THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

I. THE AUTHOR

THE second gospel, like the first, contains in itself no statement of its authorship. Reserving for brief mention at a later point the testimony of ancient tradition to the name and identity of the author, we consider first the evidence which the book itself furnishes concerning the characteristics and point of view of its writer.

1. His nationality as it appears in the book itself.—Clear indications of the nationality of the author are rare and hardly decisive. His references to Jewish affairs and to Palestinian localities imply a familiarity with both such as would be most natural in the case of a Palestinian Jew, but would not be impossible to a gentile, especially a Christian gentile who had lived in Palestine, or even to one who had obtained his knowledge of these things, along with his knowledge of the life of Jesus, from one who had been a resident of Palestine. In other words, the evidence suggests a Palestinian author or a Palestinian source of the narrative.

Thus the book speaks of Judea, Jerusalem, and the wilderness that was in that vicinity (1:4, 5, 12; 10:32; 11:1; 11:27); of the river Jordan (1:4, 9); of Jericho (10:46); of Bethany (11:1, 12) and the Mount of Olives (11:1; 13:3); of Galilee (1:9, 14, 28, 39; 3:7; 9:30) and the Sea of Galilee ( 1:16; 3:7; 4:1, 35-41; 5:1,21; 6:45, 47ff.; 7:31); of the cities of Galilee, Nazareth (1:9; cf. 1:24 and 6:1 ), Capernaum (1:21; 2:1; 9:33), implying in the connection that it was on or near the Sea of Galilee (with 1:21 cf, 1:16, and with 2:1 cf. 2:13), but adding no description of its location (cf. Matt. 4:13ff.), and Dalmanutha;¹ of the tract of Gennesaret (6:53), and of the regions adjacent to Judea and Galilee ( 3:7, 8; 5:1² 20; 7:24, 3 1; 8:27; 9:2; 10:1). The author makes occasional incidental reference to the political status and rulers of Judea and Galilee (6:14;³ 6:17;⁴ 15:1ff.⁵ ). He refers somewhat frequently to the parties and classes of people among the Jews, as also to Jewish customs and usages, usually with out comment or explanation (1:22, 44; 2:6, 18, 24; 3:6, 22; 5:22, 35; 7:1-13;⁶ 8:11, 15, 31; 10:2ff., 33; 11:15,27; 12:13ff., 18,28,38-40; 13:1; 14:1, 12ff., 53ff.; 15:1, 10, 11, 31, 42, 43. In four passages he uses Aramaic words, in each case explaining them (5:41; 7:11,34; 15:34; cf. 15:42, where, though the word is not Aramaic, but a Greek word used in a technical Jewish sense, he explains its meaning). To these positive evidences may be added the negative fact of the almost total absence of quotations from the Old Testament scriptures,⁷ which suggests either that the writer was not a Jew or that he was writing specially for non- Jewish readers.

2. The author's relation to the events.—It has frequently been pointed out that the narrative of this gospel abounds in details of time, place, and circumstances, and the feelings and manner of Jesus and the other persons of the narrative (1:13, 20, 41; 3:5, 9, 19-21; 4:35-41; 5:3-5, etc.). These details, though sometimes explained as the work of the writer's fancy, are more justly regarded as indicating that the writer was an eyewitness of the events or drew his material from those who were such.

3. His religious position.—That the writer, whatever his nationality, was a Christian is evident from his first phrase, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," and is confirmed by the tone of the whole book. Citation of particular passages is unnecessary.

But none of this evidence suffices to locate the author definitely. We may, then, properly inquire whether there is any outside evidence that will lead us to some more definite conclusion. This brings us to—

4. The testimony of tradition concerning the author ship of the book.—This is conveyed to us in two ways.

a) The ancient manuscripts of this gospel uniformly bear the title Κατα ΙνῙαρκου, " According to Mark," or Ευατγγελιου κατα Μαρκον, " Gospel according to Mark," or its equivalent.⁸

b) Ancient writers, from Papias on, speak of a gospel of Mark, but almost as constantly represent the apostle Peter as the chief source of his information. Though the earliest of these writers do not by description or quotation definitely identify the book to which they refer with our present second gospel, yet the testimonies constitute a continuous series down to the latter part of the second century, when abundant quotations identify it beyond all question. The following are some of the most ancient of these testimonies:

And the presbyter also said this: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately whatever he remembered, not, however, recording in order the things that were said or done by the Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow him; but afterward, as I said, [he followed] Peter, who adapted his teaching to the need of the occasion, but not as if he were making a systematic arrangement of the words of the Lord. So that Mark did not err at all in writing some things as he remembered them. For he was careful for one thing, not to pass over any of the things that he had heard or to state anything falsely in them. (EUSEBIUS, H. E., iii, 39. quoted from PAPIAS.)

