For and About the Common People

Mark's story of Jesus stands virtually alone among the literary achievements of antiquity for one reason: it is a narrative for and about the common people. The Gospel reflects the daily realities of disease, poverty and disenfranchisement that characterized the social existence of first-century Palestine's voiceless masses.

Meyers, Binding the Strong Man, 39

From our modern viewpoint, we tend to take for granted the nameless crowds that surrounded Jesus during his ministry. They seem an aimless pack following anyone who speaks with an authority that appears as not self-serving, desperately seeking relief from their seemingly inescapable conditions of poverty and illness. And that is what we expect of the peasant multitudes.

But we are unaware of how unusual it is for their plight to be given any notice in the records of history. The surviving literature from the period tends to be either histories or biographies of powerful men and nations. It was primarily the ruling class and their trained scribes that had both the skills and the materials to produce written documents. The plight of the rest of society had little means to record anything.