The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 420 pages of information about The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II..

The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 420 pages of information about The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II..
master, which could not but have filled a sad place in the Apostle’s memory.  On the other hand, there is no adequate record of special matter which the intimate knowledge of the doings and sayings of Jesus possessed by Peter might have supplied to counterbalance the singular omissions.  There is infinitely more of the spirit of Peter in the first Gospel than there is in the second.  The whole internal evidence, therefore, shows that this part of the tradition of the Presbyter John transmitted by Papias does not apply to our Gospel” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. i., pp. 459, 460).  But a far stronger objection to the identity of the work spoken of by Papias with the present Gospel of Mark, is drawn from the description of the document as given by him.  “The discrepancy, however, is still more marked when we compare with our actual second Gospel the account of the work of Mark, which Papias received from the Presbyter.  Mark wrote down from memory some parts [Greek:  enia] of the teaching of Peter regarding the life of Jesus, but as Peter adapted his instructions to the actual circumstances [Greek:  pros tas chreias] and did not give a consecutive report [Greek:  suntaxis] of the discourses or doings of Jesus, Mark was only careful to be accurate, and did not trouble himself to arrange in historical order [Greek:  taxis] his narrative of the things which were said or done by Jesus, but merely wrote down facts as he remembered them.  This description would lead us to expect a work composed of fragmentary reminiscences of the teaching of Peter, without orderly sequence or connection.  The absence of orderly arrangement is the most prominent feature in the description, and forms the burden of the whole.  Mark writes ‘what he remembered;’ ’he did not arrange in order the things that were either said or done by Christ;’ and then follow the apologetic expressions of explanation—­he was not himself a hearer or follower of the Lord, but derived his information from the occasional preaching of Peter, who did not attempt to give a consecutive narrative, and, therefore, Mark was not wrong in merely writing things without order as he happened to hear or remember them.  Now it is impossible in the work of Mark here described to recognise our present second Gospel, which does not depart in any important degree from the order of the other two Synoptics, and which, throughout, has the most evident character of orderly arrangement....  The great majority of critics, therefore, are agreed in concluding that the account of the Presbyter John recorded by Papias does not apply to our second Canonical Gospel at all” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. 1, pp. 460, 461).  “This document, also, is mentioned by Papias, as quoted by Eusebius; the account which they give of it is not applicable to the work which we now have.  For the ’Gospel according to St. Mark’ professes to give a continuous history of Christ’s life, as regularly as the other three Gospels, but the work noticed by Papias is expressly stated to have been memoranda, taken down
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The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.