Tatian and Mark 16:9-20

           Recently the website of the Text & Canon Institute featured a case for Mark 16:9-20, by me, and a case against Mark 16:9-20, by Dr. Peter Head.   My attention in this post is focused on Dr. Head’s reluctance to admit that Tatian knew Mark 16:9-20 and used material from Mark 16:9-20 in the Diatessaron.

          Dr. Head wrote about coming to  “more cautious conclusions about Tatian’s Diatessaron” because “Snapp’s evidence for this second-century harmony actually comes from a sixth-century Latin manuscript and a fourth-century Syriac commentary.”  The sixth-century Latin manuscript to which he referred is Codex Fuldensis.  The fourth-century Syriac commentary to which he referred is the commentary by Ephrem Syrus (d. 373). 

          Before looking into Ephrem’s commentary and Codex Fuldensis further, two things should be pointed out. 

          (1) Dr. Head’s own footnote for the above quotation runs as follows:   “Within this Syriac commentary, the only evidence for the Longer Ending of Mark comes in the form of Jesus’ commission:  ‘Go forth into the whole world, and baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit.”  This admittedly, does seem like a conflation of Mark 16:15 and Matt 28:19.  But that is the only direct evidence.  Quoted from C. McCarthy, Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron: An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with Introduction and Notes (JSSS 2; Oxford: OUP, 1993), 289.”  Notice the line, “This admittedly, does seem like a conflation of Mark 16:15 and Matt 28:19.”  What else does Dr. Head imagine that it could be?         

          (2) Contrary to Dr. Head’s footnote, the passage on page 289 of McCarthy’s book is not “the only direct evidence.”  On page 145, near the beginning of Part VIII of Ephrem’s commentary as preserved in Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 (made in 480-500; see pp. 138-139 of Michelle Brown’s In the Beginning:  Bibles Before the Year 1000 for a picture), McCarthy provides the part of the commentary in which Ephrem’s main focus is on the occasion of the sending of the disciples (in Matthew 10 and Luke 10).  After noting that on this occasion, Jesus “restrained his disciples, lest they preach to the Gentiles,” Ephrem wrote,  “After they had crucified him, he commanded his disciples, ‘Go out into the whole world and proclaim my Gospel to the whole of creation, and baptize all the Gentiles.” (Comm. VIII  §1b in McCarthy 1993).  This was indexed as a reference to Matthew 28:18, but it is clearly based on Mark 16:15. McCarthy notes that §1b “is absent from the Armenian version.”

         Now let’s review some developments in the study of the Diatessaron.  In 1880, in Institute Lectures, Ezra Abbot speculated that the Armenian version of Ephrem’s commentary was “made, it is supposed, in the fifth century” (Institute Lectures p. 173).  (The Armenian manuscripts themselves were from 1195.)  A Latin translation of the Armenian text that had been prepared by J. P. Aucher (using one Armenian manuscript) and edited by George Moesinger (using another Armenian manuscript) was published in 1876, and, Abbot reported, it went “almost unnoticed by scholars.”  

James Rendel Harris 

          J. Rendel Harris, in The Diatessaron of Tatian:  A Preliminary Study, (1890) offered a few more details about this Armenian text of Ephrem’s commentary, beginning on page 22, pointing out that Paul de Lagarde was an exception to Abbot’s generalization.   Harris then described the 1881 work of Theodor Zahn, in Forschungen zur Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons, Theil. 1, “Tatian’s Diatessaron, as “a skillful combination of this work of Ephrem with the earlier Syriac writers” that provides the means to “very nearly judge without the Arabic Harmony, what sequence Tatian followed, what passages he omitted, and what additions his text shews when compared with later texts.”

          Zahn’s work was eclipsed in 1888 by the publication of Tatiani Evangeliorum Harmoniae Arabice by Agostino Ciasca, in which Ciasca presented the Arabic text of the Diatessaron as found in two manuscripts, from the 1100s and 1300s.   Harris reported (on page 8) that in the manuscript from the 1300s, a colophon states that it was translated from Syriac into Arabic by Abu-l-Faraj Abdullah Ben-at-tîb, and that its Syriac basis had been made by ʻIsa ben Ali Almottabbeb, a disciple of Abu Zaid Honain ben Ishaq.

          Harris went on to say that Abu Zaid Honain ben Ishaq was “a famous Syrian physician and writer in medicine, who died in the year 873, and whose headquarters were at Bagdad.”  He also mentions that Bar-hebraeus, a later writer, gives the date of the death of Abdulfarag as A.D. 1043.

          Harris wrote, “The Diatessaron had seen 700 years of Syriac life before its translation into Arabic; and we can readily infer that the Syriac at the time of translation must have been in many points altered from its original cast.  Still, the comparison with the collateral evidence is sufficient to justify us in our belief that we have here substantially the work of Tatian.”

          Mark 16:9-20 is plainly incorporated into the text of the Arabic Diatessaron that was published by Ciasca.  We should ask, then, (1) Is the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 in the Arabic Diatessaron a result of an expansion based on the Peshitta (the Syriac text), and (2) Is the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 in Codex Fuldensis a result of an expansion based on the Vulgate?” 

          To find the answer to this question, we must compare the arrangement of Mark 16:9-20 in the Arabic (Syriac-based) Diatessaron (an Eastern witness) and the arrangement of Mark 16:9-20 in Codex Fuldensis (a Western witness).    

          I should first briefly introduce Codex Fuldensis.  This manuscript was produced in 541-546, under the supervision of bishop Victor of Capua (in Italy).  The Gospels-text in Codex Fuldensis is a Vulgate text, but Victor reported that its arrangement in Codex Fuldensis was based on the arrangement of an older Latin text which Victor suspected of being a translation of Tatian’s Diatessaron.  It is described a little more by J. M. Harden in Some Manuscripts of the Vulgate New Testament.  

