Legion Mark 5:1-20

5 They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes.[a] 2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3 He lived among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain, 4 for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces, and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him, 7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he had said to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 Then Jesus[b] asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region. 11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding, 12 and the unclean spirits[c] begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, stampeded down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea.

14 The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the man possessed by demons sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion, and they became frightened. 16 Those who had seen what had happened to the man possessed by demons and to the swine reported it. 17 Then they began to beg Jesus[d] to leave their neighborhood. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 But Jesus[e] refused and said to him, “Go home to your own people, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and what mercy he has shown you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone was amazed.

The story of Jesus healing a man with an unclean spirit that turned out to be "Legion" is the second of three "mighty deeds" or "miracles" that Jesus performs in Mark subsequent to a section on Jesus' teachings in order to legitimize his teachings and to give them authority.  There is a lot we can unpack here, but I am going to start by reminding myself of the audience of this story and look at some of the context.  

As explored in earlier posts, the author of Mark is writing for a mainly gentile audience in Greek (at least the earliest copies are in Greek) as part of a community that some have suggested may have been in Rome (Mark uses a number of Latin terms), Galilee, Antioch (third-largest city in the Roman Empire, located in northern Syria), or southern Syriathat.  Wherever the community resided in the Roman empire it was part of a world shaped by Hellenistic culture.  Written around 60 CE, this would put it at the time of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and most certainly amongst the Jewish revolt.

There is a Greek pagan connection to the audience by the setting of the story being in Gerasa in the region of the Sea of Galilee, one of the "ten cities of the Decapolis of the province of Syria.  The people of the region were mainly Macedonian/Greek settlers of the Seleucid period who had adopted Greek culture and with a smaller number of Jews, mostly traders and artisans, but not culturally dominant.  Following the Greco-Roman worldview, their local spirits, or Daimones, were intermediate beings between gods and humans.  These Daimones could be protective, neutral, or malevolent and were blamed for illness, madness, and misfortune.  Local spirits were believed to be tied to land and city boundaries and to inhabit tombs, ruins, and caves.  Because of this tombs were feared and exorcisms and protective rituals were common. The story in Mark fits this description of the local Greco-Roman belief about spirits to a tee. In the Mark story the possessed man lives among the tombs and the unclean spirits beg Jesus not to send them out of the region, suggesting that they are tied to the land.

An exorcism as a mighty deed legitimizing a teacher's authority also fits Greek custom as a rhetorical device and would be familiar to the Gospel's Hellenistic audience as would the earlier miracle of calming the storm.   Mighty deeds, signs, and supernatural insight were sometimes portrayed as confirming a philosopher’s closeness to divine wisdom (theios anēr, “divine man”).  Pythagoras was said to have been able to calm storms and control natural forces as in Jesus' earlier miracle.  Apollonius of Tyana, a first century CE philosopher and wonder-worker was claimed to heal the sick, exorcise demons, and to have raised a girl from the dead (Jesus' next miracle).

I notice elements of the story referring to that which is "pagan", or "unclean", outside the Jewish system of holiness and purity laws and rules that were intended to provide access to God.  The possessed man lived among tombs which were considered ritually unclean in Second Temple Judaism.  They were considered unclean because death represents the strongest contradiction to the holiness of the Temple which embodies life and God's presence.  Numbers 19:11 states that, "Whoever touches a dead person...shall be unclean seven days".  This meant that a person could not enter the Temple, the site of the presence of God for seven days. This was extended to contact with graves as the impurity of death was seen as so powerful that it transmits through enclosed spaces (Num 19:14) .  Tombs were seen as permanent sources of impurity and were whitewashed before pilgrimage festivals to guard against accidental defilement.

The possessing spirits are also labeled as "unclean" in the story and would have been seen as representing the foreignness and idolatry of the Greek and Roman culture and local gods tied to the land and the people of this region.  This is further reinforced by the spirits naming themselves "Legion' referencing both the idea that they were many and powerful, and alluding to the foreign Roman occupiers. 

We also have the herd of swine which as a ritually unclean food became a powerful symbolic and cultural boundary marker in this period.  Pigs were religiously charged above the other unclean animals due to Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167 BCE) enforcing pig sacrifice and consumption as a loyalty test.

