Gospel of Mark and Loss of Faith

"Gospel of Mark and Loss of Faith" is a study of how Livy's "Ab Urbe Condita" and Homer's "The Odyssey" influenced the Gospel of Mark. Livy's history of Rome showed Mark the way to structure his Gospel as a triple pentad of five chapters, and Homer's epic gave the structure of the monomyth to present Jesus as a mythical hero. From Livy, Mark learnt how to use 'genres disjunction', that is, with the Gospel text in the foreground, he could also have other complete genres, of classical history, the five-act tragedy and the monomyth, in the texts in the background. Furthermore, Livy's use of irony, verbal as well as situational, transformed the foreground text of the Gospel as a testament to the rejection of Christianity, both the Gentile and the Judaic versions, by Mark. In this Jesus himself is presented as losing his Faith in God. In an ironic sense, it is a metaphor for Mark's own loss of Faith.