          By comparing the arrangement of the material from Mark 16:9–20 in the Arabic Diatessaron, and the arrangement of the material from Mark 16:9–20 and Codex Fuldensis, we can discern whether their arrangements can be reasonably attributed to two independent harmonists, or if they are so similar as to demand to be recognized as a trait derived from Tatian’s Diatessaron.

          Using, for convenience, J. Hamlyn Hill’s 1894 English translation of the Arabic Diatessaron and the presentation of the Latin text of Codex Fuldensis made by Ernestus Ranke (1868), a comparison can be made of eleven aspects of their arrangements of Mark 16:9–20. (“Arab D” represents the Arabic Diatessaron, and “Fuld” represents Codex Fuldensis.)

1►    Arab D 53 has Mk 16:9 after Jn 20:2–17.

1►    Fuld 174 has part of Mk 16:9 between Jn 20:2–10 and 20:11–17.

 

2►    Arab D 53 uses Mk 16:10 after Lk 24:9.

2►    Fuld 176 uses Mk 16:10 after Lk 24:9.

 

3►    Arab D 53 uses Mk 16:11 between Lk 24:10 and 24:11.

3►    Fuld 176 uses Mk 16:11 between Lk 24:9 and 24:11.

 

4►    Arab D 53 uses Mk 16:12 between Lk 24:11 and 24:13.

4►    Fuld 177 uses Mk 16:12 between Lk 24:11 and 24:13.

 

5►    Arab D 53 uses Mk 16:13b between Lk 24:13b–35 and part of Lk 24:36.

5►    Fuld 178 uses Mk 16:13b between Lk 24:13–35 and part of Lk 24:36.

 

6►    Arab D 55 uses Mk 16:14 between Mt 28:17 and 28:18.

6►    Fuld 182 uses Mk 16:14 between Mt 28:17 and 28:18.

 

7►    Arab D 55 uses Mk 16:15 between Mt 28:18 and Mt 28:19.

7►    Fuld 182 uses Mk 16:15 between Mt 28:18 and 28:19.

          (The Arabic text also includes “For even as my Father sent me, so I also send you,” which is normally found in Jn 20:21 but is also in the Peshitta in Mt 28:18.  The Syriac text translated into Arabic was probably conformed to the Peshitta to this extent.)

8►    Arab D uses Mk 16:16–18 between Mt 28:20 and Lk 24:49.

8►    Fuld 182 uses Mk 16:16–18 between Mt 28:20 and Lk 24:49.

 

9►    Arab D blends “And our Lord Jesus,” from Mk 16:19 with Lk 24:50.

9►    Fuld 182 does not.

 

10►  Arab D uses “and sat down at the right hand of God” (from Mk 16:19) between Lk 24:51 and 24:52.

10►  Fuld 182 uses “and sat down at the right hand of God” (from Mk 16:19) between Lk 24:51 and 24:52.

 

11►  Arab D uses Mk 16:20 between Lk 24:53 and Jn 21:25.

11►  Fuld 182 uses Mk 16:20 after Lk 24:53 and ends there with “Amen.” (In Codex Fuldensis, Jn 21:25 appears at the end of 181.)

           So:  there are small differences, but the arrangement of the contents of Mark 16:9–20 in Codex Fuldensis, and the arrangement of the contents of Mark 16:9–20 in the Arabic Diatessaron, are essentially the same. (By the way, this evidence was presented by me in 2012 in The Heroic Age.)

          The agreement between Codex Fuldensis and the Arabic Diatessaron, as evidence that Tatian’s Diatessaron included Mark 16:9-20, has  corroborative witnesses besides Ephrem’s commentary.  One of them is Aphrahat, a Syriac writer who used the Diatessaron.  According to Harris, Aphrahat’s “first 22 homilies are based upon the text of the Diatessaron.”  Harris says that these homilies “were written about the year 336 A.D., and a supplementary 23rd homily was added in the year 345.”

           In Aphrahat’s first homily, also called “Demonstration One:  Of Faith,” he wrote in chapter 17, “When our Lord gave the sacrament of baptism to his apostles, he said thus to them: Whosoever believes and is baptized shall live, and whosoever believes not shall be condemned,” and, “Again he said thus: ‘This shall be the sign for those that believe; they shall speak with new tongues and shall cast out demons, and they shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall be made whole’” (See John Gwynn’s 1898 Selections, Translated into English, from the Hymns and Homilies of Ephrem, and from the Demonstrations of Aphrahat the Persian Sage, on page 351).

          (Aphrahat’s Demonstration One was misidentified in the textual apparatus of the UBS Greek New Testament (1966) as a work of Jacob of Nisibis, even though John Burgon had corrected such misidentification in 1871 on page 258 of The Last Twelve Verses of Mark.)

          In conclusion:  there is no real justification for Dr. Head’s “caution,” and there should be no doubt at all that Mark 16:9-20 was in Tatian’s Diatessaron.

 

Video Lecture 23: Consult the Evidence

Lecture 23 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism is available to view, with captions, on YouTube, about the advantages of consulting the external evidence for the New Testament text.  Special attention is given to 14 manuscripts and one inscription.  Links to some online manuscript-collections are included in the captions at the end of the lecture.

It can also be viewed, without captions, on Bitchute.

Here is an excerpt:

            Fifth, the Book of Kells.  The Book of Kells is so famous, because of its artistry, that it's easy to overlook it as a textual witness might be overlooked.  Widely regarded as the most beautifully written of all Gospels-manuscripts, the text in the Book of Kells might be considered just another copy of the Vulgate.  For the most part, that is what it is – but it also has some readings that echo Old Latin ancestors that pre-dated the Vulgate.