Given this background, I would suggest that for Gentile members of the community of Mark who we believe lived in a predominately Hellenistic community under Roman rule and the expectation of public religious participation in honoring Roman gods, this story would be seen symbolically as Jesus's, or the way of Jesus's, predominance and power over Rome and Hellenistic culture.  I can also see this as being interpreted as Jesus's way removing barriers to God and being a conduit to God that supplants the ritual holiness and purity laws.  Jesus is shown to have both done away with the impurity of the powerful hoard of spirits that made the possessed man impure and made him dwell in tombs that made him unclean and ineligible to be in God's presence, he also removed the herd of pigs, a huge herd of 2,000, that were a source of uncleanness and a symbol of foreign rule that demands loyalty to Caesar over God.  I would believe the inference here would be that the Way of Jesus for accessing God for these Gentile followers makes removes that which make them "unclean" or a barrier to God's presence, does not demand observance to the Jewish purity laws, and is not defiled or defeated by the pagan practices of the society, "the spirits of the land" in which they live.

Jesus Calms the Storm: Mark 4:35-41

35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

This story about Jesus calming the storm comes at the end of the fourth Chapter of Mark after a series of teachings and parables about the kingdom of God.  The first thing that comes to mind is that this story's purpose was to legitimize the previous teachings.  Jesus had no recognized right by the Jewish religious authorities to offer his own teaching, his own Mishnah, or interpretation of Scripture. Not having been certified by semicha, rabbinic ordination, Jesus did not have, s'mikhahto, "authority". The writer's claim to the legitimacy and authority of Jesus' teaching rests on him being a Chasidium, a Rabbi who can dispense the mercy of God.  The more dramatic Jesus' ability to call on God's power, the more credible his teaching.  As we've discussed before, establishing the credibility of the founder of their sect would have likely been important to the community of Mark living after the destruction of the Temple when a number of Jewish sects would have been vying to become the successor to Temple Judaism.  It was also likely that the community of Mark were part of the Jewish diaspora, most likely Rome, Antioch, or southern Syria.  As such, they would be under pressure from the rest of the Jewish expat community to conform to orthodoxy and would have to justify these unusual teachings.

This story also has allusions to the creation story where God brings order out of chaos with the story beginning with “Darkness ...over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God...hovering over the waters".  This part of the creation story was a response to the Babylonian creation story where the storm god Marduk slays the god Tiamat and uses her corpse to form heaven and earth.  In the Babylonian story chaos is divine and creation is achieved through violence while in the Hebrew story God calms and orders chaos through the power of God's word.  

Storms and seas are ongoing symbols of disorder and forces that resist life in the Hebrew Bible.  The Flood story of Genesis is described as a reversal of creation.  Psalm 89:9 states, "You rule the raging sea when its waves rise, you still them".  In Job, the Leviathan, a sea monster that embodies chaos itself, is created and defeated by God.

So, the story of Jesus calming the storm, right after a series of teachings and parables, serves to characterize Jesus' teachings as countering chaos and bringing order and life.  This fits nicely with other Gospel writings where the 'way' of Jesus is characterized as the positive side of a series of dualisms, the straight path as opposed to the crooked, light rather than darkness, heath instead of sickness, sight in contrast to blindness. 

The creative power of Jesus' teachings is also alluded to by the element of the story that the wind and waters are subject to his word.  This references the Creation story where God creates all things by speaking.  Thus Jesus' word, in the form of his teachings, is also being claimed to have a divine creative power.

In this story, Jesus, or Jesus' way, is like God in that it has power over and defeats the "gods" and "Leviathans" of chaos and the "floods" that threaten creation and life. It is part of God's Creation power, providing creation, order, life.

The other allusion that would have been top of mind to this community of mainly Jews would be to Moses and his parting of the Red Sea.  In a great demonstration of God's favour, Moses parts the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews to escape the pursuing Egyptian army.  Here Jesus is a new Moses, one who brings a new way from God and that rescues his people from both the chaos and death of the sea, and from the power and oppression of Empire which in this time would be Rome.

Like a Mustard Seed - Mark 4:30-34

30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

33 With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

The sayings of Jesus given in the Gospels include a number of parables and similes about, "the kingdom of God".  The entire fourth chapter of Mark centres on this theme.  While interpreting the meaning of the first parable, The Sower, Jesus tells his disciples that, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you".  The passage previous compares the kingdom to a man scattering seed.  And, we can assume that the saying in between about the lamp on a stand is also a metaphor for the kingdom.

