The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark Part 18

This is memorably the case in respect of the Codex Bezae [vi]: more memorably yet, in respect of the Gothic version of Ulphilas (A.D. 360): in both of which MSS., the order of the Gospels is (1) S. Matthew, (2) S.

John, (3) S. Luke, (4) S. Mark. This is in fact _the usual Western order_.

Accordingly it is thus that the Gospels stand in the Codd. Vercellensis (_a_), Veronensis (_b_), Palatinus (_e_), Brixia.n.u.s (_f_) of the old Latin version. But this order is not _exclusively_ Western. It is found in Cod.

309. It is also observed in Matthaei's Codd. 13, 14, (which last is _our_ Evan. 256), at Moscow. And in the same order Eusebius and others of the ancients(451) are occasionally observed to refer to the four Gospels,-which induces a suspicion that they were not unfamiliar with it.

Nor is this all. In Codd. 19 and 90 the Gospel according to S. Mark stands last; though in the former of these the order of the three antecedent Gospels is (1) S. John, (2) S. Matthew, (3) S. Luke;(452) in the latter, (1) S. John, (2) S. Luke, (3) S. Matthew. What need of many words to explain the bearing of these facts on the present discussion? Of course it will have _sometimes_ happened that S. Mark xvi. 8 came to be written _at the bottom of the left hand page_ of a MS.(453) And we have but to suppose that in the case of one such Codex the next leaf, which would have been _the last_, was missing,-(_the very thing which has happened in respect of one of the Codices at Moscow_(454))-and what else _could_ result when a copyist reached the words,

?F??????? G??. ?? ????S

but the very phenomenon which has exercised critics so sorely and which gives rise to the whole of the present discussion? The copyist will have brought S. Mark's Gospel to an end there, _of course_. What else could he possibly do?... Somewhat less excusably was our learned countryman Mill betrayed into the statement, (inadvertently adopted by Wetstein, Griesbach, and Tischendorf,) that "the last verse of S. John's Gospel _is omitted_ in Cod. 63:" the truth of the matter being (as Mr. Scrivener has lately proved) that _the __ last leaf_ of Cod. 63,-on which the last verse of S. John's Gospel was demonstrably once written,-_has been lost_.(455)

XIV. To sum up.

1. It will be perceived that I suppose the omission of "the last Twelve Verses" of S. Mark's Gospel to have originated in a sheer error and misconception on the part of some very ancient Copyist. He _saw_ ?? ????S written after ver. 8: he _a.s.sumed_ that it was the Subscription, or at least that it denoted "the End," _of the Gospel_.

2. Whether certain ancient Critics, because it was acceptable to them, were not found to promote this mistake,-it is useless to inquire. That there may have arisen some old harmonizer of the Gospels, who, (in the words of Eusebius,) was disposed to "regard what followed as superfluous from its seeming inconsistency with the testimony of the other Evangelists;"(456)-and that in this way the error became propagated;-is likely enough. But an error it most certainly was: and to that _error_, the _accident_ described in the last preceding paragraph _would have_ very materially conduced, and it may have very easily done so.

3. I request however that it may be observed that the "accident" is not _needed_ in order to account for the "error." The mere presence of ??

????S at ver. 8, so near the end of the Gospel, would be quite enough to occasion it. And we have seen that in very ancient times the word ????S frequently _did_ occur in an altogether exceptional manner in that very place. Moreover, we have ascertained that its meaning was _not understood_ by the transcribers of ancient MSS.

4. And will any one venture to maintain that it is to him a thing incredible that an intelligent copyist of the iiird century, because he read the words ?? ????S at S. Mark xvi. 8, can have been beguiled thereby into the supposition that those words indicated "the End" of _S. Mark's Gospel_?-Shall I be told that, even if _one_ can have so entirely overlooked the meaning of the liturgical sign as to suffer it to insinuate itself into his text,(457) it is nevertheless so improbable as to pa.s.s all credence that _another_ can have supposed that it designated _the termination of the Gospel_ of the second Evangelist?-For all reply, I take leave to point out that Scholz, and Tischendorf, and Tregelles, and Mai and the rest of the Critics have, _one and all, without exception, misunderstood the same word occurring in the same place, and in precisely the same way_.

Yes. The forgotten inadvertence of a solitary Scribe in the _second_ or _third_ century has been, _in the nineteenth_, deliberately reproduced, adopted, and stereotyped by every Critic and every Editor of the New Testament in turn.

