Simply put, Mark is the basic, simple Gospel. In terms of timeline, Mark may not have been the earliest person to write about Jesus, but he was the first person to compile and publish those writings into a work that was ultimately accepted by the church, including the living Disciples and others who knew Christ, as the Gospel (Matthew and Luke were probably being written around the same time – they all probably came out within 5-10 years of each other).
To be certain, there are other claims to other works being “first” – mostly by groups like the Gnostics and other writers of pseudopigraphical (aka “False Writings”) works. However, not only have none of those claims have ever been substantiated, there are large bodies of evidence that tell us that the vast majority of these claims of being “first” are simply not true, and further bodies of evidence to indicate that the stories and sayings in these works are equally fictitious.
Mark, however, is different. Again, Mark is a basic Gospel – good news, with very little in terms of the later doctrines or dogmas that came about from later works by Paul, James, Peter, John, and others. Most of what you see is Jesus in action – living His daily life. This is the historical, physical, everyday Christ.
There are always people who make claims that books of the Bible were much later than they actually were, but most of these claims are simply attempts by secularists to minimize the effect of significance of God’s active involvement in the formation of scripture. The timing and authorship of Mark are widely regarded by most conservative scholars to have been within 15-35 years of Jesus’ crucifixion, and was probably a complete, well-read Gospel by 65 AD or so (some dates go earlier, some later). This means that by the time Peter and Paul died in the mid-to-late 60’s AD, the Gospel of Mark would have already been a well-known work to them and the other living disciples of Jesus – who all seem to have accepted Mark’s Gospel as, well… Gospel.
The writer – that it, the person to have set everything down on paper - is accepted to have been a guy named “Mark”. The traditional belief is that “Mark” is “John Mark”, mentioned in Acts 12, 13 (as “John”), and 15 (as “Mark”). He’s also mentioned in Colossians, Philemon, 2 Timothy, and 1 Peter. This is the same John Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas on Paul’s first missionary journey, and then went with Barnabas to Cyprus after the “big split” between Barnabas and Paul, as Barnabas was Mark’s cousin (Col 4:10). After the missionary journeys, Mark became Peter’s assistant (I Peter 5:13).
Now, while the Gospel itself doesn’t specifically say, “I, Mark, wrote this Gospel”, it was understood by the church in the 2nd Century, just a few years after the Gospel was published, to have been based on Peter’s recollections which Mark then compiled. This would explain why Mark lacks some events found in other Gospels, such as Christ’s birth: Peter wasn’t around for those events, but he was certainly around for his own calling and the events surrounding John the Baptist’s ministry and would have been aware of Jesus’ baptism.
Mark is one of the three synoptic Gospels, meaning that it shares a lot in common with the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (John is its own category). There are many theories as to why: one theory is that Mark was a source for some of the material found in those Gospels, and was used as a foundation for the Gospels that would eventually be written for specific groups of people – Matthew for the Jews and Luke for the Gentiles. There are other theories, including one that all three were developed independently. However they ended up, whatever way the three synoptics were assembled, to quote my friend Michael Spencer, Mark’s ultimate purpose was to introduce Jesus to a world that did not know Him and already misunderstood Him.
This is why we will study Mark: it is the beginning of the Gospel.