In an earlier post I discussed what the phrase, "the kingdom of God", would have implied to a Jewish audience of that period.  For some of them, the phrase would be identified in eschatological terms relating to the expected "new age". Jewish eschatological doctrines found in writings of the time saw the world as in the "end times" on the cusp of God's "new age" where God would raise a messiah of the line of David to reestablish Israel as a nation and take the throne to lead Israel and the world into God's new age of justice and peace.  These doctrines about the end of the current world were particularly attractive during the Jewish revolts against the Roman occupiers.

The other understanding of the kingdom of God came from references in the Tanakh to God's present dominion and reign rather than a future physical realm.  This is the perspective that is given in many of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.  God's sovereignty is manifest when people do or express God's will and nature in the present moment.  Jesus is given as telling the Pharisees that the tax collectors and prostitutes that followed John the Baptist's instructions in social equality "are entering" the kingdom before them (Matthew 21:31).

It is this understanding of the manifestation of the nature of God among humanity that Jesus illuminates further through these parables and similes.  In the Parable of the Sower, the nature of God is spread like seed and we are told that it only grows and produces more if it is not choked by distractions in life, adversity, or persecution.  In the saying about the lamp on the stand, we are told that this nature is something we need to let shine and not hide away. And, in the simile of the Growing Seed, it is shown to be something that does not always bear immediate results and is not something that we can control or force to grow, but requires trust that some part will in its own time bear fruit.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus, in word and deed, characterizes this nature, or active and creative word of God, as primarily loving, compassionate and inclusive.  A perspective and actions which holds this as what is legitimate and true acknowleges God's authority and "kingship". It reveals and demonstrates allegience to God's kingdom on earth.

In the passage about the mustard seed being examined in this post, the nature of God expressed in humanity is compared to something extremely small which grows to something large. We are told that when grown it provides shelter and protection to those who like birds, might be considered vulnerable and perhaps unimportant.


The theme of the nature of God growing large from small beginnings is seen in some of the other sayings of Jesus.  In the Gospel of Matthew this same parable is followed by one about yeast.

33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.” ( Matthew 13:33)

Yeast, even a small quanity, can multiply and spread through a large quanity of dough.  So too can the spirit and nature of God spread through a large number of people through compassionate and selfless word and action.


Jesus' instruction on this nature and its cultivation in people can be further understood through some of his other sayings on the topic.

Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)

In this saying, the nature of God is shown as something requiring a fresh perspective uncluttered by the ways of thinking and values we may have learned from our culture.  There is also an aspect of humility and vulnerability.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23)

This saying reinforces the statement in the Parable of the Sower that, "the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful". Wealth, and the values that can make the aquisition a priority and a virtue, can be a distraction and competing interest that hinders the development of this nature.

99 The disciples said to him, "Your brothers and your mother are standing outside."
He said to them, "Those here who do what my Father wants are my brothers and my mother. They are the ones who will enter my Father's kingdom." (Gospel of Thomas, saying 99)

The Gospel of Thomas holds a saying with a story and message almost identical to one found in the previous chapter of Mark. The difference is the last line about his Father's kingdom.  Jesus lays it out that it is those who do what God wants who will enter the kingdom.
A key to doing what God wants is layed out in the sixth saying of the Gospel of Thomas.

6 His disciples asked him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?"
Jesus said, "Don't lie, and don't do what you hate, because all things are disclosed before heaven. After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed." (Gospel of Thomas, saying 6)

The Growing Seed - Mark 4:26-29

26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

The passage begins by identifying the saying as a simile for the, "kingdom of God".  Many modern readers interpret the kingdom of God as being about, "Heaven", a literal realm beyond our perceived universe where the consciousness of those God favours reside after death. But, this would be a foreign concept from Greek and Egyptian mythology for Jews of this period and is not one found in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures.  For them, the phrase would be identified in either of two ways, either in eschatological terms relating to the expected "new age", or in a more immediate and general way to God's reign on earth in terms of humanity's allegience to God's authority by acting out God's will.

Bruce M. Metzger in his book, The New Testament: It's Background, Growth, and Content, discusses this twin aspect of the kingdom of God in the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.  Jewish eschatological doctrines found in writings of the time saw the world as in the "end times" on the cusp of God's new age where God would raise a messiah of the line of David to reestablish Israel as a nation, rebuild the Temple, and take the throne to lead Israel and the world into God's new age of justice and peace.  These doctrines about the end of the current world were particularly attractive during the Jewish revolts against their Roman occupiers and after the Roman destruction of the Temple.

