God of the Word to become a new creation in Christ." - Abingdon Press
-
International Critical Commentary: St. Mark by Ezra P. GouldThis was published in 1896 in the prestigious ICC series. Thus, while it is dated, many modern authors have been heavily influenced by the conclusions made in this commentary and thus it is worth browsing. This is a short blurb of a review when it was first published:
"The Gospel of Mark, while in comparison of less importance than Matthew or John, nevertheless presents a great opportunity for the commentator. Dr. Gould has in a large measure seen and fulfilled this opportunity. He has undoubtedly given us a commentary on Mark which surpasses all others, a thing which we have reason to expect will be true in the case of every volume of the series to which it belongs." - Clyde Weber Votaw
-
Mark's Gospel: World's in Conflict by John Painter"Mark's 'biography' of Jesus is the earliest of the four gospels, and influenced them all. The distinctive feature of this biography is the quality of 'good news', which presupposes a world dominated by the forces of evil. John Painter shows how the rhetorical and dramatic shaping of the book emphasises the conflict of good and evil at many levels - between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, Jesus and the Roman authorities, and the conflict of values within the disciples themselves. These matters of content are integral to this original approach to Mark's theodicy, while the stylistic issue raises the question of Mark's intended readership." - Routledge
-
New Cambridge Bible Commentary: Mark by Darrell Bock"This volume provides a comprehensive, accessible introduction to the Gospel of Mark, now widely considered the first recorded treatment of Jesus. Darrell Bock explains how this text, once the least-used gospel, came to be regarded as the starting point for understanding Jesus. Drawing together previous arguments and discussion in a constructive summary, he traces the significance of Mark and addresses key features such as its cultural and historical background, its narrative flow, and the role of Greek in supplying meaning. This commentary highlights the issues Mark's gospel raises and develops Mark's message surrounding Jesus' claims of kingdom authority and salvation, the call to disciples to follow him, and the preparation of those disciples to face suffering in light of their choice. Mark will be a valuable resource for students, teachers, and pastors alike." - CUP
-
New International Commentary on the New Testament: Mark by William L. Lane"This widely praised commentary by William Lane shows Mark to be a theologian whose primary aim was to strengthen the people of God in a time of fiery persecution by Nero. Using redaction criticism as a hermeneutical approach for understanding the text and the intention of the evangelist, Lane considers the Gospel of Mark as a total literary work and describes Mark's creative role in shaping the Gospel tradition and in exercising a conscious theological purpose. Both indicating how the text was heard by Mark's contemporaries and studying Mark within the frame of reference of modern Gospel research, Lane's thoroughgoing work is at once useful to scholars and intelligible to nonspecialists." - Eerdmans
-
New Testament Library: Mark by M. Eugene Boring"Boring provides a helpful commentary—with historical introduction, interpretative outline, translation with explanatory notes, and full commentary—for students with limited resources for Mark. Writing always with an eye to theological concerns, Boring adapts the historical-critical commentary tradition literarily, primarily in the vein of narrative criticism, by focusing his comments as a “reading” of Mark. As a result, Mark’s (and Boring’s) reader is the most important character other than Jesus (and the narrator). To chart a way through Markan criticism, Boring, like his exemplar Mark, sometimes speaks rather imperatively, particularly when rejecting other readings of Mark as anachronistic moralisms, psychologizings, or universalizings. In their stead, Boring focuses on the narrative meaning of Mark’s particulars in Mark’s historical setting (65-75 CE). For that critical time, Mark offers his narrative (Christology), rejecting charismatic prophets who speak for the Lord and associate the destruction of the Temple and the parousia. For Mark, the end is not yet. Now is the time to follow Jesus “on the way (of the cross),” but also “on the way” of Isaiah’s new exodus. Mark employs the messianic secret to create his narrative and his divine and human Jesus. This structuring device allows him to adopt, without logically reconciling, the epiphany and kenosis christologies available to him." - Richard Walsh
-
Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament: Mark by Mary Ann Beavis"In this addition to the well-received Paideia series, Mary Ann Beavis examines cultural context and theological meaning in Mark. Paideia commentaries explore how New Testament texts form Christian readers by * attending to the ancient narrative and rhetorical strategies the text employs * showing how the text shapes theological convictions and moral habits * commenting on the final, canonical form of each New Testament book * focusing on the cultural, literary, and theological settings of the text * making judicious use of maps, photos, and sidebars in a reader-friendly format Students, pastors, and other readers will appreciate the insights that Beavis derives from interrogating the text through multiple perspectives." - Baker Academic
-
Reading Mark in Context by Ben C. Blackwell; John C. Goodrich; Jason Maston"Over the last several decades, the Jewishness of Jesus has been at the forefront of scholarship and students of the New Testament are more than ever aware of the importance of understanding Jesus and the Gospels in their Jewish context. Reading Mark in Context helps students see the contour and texture of Jesus' engagement with his Jewish environment. It brings together a series of accessible essays that compare and contrast viewpoints, theologies, and hermeneutical practices of Mark and his various Jewish contemporaries. Going beyond an introduction that merely surveys historical events and theological themes, this textbook examines individual passages in Second Temple Jewish literature in order to illuminate the context of Mark's theology and the nuances of his thinking. Following the narrative progression of Mark's Gospel, each chapter in this textbook (1) pairs a major unit of the Gospel with one or more sections of a thematically-related Jewish text, (2) introduces and explores the historical and theological nuances of the comparative text, and (3) shows how the ideas in the comparative text illuminate those expressed in Mark." - Zondervan
-
Sacra Pagina: Mark by John Donahue; Daniel Harrington"In The Gospel of Mark Fathers Donahue and Harrington use an approach that can be expressed by two terms currently used in literary criticism: intratextuality and intertextuality. This intratextual and intertextual reading of Mark's Gospel helps us to appreciate the literary character, its setting in life, and its distinctive approaches to the Old Testament, Jesus, and early Christian theology. Includes an updated bibliography as an appendix. Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, is a professor of New Testament at Boston College School of Theology and Ministry in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and general editor of New Testament Abstracts. He is a past-president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America and is the author of The Gospel of Matthew and co-author of 1 Peter, Jude and 2 Peter in the Sacra Pagina series published by Liturgical Press. John Donahue, SJ, PhD, is the Raymond E. Brown Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore. He is the author of Life in Abundance: Studies of John's Gospel in Tribute to Raymond E. Brown, S.S., and Hearing the Word of God: Reflections on the Sunday Readings, Year A published by Liturgical Press." - Publisher
-
Tyndale New Testament Commentary: Mark by Eckhard J. Schnabel"Mark wrote his Gospel to explain why and how Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God who fulfills God's promises as he proclaims and embodies the coming kingdom of God. Mark emphasizes Jesus' authority and also his suffering and death as God's will for his messianic mission. This Tyndale New Testament commentary from Eckhard Schnabel seeks to help today's Christian disciples communicate the significance of Jesus and the transforming power of the good news. An exegetical commentary on the Gospel of Mark, this volume will be useful for preachers, Bible teachers, and non-specialists alike." - InterVarsity Press
-
Word Bible Commentary: Mark 1-8:26 by Robert A. GuelichThis is volume 1 of a 2 volume set. Volume 2 can be found
HERE"
"The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. " - Zondervan