What wonder,-(I propose the question deliberately,)-What wonder that an ancient Copyist should have been misled by a phenomenon which in our own days is observed to have imposed upon two generations of professed Biblical Critics discussing this very textual problem, and therefore fully on their guard against delusion?(458) To this hour, the ill.u.s.trious Editors of the text of the Gospels are clearly, one and all, labouring under the grave error of supposing that "?f????t? ??? + t????,"-(for which they are so careful to refer us to "Cod. 22,")-is an indication that _there_, by rights, comes _the _"END"_ of the Gospel according to S.

Mark_. They have failed to perceive that ????S in that place is only _a liturgical sign_,-the same with which (in its contracted form) they are sufficiently familiar; and that it serves no other purpose whatever, but to mark that _there_ a famous _Ecclesiastical Lection_ comes to an end.

With a few pages of summary, we may now bring this long disquisition to an end.

CHAPTER XII.

GENERAL REVIEW OF THE QUESTION: SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE; AND CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE SUBJECT.

This discussion narrowed to a single issue (p. 244).-That S.

Mark's Gospel was imperfect from the very first, a thing altogether incredible (p. 246):-But that at some very remote period Copies have suffered mutilation, a supposition probable in the highest degree (p. 248).-Consequences of this admission (p.

252).-Parting words (p. 254.)

This Inquiry has at last reached its close. The problem was fully explained at the outset.(459) All the known evidence has since been produced,(460) every Witness examined.(461) Counsel has been heard on both sides. A just Sentence will a.s.suredly follow. But it may not be improper that I should in conclusion ask leave to direct attention to the _single issue_ which has to be decided, and which has been strangely thrust into the background and practically kept out of sight, by those who have preceded me in this Investigation. The case stands simply thus:-

It being freely admitted that, in the beginning of the ivth century, there must have existed Copies of the Gospels in which the last chapter of S.

Mark extended no further than ver. 8, the Question arises,-_How is this phenomenon to be accounted for?_... The problem is not only highly interesting and strictly legitimate, but it is even inevitable. In the immediately preceding chapter, I have endeavoured to solve it, and I believe in a wholly unsuspected way.

But the most recent Editors of the text of the New Testament, declining to entertain so much as the _possibility_ that certain copies of the second Gospel _had experienced mutilation in very early times_ in respect of these Twelve concluding Verses, have chosen to occupy themselves rather with conjectures as to how it may have happened that S. Mark's Gospel _was without a conclusion from the very first_. Persuaded that no more probable account is to be given of the phenomenon than that _the Evangelist himself put forth a Gospel which_ (for some unexplained reason) _terminated abruptly at the words_ ?f????t? ??? (chap. xvi. 8),-they have unhappily seen fit to ill.u.s.trate the liveliness of this conviction of theirs, by presenting the world with his Gospel mutilated in this particular way.

Practically, therefore, the question has been reduced to the following single issue:-Whether of the two suppositions which follow is the more reasonable:

_First_,-That the Gospel according to S. Mark, as it left the hands of its inspired Author, _was in this imperfect or unfinished state_; ending abruptly at (what we call now) the 8th verse of the last chapter:-of which solemn circ.u.mstance, at the end of eighteen centuries, Cod. B and Cod. ?

are the alone surviving Ma.n.u.script witnesses?... or,

_Secondly_,-That certain copies of S. Mark's Gospel _having suffered mutilation_ in respect of their Twelve concluding Verses in the post-Apostolic age, Cod. B and Cod. ? are the only examples of MSS. so mutilated which are known to exist at the present day?

I. Editors who adopt the former hypothesis, are observed (_a_) to sever the Verses in question from their context:(462)-(_b_) to introduce after ver. 8, the subscription "???? ??????:"(463)-(_c_) to shut up verses 9-20 within brackets.(464) Regarding them as "no integral part of the Gospel"(465)-"as an authentic anonymous addition to what Mark himself wrote down,"(466)-a "remarkable Fragment," "placed as a completion of the Gospel in very early times;"(467)-they consider themselves at liberty to go on to suggest that "the Evangelist may have been interrupted in his work:" at any rate, that "something may have occurred, (as the death of S.

Peter,) to cause him to leave it unfinished."(468) But "the most probable supposition" (we are a.s.sured) "is, that _the last leaf of the original Gospel was torn away_."(469)

We listen with astonishment; contenting ourselves with modestly suggesting that surely it will be time to conjecture _why_ S. Mark's Gospel was left by its Divinely inspired Author in an unfinished state, when the fact has been established that it probably _was_ so left. In the meantime, we request to be furnished with some evidence of _that fact_.

