The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark

by John William Burgon

I propose, therefore, that we reverse the process. Proceed we to examine the evidence borne by these two witnesses on certain other occasions which admit of no difference of opinion; or next to none. Let us endeavour, I say, to ascertain the character of the Witnesses by a patient and unprejudiced examination of their Evidence,—not in one place, or in two, or in three; but on several important occasions, and throughout. If we find it invariably consentient and invariably truthful, then of course a mighty presumption will have been established, the very strongest possible, that their adverse testimony in respect of the conclusion of S. Mark's Gospel must needs be worthy of all acceptation. But if, on the contrary, our inquiries shall conduct us to the very opposite result,—what else can happen but that our confidence in these two MSS. will be hopelessly shaken? We must in such case be prepared to admit that it is just as likely as not that this is only one more occasion on which these “two false witnesses” have conspired to witness falsely. If, at this juncture, extraneous evidence of an entirely trustworthy kind can be procured to confront them: above all, if some one ancient witness of unimpeachable veracity can be found who shall bear contradictory evidence: what other [pg 073] alternative will be left us but to reject their testimony in respect of S. Mark xvi. 9-20 with something like indignation; and to acquiesce in the belief of universal Christendom for eighteen hundred years that these twelve verses are just as much entitled to our unhesitating acceptance as any other twelve verses in the Gospel which can be named?

I. It is undeniable, in the meantime, that for the last quarter of a century, it has become the fashion to demand for the readings of Codex B something very like absolute deference. The grounds for this superstitious sentiment, (for really I can describe it in no apter way,) I profess myself unable to discover. Codex B comes to us without a history: without recommendation of any kind, except that of its antiquity. It bears traces of careless transcription in every page. The mistakes which the original transcriber made are of perpetual recurrence. “They are chiefly omissions, of one, two, or three words; but sometimes of half a verse, a whole verse, or even of several verses.... I hesitate not to assert that it would be easier to find a folio containing three or four such omissions than to light on one which should be without any.”[123] In the Gospels alone, Codex B leaves out words or whole clauses no less than 1,491 times:[124] of which by far the largest proportion is found in S. Mark's Gospel. Many of these, no doubt, are to be accounted for by the proximity of a “like ending.”[125] The Vatican MS. (like the Sinaitic[126]) was originally derived [pg 074] from an older Codex which contained about twelve or thirteen letters in a line.[127] And it will be found that some of its omissions which have given rise to prolonged [pg 075] discussion are probably to be referred to nothing else but the oscitancy of a transcriber with such a codex before him:[128] without having recourse to any more abstruse hypothesis; without any imputation of bad faith;—certainly without supposing that the words omitted did not exist in the inspired autograph of the Evangelist. But then it is undeniable that some of the omissions in Cod. B are not to be so explained. On the other hand, I can testify to the fact that the codex is disfigured throughout with repetitions. The original scribe is often found to have not only written the same words twice over, but to have failed whenever he did so to take any notice with his pen of what he had done.

What then, (I must again inquire,) are the grounds for the superstitious reverence which is entertained in certain quarters for the readings of Codex B? If it be a secret known to the recent Editors of the New Testament, they have certainly contrived to keep it wondrous close.

II. More recently, a claim to co-ordinate primacy has been set up on behalf of the Codex Sinaiticus. Tischendorf is actually engaged in remodelling his seventh Leipsic edition, chiefly in conformity with the readings of his lately discovered MS.[129] And yet the Codex in question abounds with “errors of the the eye and pen, to an extent not unparalleled, but happily rather unusual in documents of first-rate importance.” On many occasions, 10, 20, 30, 40 words are dropped through very carelessness.[130] “Letters and words, even whole sentences, are frequently written twice [pg 076] over, or begun and immediately cancelled: while that gross blunder ... whereby a clause is omitted because it happens to end in the same words as the clause preceding, occurs no less than 115 times in the New Testament. Tregelles has freely pronounced that ‘the state of the text, as proceeding from the first scribe, may be regarded as very rough.’ ”[131] But when “the first scribe” and his “very rough” performance have been thus unceremoniously disposed of, one would like to be informed what remains to command respect in Codex א? Is, then, manuscript authority to be confounded with editorial caprice,—exercising itself upon the corrections of “at least ten different revisers,” who, from the vith to the xiith century, have been endeavouring to lick into shape a text which its original author left “very rough?”

