HAVE WE THE GOSPEL OF MARK IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM?

The number of instances in which Matthew and Luke agree in their changes of Mark has given rise to the theory that Matthew and Luke did not use our Mark but an earlier form. A certain number of such agreements might be passed over as merely accidental. A certain number more might be assigned to assimilation. But if the agreements of Matthew and Luke in their corrections of Mark are so numerous and so striking as to be quite beyond accounting for in these ways, the assumption would be justified that Matthew and Luke used, not our copy of Mark, but one in which the text ran as it now does in those passages where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark.

There are some indications that we do not have the Gospel of Mark in its original form. The conclusion is lacking. This however throws no light on an Ur-Marcus, since the conclusion was lacking in the Mark used by Matthew and Luke.[50]

There are many signs of apparent transposition in our Mark. The insertion of one miracle into the midst of another, as in the case of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the issue of blood (v, 21-43), might be held to be such a transposition. The incident of the Beelzebul dispute (iii, 20-30) is inserted between the coming of the family of Jesus (iii, 21) to take him home with them, and Jesus’ statement (iii, 31-35), which is the sequel of their coming, about his true brotherhood. The speech about the cursing of the fig tree (xi, 20-26) intervenes between the cleansing of the temple (xi, 15-19) and the demand of the scribes (xi, 27-33) as to the authority by which Jesus has done so unwonted a thing. After this question about authority, and before Jesus’ reply to it, or before the description of the discomfiture of the scribes at the reply, seriously interrupting the connection, comes the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen.[51]

After the story of the transfiguration the prediction of Jesus’ sufferings comes in between the Scribes’ question about Elijah and Jesus’ answer to that question (Mk ix, 11-13). Loisy thinks Mk xiv, 28, out of place. It certainly disturbs the connection. JÜlicher considers Mk xiv, 25, to be later and less original than its parallel in Mt xxvi, 29. The saying in xiv, 9, about the name of the woman being known wherever the story of Jesus is told has been suggested as the remark of some preacher or commentator À propos of the occurrence, and not a saying of Jesus. Wellhausen has even suggested that the whole story in xiv, 3-9, may be a later addition. The saying, “Ye shall say to this mountain” (xi, 23) should probably be placed in Galilee, presumably at Capernaum, where with a wave of his hand Jesus could point to both mountain and sea—not in Jerusalem where Mark gives it. Schmiedel considers Mk xiv, 58, secondary. It has been argued, or almost assumed, that the second feeding of the multitude could not have been written by the same hand that described the first, nor the events narrated in the first thirty-four verses of chap. iv have been written in their present order. If one is at liberty to subtract what he will from the Gospel of Mark, and to rearrange its parts somewhat, he can undoubtedly make a much more readable and better arranged Gospel of it than it now is.

DISCUSSION OF THE ANALYSIS OF MARK BY WENDLING AND VON SODEN

Two attempts have recently been made to resolve our Gospel of Mark into its constituent elements, which are sufficiently successful to be noticed here. The first is that of von Soden, in his Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu, and the second Wendling’s Ur-Marcus.[52]

Von Soden[53] begins by distinguishing two strands of narrative, easily separable from each other by matter and style. The great differences between these two strands betray two different authors. As the clearest instance of the earlier strand, he takes Mk ii, 1-iii, 6, which he contrasts with iv, 35-v, 43. In the first, all the interest is centered in the words of Jesus; in the second, in the events themselves. “Let one compare the story of the Gadarene demoniac with its twenty verses and the debate about fasting with its five verses, and estimate the weight of the religious value of the thots expressed in the two sections.”