But not a particle of Evidence is forthcoming. It is not even pretended that any such evidence exists. Instead, we are magisterially informed by "the first Biblical Critic in Europe,"-(I desire to speak of him with grat.i.tude and respect, but S. Mark's Gospel is a vast deal more precious to me than Dr. Tischendorf's reputation,)-that "_a healthy piety reclaims against the endeavours of those who are for palming off as Mark's what the Evangelist is so plainly shewn_ [where?] _to have known nothing at all about_."(470) In the meanwhile, it is a.s.sumed to be a more reasonable supposition,-(a) That S. Mark published an imperfect Gospel; and that the Twelve Verses with which his Gospel concludes were the fabrication of a subsequent age; than,-() That some ancient Scribe having with design or by accident left out these Twelve concluding Verses, copies of the second Gospel so mutilated become multiplied, and in the beginning of the ivth century existed in considerable numbers.

And yet it is notorious that very soon after the Apostolic age, liberties precisely of this kind were freely taken with the text of the New Testament. Origen (A.D. 185-254) complains of the licentious tampering with the Scriptures which prevailed in his day. "Men add to them," (he says) "or _leave out_,-as seems good to themselves."(471) Dionysius of Corinth, yet earlier, (A.D. 168-176) remarks that it was no wonder his own writings were added to and _taken from_, seeing that men presumed to deprave the Word of G.o.d in the same manner.(472) Irenaeus, his contemporary, (living within seventy years of S. John's death,) complains of a corrupted Text.(473) We are able to go back yet half a century, and the depravations of Holy Writ become avowed and flagrant.(474) A competent authority has declared it "no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that _the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has been ever subjected_ originated within a hundred years after it was composed."(475) Above all, it is demonstrable that Cod. B and Cod. ? abound in unwarrantable omissions very like the present;(476) omissions which only do not provoke the same amount of attention because they are of less moment. One such extraordinary depravation of the Text, _in which they also stand alone among MSS._ and to which their patrons are observed to appeal with triumphant complacency, has been already made the subject of distinct investigation. I am much mistaken if it has not been shewn in my VIIth chapter, that the omission of the words ?? ?f?s? from Ephes. i. 1, is just as unauthorized,-quite as serious a blemish,-as the suppression of S. Mark xvi. 9-20.

Now, in the face of facts like these, and in the absence of _any Evidence whatever_ to prove that S. Mark's Gospel was imperfect from the first,-I submit that an hypothesis so violent and improbable, as well as so wholly uncalled for, is simply undeserving of serious attention. For,

(1st.) It is plain from internal considerations that the improbability of the hypothesis is excessive; "the contents of these Verses being such as to preclude the supposition that they were the work of a post-Apostolic period. The very difficulties which they present afford the strongest presumption of their genuineness." No fabricator of a supplement to S.

Mark's Gospel would have ventured on introducing so many minute _seeming_ discrepancies: and certainly "his contemporaries would not have accepted and transmitted such an addition," if he had. It has also been shewn at great length that the Internal Evidence for the genuineness of these Verses is overwhelmingly strong.(477) But,

(2nd.) Even external Evidence is not wanting. It has been acutely pointed out long since, that the absence of a vast a.s.semblage of various Readings in this place, is, in itself, a convincing argument that we have here to do with no spurious appendage to the Gospel.(478) Were this a deservedly suspected pa.s.sage, it must have shared the fate of all other deservedly (or undeservedly) suspected pa.s.sages. It never could have come to pa.s.s that the various Readings which these Twelve Verses exhibit would be _considerably fewer_ than those which attach to the last twelve verses of any of the other three Gospels.

(3rd.) And then surely, if the original Gospel of S. Mark had been such an incomplete work as is feigned, the fact would have been notorious from the first, and must needs have become the subject of general comment.(479) It may be regarded as certain that so extraordinary a circ.u.mstance would have been largely remarked upon by the Ancients, and that evidence of the fact would have survived in a hundred quarters. It is, I repeat, simply incredible that Tradition would have proved so utterly neglectful of her office as to remain _quite_ silent on such a subject, if the facts had been such as are imagined. Either Papias, or else John the Presbyter,-Justin Martyr, or Hegesippus, or one of the "Seniores apud Irenaeum,"-Clemens Alexandrinus, or Tertullian, or Hippolytus,-if not Origen, yet at least Eusebius,-if not Eusebius, yet certainly Jerome,-_some_ early Writer, I say, must _certainly_ have recorded the tradition that S. Mark's Gospel, as it came from the hands of its inspired author, was an incomplete or unfinished work. The silence of the Ancients, joined to the inherent improbability of the conjecture,-(_that_ silence so profound, _this_ improbability so gross!)-is enough, I submit, _in the entire absence of Evidence on the other side_, to establish _the very contradictory_ of the alternative which recent Critics are so strenuous in recommending to our acceptance.

