The problem translating the scriptures into English isn’t in the translating; it’s in the English. Mark knew exactly what he meant, and so did his readers.

Thanks for your thorough answer. I expect that you are correct in believing 3 and that the original author did not intend the gospel to be preached to animals.

I apologise if my original question came across as facetious. However, I feel it raises an important point. If we can all safely assume that 3 is the correct interpretation, how did we end up with that English wording in the gospel should be preached “to all creatures”? Do we have any biblical or non-biblical evidence that “creatures” meant “only humans” at the time?

If not, then your belief (3) is based not on the Bible, but the actions or early Christians (who must have ignored it or assumed that it couldn’t possibly mean “Preach to animals”) combined with modern common sense.

If we do have evidence that “creatures” meant “only humans”, then presumably the fact that we ended up with this English wording is the result of naive translation – by people not aware of this evidence. In this case, as you pointed out, it’s fairly obvious which interpretation makes most sense, so the error introduced at some point has no effect (at least I doubt anyone has tried to preach to animals as a result of this). But if errors or misunderstandings like this can creep into the text through the copying or translation process it casts doubt on the accuracy of the rest of the text. In other areas such changes might not be so obvious.

Your analysis above is well thought-out and seems quite reasonable. Do you apply the same level of scrutiny to all the beliefs you derive from the Bible? When asking whether people at the time took the same interpretation on other matters of doctrine, I imagine the answer may often be, “We don’t know”. In any case, are the actions of early Christians combined with modern common sense an infallible guide to God’s will?

Well, a good way to determine what a word means in a piece of literature is to understand what it meant or how it was understood when originally written. So we would need to know what “every creature” or “to the whole creation” meant to the original hearers/readers of these words. I’m a student of church history, though by no means an expert. I know of no instance where any early christians ever baptized dogs, gave the Lord’s Supper to cats, preached to bunnies or taught their parrots to pray the Lord’s Prayer.

So let’s consider 3 possibilities here:

1. Mark’s gospel commands christians to preach the gospel to the animal kingdom (and I guess the plant kingdom also) and early christians knew this but were all deliberately disobedient to the command.

2. Mark’s gospel commands this, and early christians didn’t do it because they misunderstood it, thinking it only meant humans.

3. They understood “every creature” to mean only all humans because that is what Mark’s gospel intended. In other words they were correct in their interpretation.

I think hardly needs debating that #1 is extremely unlikely. I don’t see anyone seriously saying that all the early christians deliberately disobeyed a command of Jesus in the gospels.

So we have to ask ourselves is it likely that Mark records a command of Jesus that every christian misunderstood. Remember the early christians didn’t agree on everything, there were many disputes over doctrine, worship and church practices. But, at least as far as I can tell, no one believed the gospel should be preached to plants or animals.

Obviously I believe #3 is correct.