The other Jewish understanding of the kingdom of God came from references in the Tanakh to God's dominion and reign rather than a future physical realm.  This is the perspective that is given in many of the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.  God's sovereignty is manifest when people do or express God's will and nature in the present moment.  Jesus is given as telling the Pharisees that the tax collectors and sinners that followed John the Baptist's instructions in social equality "are entering" the kingdom before them (Matthew 21:31).  To the Teacher of the Law who answered him on which of the commandments is the most important, he states that the man "is not far" from the kingdom of God.(Mark12:34)

More information about concepts of the kingdom of God in the Abrahamic religions can be found at this link:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingship_and_kingdom_of_God

The parable we are looking at then is about the manifesting of God's will and nature in the world.  Jesus is given as starting this analogy by talking about a man scattering seed on the ground.  In the Parable of the Sower at the beginning of the chapter, Jesus interprets the seed in that story as, the "word" (λόγον logon: a word, speech, divine utterance, analogy). 

In the previous post looking at that parable, I talked about how I interpreted this partly to refer to Jesus' message to this point in this Gospel.  Jesus is given as starting his ministry preaching a continuation of the message of John the Baptist, telling the people to "repent", to change their thinking and direction in terms of social justice; fairness, sharing with others, and caring for the disadvantaged. As the Gospel progresses, the message includes radical inclusion based on a vision of a primarily loving and compassionate God where all are welcome and equal participants in the people of God and no one is excluded or sanctioned. 

In the last post I tried to better define the seed, "the word", as it seemed to be expressed in the Parable of the Sower and the metaphor of the lamp earlier in the chapter. It would seem to be more than a message in terms of a doctrine, or a set of beliefs, and may be viewed as more of a perspective as well as the quality and type of nature that this perspective produces. If the perspective (at least in part) is that God is primarily loving and compassionate in an extravagant and unrestricted manner, then it both calls for and produces imitation of the same quality in ourselves and for that quality and nature to spill out, like light from a lamp, in what we say and do to others.

To the Jewish audience, "the word", would also carry a sense of power and active force.  Words were seen to have a power of their own. Curses and blessings were viewed as having physical effects on the world around them.  This would be especially true for God's word.  Although the text does not explicitly identify this word as God's, I think that it is strongly implied.  As such, the word would be viewed as having creative and active force.  In the Genesis stories, God speaks and the universe comes into existance and order is created out of chaos.

So let's return to the simile made in the text:

This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground.

At first I thought the man was meant to represent God, but that's not what the text says.  The "kingdom of God" is like a man, a man who scatters seed on the ground.  So the comparison is being made to explain something about the, "kingdom of God", the manifestation or expression of God's nature and will by humanity in the world.

Given the study and reflections just done, here is my awkward interpretation of this first line.  God's sovereignty, which is manifest when people speak or act in accordance with the nature and will of God, spreads "pockets" of God's creative and dynamic nature with the potential for growth.

God's sovereignty, which is manifest when people speak or act in accordance with the nature and will of God, spreads "pockets" of God's creative and dynamic nature with the potential for growth.

And, just to keep on track, remember that the nature and will of God that the Gospel gives Jesus as presenting is primarily loving, generous, compassionate and inclusive.  When we speak or act in ways that reflect this nature, we are manifesting, or embodying the kingdom of God, bringing reality under God's authority and "kingship".  When we do this, we are not only revealing the kingdom, but are spreading, or scattering the, "word", the dynamic force of God's nature, that when interacting with people can become an influence on their hearts and minds that can later result in those individuals reflecting and acting out this nature themselves.

So, when God's nature, or character, reveals itself in people’s lives, either through the beauty and generosity of nature, or through the loving words or actions of others, it, "plants a seed", that may or may not grow into expression of that same nature and produce a "harvest", of similar word and action as that spirit takes root and grows.  This is what I see as an interpretation of the rest of the saying.  Once the nature of God, love, compassion, and inclusion, are planted through its scattering, it is up to the individual heart to accept it and let it take root and flourish.  Those who spread this seed can not expect or control a harvest from each grain, but must trust that some will land in soil that will let it grow.

This perspective leads to me thougts about charitable giving for the poor and disadvantaged.  The reseach shows that those with the least wealth give a higher percentage of their income to charity than those with greater wealth and that the wealthy tend to give to charities that do not directly benefit the poor while at the same time taking advantage of tax credits which donors with lower incomes do not.  

