Heresy III, Of the Gospel of Mark

OF THE GOSPEL OF MARK — Heresy III (De Marci Evangelio haeresis III)

That the Gospel of Mark, which the church now reads, does not lack suspicion of depravation and falsity.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

This is a heresy of the Anabaptists of our time, who in this dissent from Ebion, Cerinthus, and Merinthus, and from Marcion: that those cast away this gospel of Mark entirely, while these, though they confess that they receive it, yet according to their own caprice take up some things out of it, and reject other things — those that fight against their own dogmas — as sent in by falsifiers; affirming that this is therefore lawful for them, because it is certainly established that the gospel of Mark was ill handled by corrupters, some perverting the order of the history, others superadding many things which before were not in it — as is shown by their arguments subjoined.

OBIECTIONES HAERETICORVM [The Objections of the Heretics]

1. In the very exordium it straightway appears that this gospel has been contaminated by corrupters, in those words: ¹ “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, as it is written in Esaias the prophet: Behold, I send my angel [messenger], who shall prepare thy way before thee.” ² These words were prefixed to this gospel not by Mark the Evangelist, but by some inept depraver, little versed in the scriptures of the Old Testament, who wished this exordium to agree with the unrecognized testimony of the prophet. For it is not at all likely that Mark was so devoid of the divine scriptures as not to know that this was written not by Esaias but by the prophet Malachias. Nor does that solution avail — namely, that Mark attributed to Esaias what was Malachias’s because, if not the words, yet the sense may be found in Esaias; for if this were admitted, it would matter nothing under what title anything is cited from the sacred letters, since the same senses are found almost everywhere, under divers words, in the sacred volumes. Whence Jerome, seeing that the evangelist, if he had written this, could not be vindicated from the calumny of unskilfulness, in the commentaries upon Matthew, the third chapter, threw this error back upon falsifiers, saying: “We however think the name of Esaias was added by the fault of copyists; which we could prove also in other places.” But let us grant that Mark cited the name of Esaias for the name of Malachias because, as he wrote, another name did not then occur to him: yet it is not credible that he was so unskilled as not to know that Malachias spoke not of John the Baptist but of the prophet Elias (Helia) — as his words below, in the fourth chapter, pronounced to the same purpose, attest, namely: “Behold, I will send to you Elias the prophet, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come; ³ and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the hearts of the sons to their fathers.” Which words show that the prophet spoke not of the coming of John — who is read to have come at the first coming of Christ in the flesh — but of the coming of the prophet Elias on the last day of judgment, which in the scriptures is called the great and terrible day of the Lord.

2. And lest perchance the end of this gospel should disagree with its own exordium, the depravers of the scriptures therefore added at its heel (in calce) all that which is now read in the last chapter of this gospel concerning the resurrection and ascension of the Lord. And that this chapter was not written by Mark can be known from this: first, because in it things contrary to the other evangelists are related concerning the resurrection and apparition of Christ;

(printed p. 591)

secondly, because, as Jerome hands down in the third Question to Hedibia, that last chapter is found in none of the ancient Greek codices; thirdly, because Jerome and many of the ancient fathers reject the testimony of this chapter as of uncertain authority. For thus Jerome writes of this last chapter of the gospel in the aforesaid place: “We do not receive this testimony of Mark, which is related in rare gospels — almost all the books of Greece not having this chapter at the end — especially since it seems to narrate things diverse from and contrary to the other evangelists.”

3. And the things which are placed between the beginning and the end of this gospel are related so preposterously, confusedly, and inordinately, that what Matthew the evangelist writes as said or done earlier, this one commemorates as though done later; and contrariwise, what Matthew narrates as having happened much later, this one places long before — no account being kept of times or of things done. Whence it is easily judged that this gospel was not first digested in this order by Mark, but rather according to the order and disposition of Matthew, whose abbreviator Mark was — as Augustine attests in the books On the Concord of the Evangelists — and whose gospel he contracted into a compendium, with the style of Matthew imitated so closely that Erasmus, in his Apology against Albert, Prince of Carpi, wrote that the writer of both was the same — namely, of the Gospel of Mark and of Matthew; but that afterward, after some time, by the negligence of copyists or the malice of heretics, it was tossed up and down and heaped together without any order. Thus far the Anabaptists.

