The African Memory of Mark

Published by IVP Academic in 2011, the second book in Oden's series on early African Christianity, after How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind (2007). The publisher's description notes that the author of the Gospel of Mark is often regarded as an obscure figure, and that African tradition gives a much fuller picture: that Mark was from North Africa, founded the church in Alexandria, witnessed the Last Supper and Pentecost, and was related to Barnabas and Peter. Oden begins with the New Testament evidence and adds African sources, among them synaxaries, archaeological sites and non-Western historical documents, to give a portrait of Mark rooted in African memory and, in the publisher's words, seldom viewed appreciatively in the West.