One of the most surprising, and perhaps confounding, facts of charity in America is that the people who can least afford to give are the ones who donate the greatest percentage of their income. In 2011, the wealthiest Americans—those with earnings in the top 20 percent—contributed on average 1.3 percent of their income to charity. By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid—those in the bottom 20 percent—donated 3.2 percent of their income. The relative generosity of lower-income Americans is accentuated by the fact that, unlike middle-class and wealthy donors, most of them cannot take advantage of the charitable tax deduction, because they do not itemize deductions on their income-tax returns.

Last year, not one of the top 50 individual charitable gifts went to a social-service organization or to a charity that principally serves the poor and the dispossessed.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765578735/Studies-try-to-find-why-poorer-people-are-more-charitable-than-the-wealthy.html?pg=all

You may ask what this has to do with the passage at hand.  But, think about why those with less money give a higher percentage to the disadvantaged than those with greater wealth.  I suspect that it may in many cases be a case of, "paying it forward".  

Individuals of lower income may have been more likely to have received charity or "unearned", unexpected assistance themselves at different points in their life and have been inspired to do the same.  I would also hazard that those of lower income are more likely to come from backgrounds of less advantage and have lived closer to the edge economically and are more likely to see their present means as being subject to "fortune" and circumstances rather than strictly merit.  

Those of greater economic means are conversly more likely to have come from a background of advantage and privilege where they have not experienced the same type of generous unexpected acts to meet their basic needs.  There can be an attitude of entitlement and having earned what they have where the opportunities created by family wealth and connections that allowed them access to good schools, tutors, and job opportunities are not appreciated.  They may view their good fortune in picking a career or going into a line of business that is doing favourably in the current economy as due to their own ability and superiority.

Paul Piff, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, led a series of reseach experiments on altruistic giving by people of different socioeconomic classes. These are some of his observations from an artcle on his research:

People who have a lower income are always wary of possible threats to their precarious position, Kraus says. They are always on the lookout for negative emotions.

But such awareness makes people more generous. "Because you notice other people in need a lower class person may say, 'I know what it is like to be in need. We need to help those other people out. It is wrong to turn a blind eye,'" Kraus says.

And without the constant threat to financial, social and familial survival, middle and higher income people just don't notice things.

Piff and his colleagues argue that the poor may feel more compassion because they are more connected to those around them, psychologically and socially. 

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_poor_give_more

We can put some of these observations in context with the simile about the kingdom of God in our passage. When people experience generosity and compassion which they consider unmerited or unearned, the same qualities may grow within them and shine out in similar acts. They also may feel greater connection and ownership in a community, dare I say, a, "kingdom".

A Refocusing: Background on the Community of Mark

Before I address the next passage in the Gospel of Mark, I want to refocus and remind myself of the main perspective I had set for myself for this study of the Gospel; that is, to explore the mindset of the community that produced it. To refresh this, I am going to take this opportunity to review what I have learned (what little there is) that might give some background on this community as well as study some fresh information.  There are no historical records beyond the Gospel itself for this particular community, but much can be inferred and surmised by what we know about early Christian communities of this kind and what we know of the events, political, cultural, and religious forces of this period and general location.

More than the story of Jesus, this is the story of this communities' traditions and vision of who Jesus had become to them. The teachings and stories chosen and the way they were interpreted reflect what was important to this group, how they saw the world, who they saw themselves as, and their hopes for the future.  Our vision and descriptions of others often reveal as much about ourselves as the ones we are trying to explain.  We project ourselves, our experience and what we empathise with on our interpretation of others.  In this study, I'm aware of that for myself as well in my visioning of this community.

 ...the evangelists often wrote on two levels, one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other dealing with the concerns of the author's own day
Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43

THEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES 

There were numerous disperse and diverse Christian communities at the time this Gospel was written, each unique, and as such, each with a unique vision of what the figure and teachings of Jesus had become for them.  

Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School, writes the following on early Christian diversity:

Paul's conversion as an apostle to the gentiles may date as early as three years after Jesus' death. No later than the year 35, but probably already 32 or 33.... He was in Damascus when he was called, according to his own witness. So we have, already, within two years or three or five years, of Jesus' death probably Greek speaking communities outside of Palestine, very early in Antioch, but we have also the founding of communities in Samaria.... We have apparently more isolated Christian communities founded very early in Galilee. Paul's mission carried Christianity all the way over Asia Minor, present Turkey into Macedonia, into Greece, within 20 years. And at the end of that period, Paul already knows that there's a Christian community in Rome which he has not founded.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html

L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, writes:

This is where we start to see a kind of proliferation of gospels ... all over the empire, and by the third and early fourth century [more] than you can actually count, and certainly more than you can easily read within a bible.

