Gospel of Mark

“ One of the inferences one should make from the use of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark is that the author created a new story with the aid of intertextual codes that helped him to communicate his own point of view. The Old Testament quotations and references formed part of the new story that Mark created in order to convince his readers of his point of view concerning Jesus and the implications of Jesus’ life, works and words for the prevailing situation.
Somebody may argue that the Old Testament is a special case and that it does not say much. ”

“ Retelling of the ‘same’ event or word of a specific person involves creativity. What is apparent regarding the use of the Old Testament in Mark seems to be even more applicable to the tradition incorporated in the Gospel of Mark. Let us take individual units such as controversy stories between Jesus and his opponents in the Gospel of Mark as an example. ”

“ We must absolutely be furnished, I say, with internal evidence of the most unequivocal character; or else with external testimony of a direct and definite kind, if we are to admit that the actual conclusion of S. Mark's Gospel is an unauthorized substitute for something quite different that has been lost. I can only imagine one other thing which could induce us to entertain such an opinion; and that would be the general consent of MSS., Fathers, and Versions in leaving these verses out. ”

“ Casts out a demon, [43] . Goes into the house of Simon, and heals his mother-in-law, [44] . Heals many diseased persons, [45] . Goes to the desert, and is followed by his disciples, [46] . Preaches in different towns and synagogues of Galilee, and casts out devils, [47] , [48] . Cleanses a leper, who publishes abroad his miraculous cure, [49] .
Verse 1
The beginning of the Gospel - It is with the utmost propriety that Mark begins the Gospel dispensation by the preaching of John the Baptist, he being the forerunner of Jesus Christ, and the first proclaimer of the incarnated Messiah. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of S. Mark's practice of making “extracts,” I know nothing: nor Dr. Davidson either. That there existed any “larger accounts” which would have been available for such a purpose, (except the Gospel according to S. Matthew,) there is neither a particle of evidence, nor a shadow of probability. On the other hand, that, notwithstanding the abundant oral information to which confessedly he had access, S. Mark has been divinely guided in this place to handle, in the briefest manner, some of the chiefest things which took place after our Lord's Resurrection,—is simply undeniable. ”

“ Let it be freely conceded, (but in fact it has been freely conceded already,) that there must have existed in the time of Eusebius many copies of S. Mark's Gospel which were without the twelve concluding verses. I do but insist that there is nothing whatever in that circumstance to lead us to entertain one serious doubt as to the genuineness of these verses. I am but concerned to maintain that there is nothing whatever in the evidence which has hitherto come before us,—certainly not in the evidence of Eusebius,—to induce us to believe that they are a spurious addition to S. Mark's Gospel. ”

“ Mark has shown us the Baptist proclaiming Christ. He now tells us that when John was imprisoned, Jesus, turning from that Judean ministry which stirred the jealousy of John's disciples (John iii. 26) , “came into Galilee, preaching.” And one looks twice before observing that His teaching is a distinct advance upon the herald's. Men are still to repent; for however slightly modern preachers may heal the hurt of souls, real contrition is here taken over into the gospel scheme. ”

“ 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 ”

“ And so marked is the change, that even His followers cast out devils in His name, and [pg 028] say not, Where is the Lord God of Israel? but, In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. His power is inherent, it is self-possessed, and His acts in the synoptics are only explained by His words in St. John, “What things soever the Father doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner.” No wonder that St. Mark adds to His very first record of a miracle, that the people were amazed, and asked, What is this? a new teaching! with authority He commandeth even the unclean spirits and they do obey Him! ”

“ They may doubt. The ante-Nicene Fathers at least never doubted. If “the last Twelve Verses” of S. Mark were deservedly omitted from certain Copies of his Gospel in the ivth century, utterly incredible is it that these same Twelve Verses should have been disseminated, by their authority, throughout Christendom;—read, by their command, in all the Churches;—selected, by their collective judgment, from the whole body of Scripture for the special honour of being listened to once and again at Easter time, as well as on Ascension-Day. ”

“ Then are these verses certainly spurious. There is no help for it but they must either be held to be an integral part of the Gospel, and therefore, in default of any proof to the contrary, as certainly by S. Mark as any other twelve verses which can be named; or else an unauthorized addition to it. If they belong to the post-apostolic age it is idle to insist on their Inspiration, and to claim that this “authentic anonymous addition to what Mark himself wrote down” is as much the work of God “as were the Ten Commandments written by His own [pg 012] finger on the tables of stone.” ”

“ If I may be allowed to say so,—S. Mark's last Twelve Verses shall no longer remain a subject of dispute among men. I am able to prove that this portion of the Gospel has been declared to be spurious on wholly mistaken grounds: and this ought in fairness to close the discussion. But I claim to have done more. I claim to have shewn, from considerations which have been hitherto overlooked, that its genuineness must needs be reckoned among the things that are absolutely certain. ”

“ Then, further, it is worth observing that while the phrase μετὰ ταῦτα occurs five times in S. Luke's Gospel, it is found only twice in the Acts; while S. Matthew never employs it at all. Why, then,—I would respectfully inquire—why need S. Mark introduce the phrase more than once? Why, especially, is his solitary use of the expression to be represented as a suspicious circumstance; and even perverted into an article of indictment against the genuineness of the last twelve verses of his Gospel? ”