(4th.) But on the contrary. We have indirect yet convincing testimony that the _oldest_ copies of all _did contain_ the Verses in question:(480) while so far are any of the Writers just now enumerated from recording that these verses were absent from the early copies, that five out of those ten Fathers actually quote, or else refer to the verses in question in a way which shews that in their day they were the recognised termination of S. Mark's Gospel.(481)

We consider ourselves at liberty, therefore, to turn our attention to the rival alternative. Our astonishment is even excessive that it should have been seriously expected of us that we could accept without Proof of any sort,-without a particle of Evidence, external, internal, or even traditional,-the extravagant hypothesis that S. Mark put forth an unfinished Gospel; when the obvious and easy alternative solicits us, of supposing,

II. That, at some period _subsequent_ to the time of the Evangelist, certain copies of S. Mark's Gospel suffered that mutilation in respect of their last Twelve Verses of which we meet with _no trace whatever, no record of any sort, until the beginning of the fourth century_.

(i.) And the facts which _now_ meet us on the very threshold, are in a manner conclusive: for if Papias and Justin Martyr [A.D. 150] do not refer to, yet certainly Irenaeus [A.D. 185] and Hippolytus [A.D. 190-227]

_distinctly quote_ Six out of the Twelve suspected Verses,-which are also met with in the two oldest Syriac Versions, as well as in the old Latin Translation. Now the latest of these authorities is earlier by full a hundred years than _the earliest record_ that the verses in question were ever absent from ancient MSS. At the eighth Council of Carthage, (as Cyprian relates,) [A.D. 256] Vincentius a Thiberi, one of the eighty-seven African Bishops there a.s.sembled, quoted the 17th verse in the presence of the Council.

(ii.) Nor is this all.(482) Besides the Gothic and Egyptian versions in the ivth century; besides Ambrose, Cyril of Alexandria, Jerome, and Augustine in the vth, to say nothing of Codices A and C;-the Lectionary of the Church universal, _probably from the second century of our aera_, is found to bestow its solemn and emphatic sanction on _every one_ of these Twelve Verses. They are met with _in every MS. of the Gospels in existence_, uncial and cursive,-_except two_;(483) they are found _in every Version_; and are contained besides in _every known Lectionary_, where they are appointed to be read at Easter and on Ascension Day.(484)

(iii.) Early in the ivth century, however, we are encountered by a famous place in the writings of Eusebius [A.D. 300-340], who, (as I have elsewhere explained,(485)) is the _only_ Father who delivers any independent testimony on this subject at all. What he says has been strangely misrepresented. It is simply as follows:-

(_a_) One, "Marinus," is introduced _quoting this part of S. Mark's Gospel without suspicion_, and enquiring, How its opening statement is to be reconciled with S. Matth. xxviii. 1? Eusebius, in reply, points out that a man whose only object was to get rid of the difficulty, might adopt the expedient of saying that this last section of S. Mark's Gospel "is _not found in all the copies_:" (? ?? ?p?s? f??es?a?.) Declining, however, to act thus presumptuously in respect of anything claiming to be a part of Evangelical Scripture, (??d? ?t???? t???? ??ete?? t?? ?p?s??? ?? t? t??

e?a??e???? ??af? fe??????,)-_he adopts the hypothesis that the text is genuine_. ?a? d? t??de t?? ????? s??????????? e??a? ???????, he begins: and he enters at once without hesitation on an elaborate discussion to shew _how the two places may be reconciled_.(486) What there is in this to countenance the notion that in the opinion of Eusebius "the Gospel according to S. Mark originally terminated at the 8th verse of the last chapter,"-I profess myself unable to discover. I draw from his words the precisely opposite inference. It is not even clear to me that the Verses in dispute were absent from the copy which Eusebius habitually employed.

He certainly quotes one of those verses once and again.(487) On the other hand, the express statement of Victor of Antioch [A.D. 450?] _that he knew of the mutilation, but had ascertained by Critical research the genuineness of this Section of Scripture, and had adopted the Text of the authentic _"Palestinian"_ Copy_,(488)-is more than enough to outweigh the faint presumption created (as some might think) by the words of Eusebius, that his own copy was without it. And yet, as already stated, there is nothing whatever to shew that Eusebius himself deliberately rejected the last Twelve Verses of S. Mark's Gospel. Still less does that Father anywhere say, or even hint, that in his judgment the original Text of S.