             One of the readings in the Book of Kells, and several other Latin copies, occurs in Matthew 27:49.  After Matthew’s report that some of the bystanders at Jesus’ crucifixion said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him,” the very next thing that happens, in most copies, is that Jesus cries out with a loud voice, and yields up His spirit.   But in the Book of Kells, before verse 50, there is more.  It says,      

            “And another person took a spear, and pierced His side, and there came out water and blood.”

            This is an approximate parallel to John 19:34.   The significant difference is that in John, when Jesus is pierced, He is already dead; the soldiers pierce His side to remove any doubt that He has died.  The reading in the Book of Kells appears to be an interpolation, inserted by a scribe trying to make a harmonization – but the insertion was made at the wrong place, before Jesus dies.

            But the originator of this reading cannot have been a Latin scribe, because the same reading is also found in Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, the two Greek manuscripts that form the backbone of the base-text of the New Testament in the NIV and ESV. 

             As a side-note, I have noticed that although the NIV and ESV rely very heavily on these two manuscripts, the reading of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus in Matthew 27:49 has not been adopted in their text, and, as far as I can tell,  is not mentioned in the NIV and ESV in a footnote, even though it is supported by some other Alexandrian witnesses such as Codices C and L.

            If we reckon that witnesses that share the same readings tend to have the same origin, then the thing to see is that the witnesses with this relatively rare reading in Matthew 27:49 must be connected in some way, even though some of them represent a stratum of the Latin Text in Ireland, and some of them represent a very early form of the Greek Gospels-text used in Egypt. 

            This connection is also suggested by similarities between some of the artwork in the borders of the Book of Kells, and in the artwork that appears in some Coptic manuscripts.

          Which brings us to our sixth witness:  the Fadden More Psalter.   The discovery, in 2006, of the Fadden More Psalter is another piece of evidence that increases the plausibility of a connection between a Biblical text in Ireland, and a Biblical text in Egypt.  The Fadden More Psalter is is a very heavily damaged Latin copy of the Book of Psalms that was made in about the year 800.

            The parchment pages of the Faddan More Psalter were found along with a leather cover.  It was found in a bog, near the city of Tipperary.  The discoverer, Eddie Fogerty, exercised remarkable skill and competence in preserving the manuscript once it was discovered.  One of the interesting things about the cover is that there is definitely papyrus in the cover’s lining.

             Sometimes, we cannot access the evidence directly because it does not exist anymore.  That is probably the case with our seventh witness:  Codex Gissensis.  For a few decades after its discovery in Egypt in 1907, a small Gothic and Latin fragment, with text from Luke 23 and 34, was kept in Germany.  Unfortunately, it was reportedly destroyed as a result of bombing during World War II.  But black and white photographs of the manuscript have survived.

            Similarly, when Lake Nasser was enlarged on the southern border of Egypt around the year 1970, many artifacts from the ancient site of Faras were heroically rescued by a team of researchers from Poland, and they can still be visited at the National Museum in Warsaw.  Some inscriptions had to be left behind, though, and were subsequently submerged. 

            But photographs of them were taken, including a photograph of our ninth witness:  an inscription that features the beginning and ending of each Gospel.  Even this small witness can help track the geographic spread of variants in these portions of the text.            

Mark 16:9-20, Irenaeus, and Ephraim the Scribe

          Earlier this month at The Gospel Coalition’s blog, Elijah Hixson posted some thoughts about Mark 16:9-20, addressing the question of why anyone would question the authenticity of the passage – as several Bibles versions, such as the ESV, incite readers to do, by means of their vague and misleading footnotes.  Hixson points out that although such footnotes refer ambiguously to “Some manuscripts” or “Some of the earliest manuscripts,” the actual number of Greek manuscripts of Mark in which the text ends at the end of 16:8 is exactly two.       

            Hixson also points out that those two manuscripts are from the 300s, and “around AD 180, Irenaeus unambiguously quoted Mark 16:19.”  He also points out that two other writers from the 100s, Justin Martyr and Tatian, “likely knew the verses.”  Thus the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20, besides being supported by over 1,600 Greek manuscripts (and hundreds of Greek lectionaries), is supported by the very early patristic evidence.  Furthermore, the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 is supported not only in terms of antiquity (the oldest witnesses) and quantity (the greatest amount of witnesses), but also in terms of range of attestation:  Mark 16:9-20 has early support from numerous authors – not named by Hixson – in many different locations across the Roman Empire (from Patrick in Ireland, to Ambrose in Milan, to Augustine in North Africa, to Macarius Magnes (and the pagan author whose work he addresses) in Asia Minor (SW Turkey), to Aphrahat in Syria, and to Eznik of Golb in Armenia, to name a few). 

            Hixson did not go into detail about the very strong patristic support for Mark 16:9-20.  He gave an inordinate proportion of his attention to evidence against the inclusion of these 12 verses.  Nevertheless, I like his conclusion:  “Because Mark 16:9-20 is undeniably early, is present in 99 percent of manuscripts, and has traditionally been considered canonical, I recommend keeping it in the text.” 

            Hixson qualified that, stating, “It’s probably not from Mark” – but the crucial question concerns its presence, or absence, in the autograph, not its authorship.  If we were to start erasing every part of Scripture that is present due to the involvement of a redactor or supplemental author, the books of Psalms, Proverbs, Jeremiah, etc., would significantly shrink. 

            Some other commentators on Mark 16:9-20 have misled their readers in ways that Hixson avoided:

 ● Dan Wallace’s NET’s text-critical note on Mark 16:9-20 fails to mention Irenaeus, Justin and Tatian.  The NET’s note only mentions Eusebius and Jerome with the statement, “Jerome and Eusebius knew of almost no Greek mss that had this ending,” and avoids mentioning their use of the passage.         

