A CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL COMMENTARY

on

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST MARK

by

EZRA P. GOULD

Professor of the New Testament Literature and Language, Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Philadelphia

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Latest impression 1996

ISBN 0 567 05022 X

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL COMMENTARY

on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments

general editors

S. R. DRIVER

Regius Professor of Hebrew, Oxford

A. PLUMMER

Master of University College, Durham

and

C. A. BRIGGS

Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York

presently under the editorship of

J. A. EMERTON

C. E. B. CRANFIELD

G. N. STANTON

PREFACE

There is a lack of critical commentaries in the English language on the Gospel of Mark, and especially of commentaries based on the more recent criticism of the sources, and of the history contained in the book. Commentaries corresponding to those of Meyer, Weiss, and Holtzmann, not in ability, but in critical method and results, are wanting. This volume is an attempt to supply this lack. This criticism is based on the evident interdependence of the Synoptical Gospels, unmistakable proof of which is found in the accumulated verbal resemblances of the three books. The generally accepted solution of this Synoptical problem makes Mark the principal source of Matthew and Luke, his account being supplemented and modified by material taken from the Hebrew Logia of Matthew. This critical result is accepted by many English and American scholars, but no commentary based on it has appeared among us. A modification of this theory makes the Logia the older source, which Mark uses to a limited extent, the principal source of his information being the Apostle Peter. A few passages in which this dependence is probable have been noted and discussed. The critical theme of this volume is thus the interrelation of the Synoptics.

In carrying out this plan, the relations of the Synoptical Gospels, their harmonies and divergences, and especially their interdependence, have been made a special study, and, where the fourth Gospel is parallel to Mark, their relation has been discussed.

An important part of the critical question is the historicity of the miracles. This doubt—for the question has grown into a widespread doubt—I have attempted to meet on the general ground of the credibility of the narrative as contemporaneous history, and of the verisimilitude of the miracles.

But after all, since the result of criticism has been to establish the historicity of the Synoptical ...