The last 12 verses of Mark are
attested in over 1,650 Greek manuscripts, early and abundant patristic
evidence, and in multiple transmission-streams.
It is not a Byzantine reading which fell into its neighbors, as shown by
the following features in the Western, Caesarean, and Alexandrian texts:
Western
(represented by Codex Bezae, D/05):
εφανερωσεν πρωτοις instead of
εφανη πρωτον in 16:9,
αυτοις after απηγγειλεν in
16:10,
και ουκ επιστευσαν αυτω instead of ηπιστησαν in 16:11,
και at the beginning of 16:12,
προς αυτους instead of αυτοις in
16:15,
the omission of απαντα in 16:15, and
και before κηρυξατε in 16:15.
Caesarean:
family-13 omits δε and inserts the
contracted name “Jesus” after Αναστας in 16:9.
(A lectionary-influenced reading)
Codex Θ (038) has μαθηταις in
16:10 instead of μετ’ .
Codex Θ (038) has εφανη instead
of εφανερωθη in 16:12.
Codex Θ (038) has πορευθεντες
instead of απελθοντες in 16:13.
Family-1, family-13, 28, and 565 (and A, Δ, and C) add εκ νεκρων
after
εγηγερμενον
in 16:14. (This reading may be supported
by Justin Martyr in First Apology ch.
50 as well.)
Alexandrian:
C*, L, 33, 579, and 892 (and D and
W) have παρ’ instead of αφ after
Μαρια
τη Μαγδαληνη in 16:9.
C*, L, Δ, and Ψ (044) omit
καιναις at the end of 16:17. 099 also
omits
γλωσσαις λαλησουσιν, probably due to accidental lineskipping.
This implies that 099’s exemplar
read:
δαιμονια εκβαλουσιν
γλωσσαις λαλησουσιν
και εν ταις χερσιν etc.
C, L, Δ, Ψ (044), 099, 579, and
892 have και εν ταις χερσιν at the beginning of 16:18.
Why, then, are some influential scholars still insisting that Mark
16:9-20 is not original, or is somehow, despite having plenty of distinct
features, a “pastiche”? This is due, I
suspect, because of dependence on outdated materials, and because of an
inability to satisfactorily answer the question, “Why would scribes omit these
12 verses if they were original?”
But this is not a difficult
question. Egyptian scribes did not
excise vv. 9-20 in their capacity as scribes.
They excised vv. 9-20 in their capacity as framers of the apostolic text.
It ought to be remembered that Eusebius
of Caesarea, in Church History Book Three, chapter 39, preserves Papias’
statement that “The Elder” reported the following: “Mark, who had been
Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatever he
remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord
nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his
teaching to the needs of those who listened to him, but with no intent to give
a sequential account of the Lord’s discourses. So that Mark committed no error
while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of
one thing: not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state
any of them falsely.”
In Church History Book Five,
chapter 8:1-3, Eusebius quotes from the beginning of the third book of
Irenaeus’ Against Heresies (where Irenaeus seems to rely on Papias’
writings): “Matthew published his Gospel among the Hebrews in their own
language, while Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the church in Rome. After their
departure (έξοδον), Mark the disciple and interpreter of Peter also transmitted
to us in writing those things which Peter had preached.”
In addition, in Church History Book
Six, 14:5-7, Eusebius presents a statement that he attributes to Clement of
Alexandria: “Clement gives the
tradition of the earliest presbyters, as to the order of the Gospels, in the following
manner: the Gospels containing the genealogies, he says, were written first.
The Gospel according to Mark had this occasion: as Peter had preached the Word
publicly at Rome, and declared the gospel by the Spirit, many who were present
requested that Mark, who had followed him for a long time and remembered his
sayings, should write them out. And having composed the Gospel he gave it to
those who had requested it. When Peter learned of this, he neither directly
forbade nor encouraged it.”