Von Soden next separates Mk vii, 32-37, and viii, 22-26 (the healing of the deaf man and the blind man), as quite distinct in character from such stories as those in ii, 1-12, and iii, 1-6. “In the former, the miracle of healing is itself the subject of the representation; in the latter, the miracle is merely a part of the story, whose real subject is Jesus’ forgiveness of sins and his violation of the Sabbath laws.”In this way von Soden picks out his KernstÜcke. To these KernstÜcke certainly belong the group of narratives in i, 21-39; ii, 1-iii, 6; xii, 13-44; iii, 20-35; vi, 1-6; iv, 1-8; iv, 26-32; and x, 13-31; perhaps also vii, 24-30; vi, 14-16; i, 4-11. To these narratives which go back to Peter may also belong the brief notices concerning the stages of growth of the apostolic circle, in i, 16-20; iii, 13-19; vi, 7-13; viii, 27-ix, 1; and ix, 33-40.[54] To these passages von Soden adds xiii, 1-6, 28-37. He says that at the basis of the story of the days in Jerusalem, xi, 1-xii, 12, and the passion narrative in chaps. xiv and xv, lie narratives of a similar style; but these latter he does not include in his KernstÜcke.

Von Soden then prints the passages which he thus refers to Peter (or the Petrine tradition), “undisturbed by all that our Gospel of Mark has interwoven with them.”[55] The result presents the Petrine nucleus of the Gospel as follows: John the Baptist and the Baptism of Jesus; a Sabbath in Capernaum; the offense of the Jews at Jesus’ forgiving of sins, his association with sinners, his breaking of the Sabbath, and the fact that his disciples do not fast; how the Jews attempt to take him; how Jesus meets the general misunderstanding; parables about the kingdom of God; the question as to who shall enter that kingdom; the development of the apostolic circle; glimpses into the future.

This makes (with the readjustment in the order of some of the sections) a remarkably straightforward and connected narrative. Von Soden’s remarks concerning it are well worth quoting:

These sections of Mark certainly have a very primary character; so far as their contents is concerned, they may well go back to the Petrine tradition.

With these sections von Soden contrasts the remaining parts of the Gospel, in which he finds not only much interruption of the primary narrative, but much interpretation, much allegorizing, much absence of actual situations, much reminiscence of Old Testament stories, much influence from Paul, and many reflections of the experiences of individual Christians and the Christian church.[57] No one can work thru this analysis of von Soden’s without feeling that it is easy to distinguish between primary and secondary elements in the Gospel of Mark, and that von Soden has at least pointed out many of the junctures between these two.

The attempt of Wendling in his Ur-Marcus[58] is still more thorogoing. The basis of his discussion is Mark’s 4th chapter, where he considers the two strands most easily separated. To the original belong iv, 1-9, and vss. 26-33. Vss. 10-25 are later; they have been inserted mechanically, yet so as to respect the older text; they have no organic connection with the rest of the chapter, and even contradict its situation. Jesus is teaching from a boat (and other boats are with his); then suddenly, in vss. 10-25, he is alone with his disciples who ask him the meaning of the parable of the Sower. He gives his explanation, and again without any indication of change of situation he is in the boat surrounded by the other boats, with the people still on the shore, and the storm comes up and is stilled.

This little insertion (iv, 10-25) also contains theories of the writer, quite contradictory to those of the writer of other parts of the Gospel. In other places, Jesus speaks to all the people in parables “as they were able to hear him”; he stretches out his hand over the multitude of his disciples and says, “These are my mother and my sisters”; he is the teacher of the crowd, who understand him better than his own family; there is nothing in his parables that needs explaining. But in this insertion (iv, 10-25) the theory of the writer is that the parables are “mysteries,” enigmas, which not only need to be explained (by the allegorical method), but which are spoken for the express purpose of preventing the people from understanding. Without the key which Jesus gives, even the disciples do not understand them. The section is also marked by Pauline influences.[59]

Two clews are thus given, aside from interruptions in the narrative, by which the work of a second writer may be detected. He has the Geheimnis-Theorie of the parables, and he has in thot and vocabulary reminiscences of the Pauline school. Applying these tests to another section which seems to interrupt the narrative where it stands, Wendling adds a second insertion—iii, 22-30. This is the section about the dispute with the Pharisees, which comes in inaptly between the introduction (iii, 20, 21) and the continuation (iii, 31) of the story of Jesus’ family who have come to take him home. It seems to have been inserted in this place because the Pharisees also said “he hath a devil.” By repeating in vs. 30 the ??e??? ?t? which he found in vs. 21, the redactor preserves for the continuation of the original story precisely the same connection it would have had without his interpolation; and by the use of the same words in vs. 22 he connects the interpolation with the opening narrative. His hand is seen in the superfluous repetition of words, especially of the subject, as in iii, 24, 25.[60]

To these two insertions should be added a third, iii, 6-19. The motives for it seem to be copied from narratives in other chapters. It consists (in part) of generalization and interpretation, both marks of the redactor’s work. It also contains his Geheimnis-Theorie.