DILVTIO [The Dissolution]

1. Answering them, we say first that their argument is not new, but was objected to the Christians many ages ago by Porphyry, and noted in the fourteenth book of his volumes; ⁴ whom the divine Jerome meeting, says the argument can be dissolved in two ways (bifariam): in one way indeed, that — according to the judgment of the ancient ecclesiastical [writers] — we say Mark therefore attributed that testimony to Esaias, because immediately after it there followed that other testimony of Esaias, taken from his fortieth chapter, namely: ⁵ “The voice of one crying in the desert: prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.” Wherefore, since Mark had made one body out of those two testimonies, he cited the whole of it under the name of Esaias. Which Paul also, writing to the Romans, once did: in which place, when he had woven that testimony out of Deuteronomy, and the thirteenth psalm, and certain other places of scripture — “All have turned aside, they are together become unprofitable,” down to that place, “there is no fear of God before their eyes” — he cited the whole as if from the psalm; ⁶ although those words from the verse “Their throat is an open sepulchre” as far as the verse “There is no fear of God before their eyes” are not had in the Hebrew. And in the other way it can be solved thus: that we say the name of Esaias was added by the fault of copyists, since previously it was not there. For it is likely that unskilled copyists, by the nearness of the two testimonies — which were two — could easily be deceived into believing that there was only one testimony, and hence set upon them the name of Esaias, perhaps better known to them. Nor yet does it follow from this that the whole Gospel of Mark is suspect of corruption and contamination because a single word was added from the imprudence of copyists: for [a word] added or subtracted diminishes nothing of the truth of the text. Whence also the Greek codices read the citation of this testimony diversely: some, namely the more recent, the name of Esaias being removed, read ὡς γέγραπται ἐν τοῖς προφήταις, “As it is written in the prophets”; but the more ancient — as Epiphanius cites, in the second book Against Heresies ⁷ — read ὡς γέγραπται ἐν τῷ Ἡσαίᾳ προφήτῃ, “as it is written in Esaias the prophet.” With whom also agrees the most ancient Greek exemplar of the Vatican Library, written out in majuscule letters.

Now as to what the wicked Anabaptists subjoin — that the testimony of Malachias is to be understood not of John the Baptist but of Elias — it is a comment [fabrication] and fable of the Jews of our time, who understand by “the angel [messenger] sent before the face” that same angel whom immediately after Malachias calls “the angel of the testament,” or of the covenant. ⁸ Him the Jews think to be Elias, because he had zeal for the covenant of circumcision; and hence, whenever they circumcise a boy, at every circumcision they adorn “Elias’s chair,” thinking that the spirit of Elias goes before the face of the boy to be circumcised, as one zealous for the testament and covenant of circumcision. The Jews also in the time of Jerome interpreted the first part of that vaticination — namely, “Behold, I send my angel before thy face” — of Elias; ⁹ but the following words — “And presently the Lord the ruler shall come to his temple, and the angel of the testament whom you desire” — they referred to their ἠλειμμένον [anointed one] (that I may use Jerome’s word), that is, to their Christ, whom they believed, and still believe, would come at the last time. But Christ our redeemer teaches of whom this prophecy is to be understood — namely, of his own precursor John the Baptist, who played the angel [messenger] in the dignity of his office and in the sanctity of his life — saying: “This is he of whom it is written: Behold, I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee.” Nor does it stand in the way that the Anabaptists, together with the circumcised (recutitis) Jews, say that the prophet Malachias himself declares below that he speaks of Elias, when he says: “Behold, I send to you Elias the prophet” — since the angel in Luke, and Christ in Matthew, expound the same words of John the Baptist. ¹⁰ “If you will know it,” says Christ, “he himself is Elias who is to come” — [John being] called Elias by similitude, because he came in the power and spirit of Elias; that is, having an equal measure of the Holy Spirit, or grace, or merit, and the same austerity of life and rigor of mind. And as to what is added — that Elias shall come before “the great and terrible day” — it ought to move no one, as though it could not be fitted to John, who came not at the second but at the first coming of Christ: since in the sacred letters “the great and terrible day of the Lord” is wont to be understood not only of the second coming of Christ unto judgment, in which Elias shall come, but also of the first coming of Christ in the flesh, which John preceded. For the first coming of Christ according to the flesh is called the day of the Lord

(printed p. 592)

great and terrible — whether on account of the blinding and the terrible ruin of the Hebrews wrought in it, or (as Bede says) on account of the day of the nativity and of the passion of Christ, which by Peter the Apostle, out of the testimony of the prophet Joel, is called “the great and manifest day of the Lord”: ¹¹ seeing that when Christ was born a new star shone forth, and when he was crucified the sun was darkened, the moon gave no light, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent, the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints that had slept were seen — to the great terror of the onlookers — to run about through the city.

