Who was John Mark?

The short answer

John Mark was a young man from Jerusalem whose mother’s house was a gathering place for the first believers. Acts says he traveled with Barnabas and Paul. Old tradition says he wrote the Gospel of Mark, though the Gospel itself doesn’t name its writer.

What the record says

The Gospels never name him. Acts does. When Peter was freed from prison, he went straight to a house where people were praying:

Thinking about that, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John who was called Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying.

Acts 12:12

Barnabas and Saul took him along on their travels (Acts 12:25). Partway through the first journey, “John departed from them and returned to Jerusalem” (Acts 13:13). Later Barnabas wanted to take him again and Paul did not. “Then the contention grew so sharp that they separated from each other” (Acts 15:39). Barnabas took Mark with him.

Years later, Paul asked for him by name:

Only Luke is with me. Take Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service.

2 Timothy 4:11

Paul’s letter to the Colossians calls him “the cousin of Barnabas” (Colossians 4:10). The first letter of Peter calls him “Mark, my son” (1 Peter 5:13).

Mark’s Gospel tells of a young man at the arrest who left his linen cloth behind and “fled from them naked” (Mark 14:52). The Gospel doesn’t name him. Some readers have long thought it was Mark himself.

How the novels tell it

Third Day is a novel. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. John Mark is a boy of Jerusalem who attaches himself to the company. In The Narrow Gate he’s the one who counts the five barley loaves and two fish. His family’s house holds the upper room where the apostles eat their last supper. In chapter ten of Third Day, “The Basket,” Yeshua has asked for one day alone. John Mark takes the lunch basket before his father can fix its split handle and hides it under his cloak. His mother tells him how to carry the leaking jar. Yeshua takes one handle, and the two walk into the hills with no apostle following. They patch the jar with pine gum and the handle with hide and share the bread. Yeshua sleeps under a pine while the boy sits by the basket. That same day Judas goes to Caiaphas. The two come back after dark with the basket empty, and his mother asks what Yeshua said.

“He said it was ours.”

He means the day. In chapter fifteen, “The Taking,” a soldier grabs his linen coat in the garden, and he twists out of it and runs naked through the trees. In chapter twenty-five he follows the apostles to Galilee uninvited and serves the fish at the charcoal fire.