Barnabas and Mark

John Mark — “the cousin of Barnabas” (Colossians 4:10) — is the figure who binds Barnabas’s family, his loyalty, and his parting from Paul into one story. This file traces the relationship: Mark as Barnabas’s kinsman of the Jerusalem-Cypriot family, his desertion in Pamphylia, Barnabas’s refusal to give up on him, the witness of Galatians 2 (including the moment Paul says even Barnabas was “carried away”), and the later reconciliation when Paul calls Mark “useful.”

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Cousin of Barnabas

The single explicit statement of the kinship is Paul’s own. Writing from prison, Paul sends greetings from his fellow-workers, including “Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions — if he comes to you, receive him)” (Colossians 4:10, RSV). The Greek word is anepsios, which in the usage of the period means “cousin” (first cousin), not the looser “nephew” of some older translations (Colossians 4:10; Bruce, Acts, 1988, on the term). John Mark thus belonged to Barnabas’s extended family. His mother Mary owned a house in Jerusalem substantial enough to shelter the praying church — it is to “the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark” that Peter goes after his deliverance from prison, where the maid Rhoda answers the gate (Acts 12:12–14, RSV). The family had means and standing in Jerusalem, and roots, through Barnabas, in Cyprus. This is the network into which Barnabas drew Mark when, returning from the famine-relief errand, he and Paul brought “John whose other name was Mark” back to Antioch with them (Acts 12:25, RSV).

The Desertion in Pamphylia

Mark joined the first missionary journey as the apostles’ assistant: at Salamis, “they had John to assist them” (Acts 13:5, RSV; Greek hypēretēs, attendant). But at the crossing from Cyprus to the mainland he left: “Now Paul and his company set sail from Paphos, and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem” (Acts 13:13, RSV). Luke gives no reason — homesickness, fear of the hard inland road, disagreement with the turn toward the Gentiles, and simple failure of nerve have all been proposed, but the text is silent. What it states plainly is the fact of the withdrawal, and that fact would harden into the charge Paul later levels: Mark “had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia, and had not gone with them to the work” (Acts 15:38, RSV). For Paul, the desertion disqualified Mark from the next mission; for Barnabas, it was a failure to be redeemed, not a verdict to be enforced.

The Loyalty of Barnabas

When Paul proposed revisiting the churches and refused to take Mark, Barnabas would not go without him: “Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark … and there arose a sharp contention, so that they separated from each other; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus” (Acts 15:37–39, RSV). The episode is the supreme instance of the trait the apostles had named in him. The “son of encouragement” (Acts 4:36) would not write off his kinsman over one failure. As he had vouched for the feared Saul before a wary Jerusalem (Acts 9:27), and as he had fetched the obscure Saul from Tarsus into the work (Acts 11:25–26), so now he stood by the failed John Mark — even at the price of his great partnership. There is, the tradition notes, a costliness in this: Barnabas chose the restoration of one young man over the continuation of the most famous missionary collaboration of the age. That the choice was bound up with kinship (Colossians 4:10) does not diminish it; it makes it the more human, the loyalty of the encourager extended to his own.

Galatians 2: The Right Hand and the Withdrawal

Paul’s letters add their own testimony to the Barnabas-and-Mark complex, and they are not uniformly flattering. In Galatians 2, Paul recounts going up to Jerusalem “with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me” (Galatians 2:1, RSV) — the two still partners — and reports that the pillars, “James and Cephas and John … gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles” (Galatians 2:9, RSV). Here Barnabas stands beside Paul as a recognized apostle to the Gentiles, sealed by the handshake of the Jerusalem leaders. But Paul then narrates the incident at Antioch, where Peter, having eaten with Gentiles, drew back from their tables when men came from James, “and the rest of the Jews acted insincerely with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity” (Galatians 2:13, RSV). The phrase “even Barnabas” (kai Barnabas) is pointed: Paul expected better of his partner, and is grieved that the pressure of the circumcision party drew even Barnabas into the withdrawal. This is a separate strain from the Acts 15 quarrel — an earlier moment of weakness, not over Mark but over table-fellowship — and the Church does not conceal it. It shows the historical Barnabas as a real man, capable of being swayed, the object of Paul’s reproach as well as his praise (Galatians 2:1, 9, 13; Bruce, Galatians; see The Historical Questions).

That Paul, in the same letters, can name Barnabas with honor and with reproach is itself a sign of the closeness of their bond. He cites their shared practice as established fact in defending his own apostolic rights: “Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?” (1 Corinthians 9:6, RSV) — the two of them remembered together as apostles who labored with their own hands rather than burden the churches. Barnabas remains, for Paul, a fixed point of reference even after their parting.

The Reconciliation

The story does not end in rupture, and the vindication of Barnabas’s loyalty is written into Paul’s own later letters. The Mark whom Paul had refused becomes the Mark whom Paul commends and needs. In Colossians, Paul instructs the church to receive Mark if he comes (Colossians 4:10); in Philemon, he names Mark among his “fellow workers” (Philemon 24); and at the very end, in the last of the letters ascribed to him, Paul writes to Timothy, “Get Mark and bring him with you; for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11, RSV). The young man who deserted in Pamphylia, on whom Barnabas would not give up, became a trusted minister whom even Paul wanted at his side in his final imprisonment. The Orthodox tradition further identifies this John Mark with the evangelist Mark and with the author of the Acts of Barnabas, and venerates him in his own right (see St. Mark the Evangelist and The Acts of Barnabas). The encourager’s wager on his cousin was, in the end, fully repaid: the Church gained an evangelist whom Barnabas had refused to abandon.

See Also

References

  • Colossians 4:10; Philemon 24; 2 Timothy 4:11; 1 Corinthians 9:6; Galatians 2:1, 9, 13. (RSV consulted; “the cousin of Barnabas”; “even Barnabas was carried away”; “very useful to me.”)
  • The Acts of the Apostles 12:12–14, 25; 13:5, 13; 15:37–39. (RSV consulted.)
  • Bruce, F. F. The Book of the Acts. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988; and The Epistle to the Galatians (NIGTC). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. (On anepsios, the Antioch incident, and Galatians 2.)
  • Keener, Craig S. Acts: An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–2015. (On John Mark and the dispute.)