I've always been puzzled by the strange beginning of Mark. It is syntactically independent, since it is neither a sentence nor a main clause (it lacks both a verb and a predicate) and probably functions as a title. But why the Ἀρχὴ? Even as a title it is ambiguous. The genitive phrase “of Jesus Christ" is ambiguous. a double entendre which the reader can construe as both subjective genitive (Jesus Christ as the proclaimer of good news) and as an objective genitive (Jesus Christ as the one proclaimed in the good news).
Matthew and Luke don't appropriate the name 'gospel' to describe themselves which is odd if they were using Mark. Matthew describes itself as "the book of the genesis or origin of Jesus Christ son of David etc"). The nouns 'arche' and 'genesews' are roughly equivalent meaning 'origin, beginning.' Again if Luke 3:1 was the beginning of the gospel the emphasis on 'origin, beginning' in all three gospels can hardly be accidental. It was purposed by the same hand. But why?
It has been seriously suggested that some very early accident led to the loss of both the first few verses of Mark and the last few verses.
Very interesting suggestion as always Andrew. My bet would be on an original Diatessaron-like gospel with, what is now the prologue to John as the incipit. But such a thing can't be proved ... other than the geographical distribution of Diatessaron-like texts in the near East up until the fifth century. I like having the prologue to John at the beginning of the narrative. It gives a Euripidean-like quality to the experience.
For those unfamiliar with how Euripides structured his plays here are the notes for a modern English translation of the Hecuba for the first scene:
This scene is laid, as are all the rest of the scenes, on the shores of the Thracian Bosphorus. In the background are the tents of the Trojan women who have been taken captive by the Greeks. The ghost of Polydorus, the youngest son of Hecuba, who has been basely murdered by Polymestor, the guest-friend of his family, enters to explain (w. 1 — 30) the situation of events up to the period of the opening of the play, and (w. 80 — 158) to foretell what to to follow, both with regard to the death of Polyxena, who will be shortly sacrificed to the shade of Achilles, to induce him to grant the Greeks a favourable wind for their return home, and with regard to the destined discovery of his own dead body by Hecuba's hand-maid, in order that he may obtain the funeral rites for which he has so earnestly petitioned the gods.
This scene, being anterior to the entrance of the Chorus would be called by the Greeks (see Arist. Poet. c. xii.) the πρόλογος, or prologue. This use of the term must be distinguished from the later use of it, which would limit it to the monologue at the beginning of the play. Each of the following scenes, with the exception of the last, was (called ἐπεισόδιον " an insertion " or '' interpolation," as being added to the lyric passages at a later period, and included all that came between two choral odes ; while the last scene was appropriately called the ἔξοδος, or " going out.'
FWIW the liturgical parallels between the crucifixion and the book of ἔξοδος would find an uncanny dramatic understanding with respect to the final act in the gospel drama being at once its ἔξοδος. I wonder what the earliest identification of John 1 as its πρόλογος is?
More from Wikipedia article on the dramatic πρόλογος:
A prologue or prolog (Greek πρόλογος prologos, from the word pro (before) and lógos, word) is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance, more like the meaning of preface. The importance, therefore, of the prologue in Greek drama was very great; it sometimes almost took the place of a romance, to which, or to an episode in which, the play itself succeeded.
It is believed that the prologue in this form was practically the invention of Euripides, and with him, as has been said, it takes the place of an explanatory first act. This may help to modify the objection which criticism has often brought against the Greek prologue, as an impertinence, a useless growth prefixed to the play, and standing as a barrier between us and our enjoyment of it. The point precisely is that, to an Athenian audience, it was useful and pertinent, as supplying just what they needed to make the succeeding scenes intelligible. But it is difficult to accept the view that Euripides invented the plan of producing a god out of a machine to justify the action of deity upon man, because it is plain that he himself disliked this interference of the supernatural and did not believe in it. He seems, in such a typical prologue as that to the Hippolytus, to be accepting a conventional formula, and employing it, almost perversely, as a medium for his ironic rationalismo.