AD 43

Church of Alexandria

Traditional Foundation of the Alexandrian Church by Mark

The listed year has nothing behind it. The competing traditional dates are roughly 43, 49 and 61 — and none of them is 65.

No tradition puts it in 65

No independently verifiable event can be assigned to 65 at all, and there is no secure first-century documentation of Mark visiting Alexandria in any year.

Coptic and Greek Orthodox institutional tradition dates his arrival and the foundation of the Alexandrian church to approximately 43 CE. Other strands propose 49 or 61.

Eusebius's own numbers do not line up

Writing in the fourth century and introducing the claim with "they say," Eusebius reports that Mark was sent to Egypt, preached his Gospel and first established churches in Alexandria.

His other chronological notice makes Anianus Mark's successor in Nero's eighth year, conventionally 62. That conflicts both with a 65 foundation and with the later tradition placing Mark's death in 68.

"First in Africa" is not demonstrable

The claim that this was the first Christian community in all of Africa cannot be shown from the surviving evidence, and the earliest explicit attribution of Alexandria's church to Mark is centuries later than the alleged event.

Mark's link to Peter is earlier and better attested than his link to Alexandria — Papias's surviving testimony calls Mark Peter's interpreter — but that does not establish the Egyptian mission.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited Traditional date

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~0043.

What the sources leave uncertain

There is no secure first-century documentation of Mark visiting Alexandria.
The traditional dates conflict: approximately 43/44 in official Coptic and Greek Orthodox accounts, 49 in some modern summaries, and 61 in another strand of Coptic chronology.
Eusebius's succession notice points to approximately 62, while later Coptic tradition dates Mark's martyrdom to 68.
Because the alleged event has neither a secure year nor an exact day, 43 is reported only as the principal institutional traditional date.