twelve verses have all the appearance of being a continuation, bringing the narrative down to the time of writing and as it was published after the death of Peter, the name of a living and responsible editor was necessary as a guarantee to the Church of its authenticity; and the name of Mark, the son and chosen follower of Peter, fulfilled the condition which our law considers indispensable in the proof of ancient documents, and showed that it came from the proper custody. The importance of such a guarantee will be obvious, when we remember the number of spurious and heretical Gospels which were circulated at an early age of the Church, bearing the names of Peter, Thomas, Matthias, and others.*

The patristic evidence which ascribes the matter of the second Gospel to Peter is clear and explicit; not so as to the manner in which it was communicated to Mark by Peter. A very general opinion appears to have prevailed that the communication was oral, not written-that Mark wrote from his recollection of Peter's discourses. The tradition that it was so appears to be traceable to Papias, who gives, as his authority for the origin of this Gospel, John the Presbyter. John could not be mistaken as to the fact that Mark's Gospel rested on the authority of Peter, although he might as to the manner in which it was communicated to Peter; or he might have been misapprehended by Papias, or Papias himself may have been misapprehended by subsequent writers. I am indebted to a learned reviewer of my former work+ for showing that this last supposition is more than a possibility--that Papias did not mean to say, as I formerly understood him, that "Mark was the translator of Peter, and he wrote accurately the things which he (Mark) remembered” (p. 219), but that he meant to say that “Mark wrote what Peter recorded." He thus expresses

his reasons:

"In the dissertation on the sources of the writings of St Luke, Mr Smith has laboured, and we think successfully, to prove that the Gospel of St Mark is an apostolically authorised translation from a memoir written many years before, by St Peter, in the Aramaic or Syro-Chaldee dialect. The only diffi

*

See Euseb., H. E. iii. 25.

The Rev. James Bandinel.

culty which Mr Smith meets with in the way of this conclusion-a difficulty which we think will vanish upon a more careful investigation-is, that Eusebius quotes a passage from Papias which our author gives thus, Kaì raûra ó πρεσβύτερος ἔλεγε, Μάρκος μὲν ἑρμηνευτής Πέτρου καὶ ὅσα ἐμνημόνευσεν ἀκριβῶς ἔγραψεν; and which he renders, The Presbyter (John) said this: Mark was the translator of Peter, and he wrote accurately the things which he remembered.' We, however, entertain no doubt but that Peter is the subject of éμvnμóvevoev, and Mark of ἔγραψεν; nor should we hesitate to render ἐμνημόνευσεν, “ recorded, 'Mark wrote what Peter recorded.' The sense is still clearer as it stands in the text of the Cambridge edition (the last, we believe, of Eusebius), Mápkos μεν ἑρμηνευτής Πέτρου γενόμενος, ὅσα ἐμνημόνευσεν ἀκριβῶς ἔγραψεν,—which we would give thus: Mark, being the translator (or interpreter) of Peter, wrote accurately whatever he (Peter) recorded.'"*

I agree entirely with the reviewer that unμóvevσev may be translated "recorded," and if so, must be referred to Peter; for we cannot suppose that Papias would tell us that Mark “wrote what he recorded." Let us now see how a translator, who has no theory to establish, renders the passage. Dr Cruse, in his translation of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, thus renders it :"And John the Presbyter also said this: Mark being the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he recorded he wrote with great accuracy." (P. 152.)

Such is the external evidence connecting the Gospel of Mark with the apostle. Before stating the internal proofs which the comparison of the different Gospels has suggested, I shall give the clear but concise statement of Mr Greswell :

"There are numerous indications in the Gospel of St Mark which imply a closer connection between the writer of this Gospel and St Peter, than between him and any other of the apostles. His mention of the name of Simon in a peculiar manner, as at i. 16, 29, 30, 36-the absence, in his narrative, of the name of Peter, until it was actually bestowed upon him at his ordination as an apostle-the modest and indirect way in which he is placed at the head of the apostolic catalogue-the place assigned in this catalogue to the name of his brother Andrew, which is after James and John-the circumstantiality of all those details at which Peter was obviously present (as the cure of the demoniac at Gadara; the raising of Jairus's daughter, preceded by the miracle of the issue of blood; the cure of the epileptic demoniac after the

English Review, xiii. 276.

Transfiguration, and the like)—the omission of Peter's walking on the seathe omission of his memorable blessing, and the insertion of his no less memorable reproof, which things are the reverse of each other in St Luke-the mention of the first dispute of the apostles concerning precedence, in which Peter doubtless took an active part-the omission in St Mark of the splendid promise recorded by St Matthew (xix. 28), made, indeed, to the twelve in common, but directly in answer to a question of St Peter's-the notice of his presence, along with Andrew, James, and John, at the time of the prophecy on the Mount-the renewal of the conversation respecting the curse on the fig-tree, which was due to St Peter-the omission of his name as one of the two disciples employed to prepare the Last Supper-the peculiarly distinct and definite account which St Mark in particular has given, both of the prediction and the fulfilment of the prediction of his denials of Christ—the omission of the epithet ups, at the end of the account, to describe the bitterness of his repentance, which is found in both St Matthew and St Luke-the express mention of the name of Peter in the message sent by the angels to the apostles in common;-all these, and more which might be mentioned, are circumstances in a great measure peculiar to St Mark's Gospel, and such as might naturally have been expected from a companion or disciple of St Peter in particular."*

We have here a great mass of evidence connecting Peter with the Gospel of Mark, but connecting him personally, and not through a friend or disciple, who would rather have softened his faults, and dwelt upon the bitterness of his repentance. "The modest and indirect way in which he is placed at the head of the apostolic catalogue" is much more characteristic of an author speaking of himself, than it is of a friend and disciple.