Matthew indeed published a written gospel also among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul in Rome were preaching the gospel and founding a church. But after the departure of these, Mark the disciple and interpreter of Peter, he also having written the things preached by Peter, transmitted them to us. ( EUSEBIUS, H. E., v, 8, quoted from IRENAEUS.)

So greatly, however, did the light of piety enlighten the minds of Peter's hearers that it was not sufficient to hear but once, or to receive the unwritten teaching of the divine preaching, but with all manner of entreaties they importuned Mark, whose gospel we have, and who was a follower of Peter, that he should leave them in writ ing a memorial of the teaching which had been orally communicated to them. Nor did they cease their solicitations until they had prevailed with the man, and thus became the cause of that writing which is called the gospel according to Mark. They say also that the apostle [Peter], having learned what had been done, the Spirit having revealed it to him, was pleased with the zeal of the men and authorized the work for use by the churches. This is stated by Clement in the sixth book of his Institutions, and is corroborated by Papias, bishop of Hierapolis. (EUSEBIUS, H. E., ii, 15.)

Paul therefore had Titus as his interpreter, as also the blessed Peter had Mark, whose gospel was composed Peter narrating and he [Mark] writing. (JEROME, Epistola cxx, ad Hedibiam.)⁹

Despite the inconsistencies of these statements with one another as to the extent and character of Peter's influence on the gospel, it is entirely evident that the early church both attributed this gospel to Mark and believed that he was in some way indebted for his facts, in part at least, to the apostle Peter. The Mark referred to in the tradition is undoubtedly the John Mark spoken of in the New Testament in Acts 12:12, 25; 13:5,13; 15 37, 39; Col. 4:10, 11; Philem. 24; 1 Pet. 5:13; 2 Tim. 4:11. From these passages it appears that Mark was a contemporary of Jesus, but probably only to a limited extent an eyewitness of the events of Jesus life.

These three factors of the evidence—the internal evidence of the book, the testimony of tradition, and the statements of the New Testament concerning Mark—are self-consistent, and, though not amounting to a demonstration, certainly afford reasonable ground for the conclusion that we have in the second gospel a work of John Mark, at different times a companion of Peter and of Paul; a work based in considerable part on the discourses of the apostle Peter to which Mark had listened, and in which Peter had related many things concerning the life of Jesus. It is presumably to Peter that the narrative is indebted for most of those details that suggest an eye witness. What other sources Mark may have had it is impossible now to determine.¹⁰

II. THE READERS FOR WHOM THE BOOK WAS INTENDED

Reference has already been made to the internal indications that the second gospel was intended, not for Jewish readers, but for gentiles. The almost total absence of quotations from or references to the Old Testament in the words of the evangelist himself, the absence of any special adaptation of the narrative or of the teachings of Jesus to the Jewish need or point of view, such as is so conspicuous in the first gospel, together with the occasional explanation of Jewish customs and modes of thought (7:2, 3; 12:18), and of Aramaic words or Jewish technical terms (3:17; 5:41; 7:11,34; 15:34, 42¹¹ ), all suggest that the author has in mind that his book will be read by gentiles rather than by Jews. With this agrees also the incidental testimony of tradition quoted above. Nor is there anything specially improbable in the tradition that Mark wrote at Rome and for Romans. The occurrence of Latin words in the gospel has also been said to confirm this tradition, but quite clearly without sufficient ground. Although it contains ten Latin words, seven of these (modius, 4:21; legio, 5:9, 15; denarius, 6:37; 12:15; 14:5; census, 12:14; quadrans, 12:42; flagello, 15:15; praetorium, 15:16) are common to one or more of the other gospels and only three (speculator, 6:27; sextarius, 7:4, 8; centurio, 15:39, 44, 45) are peculiar to Mark.

