How can we have confidence in the reliability of Mark's gospel?

Answer 1

We know that Mark's Gospel was not entirely reliable. It contains too many well-known geographic, historical and cultural errors to be considered thus. However, as the first of the gospels and the gospel used, directly or indirectly, by the three other evangelists as their sole reliable source of information about the life and mission of Jesus, it ought to be the most reliable of the gospels.

Answer 2

It is important for a Christian to have confidence in the reliability of Mark's Gospel, all the more so because we now know that it was used by the authors of the other New Testament gospels as a major source for their narratives, either directly (Matthew, Luke) or indirectly (John). All the gospels were actually anonymous until later in the the second century, when the Church Fathers decided who, in their opinions, probably wrote each of the gospels. We can not rely on the traditional assumption that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses or those who knew eyewitnesses.

Rhoads, Dewey and Michie (Mark as Story) tell us to read Mark independently from the other Gospels and avoid reading modern cultural assumptions into Mark's first-century story. They say the Gospel of Mark is told by a narrator with 'unlimited omniscience'. Mark’s narrator can describe the inner feelings of the characters – their compassion, anger, fear, sadness, amazement and love. The narrator tells when characters are dazed, stunned, puzzled, pleased, terrified or dejected. The narrator also tells the audience what the characters are thinking, for example, that the opponents think Jesus is a blasphemer or that Pilate knows the high priests are envious. The narrator explains why characters do things and when characters do not understand and when they do not know what to say. This knowledge of the omniscient narrator leads the audience to trust the narrator as a reliable guide in the world of the story.

The present question is not about how Mark's author uses the narrator's unlimited omniscience to establish trust, but whether we ought to have that level of confidence. Since no one could really know everything that Mark's narrator knows, the answer must be that to a large extent, we ought not have confidence in the reliability of the Gospel. Through faith, we might have confidence in the reliability of those events and sayings that a person could reasonably know about, but not those events and sayings that require unlimited omniscience.