To these should be added i, 34b (“he suffered not the demons to speak, because they knew him”), because of the presence in it of this same theory. Nor does i, 45, fit where it is; the connection without it is good; it also contains the favorite theory of the redactor that the more Jesus told people not to proclaim him, the more they did so, and the more he tried to seclude himself the more they found him.

To these again, on somewhat other grounds and not so securely, should be added the little groups of loosely strung logia which are found in vi, 7-11; viii, 34-ix, 1; ix, 40-50; x, 42-45; xi, 23-25; xii, 38-40; xiii, 9-13. The ground for asserting these to be additions is that these logia are not closely connected in the passages in which they occur, and that they share this characteristic with the similar group of disconnected sayings in the first and best attested interpolation, iv, 21-25.

In i, 1-3, 14b, 15, the word e?a??????? arouses a natural suspicion. The same word also occurs in four other places (viii, 35; x, 29; xiii, 10; xiv, 9), all of which are in passages which are suspicious upon other grounds; consequently with the three instances in chap. i, they are ascribed to the redactor.

With the exception of the interpolation in iv, 10-25, the section i, 16-iv, 33, appears to be a unit, and belongs to the oldest stratum. But with iv, 35, says Wendling, begins a new section, easily distinguished from that just mentioned. It copies the motives and the characteristics of other sections.[61] The writer is to be distinguished, however, not merely from the writer of the earliest stratum, but from the author of the insertions already identified. None of the criteria of the latter’s manner appear in the section beginning at iv, 35. It shows no trace of Pauline conceptions, has none of Jesus’ prohibitions to the demons, its Heimlichkeit is of a different sort, and goes back to Old Testament exemplars. And since the insertion in iv, 10-25, presupposes the story of the storm on the lake in iv, 35-v, 43, this latter is older than the former. The writer of this section (iv, 35-v, 43) therefore stood between the writer of the original strand, and the evangelist or redactor. The last writer (Wendling calls him Ev) worked over the combined work of his two predecessors.

To the author who is intermediate between the first writer and the Evangelist, Wendling assigns twenty-nine different sections, some of considerable length and some of only a verse or part of a verse. They are as follows: i, 4-14a; iv, 35-v, 42; v, 43b; vi, 14, 17-30, 35-44; ix, 2-8, 14-27; x, 46-xi, 10; xiv, 12-20, 26-35a, 36-37, 39-41a, 42, 47, 51-56, 60-62a, 63, 64, 66-72; xv, 16-20, 23, 24b, 25, 29-30, 33, 34b-36, 38, 40-43, 46-xvi, 7a, 8—about two hundred verses or parts of verses in all.

The contributions of the author of the Gospel are more extensive than those of his predecessor. They comprise i, 1-3, 14b-15, 34b, 39b, 45; ii, 15b-16a, 18a, 19b-20; iii, 6-19, 22-30; iv, 10-25, 30-32, 34; v, 43a; vi, 1-13, 15, 16, 30-31, 45-viii, 26, 30b-33a, 33c-35, 38-ix, 1, 9-13, 28-50; x, 2-12, 24, 26-30, 32b-34, 38-40, 45; xi, 11-14, 18-25, 27a; xii, 14b, 32-34a, 38-44; xiii, 3-27, 30-32, 37; xiv, 8, 9, 21, 35b, 38, 41b, 57-59, 62b; xv, 39, 44, 45; xvi, 7b, in all about two hundred and seventy verses or parts of verses.