Whether the gospel was intended for gentile Christians or for non-Christian gentiles can be determined, if at all, only on the basis of the evidence for the purpose of the book, which is still to be considered.

III. THE PURPOSE WITH WHICH THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN

In the absence of any statement by the author of the purpose with which he wrote, it is necessary to appeal solely to the evidence afforded by the content and arrangement of the book, and by the emphasis which it lays upon certain ideas or elements of the narrative.

At the outset, in the phrase which in effect contains the title of the book, Jesus is characterized as the Christ, the Son of God,¹² and in the first event in which Jesus himself appears he heard the voice from heaven saying to him: "Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased." This naturally raises the question whether the first line of the gospel does not express the proposition which it is the purpose of the author in the rest of the book to prove. But does the book, as a whole, justify an affirmative answer to this question? Certainly the book is not in form an argument framed to support this proposition. Nor is it true that in the narrative Jesus is represented as affirming this proposition at the outset, and then devoting his ministry to the advancing of evidence to sustain it. But neither of these facts quite answers the question of the author's purpose. It is necessary to distinguish between the purpose which the writer aimed to accomplish and the form in which he presented his material, as well as between the proposition which the writer puts in the forefront of his book and that which Jesus put in the forefront of his ministry. What proposition the writer aimed to prove, or what impression he aimed to make, or what result he desired to accomplish, can be answered only by a careful study of the contents and structure of the book, and to this we must turn.

After a brief account of the ministry of John the Baptist, and an equally condensed narrative of the baptism and temptation of Jesus, the narrative passes at once into his Galilean ministry. This ministry begins with the announcement of the approach of the kingdom and a command to the people to repent. Jesus teaches the people, heals the sick, casts out demons, forgives sin, gathers disciples, makes for himself enemies. Yet, so far as the record shows, he gave no name to his office, and claimed for himself no title but "Son of man,"¹³ accepted none but "Sir" or "Master."

The effect of this evangelistic and healing work of Jesus was twofold. On the one hand, multitudes followed him, chiefly to be healed; a few disciples attached them selves to him, and from these he selected, after a time, the Twelve whom he instructed and sent out to do the same kind of work that he himself was doing. From these Twelve he called forth at length on the journey to Caesarea Philippi what was apparently their first explicit and intelligent acknowledgment of his messiahship.¹⁴ Then, for bidding his disciples to speak to others of him as the Messiah, he went on to instruct them further concerning his mission, telling them, what was entirely out of character with their conception of the Messiah, that he must suffer and die, rejected by his nation, and that they, as his disciples, must be ready, with like devotion to the interests of their fellow-men, to suffer a like fate. From this time on he continued his instruction of the disciples, partly in specific preparation of them for his death, partly in the way of more general instruction concerning the things of the kingdom.

On the other hand, Jesus met with opposition. His own family thought him beside himself; his fellow townsmen had little faith in him; the scribes and Pharisees opposed him, at first not pronouncedly, but with increasing bitterness. This contrariety of result was in accordance with Jesus own teaching that the sowing of the seed of the kingdom would be followed, not by uniform harvests of good, but by diverse results and division of households. His assumption of authority in the temple, following close upon his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, in which he had for the first time encouraged and planned the public declaration of him as the Messiah, fanned into flame the opposition of his enemies. The Pharisees, who were his earliest opponents, joined now by the Sadducees and chief priests, determined upon his death. His trial gave occasion to a distinct avowal on his part that he was the Christ, the Son of God, and it was for this that he was condemned to death by the Jewish authorities.

His death, in which the opposition to him culminates, was speedily followed by his resurrection,¹⁵ verifying his prediction and vindicating his claims.

Thus the book gives a picture of the public career of Jesus which, taken as a whole, has a clearly defined character and great verisimilitude. Possessing, from the moment of his baptism, the first event in which he appears in the gospel, a clear definition of his own mission, he moves steadily on in the work of proclaiming the kingdom and revealing himself to men who, in the nature of the case, could receive that revelation only little by little. Not by argument, not chiefly by assertion, but by his life he reveals himself and his conception of the kingdom and the Messiah. Winning, by this revelation, both followers and foes, he teaches his disciples, as they are able to receive it, what his work and fate are to be, and what theirs, too, must be, and moves on, with clear foresight both of death and of triumph over death, to the culmination of his self-revelation in crucifixion and resurrection.

