Gospel of Mark centers on the controversies of the Little Apocalypse and the narrative of Jerusalem Barabbas. At heart, it is the soulful Christian struggle between the good symbolized at the heart of Old Testament philosophy and made personally physical in the Christ. As in all Christian texts, the conception of evil is posited against the Good News of Jesus. Steeped in Palestinian and Roman tradition in a way not seen in the Epistles of Paul, Mark's gospel presents an audience-specific version of evil, where lack of devout, blind, and holy initial faith in the Christ, witnessed by the Zealots choice of Barabbas over Jesus, was symbolic for the evil of the anti-Christ. (Mark 13:1-2) Lacking in support for the Christ, the people of Jerusalem represented a secular evil to Mark.

Paul struggles with the same empirically Christian evil symbolized by those standing against Christ, but expands it to those...
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