BSABX 679
passage. In the ten verses, Mark, iv^ 20-29, the probably misunderstood Eusebius, who says that
so many peculiar features, not only of vocabulary, but adopted the suggestion of Richard Simon (** Hist. crit.
of matter and construction^ that leaves room for doubt du Texte du N. T/' 1689, 107) that the Evangelist
as to the Marcan authorship of the verses. ma^r have published Doth a Roman and an Egjrptian
In weighing the internal evidence, however, account edition of the Gospel. But this view is sufficiently
must be taken of the improbability of the Evangelist's refuted by the silence of the Alexandrian Fathers,
concluding with vers| 8. Apart from the unlikelihood Other opinions, such as that the Gospel was written in
of his endmg with the particle ydp, he could never de- Asia Minor or at Syrian Antioch, are not deserving of
Uberately close his account of the "good news" (i, 1) any consideration.
with the note of terror ascribed in xvi, 8, to some ot The date of the Gospel is uncertain. The external
Christ's followers. Nor could an Evangelist, ^pe- evidence is not decisive, and the internal does not as-
cially a disciple of St. Peter, willingly conclude ms Gob- sist very much. St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen,
pel without mentioning some appearance of the risen Eusebius, Tertullian. and St. Jerome si^iify that it
Lord (Acts, i, 22; x, 37-41). If, then, Mark concluded was written before St. Peter's death. The subscrip-
with verse 8. it must have been because he died or was tion of many of the later uncial and cursive MS8.
interrupted before he could write more. But tradition states that it was written in the tenth or twelfth year
points to bis living on after the Gospel was completed, after the Ascension (a. d. 38-40). The ** Paschal
since it represents him as bringing the work with him Chronicle " assigns it to a. d. 40, and the "Chronicle "
to E^pt or as handing it over to the Roman of Eusebius to the third year of Claudius (a. d. 43).
Christians who had asked for it. Nor b it easy to im- Possibly these earlv dates may b^ only a deduction
derstand how, if he lived on. he could have been so in- from the tradition that Peter came to Rome in the seo-
temipted as to be eflfectually prevented from adding, ond jrear of Claudius, a. d. 42 (cf . Euseb., " Hist. Eccl.",
sooner or later, even a short conclusion. Not many II, xiv, in P. G., Xa, 472; Jer., "De Vir. 111.", i, in
minutes would have been needed to write such a pas- P. L., XXIII). St. Irenseus, on the other hand, seems
sage as xvi, 9-20, and even if it was his desire, as Zahn to place the composition of the Gospel after the death
. without reason suggests (Introd.. II, 479) ^ to add some of reter and Paul (f««rd W r^p Tc&naw H^odow — "Adv.
considerable portions to the work, it is still inconoeiv- Hsr.", III. i, in P. G., VII, 844). Paj)ias, too, assert-
able how he could have either circulated it himself or ing that Mark wrote according to his recollection of
allowed his friends to circulate it without providing it Peter's discourses, has been taken to imply that Peter
with at least a temporary and provisional conclusion, was dead. This, noweyer, does not necessarily follow
In every hypothesis, then, xvi, 8, seems an impossible from the words of Papias, for Peter might have been
ending, and we are forced to conclude either that the absent from Rome. Besides, Clement of Alexandria
true ending is lost or that we have it in the disputed (Euseb., "Hist. Eccl.", VI, xiv, in P. G., XX, 552)
verses. Now, it is not easy to see how it coula have seems to say that Peter was alive and in Rome at the
been lost. Zahn affirms that it has never been estab- time Mark wrote, though he gave the Evangelist no
lished nor made probable that even a single complete help in his work. There is left, therefore, the testi-
sentence of the N. T. has disappeared altogether from mony of St. Irenseus a^inst that of all the other early
the text transmitted by the Cnurch (Introd., II, 477). witnesses; and it is an mteresting fact that most jpres-
In the present case, if the true ending were lost during ent-day Rationalist and Protestant scholars prefer to
Mark's lifetime, the question at once occurs: Why did follow Irensus and accept the later date for Mark's
he not replace it? And it is difficult to understand Gospel, though they reject almost unanimous! v the
how it could have been lost after his death, for before saint's testimony, given in the same context and sup-
then, unless he died within a few days from the com- ported by all antiquity, in favour of the priority of
pletion of the Gospel, it must have been copied, and it Matthew s Gospel to Biuix^'s. Various attempts have
IS most unlikely tnat the same verses could have dis- been made to explain the passage in Irenseus so as to
appeared from several copies. brin^; him into agreement with the other early au-
It will be seen from this survey of the question that thonties (see, e. g. Comely. "Introd.", iii, 76-78;
there is no justification for the confident statement of Patrizi," De Evang.", 1, 38), out to the present writer
Zahn that 'Ut may be regarded as one of the most cer- they appear unsuccessful if the existing text must be
tain of critical conclusions, that the words ^0o/3odrro regarded as correct. It seems much more reasonable,
ydpj xvi, 8, are the last words in the book which were however, to believe that Irenseus was mistaken than
written by the author himself" (Introd., II, 467). that all the other authorities are in error, and hence
Whatever be the fact, it is not at all certain that Mark the external evidence would show that Mark wrote be-
did not write the disputed verses. It may be that he foreo^eter's death (a. d. 64 or 67).
did not; that they are from the pen of some other in- From internal evidence we can conclude that the
spired writer, and were appended to the Gospel in the Gospel was written before a. d. 70, for there is no allu-
first century or the beginning of the second. An Ar- sion to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem,
menian MS., written in a. d. 986, ascribes them to a such as might naturally be expected in view of the pre-
presbyter named Ariston, who mav be the same with diction in xiii, 2, if that event nad already taken place,
the presbyter Aristion. mentioned by Papias as a con- On the other hand, if xvi, 20: " But they going forth
temporary of St. Jonn in Asia. Catholics are not preached everywhere ", be from St. Mark's pen, the
bound to hold that the verses were written by St. Gospel cannot well have been written before the close
Mark. But they are canonical Scripture, for the of the first Apostolic journey of St. Paul (a. d. 49 or
Council of Trent (Sess. IV), in defining that all the 50), for it is seen from Acts, xiv, 26; xv. 3, that only
parts of the Sacrea Books are to be received as sacred then had the conversion of the Gentiles oegun on any
and canonical, had especially in view the disputed large scale. Of course it is possible that previous to
parts of the Gospels, ot which this conclusion of Mark this the Apostles had preached far and wide among
IS one (cf. Theiner, *' Acta gen. Cone. Trid.", I^ 71 sq.). the dispen^ Jews, but, on the whole, it seems more
Hence, whoever wrote the verses, they are inspired, probable that the last verse of the Gospel, occurring in
and must be received as such by every Catholic. ^ a work intended for European readers, cannot have
V. Place and Date op Composition. — It is certain been written before St. Paul's arrival in Europe (a. d.
that the Gospel was written at Rome. St. Chrysos- 50-61). Taking the external and internal evidence
torn indeed speaks of Egypt as the place of composi- together, we may conclude that the date of the Gospel
tion (" Ilomr 1 on Matt.", 3, in P. G., LVII, 17), but he prolMibly lies somewhere between a. d. 50 and 67.