Mr Greswell's is a statement of the moral evidence connecting St Peter with the second Gospel. There is another class of proofs which Mr Greswell merely glances at, which carry to my mind a still stronger conviction: I mean the undesigned coincidences between the writer and his own personal circumstances-national, professional, or otherwise. An eyewitness can scarcely avoid exhibiting such coincidences; but they are much more strongly marked in an unpractised writer, such as the author of the second Gospel evidently was, than in one accustomed to composition. We can detect such characteristic traits in all the historical writ

* Dissertations, &c., i. 82.

66

ings of the New Testament, but they are much more fully developed in the second Gospel than in the writings of the other evangelists. When at Jerusalem, Peter's Galileanism bewrayed him;" but the second Gospel abounds in Galileanisms. Thus, when the evangelist wishes to give an idea of the wide extent of our Lord's fame, he tells us that it "spread abroad throughout all the region about Galilee" (i. 28)—an idea of extent which would scarcely occur to any but a Galilean, and indeed to one writing on the spot. Many of these provincialisms escape the English reader from the neglect of the translators in rendering the article, frequently omitting it where it occurs in the original, and inserting it where it is wanting. Thus, in Matthew, v. 1, we are told in the authorised versions that our Lord "went up to a mountain;"❞—it ought to be rendered, "to the mountain." But no mountain is previously mentioned. How, then, it may be asked, should the definite article be understood? The answer is, that Capernaum is placed on the margin of a lake, and at the foot of a mountain, and the universal practice of the inhabitants of a town so situated is to call the mountain behind "the mountain."* In the case in question it is, in fact, a Capernaumism. Now, the the first two Gospels abound in such provincialisms-some of them common to both, some of them peculiar to the writers of each. Thus Matthew, speaking of his own house, calls it "the house,” but the other evangelists speak of it as "his" (Matthew's) "house." In Mark we have the somewhat remarkable expression, tà πpòs-τìv-ðúpav, "the before-the-door" (ii. 2), to indicate the open space before Peter's house. In another place, speaking of his house, the evangelist takes care to add that it was also the house of Andrew (i. 29), avoiding the appearance of exclusive appropriation which Peter alone would wish to avoid. He also talks of it as els oikov, "at home" (ii. 1); so also he speaks of "the boat," "the sea," ""the other side," &c., as objects so familiar as to

* Mr Stephens, a late American traveller, in speaking of Capernaum, almost unavoidably adopts the language of the evangelist. He says, "The ruins of Capernaum extend more than a mile along the shore, and back towards the mountain."-P. 114.

require no other specification. These modes of expression tend to prove the authors of the two Gospels to have been Galileans.

Peter was a fisherman, Matthew was not; now the descriptions. of the events which took place on the lake are professional in Mark, but unprofessional in Matthew. A storm makes a very different impression on a seaman from what it does on a landsman: the seaman, who is obliged to act, thinks and speaks of the causes of the storm the force or direction of the gale; the landsman, who is passive, thinks of what most immediately affects him-the agitation of the waters. There are two storms described in these Gospels; in Mark the prominent feature is the wind, in Matthew the waves. See Section xxviii. and note thereupon, p. 285; see also Section xxxvii. p. 82, describing the miracle of Christ walking on the sea, p. 82. Here Matthew's account is based upon the original of Mark, but with additions, one of which is the force of the waves both of the writers mention the direction of the wind. In Mark's account it is important, as increasing the toil of the rowers; in Matthew it appears unimportant, because the agitation. of the surface, on which he dwells, depended on the force, not upon the direction of the wind. There are other professionalisms in Mark which show that the author of the original was a fisherman, such as his use of the obviously technical expression àμpádλovras (i. 16) for a particular mode of fishing. The author is therefore a fisherman, but he must also have been an eyewitness of the events which he describes with such precision he must have been in the boat when our Lord stilled the tempest, for the details are such as would only be known to an eyewitness, and which an eyewitness alone would think of describing. Who would think of adding to a pre-existing account that there were other boats, of which we hear no more, in company? (Mark iv. 36); or the number of bearers of a paralytic patient? (ii. 3); or that a youth lost his garment in a popular tumult? (xiv. 52).* The autopticity

*Mr Greswell supposes that the young man must have been Mark himself, because no other assignable motive can be imagined for the insertion of such a circumstance: to me, it is a proof that the author witnessed it, and in describing the transactions inserted it in illustration of the violence of the tumult. We have an analogous case in General