This leaves to the original writer the following sections: i, 16-34a, 35-39a, 40-44; ii, 1-15a, 16b-17, 18b, 19a, 21-iii, 5, 20, 21, 31-iv, 9, 26-29, 33; vi, 32-34; viii, 27-30a, 33b, 36, 37; x, 1, 13-23, 25, 31-32a, 35-37, 41-44; xi, 15-17, 27b-xii, 14a, 14c-31, 34b-37; xiii, 1-2, 28-29, 33-36; xiv, 1-7, 10, 11, 22-25, 43-46, 48-50, 65; xv, 1-15, 21, 22, 24a, 26-27, 31-32, 34a, 37, in all about two hundred and twelve verses or parts of verses.[62]

Wendling calls the writers of these three strands M1, M2, and Ev. Printing the text of M1 and M2 without rearrangement, but with the omission of all matter assigned to Ev, he finds them to make a continuous story, well connected and without breaks. Whether M1 alone makes such a story, he is in doubt; and therefore as to whether M2 found M1 as a connected discourse, or himself first assembled the sections of it in connection with his own additions, the same doubt exists. The passion-story of M1 by itself seems to be a connected account; it may therefore be assumed that so much of M1 was found by M2 as a whole and in its present order. Further, since the work of Ev in the passion-story is so slight, it is to be assumed that the combination of M1 and M2 in this story was more carefully done than in many other parts, and also that for this part of the gospel history Ev possessed very few traditions which had not already been embodied in M1 + M2. This would agree with the natural assumption that the earliest part of the gospel tradition to be carefully treasured would be that relating to Jesus’ death, and that it was only later that the attempt was made to preserve with equal care the story of his whole public career.

When one remembers the fine-spun analyses of the historical books of the Old Testament, which, long ridiculed for their elaborateness, have finally been accepted by most scholars, one hesitates on this account alone to pronounce an adverse judgment upon Wendling’s theory. Yet his analysis certainly seems over-elaborate. It is a great advantage to be able to distinguish the more obvious work of the redactor from the earlier document upon which he worked. All students will feel this with reference to chap. iv, and the advantage in chap. iii is perhaps only less great. Still more welcome is the assignment of vi, 45-viii, 27, to the redactor. The great stumbling-block of this section is its feeding of the four thousand, so obviously copied from the feeding of the five thousand. That one and the same author should have written both these accounts has seemed strange to many readers. But this duplication is as easily disposed of upon von Soden’s theory as upon Wendling’s. Von Soden’s analysis into two strata (without the assumption of two writers) is much simpler than Wendling’s analysis into three, with three writers. Wendling’s theory is more secure where it goes with von Soden’s, and less convincing where it goes beyond it.

Some distinction has in any case to be made between the final writer of the Gospel and the earliest tradition upon which he worked; and Wendling has indicated the criteria which such a distinction must employ. Von Soden’s division of the Marcan material into a Petrine and a later source amounts to the same thing. The two critics do not differ greatly about the passages they regard as secondary. Von Soden’s Petrine narrative does not differ greatly from Wendling’s M1 + M2. But the line of demarkation between M1 and M2, and Wendling’s reasons for drawing this, are not as self-evident as the line which Wendling and von Soden agree in drawing between the earlier document, or source, and the work of the Evangelist.

CONCLUSIONS OF VON SODEN AND WENDLING COMPARED

A tabulation of the results discloses the following agreements and disagreements between von Soden’s Petrine narrative and Wendling’s M1+M2.