It is thus with Jesus in his public career that this book has to do. There is no story of the infancy. There is no genealogical table linking Jesus with the past and proving his Abrahamic and Davidic descent. The background of the life is Palestinian and Jewish, as it must have been to be true to the facts, but there is no emphasis upon the relations of Jesus to Judaism or the Old Testament. Quotations of Jesus from the Old Testament are reported, but the evangelist's own use of it is limited to his first sentence. The distinctly Jewish point of view, so clearly manifest in Matthew, for example, is wholly lacking. It is not Jesus in relation to the past, or the prophecies of the Messiah, but Jesus as he appeared to his contemporaries, a figure in, and a factor of, the history of his own times, that this gospel presents to us. The narrative is confined wholly to the most active period of Jesus life, chiefly to the busy Galilean ministry and the still more crowded passion week. It is rapid, condensed, abrupt. It reminds one of the words of Peter: "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you" (Acts 2:22), and "Jesus of Nazareth, how that God nointed him with Holy Spirit and power, who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him " (Acts 10:38).

Such a presentation of Jesus has all the value of an argument, with little of its form, and possibly with no conscious argumentative aim. The structure of the book seems almost wholly unaffected by a purpose of the writer to convince his readers of any defined proposition. Not only is there lacking, as also in Matthew, the strictly argumentative structure, but there is little indication even of the arrangement of material in a certain order to facilitate the production of a certain impression (cf. n. 16, p. 41). Even in respect to the plan and method of Jesus, of which the book gives so distinct an impression, it does not appear that the book was written to prove that such was Jesus method, but rather that it was written as it was because such was, in fact, the career of Jesus. This element is in the book, we are constrained to believe, because it was in the life. The writer tells the story of the life of Jesus as he knows it, naturally emphasizing the things which have impressed him. Because it has impressed him it will impress other men of like minds, and because of this fact it possesses argumentative value. But the argument is latent rather than explicit. There are men today to whom closely wrought argument, presenting a proposition and sustaining it by a series of reasons, means little, but to whom deeds of power—still more, a career of power—mean much. Such men are impressionable rather than reflective, emotional rather than logical. Such a man the New Testament leads us to believe Peter was, and there is not lacking a suggestion that John Mark was a man of the same character. Such a man, at any rate, we judge the writer of this gospel to have been, and to such men especially would it appeal. It is adapted to lead them to share the author's conviction, announced in his first line, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God; or, if they already hold it, to hold it more firmly and intelligently. The book makes its appeal to the reader as it records that Jesus made his appeal to his contemporaries, not by argument adduced to prove his messiahship, but by the simple presentation of the life itself, leaving this life to make its own impression. As Jesus, believing from the beginning in his own messiahship and divine sonship, convinced his followers of it, not by affirmation or by argument, but by living, so the evangelist, holding at the outset to the messiahship of Jesus, depends, not on formulated argument, but on the story of the life to carry this conviction to his readers. The book differs in this respect from the life only in the incidental announcement of its thesis in its first line.

Is such a book intended to convince unbelievers or to instruct those who already believe? Certainly it could be used for either purpose. But the absence of anything like a controversial tone, the simple straightforwardness of the story, without comment, or even arrangement for argumentative purposes, leads us to think of it as a book written for Christians rather than for unbelievers, and chiefly for instruction rather than for conviction. That it was intended, as it has been maintained in chap, i, that Matthew was, to play a part in the controversies of the apostolic age of which we learn from Acts and the epistles, there is no evidence. The writer is certainly not a Judaistic Christian, but neither does he show any distinctly anti-Judaistic interest. He writes in an atmosphere, or from a point of view, unaffected by these controversies. Its aim is undoubtedly edification, but it seeks this, not so much by convincing its readers of something they did not believe, or even by setting itself to confirm a conviction already held, as by informing them of facts which are useful to them to know. The book has argumentative value for believers and unbelievers, but it must be doubted whether its author thought of it as argumentative in any sense.

IV. THE PLAN OF THE BOOK

The following analysis is an attempt to show the contents and structure of the book as it lay in the mind of the writer, though the simplicity of the plan of the book renders such an analysis in part scarcely more than an enumeration of sections. Though we cannot affirm that Mark has in all cases given events in their chronological order, there is little or nothing to show that he ever intentionally varied from the order.¹⁶ And the relations of events to one another the causal dependence of later events upon earlier ones constrains us to believe that not only is the succession of the several periods of the record that also of the life, but that within these periods the order is, in the main, that of the events themselves.

ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL

I. INTRODUCTION: PREPARATION FOR THE PUBLIC WORK OF JESUS. 1:1-13

1. Preaching of John the Baptist. 1:1-8

2. Baptism of Jesus. 1:9-11

3. Temptation in the wilderness. 1:12, 13

II. THE GALILEAN MINISTRY. 1:14-9:50

1. The work begun and favorably received. 1:14-45

a) Jesus begins preaching in Galilee. 1:14, 1 5

b) Call of the four fishermen. 1:16-20

c) A sabbath in Capernaum. 1:21-34

d) A preaching tour in Galilee. 1:35-45

2. The opposition of the scribes and Pharisees ex cited and rapidly developed. 2:1-3:6

a) A paralytic healed and his sins forgiven. 2:1-12

b) Call of Levi, and the feast in his house. 2:13-17

c) Jesus answer to a question concerning fasting. 2:18-22

d) Plucking grain on the sabbath. 2:23-28

e) A withered hand healed on the sabbath. 3:1-6

3. The beginnings of the separation between the followers of Christ and the rest of the community; the organization of the band of twelve personal attendants and helpers. 3:7-35

a) The widespread fame of Jesus. 3:7-12

b) The choosing of the Twelve. 3:13-19

c) Concerning eternal sin. 3:20-30

d) Natural and spiritual kinsmen. 3:31-35

4. The parables of the kingdom's growth, in which is also illustrated its separating power. 4:1-34

5. Sundry manifestations of his power, which meet with varied reception, some believing, some un believing, some slow to believe. 4:35-6:6

a) Stilling of the tempest. 4:35-41

b) The Gerasene demoniac. 5:1-20

c) Jairus's daughter raised to life. 5:21-43

d) The rejection at Nazareth. 6:1-6

6. The sending out of the Twelve to engage in work like that of Jesus himself. 6:7-29

7. The continuance of Jesus work in Galilee, with the reappearance of the same features; he heals and feeds the multitudes; his disciples are slow of understanding; the multitudes follow him; the Pharisees oppose him. 6:30-7:23

a) The feeding of the five thousand. 6:30-46

b) Jesus walking on the sea. 6:47-52

c) Many healed in Galilee. 6:53-56

d) On eating with unwashen hands. 7:1-23

8. A withdrawal from Galilee into gentile territory, and the ready faith which Jesus finds there. 7:24-37

a) The Syrophoenician woman's daughter. 7:24-30

b) The deaf and dumb man healed. 7:31-37

9. Further experiences in Galilee in which the same features as before appear. 8:1-26

a) The feeding of the four thousand. 8:1-10

b) Pharisees demanding a sign from heaven. 8:11-21

c) A blind man healed near Bethsaida. 8:22-26

10. A second withdrawal from Galilee: tour to Caesarea Philippi and return to the sea. Jesus draws out from Peter the confession of him as the Christ, and begins to teach his disciples concerning his own sufferings, and the conditions of discipleship to him. 8:27-9:50

a) Peter's confession of Jesus messiahship. 8:27-30

b) Jesus prediction of his own death and resurrection. 8:31-9:1

c) The transfiguration. 9:2-13

d) The demoniac boy healed. 9:14-29

e) Jesus again foretells his death and resurrection. 9:30-32

f) The ambition and jealousy of the disciples reproved. 9:33-50

III. THE JOURNEY FROM GALILEE TO JUDEA, and instructions on the way; on nearing Jerusalem Jesus is publicly saluted as son of David. chap. 10

1. Departure from Galilee into Perea. 10:1

2. Concerning divorce. 10:2-12

3. Blessing little children. 10:13-16

4. The rich young ruler. 10:17-31

5. Announcement of his crucifixion. 10:32-34

6. Ambition of James and John reproved. 10:35-45

7. The blind man near Jericho healed. 10:46-52

IV. THE MINISTRY IN JERUSALEM: Jesus causes him self to be announced as Messiah; comes into conflict with the leaders of the people; predicts the downfall of the Jewish temple and capital. chaps. 11-13

