Stanley Stowers, Christian Beginnings: A Study in Ancient Mediterranean Religion (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), 276.
The fate of John and Mark was a form of institutional domestication that had already begun when Matthew and Luke wrote to correct Mark. Jesus was not an incomprehensible mystery even if there is a proper sense of mystery and God’s secrets are on the horizon. Another act of domestication occurred with the four gospels coming into a larger canon of authoritative writings. Institutions, especially dominant orthodox ones, know that contestation over the representation and construction of divine secrets is dangerous. So, they seek to control reading and bring an end to certain types of interpretation. Such institutions do not appreciate the kinds of tease and play about the limits of the knowable indulged in by Mark and John. Christians were thus trained to read with a harmonizing and rationalizing master story to control the wiles of the earlier myth makers. This meant that readers were to read with the sense that the secrets of God had revealed were clear and knowable teachings, but what remained secret was not to be entertained. New mythmaking must come to an end. Curiosity is a sin.
The Amateur Exegete 