The comparison shows Wendling’s analysis to be much more complex than von Soden’s. This results from his separation of his groundwork into two strands. It also shows that Wendling assigns considerably more to M1 and M2 than von Soden to his Petrine source. This Wendling can afford to do, since he supposes two documents instead of one. The matter assigned by von Soden to the Petrine source is in part assigned by Wendling to M1 and in part to M2. E.g., i, 4-11, is assigned by von Soden to the Petrine source, and by Wendling to M2; but i, 16-39, is assigned to the Petrine source, and (with the exception of two parts of verses) to M1. The passage ii, 1-28, is assigned by von Soden to the Petrine source, by Wendling to M1 (again with exception of a few parts of verses). Of the one hundred and seventy-seven verses assigned by von Soden to his Petrine source, up to and including xiii, 37 (after which he so assigns nothing), Wendling assigns about one hundred and twenty-four to his M1, and only ten to M2. Tho he assigns some verses to M1 which von Soden does not give to the Petrine source, and omits some (assigning them to the redactor) which von Soden does so assign, up to xiii, 37, the M1 of Wendling agrees very closely with the Petrine source of von Soden. The material assigned to M1 and M2 after xiii, 37, is about equally divided between them. Wendling makes no claims for the Petrine origin of his M1 or M2, but after these are subtracted from the whole Gospel there is a smaller amount left for the work of his redactor than remains after the Petrine source is subtracted. Since Wendling distinguishes between two sources and the work of the redactor, and von Soden only between the Petrine tradition and other matter, this result also is what would be expected.

The relatively great agreement of the results of these two investigations seems to prove that it is possible to distinguish an earlier and a later tradition in the Gospel. Beyond this, the difference between von Soden and Wendling is that the former makes no assertions concerning the identity of the final editor with the writer who recorded the Petrine tradition, while the latter asserts that the redactor is quite another person than the writer of either M1 or M2. Is this latter position of Wendling’s susceptible of proof or disproof?

Perhaps the simplest criterion, and the one to be most safely applied, is that of vocabulary. Sir John Hawkins compiled a list[63] of forty-one words which he regards as characteristic of Mark. Do these words occur indiscriminately in M1, M2, and Ev, or are they confined some of them to M1, and some to M2, and some to Ev? Or is there sufficient difference in the frequency with which these words occur in the three strata to justify the assumption of three different authors, and especially that Ev was distinct from the writers of the two documents? If not, the division between earlier and later material in Mark may still stand, but it may have been one and the same writer who put the whole Gospel together out of these earlier and later materials.

Characteristic of Mark[64] is the historic present. Hawkins finds one hundred and fifty-one examples of this use in Mark against seventy-eight in Matthew (twenty-one of these taken from Mark),[65] and four in Luke. Of these one hundred and fifty-one historic presents in Mark, forty-nine occur in passages assigned by Wendling to M1, sixty-nine in M2, and thirty-three in Ev.

Of the peculiarly Marcan words, some prove nothing in this connection. ??a??????? is used only by Ev (seven times); but since Wendling uses the presence of this word as a criterion of Ev’s work in six out of the seven passages where it occurs, this adds nothing to the proof. ??a??? is used once by M1, twice by M2, and not by Ev. But since Ev adds no story of a dumb man, he has no occasion to use the word. (He does add a story of a stammering man, where he uses the word, ????????.) ???sa, used once by M2 and three times by Ev, signifies little; since the three uses in Ev occur in the same passage, and this passage is a copy of the passage in M2 (the feeding of the multitudes). St???? occurs three times, all in M1, but this also signifies nothing, since no passage in which it could occur is assigned to M2 or Ev. ??p??e??a? is used twice each by M1 and M2, and seven times by Ev; but since five of these seven occurrences are in the same passage, they cannot establish any particular fondness for this word on the part of Ev as against the other two. ??sp??e??a? looks a little more favorable for Wendling’s hypothesis, since it is used once by M1, twice by M2, and five times, in separated passages, by Ev. ????a?t??, found three times in M1, four in M2, and three in Ev; ?p? a????e?, three times in M2 and twice in Ev; d?da??, used three times by M2 and twice by the redactor, and f???, five times used by M1, eight times by M2, and twice by Ev, do nothing toward establishing a distinct vocabulary for any one of the three. Only two words, d?ast????a?, used four times by the redactor in four different chapters, and not by M1 or M2; and ???a??a?, used only by M2, four times in three different chapters, point in the direction of distinct vocabularies. But the absence of the third of these words can certainly, and of the second probably, be accounted for by the subject-matter.

