(3.) Note, next, that this word is used twice, and in the course of his last chapter too, also by S. Luke. Nowhere else does it occur in the Gospels. It is at least as strange that the word ἀπιστεῖν should be found twice in the last chapter of the Gospel according to S. Luke, as in the last chapter of the Gospel according to S. Mark. And if no shadow of suspicion is supposed to result from this circumstance in the case of the third Evangelist, why should it in the case of the second?
(4.) But, lastly, the noun ἀπιστία (which occurs in S. Mark xvi. 14) occurs in two other places of the same Gospel. And this word (which S. Matthew uses twice,) is employed by none of the other Evangelists.—What need to add another word? Do not many of these supposed suspicious circumstances,—this one for example,—prove rather, on closer inspection, to be confirmatory facts?
(IX.) We are next assured that μετὰ ταῦτα (ver. 12) “is not found in Mark, though many opportunities occurred for using it.”
(1.) I suppose that what this learned writer means, is this; that if S. Mark had coveted an opportunity for introducing the phrase μετὰ ταῦτα earlier in his Gospel, he might have found one. (More than this cannot be meant: for nowhere before does S. Mark employ any other phrase to express “after these things,” or “after this,” or “afterwards.”)
But what is the obvious inference from the facts of the case, as stated by the learned Critic, except that the blessed Evangelist must be presumed to have been unconscious of any desire to introduce the expression under consideration on any other occasion except the present?
(2.) Then, further, it is worth observing that while the phrase μετὰ ταῦτα occurs five times in S. Luke's Gospel, it is found only twice in the Acts; while S. Matthew never employs it at all. Why, then,—I would respectfully inquire—why need S. Mark introduce the phrase more than once? Why, especially, is his solitary use of the expression to be represented as a suspicious circumstance; and even perverted into an article of indictment against the genuineness of the last twelve verses of his Gospel? “Would any one argue that S. Luke was not the author of the Acts, because the author of the Acts has employed this phrase only twice,—‘often as he could have used it?’ (Meyer's phrase here.[285])”
(X.) Another objection awaits us,—“Ἓτερος also is unknown to Mark,” says Dr. Davidson;—which only means that the word occurs in chap. xvi. 12, but not elsewhere in his Gospel.
It so happens, however, that ἕτερος also occurs once only in the Gospel of S. John. Does it therefore throw suspicion on S. John xix. 37?
(XI.) The same thing is said of ὕστερον (in ver. 14) viz. that it “occurs nowhere” in the second Gospel.
But why not state the case thus?—Ὕστερον, a word which is twice employed by S. Luke, occurs only once in S. Mark and once in S. John.—That would be the true way of stating the facts of the case. But it would be attended with this inconvenient result,—that it would make it plain that the word in question has no kind of bearing on the matter in hand.