9. Language. -There can be no reason for questioning that the gospel was composed in Greek. To suppose that it was written in Latin as is stated in the subscription to the Peshito, and some early Greek MSS., /•ypdctyri Pco,uatcrrc ?v P4.73--because it was intended for the use of Roman Christians, implies complete ignorance of the Roman Church of that age, which in lan guage, organization, and ritual, was entirely Greek, maintaining. its character in common with most of the churches of the west as a Greek religious colony' (Milman, Lat. Christ., i. 27). The attempt made by Baronius, Bellarmine, etc., to strengthen the authority of the Vulgate by this means was therefore, as one of their own church, R. Simon, has shown, entirely futile ; and the pretended Latin autograph, said to be preserved in the library of St. Mark's at Venice, turned out to be part of an ancient Latin codex of the four gospels, now known as Cod. Forojuliensis.' to. Gospel of St. Mark may be divided into three parts.
(i.) The occurrences previous to the commence ment of the public ministry of our Lord, including the preaching and baptism of John, our Lord's bap tism and temptation (i. 1-13).
(2.) Our Lord's ministry in Galilee, including that in Eastern Galilee (i. I4-vii. 23) ; that in Northern Galilee (vii. 24-ix. 37) ; that in Perxa, and the journeyings toward Jerusalem (ix. 38-x. 52).
(3.) His triumphant entry, passion, death, resur rection, and ascension (xi. 1-xvi. 8 [20]).
Genuineness and Integrity-The genuine ness of St. Mark's Gospel was never doubted be fore Schleiermacher, who, struck by an apparent discrepancy between the orderly narrative we now possess and the description of I'apias, rc. s., broached the view followed by Credner, Ewald, and others, that the gospel in its present form is not the work of Mark the companion of Peter. This led to the notion, which has met with much acceptance among German critics (Baur, Hilgcnfeld, Kostlin, etc.), of an original, praxanonical, Mark, the Gospel of Peter,' probably written in Aramaic, which, with other oral and documentary sources, formed the basis on which some unknown later writers formed the existing gospel. But even if, on other grounds, this view were probable, all historical testimony is against it ; and we should have to account for the entire disappearance of an original document of so much importance without leaving a trace of its existence, and the silent sub stitution of a later work for it, and its acceptance by the whole church. If ordinary historical testimony is to have any weight, we can have no doubt that the gospel we now have, and which has always borne his name, was that originally composed by St. Mark. We can have no reason to think that either John the presbyter or Papias were infallible, and if the ordinary interpretation of ou refEet was correct, and the description of the gospel given by Papias was really at variance with its present form, it would be at least equally probable that their judg ment was erroneous, and their view mistaken.
There can, however, be little doubt that the mean ing of air ;ger has been strained and distorted, and that the words do really describe not St. Mark's alone, but all three Synoptic Gospels as we have them ; not, that is, 'Lives of Christ' chronologi cally arranged, but ' a summary of representative facts' given according to a moral and not a historic sequence, following a higher order than that of mere time.
As regards the integrity of the gospel, Ewald, Reuss, and others, have called in question the genuineness of the opening verses (i. 1-13). But the external evidence for them is as great as that for the authenticity of any part of the gospels. Internal evidence is too subtle a thing, and varies too much with the subjectivity of the writer, for us to rely on it exclusively.
The case is very different with the closing portion (xvi. 9-20), where the evidence, both external and internal, is very strong against its having formed a part of St. Mark's original gospel; which, for causes on which it is now idle to speculate, appears to have broken off abruptly with the words bpoporfirro 74 (for various theories to account for this, the death of St. Peter, that of St. Mark, sudden perse cution, flight, the loss of the last leaf, etc., see Hug, Meyer, Schott). No less than twenty-one words and expressions occur in it, some of them repeatedly, which are never elsewhere used by St. Mark. This alone, when we remember the pecu liarities of diction in the pastoral epistles, as com pared with St. Paul's other writings, would not be sufficient to prove that it was not written by the same author; though when taken in connection with the external evidence, it would seem to show that it was not composed at the same time. On this ground, therefore, we must conclude that if not the work of another hand, it was written at a later period than the rest of the gospel. The external evidence, though somewhat inconsistent, points the same way. While it is found in all codices of weight, including A, C, D, and all versions, and is repeatedly quoted, without question, by early writers from the time of Irenreus (Herr. iii. so. 6), and appears in the very ancient Syriac recension published by Cureton, it is absent from the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS. (in the former of which, after the subscription, the greater part of the column and the whole of the next are left vacant, a phenomenon nowhere else found in the N. T. portion of the codex), while in several MSS. that contain it, it is noted that it is wanting in others, and those the most accurate copies.