2. As to what pertains to the last chapter of this Gospel: the Anabaptists, as is the custom of heretics, produce Jerome’s sentence truncated — the particle “Aut [Either],” which is read at the beginning of his sentence, being removed. For Jerome brought it forth not by way of assertion, but distinguishing the judgment of others from his own, saying: “Either we do not receive the testimony of Mark… or this is to be answered” — namely according to our [his own] judgment. For Jerome could not reject the scripture of this chapter, which he had translated from the Greek, had given to the church to be read, and had approved, a peculiar exposition being even applied to it. And what Jerome subjoined — that this chapter of old was not in the Greek exemplars, and for that reason was rejected by some, because it seemed to contain things contrary to the other Evangelists — he understood not of the whole scripture of this chapter, but of certain apocryphal periods [sentences] of this chapter, sent into certain codices by uncertain authors; which, because they seemed either doubtful or contrary to the other Evangelists, were therefore withdrawn from the Greek codices by the fathers. And this the divine Jerome himself declares, in the second book against the Pelagians, in these words: “In certain exemplars, and chiefly in the Greek codices according to Mark, at the end of his Gospel it is written: ¹² ‘Afterwards, when the eleven were at table, Jesus appeared to them, and upbraided their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen him rising again; and they gave satisfaction, saying: This age is the substance of iniquity and incredulity, which suffereth not, through unclean spirits, the true virtue of God to be apprehended: therefore even now reveal thy justice.’” These words, so cited by Jerome, are now had neither in the Greek nor in the Latin codices. And what the Anabaptists adjoin out of Jerome — that this chapter contains things contrary to the other Evangelists concerning the resurrection of the Lord — the same Jerome solves in this manner: ¹³ “Concerning the apparent contradiction between Matthew and Mark, it is to be answered that both spoke truly: Matthew [speaks of the time] when the Lord rose — on the evening of the sabbath; Mark, when Mary Magdalene saw him — that is, early on the first day after the sabbath (mane primo sabbati). For thus it is to be distinguished: ‘When he had risen’ — and, the breath being restrained a little, there is to be added — ‘early on the first day of the sabbath he appeared to Mary Magdalene’; so that he who, according to Matthew, had risen on the evening of the sabbath, himself, according to Mark, appeared to Mary Magdalene early on the first day after the sabbath. Which indeed John the Evangelist also signifies, demonstrating that he was seen early on the other day.” One ought not, therefore, on account of such most trifling causes, to call back into doubt this chapter, which is read in all codices, both Greek and Latin, and which the church, every year in the sacred mysteries, chants concerning the most holy resurrection and ascension.

3. As to what they oppose about the transposed order of things done, and the rash conjecture of Erasmus — namely, that the author of the gospels of Matthew and of Mark is the same — it is most false. For that Matthew wrote his own Gospel in Hebrew has been proved above; but that Mark also wrote his own, Irenaeus, Clement, Eusebius, and very many other fathers attest — but especially Jerome, in the book On Illustrious Men, writes thus of Mark: “Mark, Peter’s son in baptism and disciple and interpreter in the divine word, who — according as he had heard Peter relating — being asked by the brethren, wrote a brief Gospel; which when Peter had heard, he approved it, and by his own authority published it to be read by the church, as Clement writes in the sixth book of the ὑποτυπώσεων [Hypotyposes].”

But concerning the order, we say that this Gospel was written by Mark in the same series of narration in which it is now read: for he cared not for the order of times, but only for the truth of the narration — even as Papias, the disciple of John the Apostle, attests in the books of the Explanation of the Lord’s Words; whose words Eusebius recites in the third book of the Ecclesiastical History in this manner: ¹⁴ “Mark was the interpreter of Peter, and whatever he remembered as said by him he wrote down; yet he did not digest in order the things that were said or done by the Lord: because he himself was neither a hearer of the Lord nor a follower, but at the last, as I said, adhered to Peter — [who taught] for the use and ministry of preaching, not for the writing-out of the Lord’s discourses. And so Mark sinned nothing in this, that he wrote certain things thus, as one who seemed to recall things heard piecemeal (sparsim). And this alone he took sufficient care of: to omit nothing of what he had heard, nor to write anything false.” This defense by Papias, on behalf of the order not kept by Mark, is enough to stop the profane mouths of the heretics, who bark against the order passed over by Mark.