What is St Mark's Gospel?

Answer 1

The Gospel of Mark is a historic document from eyewitness accounts of some of the important events in the life of Jesus. Mark's Gospel focuses on action and events, thus it is dynamic and fast moving. A large portion of the Gospel focuses on the final week before the crucifixion, and the climax of the account is the Resurrection of Christ.

Answer 2

St Mark's Gospel was the first of the four New Testament gospels to be written, as well as the shortest. Because of the obvious literary dependency among the synoptic gospels, the Church Fathers thought it to be a summary of Matthew's Gospel, with Luke's Gospel a fuller copy of Matthew but with additional material. Scholars now say that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were actually based on Mark, with some additional sayings material taken from the hypothetical 'Q' document and eleswhere.

Mark's Gospel is a literary masterpiece, although written in a low, ungrammatical style of Greek, perhaps to disguise the real identity of the author. It is based around a parallel structure*, but has subsidiary chiastic structures*, most notably in the portrayal of the last twenty four hours of Jesus' life.

Footnote
*A parallel structure is a literary sequence in which an opening set of events is contrasted with another, parallel set of events that mirrors the first. *A chiastic structure is a circular sequence in which an opening set of events is contrasted with another set of events that mirrors the first, in reversed order.