            Wallace, Evans, Wright, and numerous other commentators have made false claims that Mark 16:9-20 is marked by text-critically significant asterisks and obeli in non-annotated manuscripts.

            ● Norman Geisler and numerous other commentators have spread the false claim that Mark 16:9-20 is absent from “many manuscripts.”

            ● Ben Witherington III and several other commentators have spread the false claim that Eusebius showed no knowledge of Mark 16:9-20.

            ● John MacArthur made over a dozen false claims about evidence pertinent to Mark 16:9-20, in the course of a 2011 sermon in which he called Mark 16:9-20 “a bad ending.”

            (The cascade of misinformation about Mark 16:9-20 from commentators and Bible-footnotes escaped mention in the recent book Myths & Mistakes.)

            Although Hixson did not fall into such egregious errors, there are five ways in which his good analysis might be made better.

A note about Mark 16:9-20
in GA 22.

            (1)  Hixson commended the treatment that the medieval scribe Ephraim in GA 1582 gave to Mark 16:9-20.  However, there was more to Ephraim’s treatment that Hixson did not mention.  Yes, Ephraim perpetuated the note, Ἔν τισι μεν τῶν ἄντιγράφων, ἔως ώδε πληροῦται ὁ ἐυαγγελιστής, εως ου και Ευσεβιος ο Παμφίλου εκανόνισεν· ἐν πολλοῖς δὲ ταῦτα φέρεται – “In some of the copies, the evangelist finishes here, up to which point also Eusebius of Pamphilus [i.e., Eusebius of Caesarea, who was a student of Pamphilus] made canon sections. But in many the following is also contained.”  But he also did something else.

            Ephraim included another note (also borrowed from his exemplar) at Mark 16:19:  Ειρηναιος ο των αποστόλων πλησίον εν τω προς τας αιρέσεις Τριτωι λόγωι τουτο Ανήνεγκεν το ρητον ως Μάρκω ειρημένον – that is, “Irenaeus, who lived near the time of the apostles, cites this from Mark in the third book of his work Against Heresies.”

            If footnote-formaters really want to emulate Ephraim, (as the Tyndale House Greek New Testament attempts to do) they should not only mention that 99% of the extant Greek manuscripts of Mark – or “many,” as Ephraim’s note says – include Mark 16:9-20, but also mention that Irenaeus quoted from Mark 16:19 when he wrote Book 3 of Against Heresies in about A.D. 180 – long before the production of any extant manuscript that contains Mark 16.

Top:  The last page of Mark in Codex B,
ending the text at 16:8.
Bottom:  the same page, with 16:9-20
superimposed in the copyist's lettering.

             (2) In addition to mentioning that Vaticanus (B) and Sinaiticus (ℵ) are the only Greek manuscripts of Mark in which the text of 16:8 is followed by nothing but the closing title, it would be helpful to draw readers’ attention to the remarkable unusual features in these manuscripts pertaining to the ending of Mark:  Codex Vaticanus has a distinct blank space after the end of Mark 16:8 – the only such blank space in the entire New Testament portion of the manuscript, and (contra Wallace) the only blank space that is not explained as a natural effect of factors involved in the codex’s production.  Verses 9-20 fit within this blank space with a minimal reduction in letter-spacing. 

            Meanwhile, Codex Sinaiticus contains a replacement-sheet at the end of Mark – that is, the four pages that contain Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 were not produced by the same copyist who made the surrounding pages – and the rate of letters-per-line by the copyist who produced the text on those pages (almost certainly the diorthotes, or supervisor) shows that he made a deliberate effort to avoid leaving a blank column after 16:8.  Thus while B and ℵ echo exemplars in which verses 9-20 were absent, they also attest to their copyists’ awareness of exemplars in which verses 9-20 were included.

            (3)  Witnesses for Ephraim’s note, and for the Shorter Ending, should be brought into focus.  Hixson mentioned that “At least 23 Greek manuscripts that include Mark 16:9-20 also have anomalies like extra endings or notes that express doubts concerning the authenticity of these verses.”  It should be emphasized that the manuscripts with additional notes are not independent witnesses; they represent the family-1 manuscript-cluster, echoing the same scribal tradition shared by Ephraim’s exemplar. 

            Manuscripts 1, 205, 2886 [that’s 2886, the same MS also known as 205abs, not 2866 – readers of my book, Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20, be aware that there is a typo there!], 209, and 1582 descend from a common ancestor, and manuscripts 15, 22, 1110, 1192, and 1210 share the same pedigree; they echo the same note that Ephraim preserved but without mentioning Eusebius’ cross-reference system (probably because when and where these copies were made, the Eusebian Canons had already been expanded to include the verses).               
            Manuscripts 20, 215, and 300 share the note ἐντεῦθεν εως το τέλος ἔεν τισι τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὐ κεῖται· ἐν δε τοις ἀρχαίοις πάντα ἀπαράλειπτα κεῖται,” that is, “From here (i.e., the end of 16:8) to the end forms no part of the text in some of the copies. But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact.”  These three manuscripts also share the Jerusalem Colophon, showing their contact with the same transmission-line.

            So, ten of Hixson’s 23 manuscripts echo the same source, and three of them echo another source.  If we are serious about applying the old axiom, “Manuscripts must be weighed, not counted,” then the relationships of these manuscripts’ texts, as echoes of the same voice, should be highlighted.  

           

            (4)  While the subject of the relationships of witnesses is in view, Jerome’s dependence, in his Epistle 120, To Hedibia, upon Eusebius’ earlier comments in Ad Marinum, should be revisited.  Hixson claimed:  “Even though Jerome and Severus were clearly drawing from Eusebius’s work, nothing in their experience with manuscripts prevented them from repeating Eusebius’s claims that the majority of manuscripts (Jerome), or at least the most accurate ones (Jerome and Severus), lacked those verses.” 

