The author claims that the gospel of Mark is a speech or sermon. To prove this he shows how Mark used many of the elements of Aristotle's rhetoric. Literary critics noticed these rhetorical features in Mark, but remained with a literary critical model of that gospel instead of a rhetorical view that the evidence called for. They continued to translate the first word of Mark, arche, as ""beginning"" to provide Mark's story of Jesus with a chronological beginning. The author translates Mark's first word as ""guiding principle"" to provide Mark's persuasive speech or sermon with a logical starting point. The last two years of high school, Caurie Beaver attended a Bible school in Oklahoma City, attended one year at Bethany Nazarene College in Bethany, Oklahoma, and received a BA degree from Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma, in 1961. He studied Albert Schweitzer's theology at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont, California. He completed a book on the gospel of Mark in 2000 CE.