The Gospel of Mark is significant in many ways. Not only was it the first Gospel to be written and an important literary source for Matthew and Luke, but it is also best characterized as a witness document, a proclamation of salvation through Jesus Christ, which received its creative impulse from the early apostolic preaching. This widely praised commentary by William Lane shows Mark to be a theologian whose primary aim was to strengthen the people of God in a time of fiery persecution by Nero. Using redaction criticism as a hermeneutical approach for understanding the text and the intention of the evangelist, Lane considers the gospel of Mark as a total literary work and describes Mark's creative role in shaping the Gospel tradition and in exercising a conscious theological purpose. By indicating how the text was heard by Mark's contemporaries while also studying Mark within the frame of reference of modern Gospel research, Lane has constructed a thoroughgoing work that is at once useful to scholars and intelligible to nonspecialists. -- From publisher's description.