Mark was without them. If he may be judged by his words, _he accepted them as genuine_: for (what is at least certain) he argues upon their contents at great length, and apparently without misgiving.

(_b_) It is high time however to point out that, after all, the question to be decided is, not _what Eusebius thought_ on this subject, but what is historically probable. As a plain matter of fact, the sum of the Patristic Evidence against these Verses is the hypothetical suggestion of Eusebius already quoted; which, (after a fas.h.i.+on well understood by those who have given any attention to these studies), is observed to have rapidly propagated itself in the congenial soil of the vth century. And even if it could be shewn that Eusebius deliberately _rejected_ this portion of Scripture, (which has never been done,)-yet, inasmuch as it may be regarded as certain that those famous codices in the library of his friend Pamphilus at Caesarea, to which the ancients habitually referred, _recognised it as genuine_,(489)-the only sufferer from such a conflict of evidence would surely be Eusebius himself: (not _S. Mark_, I say, but _Eusebius_:) who is observed to employ an incorrect text of Scripture on many other occasions; and must (in such case) be held to have been unduly partial to copies of S. Mark in the mutilated condition of Cod. B or Cod.

?. His words were translated by Jerome;(490) adopted by Hesychius;(491) referred to by Victor;(492) reproduced "with a difference" in more than one ancient scholion.(493) But they are found to have died away into a very faint echo when Euthymius Zigabenus(494) rehea.r.s.ed them for the last time in his Commentary on the Gospels, A.D. 1116. Exaggerated and misunderstood, behold them resuscitated after an interval of seven centuries by Griesbach, and Tischendorf, and Tregelles and the rest: again destined to fall into a congenial, though very differently prepared soil; and again destined (I venture to predict) to die out and soon to be forgotten for ever.

(iv.) After all that has gone before, our two oldest Codices (Cod. B and Cod. ?) which alone witness to the truth of Eusebius' testimony as to the state of certain copies of the Gospels in his own day, need not detain us long. They are thought to be as old as the ivth century: they are certainly without the concluding section of S. Mark's Gospel. But it may not be forgotten that both Codices alike are disfigured throughout by errors, interpolations and omissions without number; that their testimony is continually divergent; and that it often happens that where they both agree they are both demonstrably in error.(495) Moreover, it is a highly significant circ.u.mstance that the Vatican Codex (B), which is the more ancient of the two, exhibits _a vacant column_ at the end of S. Mark's Gospel,-_the only vacant column in the whole codex_: whereby it is shewn that the Copyist was aware of the existence of the Twelve concluding Verses of S. Mark's Gospel, even though he left them out:(496) while the original Scribe of the Codex Sinaiticus (?) is declared by Tischendorf to have actually _omitted the concluding verse of S. John's Gospel_,-in which unenviable peculiarity _it stands alone among MSS._(497)

(I.) And thus we are brought back to the point from which we started. We are reminded that the one thing to be accounted for is _the mutilated condition of certain copies of S. Mark's Gospel in the beginning of the fourth century_; of which, Cod. B and Cod. ? are the two solitary surviving specimens,-Eusebius, the one historical witness. We have to decide, I mean, between the _evidence_ for this _fact_,-(namely, that within the first two centuries and a-half of our aera, the Gospel according to S. Mark _suffered mutilation_;)-and the _reasonableness_ of the other _opinion_, namely, that S. Mark's _original autograph_ extended no farther than ch. xvi. 8. All is reduced to this one issue; and unless any are prepared to prove that the Twelve familiar Verses (ver. 9 to ver. 20) with which S. Mark ends his Gospel _cannot_ be his,-(I have proved on the contrary that he must needs be thought to have written them,(498))-I submit that it is simply irrational to persist in a.s.severating that the reason why those verses are not found in our two Codexes of the ivth century must be because they did not exist in the original autograph of the Evangelist. What else is this but to set unsupported _opinion_, or rather unreasoning _prejudice_, before the _historical evidence_ of a _fact_? The a.s.sumption is not only gratuitous, arbitrary, groundless; but it is discountenanced by the evidence of MSS., of Versions, of Fathers, (Versions and Fathers much older than the ivth century:) is rendered in the highest degree improbable by every internal, every external consideration: is condemned by _the deliberate judgment of the universal Church_,-which, in its corporate capacity, for eighteen hundred years, in all places, has not only solemnly accepted the last Twelve Verses of S.

Mark's Gospel as genuine, but has even singled them out for special honour.(499)