A number of years ago I read Elaine Pagels', Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas.  In this book she explores the richness and diversity of early Christian philosophy that has recently become available since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts and how these diverse views and writings from the many early Christian communities were later suppressed and actively eradicated by the later Roman Church in order to impose a standardized orthodoxy.  It would most likely profit my study to read her book again with eyes to how her studies relate to this community.

PLACE OF ORIGIN

So, what does the scholarly research suggest is the background of this particular Christian community, the community that assembled what we have come to know as the Gospel of Mark.  First off, the Gospel was originally anonymous and it wasn't until the second century that we have writers attributing the authorship to Mark, a figure offhandedly mentioned in Acts and First Peter as a companion of Peter in his travels and nephew of Barnabas. The mythology claims that Mark recorded these stories from Peter on his missions to spread Jesus' teachings.

Secondly, most scholars believe the community lived as part of the diaspora, one of the Jewish enclaves outside of the traditional borders of Palestine, most likely Rome, Antioch, or southern Syria.

Delbert Burkett in his, An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, writes:

Mark was written in Greek, for a gentile audience (that they were gentiles is shown by the author's need to explain Jewish traditions and translate Aramaic terms) of Greek-speaking Christians: Rome (Mark uses a number of Latin terms), Galilee, Antioch (third-largest city in the Roman Empire, located in northern Syria), and southern Syria have all been offered as alternative places of authorship.

DATE OF COMPOSITION 

The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the earliest of the four canonized Gospels, written sometime between 50 and 70 either just before or during the Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple.  The NIV Study Bible gives the following on the date of composition:

Some, who hold that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a major source, have suggested that Mark may have been composed in the 50s or early 60s. Others have felt that the content of the Gospel and statements made about Mark by the early church fathers indicate that the book was written shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem.  http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/scholar-notes/niv-study-bible/intro-to-mark/

Marilyn Mellowes, who produced and wrote the popular four-hour series, "From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians", for PBS, writes:

While there is disagreement about where Mark wrote, there is a consensus about when he wrote: he probably composed his work in or about the year 70 CE, after the failure of the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple at the hands of the Romans. That destruction shapes how Mark tells his story.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/mmmark.html

JEWISH ESCHATOLOGICAL THOUGHT

The placement of the Gospel after the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple is an important factor in the world view of the Gospel community.  They would have needed to interpret for themselves what had gone wrong and why Jerusalem had been destroyed.  These events would have also increased the popularity of Jewish  eschatological thought, teaching, and literature. 

Delbert Burkett in his, An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, writes:

From the outset, Christians depended heavily on Jewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures.[19] Those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts: the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, the kingdom of God. Uniting these ideas was the common thread of apocalyptic expectation: Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was at hand, that God would very soon come to punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the centre of his plans.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark

The Wikipedia entry for Jewish Eschatology includes the following:

In Judaism, end times are usually called the "end of days" (aḥarit ha-yamim, אחרית הימים), a phrase that appears several times in theTanakh. The idea of a messianic age has a prominent place in Jewish thought, and is incorporated as part of the end of days.
The main tenets of Jewish eschatology are the following, in no particular order, elaborated in the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiahand Ezekiel:[1]

• End of world (before everything as follows).

• God redeems Israel (i.e. the Jewish people) from the captivity that began during theBabylonian Exile, in a new Exodus

• God returns the Jewish people to the Land of Israel

• God restores the House of David and theTemple in Jerusalem

• God creates a regent from the House of David (i.e. the Jewish Messiah) to lead the Jewish people and the world and usher in anage of justice and peace

• All nations recognize that the God of Israel is the only true God

• God resurrects the dead

• God creates a new heaven and a new earth  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_eschatology

PAGAN AND HELLENISTIC INFLUENCES

The placement of the community of Mark outside of Palestine and the inclusion of Gentiles suggests that there would have been a strong influence from pagan religions and Hellenistic thought.  Helmut Koester, John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School, relates:

But the other aspect is the diversity of religious movements. And that in fact early Christianity, by moving into different realms of the different universes of thought and of religion in the Greco-Roman world, adopted a lot of concepts from other religions, lots of them pagan religions, which enriched the early Christian movement tremendously.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/diversity.html

Even if the community of Mark did live in Palestine, I would imagine that one thing this group would know in common would have been Greek or Hellenistic culhture. Alexander the Great had conquered all of the Mediterranean and the Middle East as far as present day Pakistan leaving Hellenistic culture in his wake. After his death, Palestine was part of the Selucid kingdom. The Herrads were all about a renaissance of Hellenistic culture and the Romans, taking their turn as world conquers, were also steeped in Greek culture. Everyone in the possible location of Mark's community would have been versed in Greek thought, philosophy, myth and aware of the various mystery religions.