The accounts of Irenaeus and Clement
seem to conflict: Irenaeus states that Mark wrote after the departure of Peter
and Paul, but Clement states that Mark was distributing the Gospel while Peter was
still alive. This should be compared to what Jerome, recollecting earlier compositions,
wrote in the eighth chapter of De Viris Illustribus:
“Mark, the disciple and interpreter
of Peter, wrote a short gospel at the request of the brethren
at Rome,
embodying what he had heard Peter tell. When Peter heard this, he approved it
and published it to the churches to be read by his authority, as Clement in
Book 6 of his Hypotyposes,
and Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, record. Peter also mentions this Mark in his first
epistle, figuratively indicating Rome under the
name of Babylon: “She who is in Babylon elect
together with you salutes you, and so does Mark my son.”
“So, taking the gospel which he
himself composed, he [Mark]
went to Egypt.
And first preaching
Christ at Alexandria,
he formed a church so admirable in doctrine and continence of living
that he constrained all followers of Christ to his example. Philo – most learned of the Jews
– seeing the first church at Alexandria still Jewish in a degree, wrote a book
on their manner
of life as something creditable to his nation, telling how, as Luke says, the
believers had all
things in common at Jerusalem, so he recorded
what he saw was done at Alexandria
under the
learned Mark. He died in the eighth year of Nero and was buried at Alexandria, Annianus succeeding
him.”
Jerome was clearly relying on
earlier accounts, including Eusebius’ Church History; the statement
about the year of Mark’s death seems to be drawn directly from Eusebius’ Church History,
Book Two, chapter 24: “When Nero was in the eighth year of his reign,
Annianus succeeded
Mark the evangelist in the administration of the parish of Alexandria.” Eusebius provides a second
affirmation of the year of the beginning of the bishopric of Annianus in Church
History, Book Three, chapter 14: “In the fourth year of Domitian, Annianus,
the first bishop of the parish of Alexandria,
died after holding office twenty-two years, and was succeeded by Abilius, the
second bishop.” Figuring
that Domitian’s reign began in September
of 81, adding four years brings us to September of 85. By subtracting 22 from
85, we arrive
at the year 63. If Annianus served as bishop for a bit more than 22 years but
less than 23 full
years, Eusebius’ two statements agree.
On the question of whether Mark
wrote his Gospel before Peter’s death, or afterward, the accounts
are divided. Their discord may decrease a little if Jerome’s statement is
understood as an
incorrect deduction based on Eusebius’ statement that Annianus succeeded Mark
in the eighth year
of Nero’s reign. If Eusebius’ statement means that Mark, instead of dying in
that year, departed
from Alexandria to go to Rome, then if Nero’s eighth year is
calculated to be 62 (since his
reign began on October 13, in the year 54), the emerging picture is that Mark
established a Christian
community in Alexandria, and then went to Rome, possibly at the
urging of Timothy (see
Second Timothy 4:11). According to this hypothesis, Peter and Mark were both
ministering in Rome in the year 62.
In the mid-60s, severe persecution
against Christians arose in the city of Rome,
and Paul and
Peter were martyred. What then happened to Mark? He apparently did not remain
in Rome; as
Peter’s assistant he would have been a natural choice to lead the congregation
there; yet a man named
Linus is reported by Eusebius (in Church History Book Three, 3:2) to
have been the first bishop
of Rome after
the martyrdoms of Paul and Peter. A detailed tradition is found in the medieval
composition History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria by
Severus of
Al-Ushmunain (in the mid-900s), who stated that he accessed source-materials
from the monastery
of St. Macarius and other monasteries in Egypt,
and from Alexandria.
Severus of Al-Ushmunain
states that Mark was martyred in Alexandria.
When this is compared to the report
from Irenaeus that Mark composed his Gospel-account after the departure – that
is, the martyrdoms – of Peter and Paul, the situation becomes more clear: after
assisting Barnabas and Paul on Paul’s first missionary journey (as related in
Acts 12:25-13;13, and after assisting Barnabas in Cyprus (as related in Acts
15:36-39), Mark established
churches in Egypt in the
50s, and traveled from there to Rome
in 62, leaving behind Annianus
in Egypt.
