The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark. John William Burgon
ὁ παραδώσων αὐτόν (in S. John vi. 64) we are invited to accept και τις ην ο μελλων αυτον παραδιδοναι.144 But it requires very little acquaintance with the subject to foresee that this kind of license may easily assume serious dimensions, and grow into an intolerable evil. Thus, when the man born blind is asked by the Holy One if he believes ἐπὶ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ (S. John. ix. 35), we are by no means willing to acquiesce in the proposed substitute, τον υιον του ανθρωπου: neither, when the Saviour says, γινώσκομαι ὑπὸ τῶν ἐμων (S. John x. 14) are we at all willing to put up with the weak equivalent γινωσκουσι με τα εμα. Still less is και εμοι αυτους εδωκασ any equivalent at all for καὶ τὰ ἐμὰ πάντα σά ἐστι, καὶ τὰ σὰ ἐμά in S. John xvii. 10: or, αλλοι [pg 083] ζωσουσιν σε, και ποιησουσιν σοι οσα ου θελεις, for ἄλλος σε ζώσει; καὶ οὄσει ὅπου οὐ θέλεις, in S. John xxi. 18. Indeed, even when our Lord is not the speaker, such licentious depravation of the text is not to be endured. Thus, in S. Luke xxiii. 15, Cod. B and Cod. א conspire in substituting for ἀνέπεμψα γὰρ ὑμᾶς πρὸς αὐτόν—ανεπεμψεν γαρ αυτον προς ημας; which leads one to suspect the copyist was misled by the narrative in ver. 7. Similar instances might be multiplied to an indefinite extent.
Two yet graver corruptions of the truth of the Gospel, (but they belong to the same category,) remain to be specified. Mindful, I suppose, of S. James' explanation “how that by works a man is justified,” the author of the text of Codices B and א has ventured to alter our Lord's assertion (in S. Matth. xi. 19,) “Wisdom is justified of her children,” into “Wisdom is justified by her works;” and, in the case of Cod. א, his zeal is observed to have so entirely carried him away, that he has actually substituted εργων for τέκνων in the parallel place of S. Luke's Gospel.—The other example of error (S. Matth. xxi. 31) is calculated to provoke a smile. Finding that our Saviour, in describing the conduct of the two sons in the parable, says of the one—ὕστερον δὲ μεταμεληθεὶς ἀπῆλθεν, and of the other—καὶ οὐκ ἀπῆλθεν; some ancient scribe, (who can have been but slenderly acquainted with the Greek language,) seems to have conceived the notion that a more precise way of identifying the son who “afterwards repented and went,” would be to designate him as ὁ ὕστερος. Accordingly, in reply to the question—τίς ἐκ τῶν δύο ἐποίησεν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πατρός; we are presented (but only in Cod. B) with the astonishing information—λεγουσιν ο υστερος. And yet, seeing clearly that this made nonsense of the parable, some subsequent critic is found to have transposed the order of the two sons: and in that queer condition the parable comes down to us in the famous Vatican Codex B.
4. Some of the foregoing instances of infelicitous tampering with the text of the Gospels are, it must be confessed, very serious. But it is a yet more fatal circumstance in connexion with Cod. B and Cod. א that they are convicted [pg 084] of certain perversions of the truth of Scripture which must have been made with deliberation and purpose. Thus, in S. Mark xiv, they exhibit a set of passages—(verses 30, 68, 72)—“which bear clear marks of wilful and critical correction, thoroughly carried out in Cod. א, only partially in Cod. B; the object being so far to assimilate the narrative of Peter's denial with those of the other Evangelists, as to suppress the fact, vouched for by S. Mark only, that the cock crowed twice. (In Cod. א, δίς is omitted in ver. 30,‘—ἐκ δευτέρου and δίς in ver. 72—’and καὶ ἀλέκτωρ ἐφώνησε in ver. 68: the last change being countenanced by B.)”145 One such discovery, I take leave to point out, is enough to destroy all confidence in the text of these two manuscripts: for it proves that another kind of corrupting influence—besides carelessness, and accident, and tasteless presumption, and unskilful assiduity—has been at work on Codices B and א. We are constrained to approach these two manuscripts with suspicion in all cases where a supposed critical difficulty in harmonizing the statements of the several Evangelists will account for any of the peculiar readings which they exhibit.
Accordingly, it does not at all surprise me to discover that in both Codices the important word ἐξελθοῦσαι (in S. Matth. xxviii. 8) has been altered into απελθουσαι. I recognise in that substitution of απο for ἔξ the hand of one who was not aware that the women, when addressed by the Angel, were inside the sepulchre; but who accepted the belief (it is found to have been as common in ancient as in modern times) that they beheld him “sitting on the stone.”146—In consequence of a similar misconception, both Codices are observed to present us with the word “wine” instead of “vinegar” in S. Matthew's phrase ὄξος μετὰ χολῆς μεμνγμένον: which results from a mistaken endeavour on the part of some ancient critic to bring S. Matth. xxvii. 34 into [pg 085] harmony with S. Mark xv. 23. The man did not perceive that the cruel insult of the “vinegar and gall” (which the Saviour tasted but would not drink) was quite a distinct thing from the proffered mercy of the “myrrhed wine” which the Saviour put away from Himself altogether.
So again, it was in order to bring S. Luke xxiv. 13 into harmony with a supposed fact of geography that Cod. א states that Emmaus, (which Josephus also places at sixty stadia from Jerusalem), was “an hundred and sixty” stadia distant. The history of this interpolation of the text is known. It is because some ancient critic (Origen probably) erroneously assumed that Nicopolis was the place intended. The conjecture met with favour, and there are not wanting scholia to declare that this was the reading of “the accurate” copies—notwithstanding the physical impossibility which is involved by the statement.147—Another geographical misconception under which the scribe of Cod. א is found to have laboured was that Nazareth (S. Luke i. 26) and Capernaum (S. Mark i. 28) were in Judæa. Accordingly he has altered the text in both the places referred to, to suit his private notion.148—A yet more striking specimen of the preposterous method of the same scribe is supplied by his substitution of Καισαριας for Σαμαρείας in Acts viii. 5—evidently misled by what he found in viii. 40 and xxi. 8.—Again, it must have been with a view of bringing Revelation into harmony with the (supposed) facts of physical Science that for the highly significant Theological record καὶ ἐσκοτίσθη ὁ ἥλιος at the Crucifixion,149 has been substituted both in B and א, του ηλιου εκλιποντος—a statement [pg 086] which (as the ancients were perfectly well aware150) introduces into the narrative an astronomical contradiction.—It may be worth adding, that Tischendorf with singular inconsistency admits into his text the astronomical contradiction, while he rejects the geographical impossibility.—And this may suffice concerning the text of Codices B and א.
III. We are by this time in a condition to form a truer estimate of the value of the testimony borne by these two manuscripts in respect of the last twelve verses of S. Mark's Gospel. If we were disposed before to regard their omission of an important passage as a serious matter, we certainly cannot any longer so regard it. We have by this time seen enough to disabuse our minds of every prejudice. Codd. B and א are the very reverse of infallible guides. Their deflections from the Truth of Scripture are more constant, as well as more licentious by far, than those of their younger brethren: their unauthorized omissions from the sacred text are not only far more frequent but far more flagrant also. And yet the main matter before us—their omission of the last twelve verses of S. Mark's Gospel—when rightly understood, proves to be an entirely different phenomenon from what an ordinary reader might have been led to suppose. Attention is specially requested for the remarks which follow.
IV.