There is here practically no evidence of distinct vocabularies. Even if there were, it would be fully offset by the use of words having no necessary connection with any particular subject-matter, and therefore equally likely to occur in any part of the Gospel. Five such words are the adverbs e????, p????, p????, ????t?, and ??p?. Of these, the first (Mark’s most characteristic word) is used seventeen times by M1, fifteen by M2, and ten by Ev. Considering the relative amounts of narrative matter ascribed to the three, this usage seems to indicate an equal fondness for this word among them. The second (p????) is used ten times by M1, eight times by M2, and nine times by Ev; the third (p????) is used adverbially three times by M1, six times by M2, and three times by Ev; the fourth (????t?), twice by M1, twice by M2, three times by Ev; the fifth (??p?), once by M1 and four times by Ev.

Characteristic of Mark also is his use of the imperfects ??e?e? and ??e???. They are found fourteen times in M1, fifteen times in M2, and twenty-one times in the passages ascribed to Ev.

Of the forty-one verses listed on p. 246 as standing in both Mark and Q, thirty-four are in passages assigned by Wendling to Ev. This would seem to tell in Wendling’s favor, since the last writer who had a hand in the making of the Gospel of Mark would naturally be the one most likely to make use of Q. Three verses, however, occur in passages assigned to M1, and four in M2. This would indicate that all three writers, besides having the same favorite words, were acquainted with and made some use of Q. The item of the relation of the various writers to Q, however, has little or no significance; since it is the sections having the greatest amount of logian matter and the least narrative, that are assigned to Ev.

The cumulative effect of these considerations is very much to the discredit of Wendling’s assumption of three different writers for our Gospel of Mark. It cannot, to be sure, disprove that assumption; but it at least shows a lack of proof where proof would be most easily found and most convincing.

MATTHEW AND LUKE USED OUR MARK AS A SOURCE

Even if Wendling’s analysis had been capable of substantiation on linguistic grounds, his division of our Gospel of Mark into three strands from three different authors would not help us toward an Ur-Marcus lying behind our Gospels of Matthew and Luke. For Matthew or Luke or both of them follow Mark in all the transpositions, dislocations, and other misarrangements of his Gospel. Whether these features stood in the original Mark or not, they evidently stood in the Mark used by Matthew and Luke.

Matthew and Luke also used a Mark which contained the story of Jesus in the same order given by our present Mark. Tho both of them deviate from this order for assignable reasons, one or the other of them is found following it all the time. If these deviations go back to an Ur-Marcus, there must have been one Ur-Marcus in the hands of Matthew and another in the hands of Luke.

THE HYPOTHESIS OF A PRIMITIVE MARK SUPERFLUOUS; SIMPLER EXPLANATIONS

Can the verbal agreements of Matthew and Luke as against Mark, or their deviations from him without apparent reason, be explained upon any simpler hypothesis than that of Ur-Marcus? It appears to the writer that they can.

A certain number (tho no one can say exactly what proportion of the whole) of the agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark may be allowed to be accidental. Many of them, like the substitution of e?pe? for ???e?, or of an occasional d? for Mark’s invariable and monotonous ?a? or the substitution of a common for an uncommon word (like ????? for ???att??) require no explanation.Agreements of Matthew and Luke in their omissions from the Marcan narrative do not stand upon the same plane with the agreements in substitutions, and may all be accounted for on the ground of accident, or by the same desire on the part of both writers to be more concise, or to avoid anything derogatory to Jesus or the apostles; or by some other similar motive at work separately in the minds of the two later evangelists. It is only the agreements in corrections and substitutions that require accounting for. I believe these can be explained chiefly on two grounds:

