The Appendices to the Gospel according to Mark. 385 



Concerning the identification of "Ariston Eritzou" with the 

 Aristion known through Papias, we can at least sa\^ that it is not 

 proven . 



But already before the publication of his first article Prof. Sanday 

 had suggested to Dr. Conybeare that the Ariston referred to was 

 Ariston (or Aristo) of Pella, whom Eusebius quotes at some length as 

 reporting the overthrow by Hadrian in 135 A.D. of Jerusalem. In 

 a scholion of the seventh century by Maximus Confessor (De mystica 

 Theol. cap. i, p. 17, ed. Corderii) he is declared to be the author of the 

 Jewish-Christian "Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus. Prof. Bacon has 

 argued that this statement is late and untrustworthy, and that the 

 above writing was originally anonymous. 



Resch declares that "If we take the name 'Apto-x-wv in the strict 

 form in which it has been transmitted, no other person can be con- 

 sidered to be referred to thereby than Ariston of Pella. He acknowl- 

 edges however that in antiquity there was a confusion of the names 

 "ApiTxwv and 'Aptaxiwv. However it is interesting to note that the 

 name of Ariston of Pella is transliterated in precisely this way in 

 the Armenian version of Eusebius. 



Conybeare brings against this identification two objections : 



1. The date of 140—150 A.D. is too late for the origin of a sec- 

 tion so uniformly found in Greek MSS Zahn agrees. But the testi- 

 mony of Greek MSS is now seen to be not so uniform as was at first 

 supposed, and the arguments of Resch and Rohrbach that these 

 verses were added to Mark at the time of the formation of the fourfold 

 Gospel canon, which would date them just about this time, as far as 

 their connection with the second Gospel is concerned, is a sufficient 

 answer to this objection. 



2. "So far as we know anything about Ariston's writings they 

 were not at aU similar to these twelve verses." But in his second 

 article Dr. Conybeare himself overthrows this argument by stating : 

 "Both dialogue and history of Ariston having perished, we have no 

 means of deciding whether the twelve verses are in the style of that 

 author. We do hear that some people mistook his dialogue for a work 

 of Luke the Evangelist ; and as that was so, it is hkely that Ariston 

 of Pella could have written the twelve verses.'' 



Moreover this objection would tell equally against the identification 

 with the Aristion of Papias since we do not know anything about the 

 writings of Aristion, and in fact do not know that he was a writer at 

 all. Besides if the rubric here does refer these verses to Ariston of 

 Pella, it by no means proves that he wrote them. It may indicate only 

 a tradition, and as our previous arguments have sought to show, this 