The co-ordinate primacy, (as I must needs call it,) which, within the last few years, has been claimed for Codex B and Codex א, threatens to grow into a species of tyranny,—from which I venture to predict there will come in the end an unreasonable and unsalutary recoil. It behoves us, therefore, to look closely into this matter, and to require a reason for what is being done. The text of the sacred deposit is far too precious a thing to be sacrificed to an irrational, or at least a superstitious devotion to two MSS.,—simply because they may possibly be older by a hundred years than any other which we possess. “Id verius quod prius,” is an axiom which holds every bit as true in Textual Criticism as in Dogmatic Truth. But on that principle, (as I have already shewn,) the last twelve verses of S. Mark's Gospel are fully established;[132] and by consequence, the credit of Codd. B and א sustains a severe shock. Again, “Id verius quod prius;” but it does not of course follow that a Codex of the ivth century shall exhibit a more correct text of Scripture than one written in the vth, or even than one written in the xth. For the proof of this statement, (if it can be supposed to require proof,) it is enough to appeal to Codex D. That venerable copy of the Gospels is of the vith century. [pg 077] It is, in fact, one of our five great uncials. No older MS. of the Greek Text is known to exist,—excepting always A, B, C and א. And yet no text is more thoroughly disfigured by corruptions and interpolations than that of Codex D. In the Acts, (to use the language of its learned and accurate Editor,) “it is hardly an exaggeration to assert that it reproduces the textus receptus much in the same way that one of the best Chaldee Targums does the Hebrew of the Old Testament: so wide are the variations in the diction, so constant and inveterate the practice of expanding the narrative by means of interpolations which seldom recommend themselves as genuine by even a semblance of internal probability.”[133] Where, then, is the à priori probability that two MSS. of the ivth century shall have not only a superior claim to be heard, but almost an exclusive right to dictate which readings are to be rejected, which retained?

How ready the most recent editors of the New Testament have shewn themselves to hammer the sacred text on the anvil of Codd. B and א,—not unfrequently in defiance of the evidence of all other MSS., and sometimes to the serious detriment of the deposit,—would admit of striking illustration were this place for such details. Tischendorf's English “New Testament”—“with various readings from the three most celebrated manuscripts of the Greek Text” translated at the foot of every page,—is a recent attempt (1869) to popularize the doctrine that we have to look exclusively to two or three of the oldest copies, if we would possess the Word of God in its integrity. Dean Alford's constant appeal in his revision of the Authorized Version (1870) to “the oldest MSS.” (meaning thereby generally Codd. א and B with one or two others[134]), is an abler endeavour to familiarize the public mind with the same belief. I am bent on shewing that there is nothing whatever in the character of either of the Codices in question to warrant this servile deference.

(a) And first,—Ought it not sensibly to detract from our [pg 078] opinion of the value of their evidence to discover that it is easier to find two consecutive verses in which the two MSS. differ, the one from the other, than two consecutive verses in which they entirely agree? Now this is a plain matter of fact, of which any one who pleases may easily convince himself. But the character of two witnesses who habitually contradict one another has been accounted, in every age, precarious. On every such occasion, only one of them can possibly be speaking the truth. Shall I be thought unreasonable if I confess that these perpetual inconsistencies between Codd. B and א,—grave inconsistencies, and occasionally even gross ones,—altogether destroy my confidence in either?

(b) On the other hand, discrepant as the testimony of these two MSS. is throughout, they yet, strange to say, conspire every here and there in exhibiting minute corruptions of such an unique and peculiar kind as to betray a (probably not very remote) common corrupt original. These coincidences in fact are so numerous and so extraordinary as to establish a real connexion between those two codices; and that connexion is fatal to any claim which might be set up on their behalf as wholly independent witnesses.[135]

(c) Further, it is evident that both alike have been subjected, probably during the process of transcription, to the same depraving influences. But because such statements require to be established by an induction of instances, the reader's attention must now be invited to a few samples of the grave blemishes which disfigure our two oldest copies of the Gospel.

1. And first, since it is the omission of the end of S. Mark's Gospel which has given rise to the present discussion, it becomes a highly significant circumstance that the original [pg 079] scribe of Cod. א had also omitted the end of the Gospel according to S. John.[136] In this suppression of ver. 25, Cod. א stands alone among MSS. A cloud of primitive witnesses vouch for the genuineness of the verse. Surely, it is nothing else but the reductio ad absurdum of a theory of recension, (with Tischendorf in his last edition,) to accommodate our printed text to the vicious standard of the original penman of Cod. א and bring the last chapter of S. John's Gospel to a close at ver. 24!