By the Numbers: "Immediately" in the Gospel of Mark

Mark is a unique gospel for a number of reasons.

One, it is most likely the earliest of the four canonical gospels to have been written. Two, it was a gospel written by John Mark, but most likely the material in the gospel came from Peter. And, three, the subject for this article, it uses the Greek word εὐθὺς, which regularly means immediately or straightaway more than any other gospel.

In fact, Mark uses εὐθὺς (immediately) 41 times. The rest of the New Testament only uses εὐθὺς a total of 10 times (Matthew (5); Luke (1); John (3); Acts (1)). This means that for all the uses of εὐθὺς (immediately) in the New Testament (51), 80% of them occur in Mark’s gospel.

This would take more research—and I should probably dig into it—but my guess is that the majority use of εὐθὺς in Mark is unique even over any other word in the New Testament by comparison.

What does that mean for Mark’s gospel?

I’m not totally sure, but it does give us a peek into the type of story Mark (and ultimately, Peter) was telling. Based even solely on the frequent use of immediately, it’s clear that Mark is not like the contemplative John, nor is he like the detailed Luke, nor is he like the organized Matthew. Mark is different.

The story he’s telling about Jesus is one that moves quickly.

By the Numbers: "And" in the Gospels

While reading the Gospel of Mark (in the ESV) the other day I was struck by how many verses begin with the word “And”. What made this stand out to me all the more was a section in Mark 8 where “And” began nine sentences in a row in just five verses (8:6-10). That got me thinking about the way in which Mark wrote his gospel.

Nearly everyone who picks up and reads the Gospel of Mark can sense the pace of his story. This is even more clear when it’s compared with the other gospels writers—Matthew, Luke, and John. Matthew’s gospel seems to me to be episodic. There are large chunks of episodes (five for sure) that Matthew uses to tell his story. Luke’s gospel seems to me to be investigative. Luke writes his gospel to explain what has been going on and he goes into great detail. John’s gospel seems to me to be reflective. The story John lays out begs the reader to sit back and meditate again and again as they read. With Mark’s gospel, there’s just something about it that pushes the reader along through the story.

I think one of the reasons for this is Mark’s frequent use of the Greek word kai, which is (I think) almost always translated as and.

Now, to be fair to the rest of the gospel authors, and (kai) is used a lot. It’s not only one of the favorite words for the gospel writers; it’s one of the favorite words for the rest of the New Testament authors. And yet, Mark stands out when we go by the numbers.

What I’ve broken down below are three sections of numbers related to how the gospel writers use the word and.

“And” in the Gospels (ESV)
Mark: 1,160
Matthew: 1,395
Luke: 1,600
John: 718

Now, here you might be wondering why I focused on Mark’s gospel when Luke is the clear winner. Well, appearances can be deceiving. When we compare the number of times a gospel writer uses “and” with the total number of words, a different story emerges.

Total Words in the Gospels (NA27)
Mark: 11,304
Matthew: 18,346
Luke: 19,482
John: 15,635

Here we can see how Luke runs away with the total word count and Mark comes in last. This can also be easily seen just by looking at the total number of chapters for each gospel (Mt. 28; Mk. 16; Lk. 24; Jn. 21). Finally, let’s compare the usage of and with total number of words to see truly how often each gospel writer uses that word.

Percent Usage of “And”
Mark: 10.26%
Matthew: 7.60%
Luke: 8.21%
John: 4.59%

What we see here is quite interesting. Luke is the longest gospel and Luke uses the word “and” more than any other gospel; however, when compared to the total number of words Luke comes in third. Mark, as we can see, wins by almost 3%. He has the shortest gospel, comes in third with the number of times “and” is used, but he uses “and” more often than all the other gospel writers.

By the Numbers: "Love" in 1 John 4:7-21

1 Corinthians 13 is often referred to as the “love chapter” in the New Testament, and rightfully so. What Paul says about love in that part of his letter is worldview altering. We all ought to come to 1 Corinthians 13 ready and willing to be examined by God through Scripture because what Paul says there is no less than definitional about love.

That being said—and you should have known an exception was going to be made from the title of this article—if we’re going by the numbers there’s one section in the New Testament that really ought to be considered a primary authority on love. And that section is 1 John 4:7-21.

In those 15 verses love (or loved, loves, and loving) is used a total of 27 times. That’s roughly 1.8 times per verse. To put it into a bit of perspective, love, loved, loves, and loving is used a total of 46 times throughout all of 1 John. That means 58.7% of the usages of love, loved, loves, and loving throughout the entire letter is found in 1 John 4:7-21.

To add more perspective to the matter, love (and its different forms) is used 56 times throughout the entire Gospel of John. This means that in 1 John 4:7-21, love makes up 26.4% of its usage in 1 John and the Gospel of John combined.

In comparing 1 John 4:7-21 directly to 1 Corinthians 13 we something pretty interesting. In 1 Corinthians 13, love (and in context, “it”) is used a total of 17 times in just 13 verses. That’s roughly 1.3 times per verse. Compared to that of 1 John 4:7-21’s 1.8 times per verse, we see a difference of only 0.5 usages per verse.

For even more perspective—just because it’s fun—love shows up a total of 316 times in the New Testament and 751 times in the entire Bible. This means that in 1 John 4:7-21 we find 8.5% of its usage in the New Testament and 3.5% in the entire Bible.

By the numbers, 1 John 4:7-21 is definitely the authority on love for John’s writings. Whether it really is the authority over that of 1 Corinthians 13 is up for debate. But, if we’re going by the numbers, 1 John 4:7-21 wins in a close one.