A number of years ago I read Bruce M.  Metzger's, The New Testament: It's Background, Growth, and Content.  Bruce Metzger is the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary and a past president of the Society of Biblical Literature and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.  He devotes a large section of this book to the mystery religions and on the dying and resurrected god-man figures of Dionysis, Bacchus, and Osiris.

SOCIAL MAKE UP AND PRACTICE

What segments of society made up early Christian communities like that of the book of Mark and what did the practice of these communities look like?  L. Michael White,
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, states:

What kinds of people belong to these early congregations? Who signs up? Paul's congregations are typically based in individual homes. We call those "house churches" these days. They didn't have church buildings. There probably weren't that many synagogue buildings that one could recognize. Even Jewish communities typically began in homes as well, and in these home congregations or house churches we should imagine a mix of people from across the social spectrum of any Greek city. There's the owner of the house, a kind of wealthy patron. It might be someone like Stephanus or Phoebe. Also the members of their household, family members as well as household slaves and even their clients if they were in a artisan guild. Say tent makers or merchants of some sort. We might typically expect that the household would include not only the immediate family and others around them but even the clients and business partners.... Paul seems to have recognized the opportunity that these house church congregations afforded for getting into the networks of individual relationships that afford to him access to many different people within the Greek city.    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/congregations.html

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, contends:

So you begin to get the impression that you have quite a variety of different social levels represented in these early Christian communities. Not people at the absolutely top level; you have, with the exception possibly of Erastus, no one from the aristocratic orders - no one who would be a member of the city council. You have no agricultural slaves, are at the bottom of the hierarchy. But, in the rest of the social pyramid, everything in between, you seem to have representatives in these early Christian groups. The people who are named, whom we can identify, have the further characteristic that they seem to cross various boundaries, they're betwixt and between. In some ways, they are marked by high social status.    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/congregations.html

A SECT IN THE DIASPORA 

Christianity began as a relatively small sect within Judaism.  As a sect they had to justify themselves to other Jews who were part of the more mainstream institutional Judaism.  This was even more the case in a period of foreign occupation where religious leaders were trying to unify and purify the faith in response to oppression in hopes that God would save them.  The Christian's lax interpretation towards the practice of the purity laws would have been seen as a threat.

If as we suspect, the community of Mark was part of the diaspora and living as a minority sect as part of a larger Jewish enclave in a foreign land, they would have had further pressures towards conformity.  Minority cultural groups living outside of the traditional homeland of their heritage often seek to preserve their culture against the influence of the dominant culture around them.  There is a strong emphasis on maintaining the most conservative and traditional elements of that identity without change and sometimes become almost cultural time capsules resistant to incorporating the changes going on in their homeland.  As such, the divergent Jewish fringe cult of Christianity with their inclusion of Gentiles would have been seen as a threat.

L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, discusses part of the social dynamic of early Christianity as a Jewish sect:

The Jesus movement is a sect. How do sects behave? One of the things they have to do is, they have to distance themselves from their dominant cultural environment. A sect always arises within a community with whom it shares a basic set of beliefs and yet, it needs to find some mechanism for differentiating itself. So, sectarian groups are always in tension with their environment. That tension is manifested in a variety of ways - controversies over belief and practice; different ideas of purity and piety. But, another manifestation of that tension is the tendency to want to spread the message out, to hit the road and convince others that the truth is real.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/themovement.html

Shaye J.D. Cohen in his book From the Maccabees to the Mishnah locates early Christianity firmly within the world of Jewish sectarianism. However, he does not think it remained so beyond the first century.