            However, that is only part of the picture.  Jerome’s use of Eusebius’ much-condensed claim as the basis to reject the passage (and thus resolve the perceived discrepancy under discussion) should not be considered without also considering Jerome’s acceptance of the passage: 

            After Jerome says: 

            This problem has a twofold solution.  Either we do not accept the testimony of Mark, because this final portion is not contained in most of the Gospels that bear his name – almost all the Greek codices lacking it –

            he proceeds:

            or else we must affirm that Matthew and Mark have both told the truth, that our Lord rose on the evening of the Sabbath, and that He was seen by Mary Magdalene in the morning of the first day of the following week.
            And he proceeds to take the second option:

            So this is how this passage of Saint Mark should be read:  “Jesus arising,” place a little pause here, then add, “on the first day of the week in the morning appeared to Mary Magdalene,” so that, being raised, according to Saint Matthew, in the evening of the last day of the week, He appeared to Mary Magdalene, according to Saint Mark, “the morning of the first day of the week,” which is how John also represents the events, stating that He was seen on the morning of the next day.

            Jerome could have said, “Since the passage is absent from most copies of the Gospel of Mark, we should reject it.”  But he did just the opposite.  He casually left his abridgment of Eusebius’ claim about Greek manuscripts where he dropped it, and did not pick it up again, because his purpose was to resolve a harmonization between two passages which both he and Hedibia already accepted. 

            Also relevant to the evidence from Jerome are (1) the possibility that Jerome expected Hedibia to recognize that he was borrowing from Ad Marinum, and (2) his statement in his Preface to the Vulgate Gospels (383/384) that he edited the Vulgate Gospels on the basis of ancient Greek manuscripts, and (3) his statement in 417, in Against the Pelagians, that after Mark 16:14, there was – “in certain exemplars, especially in Greek codices” – the interpolation known as the Freer Logion.  Jerome pictured the Freer Logion as something unusual, while the presence of Mark 16:14 was ordinary.  A heavy spotlight has been put on Jerome’s casual use of Eusebius’ statement about manuscripts in Ad Marinum, while Jerome’s complete acceptance of Mark 16:9-20 – an acceptance somewhat difficult to account for, if almost all Greek codices available to him ended Mark’s text at verse 8 – has tended to be pushed into the shadows.  
          

            (5) Hixson stated that the note preserved by Ephraim “probably predates 10th-century Ephraim by a few hundred years.”  However, as observed by K.W. Kim in 1950 in his article Codices 1582, 1739, and Origen in the Journal of Biblical Literature, the most recent patristic citations in the margin-notes in 1582 are from Basil of Cappadocia (329-379); a reasonable explanation for the non-use of more recent writings is that Ephraim’s exemplar was made only shortly after Basil’s death.  However, 1582 also has a note about the pericope adulterae  – which is found in f-1’s flagship members at the end of the Gospel of John  – which reads, “The chapter about the adulteress: in the Gospel according to John, this does not appear in the majority of copies; nor is it commented upon by the divine fathers whose interpretations have been preserved – specifically, by John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria; nor is it taken up by Theodore of Mopsuestia and the others.  For this reason, it was not kept in the place where it is found in a few copies, at the beginning of the 86th chapter [that is, the 86th Eusebian section], following, ‘Search and see that a prophet does not arise out of Galilee.’” 

            The names of the authors in this note push the production-date of the exemplar of 1582 forward a bit; it must be later than Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444).  But even if we were to posit that Ephraim’s exemplar was produced a full century after Cyril’s death, a production-date in the mid-500s would be a bit more than “a few hundred years” before the mid-900s.
         
            More could be said about some other things that Hixson mentioned, but for additional details I refer readers to my book, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20, and for some interesting analysis of Jerome’s letter to Hedibia, see Andrew Cain’s 2003 article Defending Hedibia and Detecting Eusebius: Jerome’s Correspondence with Two Gallic Women (Epist. 120-21).

POSTSCRIPT

            To shine some light on the testimony of Eusebius, whose words are habitually blurred and misrepresented by commentators, here are three relevant extracts from Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ad Marinum, where he discussed the ending of Mark.  (Based on Roger Pearse’s 2010 Eusebius of Caesarea – Gospel Problems & Solutions.) 

From Q-&-A #1: 

            Your first question was:  How is it that the Savior’s resurrection evidently took place, in Matthew, “late on the Sabbath,” but in Mark “early in the morning on the first day of the week”?

            The answer to this would be twofold.  The actual nub of the matter is the pericope which says this.  One who athetises that pericope would say that it is not found in all copies of the Gospel according to Mark:  accurate copies end their text of the Marcan account with the words of the young man whom the women saw, and who said to them, “Do not be afraid; it is Jesus the Nazarene that you are looking for, etc. …”, after which it adds, “And when they heard this, they ran away, and said nothing to anyone, because they were frightened.”  That is where the text does end, in almost all copies of the gospel according to Mark.  What occasionally follows in some copies, not all, would be extraneous, most particularly if it contained something contradictory to the evidence of the other evangelists.

            That, then, would be one person’s answer:  to reject it, entirely obviating the question as superfluous.

            Another view, from someone diffident about athetising anything at all in the text of the gospels, however transmitted, is that there is a twofold reading, as in many other places, and that both are to be accepted; it is not for the faithful and devout to judge either as acceptable in preference to the other.

            Supposing the latter point of view to be granted as true, the proper thing to do with the reading is to interpret its meaning.  If we were to divide up the sense of the wording, we would not find it in conflict with the words in Matthew to the effect that the Savior’s resurrection was “late on the Sabbath,” because we shall read the words in Mark: “Having risen again early in the morning” with a pause, punctuating after “Having risen again,” and making a break in the sense before the following words.  Let us then refer “having risen again” back to Matthew’s “late on the Sabbath,” because that was when the resurrection had taken place; but the next part forms part of a separate idea, so let us connect it with the words that follow:  “early in the morning on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary of Magdala.”

