Acts 12:12
The house of Mary the mother of John
The prayer meeting that did not believe its own answered prayer is at his mother’s house. It is how the reader first learns he exists.
People of the Bible
Mark
Quit one journey and is the reason the first missionary partnership broke up, and ended it useful.
Also called John whose surname was Mark
He appears first as an address. When Peter walks out of prison he comes to the house of Mary the mother of John whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying, which means Mark grew up in one of the houses the church met in. He is Barnabas’s cousin, and he goes out with Barnabas and Saul as their minister on the first journey, and at Perga he departs from them and returns to Jerusalem. The text gives no reason.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Mark
- 01
- 02
Acts 13:5, 13
John departing from them returned to Jerusalem
He goes as their minister and leaves at Perga. No explanation is offered and none of the explanations later readers have supplied is in the text.
- 03
Acts 15:37-39
Barnabas determined to take with them John
One man judges by the record and the other by the person. The disagreement is recorded without either being called wrong.
- 04
2 Timothy 4:11
He is profitable to me for the ministry
The last word on him in Paul’s letters reverses the first. The man who was not worth taking is now specifically sent for.
- 05
1 Peter 5:13
Marcus my son
Peter greets from Babylon and names him as family. The gospel that bears his name is the shortest and the fastest of the four.
Why it matters
That silence is the whole quarrel. When Barnabas wants to take him again, Paul thinks it not good to take him who departed from them from Pamphylia, and the contention is sharp enough to split the pair. Barnabas takes Mark to Cyprus and the record follows Paul instead. Years later Paul writes take Mark, and bring him with thee, for he is profitable to me for the ministry. Peter calls him my son. The tradition that he wrote the second gospel from Peter’s preaching is early and consistent.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