1. It is not necessary to assume that Matthew and Luke both worked upon the same identical copy of our Mark. If they used two copies, these two would not be expected to agree absolutely with each other in the wording of every passage. This would account for some of the slight deviations in the wording of either Matthew or Luke where the other agrees with our present Mark. These two copies that Matthew and Luke used may neither of them have been the original (since in both of them the conclusion at least was gone); or at least not the original in its original form. One of them may have been a copy of the original, and the other a copy of this copy. Or they may both, as Sanday argues, have belonged to a type later, and not earlier, than our present Mark. This would account for the agreements, and for such deviations as have not already been accounted for, or cannot be accounted for, by the known literary peculiarities of Matthew and Luke. Since the text of Mark that has come down to us is more corrupt than that of either Matthew or Luke, various words in which Matthew and Luke now agree against Mark may have stood in the text which both of them used, and may later have dropped out, before the copy was made to which our present texts go back. Or the two copies of Mark, assumed above, may both have been made from the original copy which Mark made with his own hand. Upon this supposition even, they would not always agree, and so deviations in Matthew and Luke from Mark, and occasional agreements in such deviations, would be explained. Or these agreements may be explained, as is obvious in many instances, by the working of similar motives in the minds of Matthew and Luke, even assuming them to have made their extracts from one and the same copy, or from two practically identical copies, of Mark.

Dr. E. A. Abbott, in his Corrections of Mark (London, 1901) gives an exhaustive list of the deviations from Mark in which Matthew and Luke agree. Many of these are such as to suggest that Matthew and Luke used not an Ur-Marcus, but a text of Mark later than the one that has come down to us. E.g., in twelve instances Matthew and Luke agree in supplying the subject or object which our Mark omits. In fifteen, they agree in correcting abrupt constructions, supplying a connecting word. In thirteen (exclusive of ???e?) they agree in correcting Mark’s historic present. In twelve they agree in replacing Mark’s relative clause or his subjunctive by a participle. In twenty-three they agree in substituting e?pe? for ???e?. In thirty they agree in the use of d? for ?a?. It is not impossible that Matthew and Luke, independently bent on improving Mark’s style, have accidentally agreed in making these same improvements in the same places (especially since there are other improvements of the same sort in which they do not agree). But it is a much simpler and more adequate hypothesis, that they both used a text of Mark in which these corrections had already been made.Yet even of this text they probably did not use the same identical copy. And as the copy used by one or both of them may have been two or three removes from the text from which it started, many changes may have crept into the copy used by one of them, not contained in the copy used by the other. This would account alike for the agreements in deviations from our present Mark, and for the fact that these corrections are not all of them found in both Matthew and Luke. This last item is further accounted for by the freedom of Matthew and Luke in making their own corrections in the copy that lay before them.[66] Allowance should also be made for the fact that we cannot be sure that we have yet recovered the true text of either Matthew or Luke.[67]

2. The agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark can further be accounted for by the hypothesis of assimilation. Matthew made certain changes of his own in the wording of Mark; Luke apparently made many more. The various texts still extant show many efforts of copyists to bring the deviations of Matthew and Luke in small verbal items into an agreement. If this same process went on during the period covered by our earliest manuscripts, it is probable that it went on to a much greater extent at an earlier date, before our Gospels had acquired the sacredness which they later came to possess. A fine illustration of this process and its results is to be seen in the Matthean and Lucan versions of the Lord’s Prayer, in which the probably original “Let thy Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us,” of Luke, has been assimilated to “Thy kingdom come,” and in many manuscripts also to “Thy will be done as in heaven so upon earth,” of Matthew. The extent of this sort of assimilation can never be determined; but it seems quite sufficient to account for agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark not easily accounted for on other grounds.

A more general reason against the assumption of an Ur-Marcus in the hands of Matthew and Luke is the comparatively small number and importance of their agreements against Mark, as compared with the very large number of the deviations in which they do not agree, and as compared also with the vastly greater number of instances in which both Matthew and Luke follow Mark faithfully. In other words, if Ur-Marcus differed from our Mark only in those words and phrases in which Matthew and Luke agree against our Mark, then Ur-Marcus was at the most not a different Mark from ours, but only a different copy or text of our Mark. The assumption of an Ur-Marcus was a natural one for the explanation of the phenomena in question; but it is a cumbersome hypothesis, and insecure; further study seems to discredit it. Matthew and Luke used our Mark, not another.