1. The triumphal entry; Jesus is saluted as Messiah, 11:1-11

2. The cursing of the fig tree. 11:12-14

3. The cleansing of the temple. 11:15-19

4. Comment on the withered fig tree. 11:20-25

5. Conflict with the Jewish leaders. 11:27-12:40

a) Christ's authority challenged. 11:27-33

b) The parable of the vineyard. 12:1-12

c) Three questions by the Jewish rulers. 12:13-34

d) Jesus question concerning David's son. 12:35-37

e) Warning against the scribes. 12:39, 40

6. The widow's two mites. 12:41-44

7. The prophetic discourse concerning the down fall of the temple and city. chap. 13

V. THE PASSION HISTORY. chaps. 14, 15

1. The plot of the Jews. 14:1,2

2. The anointing in the house of Simon the leper. 14:3-9

3. The bargain of Judas with the Jewish leaders. 14:10,11

4. The last passover of Jesus and his disciples. 14:12-26

5. Prediction of Peter's denial. 14:27-31

6. The agony in Gethsemane. 14:32-42

7. The betrayal and arrest. 14:43-52

8. The trial before the Jewish authorities. 14:53-65

9. The denials of Peter. 14:66-72

10. The trial before Pilate. 15:1-20

11. The crucifixion and the death of Jesus. 15:21-41

12. The burial. 15:42-47

VI. THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, attested by the empty tomb and the word of the young man. 16:1-8

Appendix: Summary of the appearances of Jesus. 16:9-20

1) The location of Dalmanutha has never been satisfactorily deter mined. See HENDERSON in HASTINGS, Dictionary of the Bible.

2) Cf. chap, i, p. 2, ii. 2.

3) The designation of Herod Antipas as king is inaccurate, but follows perhaps the popular manner of speech.

4) According to JOSEPHUS, Antiquities, xviii, 5, 4, Herodias was the wife, not of Philip, tetrarch of the northeastern provinces, but of his half-brother Herod, who lived and died a private person. Mark's statement must be explained either by supposing that this Herod was also known as Philip (he was the son of a different mother from Philip the tetrarch) or by attributing it to a confusion between Herod the husband of Herodias and his brother Philip, husband of her daughter, Salome, who is also referred to in this passage. See HEADLAM in HASTINGS, Dictionary of the Bible, art. " Herod," Vol. I, pp. 3590, 3606.

5) Concerning this statement of Pilate's custom, see chap, i, p. 8; but observe also that Mark's language even less than Matthew's intimates that this was a general custom of the procurators of Judea.

6) In this passage vss. 3, 4 contain an explanation of Jewish custom, implying, however, not so much a non-Jewish writer as non-Jewish readers. See also 12:18 and 15:42.

7) The only quotation in this gospel made by the evangelist himself is that in 1:2, 3; the words in the A. V. 15:28 do not belong to the true text, and all the other quotations of Scripture language occur in his report of the language of others, usually of Jesus. Of these a list of twenty-three, besides forty-four briefer references to the Old Testament, is given in SWETE, Gospel according to St. Mark, pp. lxxff.

8) See chap, i, p. 8, n. 7.

9) For other testimonies of antiquity see CHARTERIS, Canonicity.

10) The view of BADHAM, St. Mark's Indebtedness to St. Matthew, that the picturesque details of Mark's gospel are embellishments added by the evangelist to narratives taken from an older source, and that of WENDT, Lehre Jesu, Part I, pp. 9-44, especially pp. 10, 36, 41, 43, that the sources of Mark to the number of eight can be discovered by literary analysis, both seem to me wholly improbable.

11) Σατανᾶς in 1:13, Βεεζεβσύλ in 3:22, Ῥαββουνεί in 10:51, are left without explanation, the first two probably as being proper names which required no explanation, the latter perhaps as a word sufficiently known, even among non-Jewish Christians, not to require explanation. Ἀββά in 14:36 is explained by the immediately following ὀ πατήρ, though this is perhaps not a mere explanatory addition. Cf. SWETE, The Gospel according to St. Mark, ad loc. On the general subject of Aramaic in the New Testament see KAUTZSCH, Grammatik des Biblisch-Aramäischen, pp. 7-12; NEUBAUER, "Dialects Spoken in Palestine," in Studio. Biblica, Vol. I, pp. 39ff., especially p. 56; SCHÜRER, History of the Jewish People, Div. II, Vol. I, pp. 8-10; 3d German ed., Vol. II, pp. 18-20; DALMAN, Words of Jesus, pp. 1-42.

