Not sure what you mean by "Mark is a myth."
?
Mark is written like a myth. Uses language and literary styles only found in fiction. Doesn't give sources or explain improbable events, like fiction, does use Pauls letters and changes them to craft Earthly narratives. Uses the OT often sometmies verbatim, re-writes Kings, the Romulus narrative, the main character explains he teaches in parables (telling the reader the story is a parable) and Jesus scores 18 out of 22 on the Rank Ragalin mythotype scale. Higher than King Arthur.
Also dying/rising savior demigods who get followers into an afterlife is an older myth sweeping around that region and Jesus was he last. Baptism, eucharist, word made flesh, salvation, all races welcome, all Greek Hellenism. Like savior demigods these changes were being added to all religions in that region during that time.
This is myth making.
The Hellenistic World: The World of Alexander the Great
Hellenistic thought is evident in the narratives which make up the books of the Bible as the Hebrew Scriptures were revised and canonized during the Second Temple Period (c.515 BCE-70 CE), the latter part of which was during the
Hellenic Period of the region.
The gospels and epistles of the Christian New Testament were written in Greek and draw on
Greek philosophy and religion as, for example, in the first chapter of the Gospel of John in which the word becomes flesh, a Platonic concept.
A few Hellenistc concepts religiojhs were picking up to become mystery religions (Christianity is one of the mystery religions)
- The basic forms of worship of both the Jewish and Christian
communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time. Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish
Talmud (an
authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the
New Testament, and the later
patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.
-Other traditions even more radically reinterpreted the ancient figures. The cosmic or seasonal drama was interiorized to refer to the divine
soul within man that must be liberated.
-Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to
nationalistic or
messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)
-and
apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)
- Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—
e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus,
Simon Magus,
Apollonius of Tyana,
Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius—whose preaching corresponded to the activities of various Greek and Roman philosophic missionaries
-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (
e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of
transcendent, supreme
-his led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual
salvation, from focus on a particular
ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or
saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.
