Mark the cousin of Barnabas

Saint Mark the Apostle, cousin (according to the Russian source nephew) of Barnabas, is one of the Seventy Apostles, a companion of the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, mentioned in the New Testament. He is usually identified with John Mark and thus with Mark the Evangelist. In the Orthodox Church the commemoration of Mark-⁠John is kept on 30 October (12 November New Style) and on 4 January (17 January New Style), the day of the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles; in the Roman Catholic Church on 27 September.

In the New Testament

Mark accompanied Barnabas and Paul on their missionary journeys. He started with them on the first journey but left them partway. Later, when they were planning their second journey, Barnabas and Paul could not agree whether Mark should accompany them again, so Barnabas and Mark separated from Paul. Then Paul appears to have been reconciled with Mark, for he mentions him in a good light in Colossians 4:10: "Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, sends you greetings, and Mark the cousin of Barnabas (concerning whom you have received instructions; if he comes to you, welcome him)". A Mark is also mentioned in the Epistle to Philemon (1:23-24), which shows that Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, was with Paul in his first imprisonment at Rome, when he wrote the four Prison Epistles.

Who he is

According to Hippolytus of Rome, in the work "On the Seventy Apostles", Mark, the cousin of Barnabas (Col 4:10), is distinct from John Mark (Acts 12:12 and 25) and from Mark the Evangelist (perhaps the Mark of 2 Timothy 4:11). All would have been among the Seventy Apostles of Christ (listed at numbers 56, 65 and 14), sent by Jesus to fill Judea with the Gospel, not long before the crucifixion. According to Hippolytus, Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, was a leader of the apostolic Church and bishop of Apollonia (three places are proposed for this city: one in Albania, one in Thrace and one in Cyrenaica). The Russian source points out that these appear in the synaxaria in Dorotheus, Ado and Demetrius of Rostov; the great majority of scholars today hold that the New Testament mentions of Mark, companion of Paul and Barnabas, and of Mark called John refer to the same person, and the distinction of three Marks is poorly founded and comes only from late church tradition; in the book of Acts it is said several times that Mark, the nephew of Barnabas, was the companion of his uncle and of Paul. The biblical scholars Samuel Rolles Driver and Charles Augustus Briggs identified Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, with John Mark of Jerusalem, as do John R. Donahue and Daniel J. Harrington.