“ Among the marvellous predictions made concerning “them that believe;” what can be imagined more striking than the promise that they should “take up serpents;” and suffer no harm even if they should “drink any deadly thing”?
(iii) Next,—all have been struck, I suppose, with S. Mark's proneness to substitute some expression of his own for what he found in the Gospel of his predecessor S. Matthew: or, when he anticipates something which is afterwards met with in the Gospel of S. Luke, his aptness to deliver it in language entirely independent of the later Evangelist. ”

“ For an explication of the word Gospel, and the title Saint, see the Preface to Matthew.
Mark. This person, the second in the commonly received order of the four evangelists, was named John Mark, and was the son of a pious woman called Mary, who dwelt at Jerusalem: she was an early believer, and the disciples used to meet at her house. Peter, having been delivered out of prison by an angel, came to the house of Mary, mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying, [1] . ”

“ His close agreement with Mark in the arrangement of his narrative suggests that he found no clear evidence of a ministry of wider extent in time and place. He therefore used Mark as his narrative framework, and of the rich materials which he had gathered made a gospel, the completest of any written up to his time.
30. Such in the main is the conclusion of modern study of our first three gospels; it explains the general identity of their picture of Jesus and of their report of his teaching; it leaves room for those individual characteristics which give them so much of their charm ”

“ III. We are by this time in a condition to form a truer estimate of the value of the testimony borne by these two manuscripts in respect of the last twelve verses of S. Mark's Gospel. If we were disposed before to regard their omission of an important passage as a serious matter, we certainly cannot any longer so regard it. We have by this time seen enough to disabuse our minds of every prejudice. ”

“ It is on this “sound tradition” that modern critical theologians base their hypothesis of two sources. It supposes that the gospel of Mark, or an earlier version of it, the so-called “Primitive Mark,” is one source of our three Synoptic gospels; it describes the actions of Jesus. The other source is the discourses or sayings-source, the document which Papias ascribes to Matthew, the so-called “Primitive Matthew.” ”

“ The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the earliest (excepting the notes of Andrew) , briefest, and most simple record of Jesus' life. He presented the Master as a minister, as man among men. Although Mark was a lad lingering about many of the scenes which he depicts, his record is in reality the Gospel according to Simon Peter. He was early associated with Peter; later with Paul. Mark wrote this record at the instigation of Peter and on the earnest petition of the church at Rome. ”

“ Matthew's is the Gospel of the King; Mark's, of the Worker.
The omission of Christ's eulogium on Peter has often been pointed out as an interesting corroboration of the tradition that he was Mark's source; and perhaps the failure to record the praise, and the carefulness to tell the subsequent rebuke, reveal the humble-hearted 'elder' into whom the self-confident young Apostle had grown. Flesh delights to recall praise; faith and self-knowledge find more profit in remembering errors forgiven and rebukes deserved, and in their severity, most loving. ”

“ They must be assured, on the contrary, that these Twelve Verses are wholly undistinguishable in respect of genuineness from the rest of the Gospel of S. Mark; and it may not be amiss to remind them the Creed called the “Athanasian” speaks no other language than that employed by the Divine Author of our Religion and Object of our Faith. The Church warns her children against the peril incurred by as many as wilfully reject the Truth, in no other language but that of the Great Head of the Church. No person may presume to speak disparagingly of S. Mark xvi. ”

“ Mark. [Those verses made up by themselves a complete Lection. The preceding Lection, which was used on the Second Sunday after Easter, was closed with the Liturgical note 'The End,' or ΤΟ ΤΕΛΟΣ, occurring after the eighth verse. What more probable, nay, more certain result could there be, than that some scribe should mistake the end of the Lection for the end of St. Mark's Gospel, if the last leaf should chance to have been torn off, and should then transcribe no more [159] ? How natural that St. Mark should express himself in a more condensed and abrupt style than usual. ”

“ Into this Lectionary then,—so universal in its extent, so consistent in its witness, so Apostolic in its antiquity,—“the Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to S. Mark” from the very first are found to have won for themselves not only an entrance, a lodgment, an established place ”

“ The brief account of these is marked by the Evangelist's vivid pictorial faculty, which we shall frequently have to notice as we read his Gospel. Here he puts us, by a word, in the position of eye-witnesses of the scene as it is passing, when he describes the heavens as 'being rent asunder'—a much more forcible and pictorial word than Matthew's 'opened.' He says nothing of John's share in the vision. All is intended for the Son. It is Jesus who sees the rending heavens and the descending dove. The voice which Matthew represents as speaking of Christ, Mark represents as speaking to Him. ”

“ I insist that one only result can attend the exact analysis of this portion of the Gospel into its elements; namely, a profound conviction that S. Mark is most certainly its Author.
3. Let me however distinctly declare beforehand that remarks on “the style” of an Evangelist are singularly apt to be fallacious, especially when (as here) it is proposed to apply them to a very limited portion of the sacred narrative. ”

“ It is agreed that Mark wrote his Gospel for the use of Gentile converts; and opinion deriving great force from the explanations introduced into it, which would have been useless to a Jew, and that it was composed for those at Rome, is believed, not only from the numerous Latinisms it contains, but from the unanimous testimony of ancient writer, and from the internal evidence afforded by the Gospel itself. ”