§ 5.

The word απεχει in St. Mark xiv. 41 has proved a stumbling-block. The most obvious explanation is probably the truest. After a brief pause [397], during which the Saviour has been content to survey in silence His sleeping disciples;—or perhaps, after telling them that they will have time and opportunity enough for sleep and rest when He shall have been taken from them;—He announces the arrival of 'the hour,' by exclaiming, Απεχει,—'It is enough;' or, 'It is sufficient;' i.e. The season for repose is over.

But the 'Revisers' of the second century did not perceive that απεχει is here used impersonally [398]. They understood the word to mean 'is fully come'; and supplied the supposed nominative, viz. το τελοσ [399]. Other critics who rightly understood απεχει to signify 'sufficit,' still subjoined 'finis.' The Old Latin and the Syriac versions must have been executed from Greek copies which exhibited,—απεχει το τελος. This is abundantly proved by the renderings adest finis (f),—consummatus est finis (a); from which the change to απεχει το τελος ΚΑΙ 'η 'ωρα (the reading of D) was obvious: sufficit finis et hora (d q); adest enim consummatio; et (ff² venit) hora (c); or, (as the Peshitto more fully gives it), appropinquavit finis, et venit hora[400]. Jerome put this matter straight by simply writing sufficit. But it is a suggestive circumstance, and an interesting proof how largely the reading απεχει το τελος must once have prevailed, that it is frequently met with in cursive copies of the Gospels to this hour [401]. Happily it is an 'old reading' which finds no favour at the present day. It need not therefore occupy us any longer.

As another instance of ancient Glosses introduced to help out the sense, the reading of St. John ix. 22 is confessedly 'ινα εαν τις αυτον 'ομολογησηι Χριστον. So all the MSS. but one, and so the Old Latin. So indeed all the ancient versions except the Egyptian. Cod. D alone adds ειναι: but ειναι must once have been a familiar gloss: for Jerome retains it in the Vulgate: and indeed Cyril, whenever he quotes the place [402], exhibits τον Χριστον ειναι. Not so however Chrysostom [403] and Gregory of Nyssa [404].