Mark
King James Version · 16 chapters · 678 verses · New Testament
The shortest gospel, and the fastest
No genealogy, no birth story. It begins with John the Baptist and moves straight into the ministry, and the word straightway keeps appearing because the whole book is in a hurry. It shows more than it explains: the crowds pressing in, a paralysed man let down through a roof, a storm stilled, a legion of demons, a girl told to get up. Jesus keeps telling people not to say who He is. The turning point is halfway through, at Caesarea Philippi, and from there the book walks steadily to Jerusalem. A Roman soldier at the cross is the first human being in the story to say it plainly.