Cohen defines a sect this way:

A sect is a small, organized group that separates itself from the larger religious body and asserts that it alone embodies the ideals of the larger group because it alone understands God’s will . . . In the final analysis, what makes a sect a sect is its separation and exclusivity. Guilds, clubs, synagogues, and schools resemble sects in that they are small voluntary associations, but as long as they neither separate themselves from the community nor claim exclusive possession of truth, they are not sects . . . Whether as a cause or an effect of its alienation, a sect rejects or, at least, harshly criticizes the institutions and practices venerated by the rest of the society. In ancient Judaism, the targets of sectarian polemics were primarily three: law, temple, and scripture (120, 122, 123).     http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2012/01/christianity-from-jewish-sect-to-separate-religion/

CONFLICT WITH EMPIRE 

The Gospel was written at a time when there is historic mention of some persecution of Christians.  Nero is said to blame them for the great fire in Rome.  Adhering to a religion other than the Roman state religion was tolerated as long as one also practiced the civic religion and took part in the socially expected religious ceremonies and practices.  This was something that even the mainstream sects of Judaism did.  However, the early Jesus communities were known for refusing to participate.  A few Jews doing this could be ignored by Gentiles as a quirk of their race.  But when communities with a large contingent of non-jews did this I would imagine that it would cause the greater community to be less sympathetic.  This negative attention levelled against a Jewish sect could only have increased conflict between Jewish Christians and their more mainstream Jewish neighbours.

Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University, states:

Christianity, in its earliest beginnings, is part of Judaism... it is a sect, among a number of varieties of Judaism in the Roman Empire. But it is also clear that at a certain point, they develop a consciousness which takes them outside of the social orb of Judaism. They're no longer part of the local Jewish community, they're a separate community, meeting in little household groups, all over the city. And, it's apparent, at least from the time of the Emperor Nero, that outsiders also view them as distinct. So that when Nero is looking for scapegoats upon whom to put blame for the fire in Rome in 64, he zeroes in on the Christians.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/wrestling.html

LITERARY INFLUENCES AND PURPOSE

The author may have been influenced by Greco-Roman biographies and rhetorical forms, popular novels and romances, and the Homeric epics; nevertheless, he mentions almost no public figures, makes no allusions to Greek or Roman literature, and takes all his references from the Jewish scriptures, mostly in their Greek versions.[11] His book is not history in the modern sense, or even in the sense of classical Greek and Roman historians, but "history in an eschatological or apocalypticsense," depicting Jesus caught up in events at the end of time.[12]

Christianity began within Judaism, with a Christian "church" (from a Greek word meaning "assembly") that arose either within Jesus' own lifetime or shortly after his death, when some of his followers claimed to have witnessed him risen from the dead.[18] From the outset, Christians depended heavily onJewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures.[19] Those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts: the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, thekingdom of God. Uniting these ideas was the common thread of apocalyptic expectation: Both Jews and Christians believed that the end of history was at hand, that God would very soon come to punish their enemies and establish his own rule, and that they were at the centre of his plans. Christians read the Jewish scripture as a figure or type of Jesus Christ, so that the goal of Christian literature became an experience of the living Christ.[20]The new movement spread around the eastern Mediterranean and to Rome and further west, and assumed a distinct identity, although the groups within it remained extremely diverse.[18]Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark

They were written for an audience already Christian – their purpose was to strengthen the faith of those who already believed, not to convert unbelievers.[21] Christian "churches" were small communities of believers, often based on households (an autocratic patriarch plus extended family, slaves, freedmen, and other clients), and the evangelists often wrote on two levels, one the "historical" presentation of the story of Jesus, the other dealing with the concerns of the author's own day.[22] 

Lössl, Josef (2010). The Early Church: History and Memory. Continuum. ISBN 978-0-567-16561-9. p. 43

EPILOGUE

Like Socrates, Jesus left us no written record of his own.  Socrates' teachings come to us only through the record and interpretation of his student Plato.  Likewise, Jesus' teaching and actions are only available to us through the writings put together by the early Jesus communities some generations after his death. 

The Gospel of Mark is the story of one of those communities' traditions and vision of who Jesus had become to them. The teachings and stories chosen and the way they were interpreted reflect who they were, their conflicts and concerns, who they saw themselves as, and their hopes for the future.

The fact that the Gospel is a creation of its community, colored and inspired by their unique situation and not a literal history of the words and events of Jesus does not make it less meaningful or "true".  The way the stories this group told transformed them and defined them from the dominant culture, and the vision it gave them for viewing their world and living in a different way has great meaning.  The truths they relate are both transcendent and eternal, extending beyond their unique situation.  There is meaning here that speaks to us today and that tackles themes and perceptions that we continue to wrestle with.  However, to fully appreciate that meaning and how it can speak more universally we need to better understand what these teachings and stories meant to them.