            As confirmation, that is what John has told us, as well:  he too testifies that Jesus had been seen by the Magdalene early in the morning on the first day of the week. In this way, therefore, he appeared to her “early in the morning” in Mark also.  It was not that the resurrection took place early in the morning; it was well before that, “late on the Sabbath,” as Matthew has it.  That was when he appeared to Mary, after his resurrection; the appearance was not at the time of the resurrection, but “early in the morning.”

            Thus two points of time are presented here:  that of the resurrection, “late on the Sabbath,” and that of the Savior’s appearance, “early in the morning,” as written by Mark in words to be read as including a pause:  “Having risen again.”  Then the next words are to be pronounced after our punctuation-mark: “early in the morning on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary of Magdala, from whom he had driven out seven devils.”

FROM Q-&A #2, Part 9 (Where Eusebius suggests that there were two women known as Mary Magdalene):

            It is perfectly reasonable to say that two Marys came from the same place, Magdala.  There is then no difficulty in saying that one of them was the Magdalene who, in Matthew, came to the tomb late on the sabbath; and then again that the other, also a Magdalene, came there early in the morning, in John, and that she is the one of whom it is stated in Mark (according to some copies) that “he had cast seven devils” out of her, and also presumably the one who heard the words “Do not touch me” –but not the one in Matthew, about whom, even if she too was certainly from Magdala, the divine scripture makes no such derogatory statement. 

FROM Q-&-A #3, Part 4:

            Supposing, however, that it is conceded that it is not the same one, but that there is one Mary who is there with the other Mary, according to Matthew, and a different one who, in John, comes to the tomb alone, early in the morning, while it was still dark; all doubt would then be resolved.  There would be, late on the sabbath, the women who arrive first, being more fervent and having more faith; they hear the Savior’s greeting, worship him, and are found fit to clasp his feet. Then the Mary in John would be a different person, who gets there later than the others, early in the morning; this would be the same one from whom, according to Mark, he had cast out seven devils.



Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.

Mark 10:24: Is It Easy to Enter the Kingdom?

            In Mark 10:23, Jesus told His followers, “How difficult it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.”  This was just after a young man with many possessions had gone away from Jesus, after Jesus had invited him to sell everything he had, and give to the poor, and expect heavenly treasures instead.  The disciples were astonished.  But then, in Mark 10:24, Jesus affirmed:  “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!”

Mark 10:24 in GA 2474 (900s).

            That is Jesus’ statement in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, representative of a broad assortment of locales.  The same sense is given in the KJV, the NKJV, the EHV (Evangelical Heritage Version), the MEV (Modern English Version), and the WEB (World English Bible).  The Latin Vulgate (produced by Jerome in 383), the Gothic Version (produced by Wulfilas in the mid-300s), the Peshitta (the dominant Syriac version, probably produced in the late 300s), the Sinaitic Syriac, and most Old Latin copies (representing Latin translations made before the Vulgate) agree with this.

            Yet, when one turns to popular modern English versions such as the ESV, NIV, and CSB, the text of Mark 10:24 is shorter:  the phrase “for those who trust in riches” is absent.  This is not due to any editorial decision on the part of translators:  the phrase is missing in four important early manuscripts Sinaiticus (ℵ), Vaticanus (B), Delta (Δ), and Ψ, and in the Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis (k), and two Egyptian versions (the Sahidic and Bohairic). 

            Although ℵ, B, and k are old (from the fourth and fifth centuries) they are relatively isolated.  Furthermore, this is one of those cases – not as rare as one might think – in which our earliest manuscripts are not our earliest evidence.  Two important patristic writers provide significantly older evidence:  Clement of Alexandria (in the fourth chapter of his composition Who Is The Rich Man Who Shall Be Saved?), and Ephrem Syrus (in his Commentary on the Diatessaron). Let’s look at them one at a time.

            The exact years of Clement of Alexandria’s birth and death are unknown, but it can be safely deduced that he served the church from some time in the 180s to some time in the 210s.  Clement espoused various controversial doctrines, but for today’s purposes, we may zoom in on his quotations in the composition Who Is the Rich Man Who Shall Be Saved?:  in chapter 4, Clement makes an extensive quotation from Mark 10:17-31, specifically stating (at the outset of the next chapter) that he is drawing on text from the Gospel of Mark.  The text of Clement’s work was the subject of a doctoral dissertation by Reuben Swanson, and in his volume on Mark in the New Testament Greek Manuscripts series, he provides the relevant extract from Mark 10:23:
            περιβλεψαμενος δε ο Ιησους λεγει τοις μαθηταις αυτου, πως δυσκολως οι τα χρηματα (χρημα 1 ms) εχοντες ειςελευσονται εις την βασιλειαν του θεου.   
            Here is the Byzantine text of Mark 10:23, with differences noted:

            Και περιβλεψαμενος [Clement has και before περιβλεψαμενος, instead of δε after it]

            ο Ιησους λεγει τοις μαθηταις αυτου, [no differences]

            πως δυσκολως οι τα χρηματα (χρημα 1 ms) [no differences]

            εχοντες εις την βασιλειαν του θεου ειςελευσονται [Clement has ειςελευσονται before the words εις την βασιλειαν του θεου instead of after them].  

            Likewise for Mark 10:24, Swanson has provided Clement’s text:

            Οι δε μαθηται εθαμβουντο επι τοις λογοις αυτου.   παλιν δε ο Ιησους αποκριθεις λεγει αυτοις, Τεκνα, πως δυσκολον εστι τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημσασιν εις την βασιλειαν του θεου εισελθειν.

