The tradition about the origin of the Gospel of Mark is that Mark composed it in Rome to preserve a record of Peter's remembrances about Jesus. I see no reason not to subscribe to that.
Dr. Bart Ehrman has recently focused on this, asking his readers about the Gospel of Mark's author, date, and purpose. Let's put some of his claims under my analytical magnifying glass.
He called Sinaiticus and Vaticanus "our oldest two manuscripts, assigning them both to "toward the end of the fourth century (around 375 CE)." In real life Papyrus 45 is older. And Vaticanus probably dates from the early 300s, not the later 300s (by which the Eusebian Sections had become very popular among scribes transcribing the Gospels).
He also stated that "they have the shortest titles," but in real life Sinaiticus has the longer form of the subscription to the Gospel of Mark (see picture).
"The titles were added by a later scribe (in a different hand" he state, and this is correct - but "later" in this case may simply be a matter of days; the diorthotes (supervisor/proofreader) acting as scribe as he finished approving the codex book by book via the addition of the closing titles.
Ehrman then claimed "the manuscripts that the authors of both these 4th century manuscripts used apparently didn’t have titles at all (since they lacked them until the later scribe added them)." At this point Dr. Ehrman was over-extrapolating and making little sense. It is simply baseless to look at a systematic approach to adding page-titles and book subscriptions and conclude that it is an echo of exemplars rather than simply show tighter compartamentalization of the labor assigned to the transcription team of scribes.
Ehrman supposes that it's anyone's guess whether the titles were added a year after 01 and 03 were made, but in real life it would require less than a minute before manuscript-readers of the Gospels in the 300s would encounter no book-titles and no subscriptions before they would demand a refund and/or send it back to the scriptorium to be finished.
For some reason - probably an irrational adherence to skepticism - Ehrman questions the testimony of Papias about Mark's authorship. First he claims "There’s no way of knowing for certain that he’s talking about our Mark. I’m not just being overly skeptical here."
Bart Ehrman certainly is being overly skeptical, as usual. It's not as if there were multiple small books floating around Rome in the late 100s and reporting testimony about Jesus. Papias' report made sense to subsequent generations. If Ehrman really considers it "odd" that second-century writers prior to Irenaeus did not make their reports of the origins of the Gospels more explicit I invite him to consider that they were writing for audiences informed by oral tradition, not for atheistic readers 1900 years later.
Papias wasn't throwing down words from the clear blue sky. As Eusebius of Caesarea wrote, "he shows by the words which he uses that he received the doctrines of the faith from those who were their friends." Papias wrote that he "learned carefully from the elders and carefully remembered" what he heard.
For those new to Papias, I remind everyone what Timothy Mitchell pointed out in 2016, : Papias perpetuated an older tradition when he wrote "And the elder used to say this: "Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered - though not in systematic order - about the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him. But afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord's discourses. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong by writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his primary concern not to omit anything which he heard, and to avoid making any false statement in them." This is preserved in Eusebius' Church History Book 3:39.
(I mention in passing that this does not seem to be how anyone would describe Mark's Gospel without 16:9-20.)
Ehrman wrote, "Earlier authors who appear to quote Mark (e.g., Justin in 150 CE) - "
Allow me to pause and consider Ehrman's needless nebulosity. Justin Martyr utilized Mark 3:16-17 when he mentioned that Jesus changed the moniker of the sons of Zebedee to Boanerges (in Dialogue with Trypho 106).
Ehrman claimed that "If we look for any evidence in the Gospel itself that it was written by Mark or from provides Peter’s perspective on Jesus, there’s really nothing there." He is incorrect again, as a thoughtful reading of Broadus' commentary on the Gospel of Mark demonstrates. [Take ten minutes and use the embedded link to obtain this wonderful resource.]
Ehrman assumed that Peter didn't know what Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane - as if Peter and Jesus could not have discussed the subject when Peter and Jesus were eating during the 40 days following Jesus' resurrection. That's his atheism talking.
Ehrman correctly observed that "Peter is not portrayed in a positive light in the Gospel: he cannot understand who Jesus is, he puts his foot in his mouth, he denies him three times, and at one point Jesus calls him Satan." So what? Peter did not want to brag about himself; he honestly pointed out some of his faults to his Roman audience. Of course he wanted to point to Jesus and Mark in his Gospel recorded Peter's accounts.
Ehrman's irrational skepticism is on display when he wrote that Mark "almost certainly could not have written this kind of subtle and elaborate account in Greek" on the grounds that Mark's native tongue was Aramaic. Dr. Ehrman simply underestimated how thoroughly being raised in a bilingual society - in this case, Judea-Samaria-Galilee - produced a literate mind such as that of Mark. His incredulosity that Mark produced his Gospel (totaling 52 page if written in a tidy little book today) in the course of his lifetime is hard to understand anything other than a theatrical effect.
Ehrman claimed that to compose Mark's little Greek book "was highly unusual." Considering the educational system organized by Queen Salome Alexandra that was already in place when Mark was born this assumption is unwarranted. The Septuagint was in play. Many Jews in Roman-occupied Judea were literate in Greek.
When Ehrman asked why the Gospel of Mark was attributed to Mark he seems to overlook the historical reason that the Christians at Rome who knew Peter and Mark were aware that Mark was writing a composition to preserve Peter's recollections about Jesus, and when Mark passed his work along to them it was simply the natural thing to do.
Like most liberals, Ehrman assigned the Gospel of Mark to "maybe" 70-75. Being a skeptic who denies the miraculous he seemingly considers certain sayings of Jesus foreseeing the destruction of Jerusalem as if they were concocted after the fact. A production-date in the mid-60s (not to put too fine a line on it but I suspect 68) seems to me more probable, with earlier stages of the composition being accessible to Christians such as Luke. (Independent records of early apostolic traditions about Jesus were also circulating as Luke attested in the opening verses of his Gospel).
Ehrman didn't go far enough when he observed that in the Gospel of Mark "Jesus repeatedly declares he has to die for others and not even his closest intimates can get their minds around it." Peter and his fellow apostles didn't have an accurate idea of Jesus' mission prior to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - but afterwards, following the coming of the Holy Spirit, they did. Their enlightenment didn't start with the composition of Mark's Gospel; Mark's Gospel echoes Peter's education. Considering that Peter died as a crucified martyr rather than deny Christ, that ought to say something about his integrity and the truthfulness of his testimony about Jesus as written by Mark.
