Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 179:713 (Jan 2022)
Article: Pre-Markan Material And The Reliability Of The Passion
Author: Kevin M. Kroitor

BSac 179:713 (January-March 2022) p. 46

Pre-Markan Material And The Reliability Of The Passion

Kevin M. Kroitor

Kevin M. Kroitor is Adjunct Professor of Apologetics and Theology at Crown College, St. Bonifacius, Minnesota.

Abstract

The early dating of the Gospels along with the earlier dating of the Pauline Epistles supports the reliability of the passion account. Additionally, the sources behind those works also indicate the passion’s reliability. This article argues for a pre-Markan passion narrative that dates within four years of Jesus’s crucifixion. That narrative’s content—to varying degrees—appears throughout Mark’s Gospel and provides evidence that supports Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth remains the linchpin of orthodox Christianity. The apostle Paul claimed that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, then the proclamation of the gospel and the faith of Christians is in vain—the freedom they believe they have acquired from sin and eternal death is false (1 Cor 15:14–17). Many scholars have suggested that belief in Jesus’s resurrection was a later Christian development, rendering the resurrection claim false and undermining the entirety of orthodox Christian faith.1 This article challenges the premise that belief

BSac 179:713 (January-March 2022) p. 47

in the resurrection was a later Christian development. To accomplish this aim, the article focuses on the early dating of the passion narrative contained within the Gospel of Mark, with its reliance on earlier sources and traditions, including its relation to an early Christian creed found in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4.

The Early Gospel And Earlier Sources

Historical investigation depends on sources, and the history of Christianity, including the death and alleged resurrection of Jesus, is no exception. The epistles contain the earliest Christian sources with information about Jesus’s resurrection. Barnett writes that Paul’s earliest letters, as well as James, 1 Peter, and Hebrews, “are the earliest documents of Christianity, apparently pre-dating the more overtly biographical gospels.”2 How early were the Epistles written? Most New Testament scholars date 1 Corinthians at approximately AD 55, a mere twenty-two years after the death of Jesus. In the fifteenth chapter of the epistle, an early Christian creed refers to Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection.3 Despite the early date of th...