The Gospels of the New Testament are not biographies, and, in this class, we will be reading them through a historical critical lens. This means that the events they narrate are not taken at face value as historical. The Gospel of Mark illustrates how the gospel writer skillfully crafts a narrative in order to deliver a message. It is a message that emphasizes a suffering Messiah, and the necessity of suffering before glory. The gospel's apocalyptic passages predicts troubles for the Jewish temple and incorporates this prediction with its understanding of the future coming of the Son of Man.