In order to exhibit successfully what I have to offer on this subject, I find it necessary to begin (in the next chapter) at the very beginning. I think it right, however, in this place to premise a few plain considerations which will be of use to us throughout all our subsequent inquiry; and which indeed we shall never be able to afford to lose sight of for long.
The question at issue being simply this,—Whether it is reasonable to suspect that the last twelve verses of S. Mark are a spurious accretion and unauthorized supplement to his Gospel, or not?—the whole of our business clearly resolves itself into an examination of what has been urged in proof [pg 015] that the former alternative is the correct one. Our opponents maintain that these verses did not form part of the original autograph of the Evangelist. But it is a known rule in the Law of Evidence that the burthen of proof lies on the party who asserts the affirmative of the issue.[23] We have therefore to ascertain in the present instance what the supposed proof is exactly worth; remembering always that in this subject-matter a high degree of probability is the only kind of proof which is attainable. When, for example, it is contended that the famous words in S. John's first Epistle (1 S. John v. 7, 8,) are not to be regarded as genuine, the fact that they are away from almost every known Codex is accepted as a proof that they were also away from the autograph of the Evangelist. On far less weighty evidence, in fact, we are at all times prepared to yield the hearty assent of our understanding in this department of sacred science.
And yet, it will be found that evidence of overwhelming weight, if not of an entirely different kind, is required in the present instance: as I proceed to explain.
1. When it is contended that our Lord's reply to the young ruler (S. Matt. xix. 17) was not Τί με λέγεις ἀγαθόν; οὐδεὶς ἀγαθὸς, εἰ μὴ εῖς, ὁ Θεός,—it is at the same time insisted that it was Τί με ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ; εῖς ἐστὶν ὁ ἀγαθός. It is proposed to omit the former words only because an alternative clause is at hand, which it is proposed to substitute in its room.
2. Again. When it is claimed that some given passage of the Textus Receptus,—S. Mark ch xv. 28, for example, (καὶ ἐπληρώθη ἡ γραφὴ ἡ λέγουσα, Καὶ μετὰ ἀνόμων ἐλογίσθη,) or the Doxology in S. Matth. vi. 13,—is spurious, all that is pretended is that certain words are an unauthorized addition to the inspired text; and that by simply omitting them we are so far restoring the Gospel to its original integrity.—The same is to be said concerning every other charge of interpolation which can be named. If the celebrated “pericopa de adulterâ,” for instance, be indeed [pg 016] not genuine, we have but to leave out those twelve verses of S. John's Gospel, and to read chap. vii. 52 in close sequence with chap. viii. 12; and we are assured that we are put in possession of the text as it came from the hands of its inspired Author. Nor, (it must be admitted), is any difficulty whatever occasioned thereby; for there is no reason assignable why the two last-named verses should not cohere; (there is no internal improbability, I mean, in the supposition;) neither does there exist any à priori reason why a considerable portion of narrative should be looked for in that particular part of the Gospel.
3. But the case is altogether different, as all must see, when it is proposed to get rid of the twelve verses which for 1700 years and upwards have formed the conclusion of S. Mark's Gospel; no alternative conclusion being proposed to our acceptance. For let it be only observed what this proposal practically amounts to and means.
(a.) And first, it does not mean that S. Mark himself, with design, brought his Gospel to a close at the words ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. That supposition would in fact be irrational. It does not mean, I say, that by simply leaving out those last twelve verses we shall be restoring the second Gospel to its original integrity. And this it is which makes the present a different case from every other, and necessitates a fuller, if not a different kind of proof.
(b.) What then? It means that although an abrupt and impossible termination would confessedly be the result of omitting verses 9-20, no nearer approximation to the original autograph of the Evangelist is at present attainable. Whether S. Mark was interrupted before he could finish his Gospel,—(as Dr. Tregelles and Professor Norton suggest;)—in which case it will have been published by its Author in an unfinished state: or whether “the last leaf was torn away” before a single copy of the original could be procured,—(a view which is found to have recommended itself to Griesbach;)—in which case it will have once had a different termination from at present; which termination however, by the hypothesis, has since been irrecoverably lost;—(and to one of these two wild hypotheses the critics are [pg 017] logically reduced;)—this we are not certainly told. The critics are only agreed in assuming that S. Mark's Gospel was at first without the verses which at present conclude it.
But this assumption, (that a work which has been held to be a complete work for seventeen centuries and upwards was originally incomplete,) of course requires proof. The foregoing improbable theories, based on a gratuitous assumption, are confronted in limine with a formidable obstacle which must be absolutely got rid of before they can be thought entitled to a serious hearing. It is a familiar and a fatal circumstance that the Gospel of S. Mark has been furnished with its present termination ever since the second century of the Christian æra.[24] In default, therefore, of distinct historical evidence or definite documentary proof that at some earlier period than that it terminated abruptly, nothing short of the utter unfitness of the verses which at present conclude S. Mark's Gospel to be regarded as the work of the Evangelist, would warrant us in assuming that they are the spurious accretion of the post-apostolic age: and as such, at the end of eighteen centuries, to be deliberately rejected. 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. Else, it is evident that we are logically forced to adopt the far easier supposition that (not S. Mark, but) some copyist of the third century left a copy of S. Mark's Gospel unfinished; which unfinished copy became the fontal source of the mutilated copies which have come down to our own times.[25]
I have thought it right to explain the matter thus fully at the outset; not in order to prejudge the question, (for that could answer no good purpose,) but only in order that the reader may have clearly set before him the real nature of the issue. “Is it reasonable to suspect that the concluding verses of S. Mark are a spurious accretion and unauthorized supplement to his Gospel, or not?” That is the question which we have to consider,—the one question. And while I proceed to pass under careful review all the evidence on this subject with which I am acquainted, I shall be again and again obliged to direct the attention of my reader to its bearing on the real point at issue. In other words, we shall have again and again to ask ourselves, how far it is rendered probable by each fresh article of evidence that S. Mark's Gospel, when it left the hands of its inspired Author, was an unfinished work; the last chapter ending abruptly at ver. 8?