The Appendices to the Gospel according to Mark. 435 



Schmeidel, " Gospels/'Encycl. Bibl.col. 1880), it seems probable that 

 neither Gospel was based on the original conclusion. As Resch says : 

 "The entire literary style of their concluding sections announce to 

 us that they flow from sources which were hidden from the second 

 evangehst and never opened hy him." (Ausser-Canonische Parallel- 

 texte zu den Evangelien, T. und U., X, 3, p. 449, quoted here from 

 Conybeare's translation in the Expositt)r, 1894, p. 227.) 



The form of Mark used by the writers of the first and third of our 

 Gospels was probably the same as that found in {<, B, and Ss. The 

 conclusion seems to have been lost from Mark before Matthew and 

 Luke were written, that is in the first century. 



However it has been argued by Rohrbach (Der Schluss des Marcus- 

 evangeliums, der Vier-Evangelienkanon und die Kleinasiatischen Pres- 

 byter, Berlin 1894, and Die Berichte iiber die Auferstehung Jesus 

 Christi, Berlin, 1898), following up a suggestion made by Harnack 

 (Bruchstiicke des Ev. und der Ap. des Petrus), that the original ending 

 of Mark was known to and used by the author of the Gospel according 

 to Peter. In that apocryphal writing the concluding incident follows 

 the narrative of Mark up to the eight verse of that Gospel, and then 

 begins another incident with "But I, Simon Peter, and Andrew my 

 brother took our nets, and went away to the sea ; and there was with 

 us Levi the son of Alphaeus, whom the Lord. . , ." 



Since the end of the writing is lost, it still remains possible that in 

 narrating the incident he thus introduces, the author used the Fourth 

 Gospel, or the tradition upon which it was based. Against this it 

 has been argued that the writer of the Fourth Gospel never mentions 

 Levi the son of Alphaeus, and that he is referred to in this way by 

 Mark alone (2 : 14). But if the author of the Gospel according to 

 Peter possessed the Second Gospel in its abbreviated form, what more 

 natural than that he should wish to conclude his narrative with an 

 account of the restoration of Peter, and take this narrative from the 

 Fourth Gospel, or from the material which was incorporated into it. 

 It would not be unnatural to take the names of some of the group 

 from the Second Gospel, which he had just been following. The same 

 might be true even if he possessed the Gospel according to Mark with 

 one of the conclusions appended. Until the lost end of this apo- 

 cryphal Gospel is found the question cannot be definitely settled, but 

 internal evidence is against the hj^pothesis of Rohrbach. We hold 

 therefore to the early loss of the authentic conclusion of the Second 

 Gospel. 



This inference, which will be challenged by some, is, however, 

 only of minor importance for the present argument. The loss of the 