Immediately after the deaths of Paul and Peter, Mark left Rome and returned to Egypt.
The martyrdoms of Paul and Peter are
generally assigned to the year 67. Eusebius of Caesarean,
in Book Two, chapter 25 of Church History, states that Paul was beheaded
in Rome, and
that Peter was crucified in the reign of Nero. He also reports that they were
both martyred at the
same time, and cites as his source for this information a man named Dionysius
of Corinth. Dionysius
of Corinth is a fairly early source. Eusebius
reports that he served the church in the early
170s. Jerome, in the first and fifth chapters of De Viris Illustribus,
echoes Eusebius’ information,
stating that Peter and Paul were both martyred “in the fourteen year of the
reign of Nero,
which is the 37th year after the Lord’s Sufferings.”
The account preserved by Severus of
Al-Ushmunain specifically states that Mark was seized by unbelievers in
Alexandria on Easter, when one of their religious festivals, dedicated to the
deity Serapis, occurred, on the 29th day of the month called Barmudah (the
eighth month of the Egyptian calendar), and that he died the next day. Although this is a
late document, its author states that he relied upon earlier sources. One such
earlier text, although it does not say anything about the specific date of
Mark’s martyrdom, agrees regarding the location: the author of The Martyrdom
of Peter of Alexandria (a bishop who was martyred in 311) states, “They
took him up and brought him to the place called Bucolia, where the holy St.
Mark underwent martyrdom for Christ.” The same author states that Peter of
Alexandria entreated his persecutors “to allow him to go to the tomb of St.
Mark.”
Only in certain years would Easter
coincide on the calendar with the festival of Serapis, and the year 68 is one
of those years. Thus, it appears Mark was martyred in 68, in Alexandria,
less than a year after Paul and Peter were martyred in 67 in Rome. If the gist of the tradition preserved
by Irenaeus is followed, then Mark must have had only a small window of
opportunity, if any, after the martyrdoms of Paul and Peter to finish his
Gospel-account.
This does not mean that the
tradition reported by Clement of Alexandria is entirely untrue. After Mark had been in Rome long enough to be recognized as Peter’s
assistant and interpreter, he would have had opportunities to respond to
requests for copies of collections of Peter’s sayings. These collections,
though, may have been shorter than the final form of the Gospel of Mark. A
definitive collection of all of Peter’s remembrances would not be feasible
until after Peter stopped recollecting.
The tradition preserved by Irenaeus
is not likely to be a later invention; creative tradition inventors would tend
to emphasize the apostolic authority of the text. Clement’s tradition, by stating
that Peter neither approved nor disapproved Mark’s undertaking, certainly does
not seem to
have been designed to ensure that readers would regard the Gospel of Mark as
apostolically approved,
but Irenaeus’ tradition, by stating that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark after
Peter had departed
(that is, died), is even less positive, inasmuch as the martyred apostle Peter
cannot even acquiesce
to the text’s contents.
If we thus accept Irenaeus’ basic
version of events, and assign a date in 67 for the martyrdom
of Peter in Rome, and a date in 68 for the
martyrdom of Mark in Alexandria,
then the date
for the composition of the Gospel of Mark must be somewhere in between.
All this provides the background for
the following hypothesis:
In the second half of the year 67,
following the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, as Mark was almost finished writing
his Gospel-account, he was in imminent danger and had to suddenly stop writing
his nearly-complete text, leaving it, and whatever else he had written, in the
hands of his colleagues. Thus, when Mark left Rome, his definitive collection of Peter’s
remembrances was unfinished and unpublished.
Mark’s Roman colleagues were thus
entrusted with an incomplete and unfinished text. They had no desire to insert
material of their own invention into Mark’s text, but they also had no desire
to publish a composition which they all knew was not only unfinished, but which
would be recognized as unfinished by everyone who was familiar with Peter’s
preaching – indeed, by everyone acquainted at all with the message about Jesus.