12) The words "Son of God" (υἱοῦ θεοῦ) are lacking in a very few ancient authorities. Westcott and Hort place them in the margin, expressing the opinion that neither reading can be safely rejected. The strong evidence in their favor, and the early recognition of Jesus as Son of God in the narrative, seem to justify the treatment of this characterization as reflecting the author's conception of Jesus. SWETE, The Gospel according to St. Mark, pp. Ix, i, expresses the opinion that the whole of this verse is probably due to a later hand. But this is a conjecture for which there is no external evidence.

13) Into the much-disputed question what the term " Son of man " meant, as used by Jesus of himself, there is not space to enter here. It it perhaps sufficient to observe that in view of the reticence concerning his messiahship which, according to this gospel, Jesus observed almost to the end of his ministry, it is impossible to suppose that the evangelist regarded the term "Son of man," by which Jesus is said publicly and almost from the beginning of his ministry to have designated himself, as a recognized equivalent of " Messiah." That the possibility that he was the Messiah was early discussed among the people (cf. the statement of Luke 3:15 concerning John the Baptist, and the titles with which, according to all the synoptists, the demoniacs addressed Jesus, Mark 3:11, etc.) is not intrinsically improbable. But this does not imply that Jesus had declared himself to be the Messiah, and it is worthy of note that those who address him as Messiah never employ the term " Son of man."

14) This does not imply that the disciples had not from the first suspected, or even believed, that Jesus was the Christ; still less that Jesus had not from the first known himself to be the Messiah. The representation of this gospel is rather that Jesus did not thrust his messianic claim into the foreground; did not make recognition of it a test and condition of discipleship; did not, so to speak, conduct his campaign on the basis of it; but, on the contrary, kept it in the background, both with his disciples and with the people at large, until each had had the opportunity to gain from Jesus own conduct and character a conception of messiah ship somewhat akin to his own. He did not define himself by the term "Messiah," but he defined "Messiah" by himself. Thus this term represented for the disciples, as they grew in knowledge of their Master, an ever-changing and enlarging conception.

15) Mark's story of the resurrection is incomplete in the gospel as we have it. Chap. 16:8 is the end of that which we have reason to believe came from the hand of Mark. Yet it cannot be that this is all that he wrote. He certainly did not intend to close his gospel with the words, " They were afraid," and with no account at all of an appearance of Jesus after his resurrection. But the remainder of what he wrote, or intended to write, has in some way failed of transmission to us. Instead of it we have in vss. 9-20 a narrative of the appearance of Jesus after his resurrection, from another hand, and based, perhaps, on the accounts of the other gospels. For fuller discussion of the genuineness and authorship of this passage see WESTCOTT AND HORT, Greek Testament, II, Appendix, pp. 28-51; BURGON, The Last Twelve Verses of St. Mark; SALMON, Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 144-51; GOULD, Commentary on Mark, pp. 301-4; CONYBEARE, in Expositor, IV, viii, p. 241; IV, x, p. 219; V, ii, p. 401; ZAHN, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, Vol. II, pp. 910ff.; ROHRBACH, Der Schluss des Markusevangelinms.

16) At one point only in the gospel is there any considerable indication of arrangement upon a topical plan involving a departure from chronological order, viz., in 2:1 3:6. This group of five short narratives certainly does exhibit the growth of the hostility of the scribes and Pharisees to Jesus, and this seems to be clearly the link of connection joining them. That they should have occurred thus in rapid succession seems somewhat improbable, and the plot to put him to death (3:6) strikes one as strange so early in the ministry. It is possible that the grouping here was that of one of Peter's discourses, and that 3:1-6, or at least vs. 6, is anachronistically narrated. Even this, however, must remain only a conjecture, and the general order of events in Mark remains, if not chronological, yet apparently the nearest approximation to such an arrangement that we possess. Cf. SWETE, St. Mark, pp. liiiff.; BRUCE, in the Expositor's Greek Testament, Vol. I, pp. 27-32.

For an attempt to discover the true order of the events of Jesus ministry on the basis of intrinsic probability and in large part independently of the order of any of the evangelists, see BRIGGS, New Light on the Life of Jesus.