It has often been suggested that the Marcan material covered by the “great omission” of Luke (Mk vi, 45-viii, 26) was absent from the copy of Mark used by Luke, tho present in that used by Matthew. Reasons for Luke’s omission of this long Marcan section have been given, and seem sufficient without the assumption of its absence from Luke’s copy of Mark. But the theory of its absence has also important items directly against it. The section has the general Marcan characteristics. Mark has one hundred and forty-one historic presents; eighteen of them are in this section. He uses e???? thirty-four times, five in this section; p???? twenty-six times, five in this section. He is partial to the imperfects ??e?e? and ??e???, which he uses fifty times (against Matthew’s twenty-three and Luke’s nine), six times in this section. The same habit of duplicate expression which occurs in other parts of his Gospel appears here. ? ?st?? in the sense of “i.e.,” peculiar to Mark among the evangelists, appears here twice (four times elsewhere in the Gospel). Seven out of the nine sections begin with ?a?. The section seems to be too homogeneous with the rest of the book to be from a different hand.[68]

The foregoing considerations seem to render the hypothesis of Ur-Marcus superfluous. The phenomena for which it was designed to account are more easily and naturally explained by other suppositions.

SOME REMARKABLE VERBAL RESEMBLANCES

In the preceding pages sufficient consideration has been given not only to the fact, but to the manner, of the use of Mark by Matthew and Luke. Visual illustration, by the printing of a few passages in different kinds of type may serve to enforce some of the more general facts already brot out. The words (or parts of words) common to the three Synoptics, in the following passages, will be printed in heavy-faced type.

Here the evangelists differ each from the other in the words ascribed to Jesus, but when they come to the parenthetic explanation injected into the midst of the sentence, ??a d? e?d?te, etc., they agree exactly, not only in the wording, but in the awkward placing of the clause. The three accounts agree in the first five lines, except for the presence of ??? in Matthew, the insertion of t? pa?a??t??? in Mark, and a slightly different form of the verb ?f??? in Luke. In the fourth line Luke also inserts s??, after which come seven consecutive agreeing words (tho with slight rearrangement in order by Luke). Mark then has a clause of six words which Matthew and Luke omit. The latter agree in substituting pe??p?te? for ?pa?e, and two (different) words from the same root for Mark’s ???at??. Luke has preserved the s?? ???? which Matthew has dropped.

Few brief passages in the triple tradition will better repay study than this. Note that the three introduce their question with three different particles. Matthew and Luke omit the apparently superfluous words of Mark, ??e?a? ?s?e?, but Luke retains the a?t?? of Mark which Matthew has dropped. Luke adds ??te?, perhaps in deference to Mark’s ??s??, used in a similar phrase but different connection. He substitutes ?? for the p?? of Mark and Matthew. Mark and Luke both have the statement that David “gave” the bread to those that were with him, Luke adding that he “took” it. All three have in conclusion the phrase “to those with him,” but each has inserted it in a different place. Matthew follows Mark more closely than does Luke, the latter transposing one or two clauses. Both Matthew and Luke have omitted the reference to Abiathar, either because they (or Luke at least) had no interest in it, or for its historical difficulty. In spite of these changes there is a most remarkable verbal agreement thruout. Except for Mark’s superfluous “had need,” and his reference to Abiathar, nothing can be found in either account that is not duplicated, practically word for word and almost letter for letter, in one or both of the others.

This passage contains the striking addition of the parenthetical explanation ?sa? ??? ??ee??. That this should occur in a narrative portion, and not in a saying of Jesus, is the more significant. For the rest, the saying ascribed to Jesus runs word for word (tho its brevity in this case robs this fact of any very remarkable significance); in the narrative portion Matthew mentions that Simon was called Peter (a remark which Mark saves till he comes to the formal naming of the twelve), and in the conclusion he says “they left the boat and their father,” while Mark says “they left their father in the boat,” adding, “with the hired men.” Mark says Jesus called the two “immediately.” Matthew says they left “immediately.”