MARK wrote his Gospel in a popular literary style. He combined the stories of Jesus, which he collected from a variety of sources into one continuous, extended narrative. He wrote his Gospel for the benefit of a Gentile Christian community. He wrote to be of service to his own community. It was not a collection of stories about Jesus. It was the story of Jesus, the Son of God. Mark intended that it be read in its entirety, in one setting. Mark’s primary purpose in writing his Gospel was to strengthen his community’s faith in Jesus as the Christ, the resurrected Son of God. The Gospel of Mark is not a collection of anecdotes about Jesus. It is a unified presentation of Mark’s own faith, whose reading, Mark fervently hoped, would call forth strong belief from the reader. As one writer, Will Marxpen, has described it, “The evangelist proclaims the One whom once appeared as One who is to come, and who is present now as the proclamation is made”. Mark collected the Jesus stories and used them as part of his own story. In so doing he removed the atmosphere of urgency by presenting Jesus in the narrative as the savior who presents God’s claim on the reader (or hearer) in the act of reading the work itself. Mark’s understanding of who Jesus was is reflected in the titles which he used to refer to Jesus in his Gospel. The titles which appear most frequently are, “Rabbi’’, “Christ”, ’Son of man’, and “Son of God”.. Although Mark had a great respect for the teaching traditions, he preferred to emphasize those stories that described Jesus’ miraculous deeds. Mark placed great emphasis on those stories perhaps to present Jesus as the special agent of God. He portrayed Jesus as endowed with supernatural power and authority. 12