In the field of religious studies more generally, Mack was known for popularizing the term "Social Formation," originally coming from the work of Louis Althusser, as a descriptive category for religion.
Along with his close friend Jonathan Z. Smith, Mack was active in the Redescribing Christian Origins Group of the Society of Biblical Literature.
He was a noted scholar of the hypothetical Q Document, and is confident that it can be sifted into three layers: one containing primarily wisdom sayings, another giving details on how the community ought to behave, and another containing apocalyptic pronouncements.
Mack's hypothesis presenting Jesus and the earliest Christians[broken anchor] within the frame of Greco-Roman Cynicism is controversial.
"[3] Other scholars, such as John Dominic Crossan, affirms the confluence of Hellenistic and Judaic cultures in 1st-century Galilee as a potential source for the similarities between Christ and the Cynic philosophers-peasants of antiquity.