Therefore, rather than publish the Gospel of Mark without an ending (that is,
with the abrupt ending), they completed it by supplementing it with a short
text which Mark, at an earlier time, had composed about Jesus’ post-resurrection
appearances. Only after this supplement was added did the Roman church begin to
make copies of the Gospel of Mark.
Now let us turn to the subject of
scribes in Egypt
as canon-framers.
B. H. Streeter, in his influential
book The Four Gospels, made an insightful surmise about Mark 16:9-20:
“The hypothesis that Mark 16:9-20 was originally a separate document has the additional
advantage of making it somewhat easier to account for the supplement in the
text of W known as the “Freer logion.” A catechetical summary is a document
which lends itself to expansion;
the fact that a copy of it had been added to Mark would not at once put out of existence
all other copies or prevent them suffering expansion. No doubt as soon as the
addition became
thoroughly established in the Roman text of Mark, it would cease to be copied
as a separate
document. But supposing that a hundred years later an old copy of it in the
expanded version
turned up. It would then be mistaken for a fragment of a very ancient
manuscript of Mark,
and the fortunate discoverer would hasten to add to his copy of Mark – which,
of course, he
would suppose to be defective – the addition preserved in this ancient
witness.”
That seems to me a very plausible origin
for the Freer Logion. Slightly adapted, Streeter’s theory implies that the
Freer Logion did not originate as an expansion in the Gospel of Mark, but as an
expansion of the freestanding Marcan summary of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances
which Mark’s colleagues incorporated into the text of the Gospel of Mark.
But what was such a text doing in Egypt?
It is possible that Mark composed it
earlier, during the period in the 50s-62 when he was in Egypt – the
only locale in which the Freer Logion is known to have existed. (Jerome may have seen the Freer Logion in
Didymus’ church’s copies.)
If Mark’s brief summary of Jesus’
post-resurrection appearances was already used in Egypt as a freestanding
composition, then when the Gospel of Mark arrived from Rome in the late 60s, it
would not be difficult for them to compare it to their copies of the Marcan
composition about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, and immediately see
that the final portion of the text from Rome was not, and could not be, part of
the Petrine Memoirs.
Some of the first individuals in Alexandria to read the
Gospel of Mark would thus be
inclined to regard 16:9-20 as a distinct Marcan composition which, though
valuable as a Marcan
text, simply did not belong in the memoirs of the apostle Peter. As a result,
they declined to
perpetuate it in their copies of the Gospel of Mark, thinking that it lacked apostolic
approval. Everywhere else, the verses were
accepted as part of Mark’s Gospel.
 |
Replica based on an image in a booklet
from the British Museum.
|
P.S.
The tendency to apply a sort of higher criticism to justify the excision
of verses that did not seem to come from the primary author was apparently
shared by one of the copyists of Codex Sinaiticus. At the end of John, Scribe A
finished the text at the end of 21:24, and followed this with the decorative
coronis and the subscription. Then he had second thoughts, erased the decorative
design and subscription, and added 21:25, followed by a new decorative design
and a new subscription. Tischendorf had detected this in the 1800s, but it was
not until the page was exposed to ultraviolet light in research overseen by
Milne and Skeat that the evidence of what the copyist had done literally came
to light.
The initial excision of John 21:25
in Sinaiticus was probably not an altogether isolated case; Theodore of
Mopsuestia (350 to 428), in a statement preserved in Ishodad of Merv’s Commentary
on the Gospels, claimed that the extra material in the Septuagint version of
Job, and the
sentence about the angel moving the waters in John 5:4, and this verse, John
21:25, are “Not the
text of Scripture, but were put above in the margin, in the place of some
exposition; and afterwards,
he says, they were introduced into the text by some lovers of knowledge.” Theodoret may have been repeating a theory of
an earlier writer which was also known to Scribe A of Sinaiticus.
