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

by John William Burgon

This discussion narrowed to a single issue (p. [244]).—That S. Mark's Gospel was imperfect from the very first, a thing altogether incredible (p. [246]):—But that at some very remote period Copies have suffered mutilation, a supposition probable in the highest degree (p. [248]).—Consequences of this admission (p. [252]).—Parting words (p. [254].)

This Inquiry has at last reached its close. The problem was fully explained at the outset.[459] All the known evidence has since been produced,[460] every Witness examined.[461] Counsel has been heard on both sides. A just Sentence will assuredly follow. But it may not be improper that I should in conclusion ask leave to direct attention to the single issue which has to be decided, and which has been strangely thrust into the background and practically kept out of sight, by those who have preceded me in this Investigation. The case stands simply thus:—

It being freely admitted that, in the beginning of the ivth century, there must have existed Copies of the Gospels in which the last chapter of S. Mark extended no further than ver. 8, the Question arises,—How is this phenomenon to be accounted for?... The problem is not only highly interesting and strictly legitimate, but it is even inevitable. In the immediately preceding chapter, I have endeavoured to solve it, and I believe in a wholly unsuspected way.

But the most recent Editors of the text of the New Testament, declining to entertain so much as the possibility that certain copies of the second Gospel had experienced mutilation in very early times in respect of these Twelve concluding [pg 244] Verses, have chosen to occupy themselves rather with conjectures as to how it may have happened that S. Mark's Gospel was without a conclusion from the very first. Persuaded that no more probable account is to be given of the phenomenon than that the Evangelist himself put forth a Gospel which (for some unexplained reason) terminated abruptly at the words ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ (chap. xvi. 8),—they have unhappily seen fit to illustrate the liveliness of this conviction of theirs, by presenting the world with his Gospel mutilated in this particular way. Practically, therefore, the question has been reduced to the following single issue:—Whether of the two suppositions which follow is the more reasonable:

First,—That the Gospel according to S. Mark, as it left the hands of its inspired Author, was in this imperfect or unfinished state; ending abruptly at (what we call now) the 8th verse of the last chapter:—of which solemn circumstance, at the end of eighteen centuries, Cod. B and Cod. א are the alone surviving Manuscript witnesses?... or,

Secondly,—That certain copies of S. Mark's Gospel having suffered mutilation in respect of their Twelve concluding Verses in the post-Apostolic age, Cod. B and Cod. א are the only examples of MSS. so mutilated which are known to exist at the present day?

I. Editors who adopt the former hypothesis, are observed (a) to sever the Verses in question from their context:[462]—(b) to introduce after ver. 8, the subscription “ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ:”[463]—(c) to shut up verses 9-20 within brackets.[464] Regarding them as “no integral part of the Gospel”[465]—“as an authentic anonymous addition to what Mark himself wrote down,”[466]—a “remarkable Fragment,” “placed as a completion of the Gospel in very early times;”[467]—they consider themselves at liberty to go on to suggest that “the Evangelist may have been interrupted in his work:” at any rate, [pg 245] that “something may have occurred, (as the death of S. Peter,) to cause him to leave it unfinished.”[468] But “the most probable supposition” (we are assured) “is, that the last leaf of the original Gospel was torn away.”[469]

We listen with astonishment; contenting ourselves with modestly suggesting that surely it will be time to conjecture why S. Mark's Gospel was left by its Divinely inspired Author in an unfinished state, when the fact has been established that it probably was so left. In the meantime, we request to be furnished with some evidence of that fact.

But not a particle of Evidence is forthcoming. It is not even pretended that any such evidence exists. Instead, we are magisterially informed by “the first Biblical Critic in Europe,”—(I desire to speak of him with gratitude and respect, but S. Mark's Gospel is a vast deal more precious to me than Dr. Tischendorf's reputation,)—that “a healthy piety reclaims against the endeavours of those who are for palming off as Mark's what the Evangelist is so plainly shewn [where?] to have known nothing at all about.”[470] In the meanwhile, it is assumed to be a more reasonable supposition,—(α) That S. Mark published an imperfect Gospel; and that the Twelve Verses with which his Gospel concludes were the fabrication of a subsequent age; than,—(β) That some ancient Scribe having with design or by accident left out these Twelve concluding Verses, copies of the second Gospel so mutilated become multiplied, and in the beginning of the ivth century existed in considerable numbers.

And yet it is notorious that very soon after the Apostolic age, liberties precisely of this kind were freely taken with the text of the New Testament. Origen (A.D. 185-254) complains of the licentious tampering with the Scriptures which prevailed in his day. “Men add to them,” (he says) “or leave out,—as seems good to themselves.”[471] Dionysius of Corinth, yet earlier, (A.D. 168-176) remarks that it was no wonder his own writings were added to and taken from, seeing that men presumed to deprave the Word of God [pg 246] in the same manner.[472] Irenæus, his contemporary, (living within seventy years of S. John's death,) complains of a corrupted Text.[473] We are able to go back yet half a century, and the depravations of Holy Writ become avowed and flagrant.[474] A competent authority has declared it “no less true to fact than paradoxical in sound, that the worst corruptions to which the New Testament has been ever subjected originated within a hundred years after it was composed.”[475] Above all, it is demonstrable that Cod. B and Cod. א abound in unwarrantable omissions very like the present;[476] omissions which only do not provoke the same amount of attention because they are of less moment. One such extraordinary depravation of the Text, in which they also stand alone among MSS. and to which their patrons are observed to appeal with triumphant complacency, has been already made the subject of distinct investigation. I am much mistaken if it has not been shewn in my VIIth chapter, that the omission of the words ἐν Ἐφέσῳ from Ephes. i. 1, is just as unauthorized,—quite as serious a blemish,—as the suppression of S. Mark xvi. 9-20.