            Comparing this to the Byzantine text of Mark 10:24, bit by bit, we see the following differences:

            Οι δε μαθηται εθαμβουντο επι τοις λογοις αυτου.   [no differences]

            παλιν δε ο Ιησους αποκριθεις λεγει αυτοις, [transposition of παλιν]

            Τεκνα, πως δυσκολον εστιν τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημσασιν [spelling; χρημασιν]

            εις την βασιλειαν του θεου εισελθειν [no differences].

            (I think Swanson’s transcription contains a typo and should read χρημασιν.)

            The thing to see is that as Clement quotes Mark 10:24, he quotes it with the words τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημσασιν – not in the Alexandrian form (which lacks this phrase), and not in the Western form (in which verse 24 appears after verse 25).  Thus we have confirmation, in a patristic composition written around the year 200 in Egypt, of the presence of this phrase in Mark 10:24.

            Now we turn to Ephrem Syrus.  Ephrem wrote in the mid-300s, in Syria, in the Syriac language.  The Diatessaron – the text upon which he wrote a commentary – is older; an individual named Tatian compiled the Diatessaron as a combination of all four Gospel accounts, in the early 170s.  The discovery of an important manuscript of Ephrem’s commentary on the Diatessaron was announced in 1957, when Syriac MS 709, assigned to the late 400s, was added to the Chester Beatty collection – and subsequently additional parts of Ephrem’s commentary were found, including two more portions of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 in the 1980s.  Not only was this evidence was unavailable to Hort in 1881; it was unavailable to Metzger when he wrote his Textual Commentary on the New Testament. 

            When we look into Ephrem’s quotations from Tatian’s Diatessaron, (cf. page 231 of Carmel McCarthy’s Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron:  An English Translation of Chester Beatty Syriac MS 709 with an Introduction and Notes) we see this statement:  “When he turned away, our Lord said, It is difficult for those who trust in their own riches.”  One might initially suspect that Ephrem has merely cited 10:23, but the quotation does not refer merely to those who possess wealth; it refers to those who trust in their wealth – a statement not found in Mark 10:23, nor in the parallel accounts in Matthew 19:23-24 and Luke 18:24-25, but exclusively in Mark 10:24.

            Via Ephrem’s comment, we may see the Gospels-text used by Tatian in the 170s – a text in which Mark 10:24 included the phrase “for those who trust in riches.”

            Thus two very early patristic writers, from two far-removed branches of the transmission-stream, constitute strong support for the inclusion of the words “for those who trust in riches” in the text of Mark 10:24; finding these citations in the quotations of Clement and Ephrem is roughly congruent to finding small second-century papyrus fragments of Mark 10:24 in Alexandria (where Clement wrote) and in Rome (where Tatian studied under Justin Martyr).

            Nevertheless, what answer shall be given to Metzger’s theory (phrased as an assertion):  “The rigor of Jesus’ saying was softened by the insertion of one or another qualification that limited its generality and brought it into closer connection with the context”?  Besides mentioning the usual reading, he adds that two different readings are attested:  Codex W and it^c support πλουσιον, and 1241 reads οι τα χρηματα εχοντες.  The counter-point is not hard to find: πλουσιον is not a wholesale insertion, but a harmonization to the parallels in Matthew and Luke; meanwhile οι τα χρηματα εχοντες is a harmonization to the identical phrase in Mark 10:23.  (Willker mentions that the latter harmonization is read by five other minuscules, 588, 973. 1090, 2791, and 2812.)

            Finally, we may consider the simple mechanics by which the phrase for those who trust in riches could be lost.  This phrase – τους πεποιθοτας επι χρημασιν – ends with the same two letters that come before it, at the end of the word εστιν.  If an early copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters ιν at the end of εστιν to the letters εστιν at the end of χρημασιν a line or two later, the accidental disappearance of the phrase in an early transmission-stream in Egypt is accounted for.  Meanwhile, everywhere else, the phrase was included, perpetuating the original reading, though in some witnesses it was expanded (so as to read “in their riches”) or harmonized to the parallels in Matthew and Luke or to the preceding verse.

            So, rather than tell His disciples that it is hard to enter into the kingdom of God, Jesus did not contradict what He said elsewhere, that His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  Entering God’s kingdom can be hard indeed, if we attach ourselves to the things of this world and turn them into priorities above the will of God.  But if we let go of the things of this world, and trust in the atoning work of Christ, with surrendered hearts, then the entrance into God’s kingdom, even through tribulations, can become not only easy, but joyful.

Cherry-picking in Edinburgh

            Have you ever been misled by “cherry-picking”?   I bought a new car last week! – a new Hot Wheels car.  I won half a million dollars yesterday! – in a game of Monopoly.  Details matter, and the omission of important details can result in the spread of false impressions.

            Teachers and commentators who describe evidence very selectively risk giving false impressions to their students and readers.  This is unfortunately a frequent phenomenon when it comes to the way the evidence pertaining to John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20 is described,   The result:  students leave the classroom, or readers leave the commentary, with a thoroughly distorted picture of the evidence.  It’s not that anyone has lied to them.  They simply have not been told the whole story.  Consider an example:  the recent descriptions of evidence pertaining to those two passages made by Dr. Larry Hurtado of the University of Edinburgh.  Dr, Hurtado is a distinguished professor with impressive credentials; surely he can be trusted to describe text-critical evidence objectively and accurately and with only the mildest of bias, right?  Well let’s see: 

            In a recent blog-post titled More on Rethinking the Textual Transmission of the Gospels, Dr. Hurtado claimed that John 7:53-8:11 “first appears in the extant manuscripts in the fifth century.”  Technically, it is true that we have no manuscripts made before the 400s in which the passage appears,  just as it is technically true that I recently bought a new car and won half a million dollars.  But the impression that that statement gives – that the passage did not began to occupy that location in the Gospels until the 400s – is false. 

