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.