The first edition of this book was divided into two unequal parts. Since its writing very much more attention has been paid by scholars to the second area, the Passion, than to the first, the Temptation, and so the same unequal division has been continued in this additional preface. At the time of the first edition Mark's Gospel was sometimes explained as a continual conflict or encounter between Christ and the Devil. I therefore began then by examining the place of the Devil in the Gospel, and since I concluded that views which understood the Gospel in terms of conflict accorded the Devil too prominent a position, it was necessary to go on and see if Mark presented another understanding of the death of Christ; this led to the writing of the second part of the original work.

Just prior to the first edition a new method of examining the Gospel had been evolved. Redaction criticism, or redaction composition, as it is more properly termed, was becoming the principal tool in Gospel study and being widely used to discover the particular contribution of each of the Evangelists. Today the central concern of those working on the Gospels has again changed, and the reading of each Gospel as a whole is stressed rather than the examination of the details of editing.