            The risk of conveying such a false impression could have been avoided if Dr. Hurtado had shared just one more bit of evidence:  Jerome’s testimony that he had found the story of the adulteress in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin.  Or, if Jerome is too obscure an author to be considered worth mentioning, perhaps the testimony of Ambrose would have been sufficient.  

            A writer resorting to less cherry-picking might inform readers and students about the different types of early Latin breves, or chapter-summaries, which refer to the story about the adulteress in its usual place in the Gospel of John – including Type I (generally regarded as contemporary with Ambrose, and with Zeno of Verona) and Type Cy; the “Cy” stands for Cyprian, the prominent author and bishop in the 200s; this form of the breves has been assigned to the time of Cyprian or slightly later.  If the composition-dates that have been given to these chapter-summaries are correct, then their testimony implies that the pericope adulterae was in Latin copies of the Gospel of John in the 200s.   

            When these pieces of evidence are added to the equation, though, there is a cost:  the narrative in which John 7:53-8:11 doesn’t show up until the fifth century crumbles to pieces.  A wider, fuller view of the evidence does not support Dr. Hurtado’s contention that this passage became part of the text of the Gospel of John “not in some early “wild” period, but later, in the period of supposed textual stability.”           

            More cherry-picking is in Dr. Hurtado’s description of evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20.  “The first Greek manuscripts that allow us to check the matter are Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, which don’t have these verses.”  That is technically true, but why has Dr. Hurtado mentioned these two manscripts from the fourth century without mentioning the much earlier testimony of Tatian and Irenaeus?  Tatian incorporated the passage into his Diatessaron in the 170s, and Irenaeus specifically quoted Mark 16:19 from the Gospel of Mark, in Against Heresies Book 3, chapter 10, around the year 180.  Here we have two pieces of evidence, both well over a century older than Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  Why are they hidden from view?  Some of Dr. Hurtado’s readers might imagine that the testimony of Tatian and Irenaeus has been avoided because if their testimony were given a spotlight, it would be extremely difficult to convince anyone that the picture that Dr. Hurtado has painted of the history of Mark 16:9-20 can be plausibly maintained. 

Codex Vaticanus, with Mark 16:9-20
added in the space that appears
in the manuscript after 16:8.

            And why did Dr. Hurtado mention Vaticanus without also mentioning its special blank space after Mark 16:8?  Why did Dr. Hurtado mention Sinaiticus without mentioning that the last part of Mark and the first part of Luke occupy a cancel-sheet – that is, four replacement-pages, on which the lettering has unusual features that indicate the copyist’s awareness of the absent verses?  Again, students and readers might be forgiven for imagining that such information has not been shared because it makes Dr. Hurtado’s theory appear contrived.

            Finally, why did Dr. Hurtado describe Mark 16:9-20 as part of “the Medieval text of Mark,” instead of “The Second-Century Text of Mark,” in light of the testimony of Tatian and Irenaeus?  (And the testimony of Apostolic Constitutions and Ambrose and Augustine and Macarius Magnes and Marcus Eremita and some others who wrote in the time of the Roman Empire).  How is that not just spin?  Spin is exactly what it is.  

            Dr. Hurtado stated, “To find the variant in the manuscript tradition we have to go to later, to the fifth/sixth century, in Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Bezae, and others.”  (As if the presence of Mark 16:9-20 in Codices A, D, W, the Vulgate, and the Peshitta does not imply a much earlier ancestry.)  But we have more evidence besides just manuscripts; why would anyone put on blinders by ignoring the widespread patristic evidence that demonstrates that Mark 16:9-20 was in widespread use in the early centuries of Christianity?  Why point out the testimony from Sinaiticus (c. 350) without mentioning the testimony of Aphrahat (337)?  It might seem to some readers and students that a lot of evidence that is inconvenient for their professor’s proposal has not been presented – at least, it would seem so, if somehow they were to learn about that evidence’s existence.

            A third variant was mentioned by Dr. Hurtado, and I will mention it just for the sake of thoroughness.  The scenarios involving John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20 are nothing like the scenario involving Dr. Hurtado’s third variant, the Comma Johanneum.  Its adoption in the Textus Receptus was the result of Erasmus’ statement (after he had compiled the Greek text without the Comma) that if he had possessed a Greek manuscript with the passage, he would have included it), plus two other things:  Erasmus’ desire to make another edition, and the premiere of Codex Montfortianus.  This is no more like the situation regarding Mark 16:9-20 – a passage with second-century patristic support, and which is included in over 99% of the Greek manuscript of Mark – than Barney Fife is like the Incredible Hulk.    

            If you want to be taught about the transmission of the early New Testament text in a way that treats the evidence fairly, without having your professor mold the evidence, and pick and choose which evidence gets a megaphone, and which evidence is silenced – my impression is that you won’t find what you’re looking for at the University of Edinburgh.  Asbury Theological Seminary isn’t a good option either.

            One more thing:  Dr. Hurtado recommended Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary to those who want more information about the variants he mentioned.  Let it be noted that Metzger’s Textual Commentary contains misleading statements about Mark 16:9-20.  Also, dislocations of John 7:53-8:11 occurred due to the influence of lection-cycles, not (contra Metzger, Wallace, White, et al) due to the untenable idea that the pericope adulterae was a “floating” text (a theory which has been tested, and dismantled).

                     One more one more thing:  from now till Christmas, upon the request of any student at the University of Edinburgh and Asbury Theological Seminary, I will gladly send a digital copy of my research-books, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20, and A Fresh Analysis of John 7:53-8:11, free of charge. 



Readers are invited to explore the embedded links in this post for additional resources.