Thanks Ben. Interesting that Eusebius (if you accept that To Marinon expresses the personal view of Eusebius) claims the complete opposite -- that it is the accurate texts that did not include the LE. If almost all of the texts omit the LE, how does Victor possibly explain that the best texts include it? I continue to believe there is some kind of foul play involved.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Thu May 24, 2018 5:52 amBy your own words, it was not missing from all Greek manuscripts: just from most of them. So scribes and scholars simply copied the Longer Ending from one of the few manuscripts which contained it over to those manuscripts which lacked it. Easy peasy.gmx wrote: ↑Thu May 24, 2018 5:23 amI guess my simplistic point is this. If we accept that the LE was missing from the majority of Gk MSS in the 4th Century, it has somehow found its way back into the vast majority of the extant Gk MSS available today. My point is, by what process has it been repatriated into our extant copies?
Victor of Antioch even tells us that this is exactly what he did. He accepted the Longer Ending as authoritative, apparently because it was contained in a revered manuscript of Mark extant in Palestine (κατὰ τὸ Παλαιστιναῖον εὐαγγέλιον Μάρκου); so in Victor's judgment the Greek manuscripts which contained the Longer Ending were the more accurate ones. But he agreed with Eusebius that most (not all) of the Greek manuscripts lacked it. His reaction was to append (συντεθείκαμεν) the Longer Ending, as gleaned from what he deemed to be the more accurate copies (ἐξ ἀκριβῶν ἀντιγράφων), to those copies which lacked it:
Victor of Antioch, from Cramer's Catena, volume 1: Εἰ δὲ καὶ τὸ ”αναστὰς δὲ πρωῒ” μετὰ τὰ ἐπιφερόμενα παρὰ πλείστοις ἀντιγράφοις οὐ κεῖνται ἐν τῷ παρόντι Εὐαγγελίῳ, ὡς νόθα νομίσαντες αὐτὰ εἶναι, ἀλλ’ ἡμεις ἐξ ἀκριβῶν ἀντιγράφων ἐν πλείστοις εὑρόντες αὐτὰ, καὶ κατὰ τὸ Παλαιστιναῖον Εὐαγγέλιον, ὡς ἔχει ἡ ἀλήθεια Μάρκου, συντεθείκαμεν καὶ τὴν ἐν αὐτῷ ἐπιφερομένην δεσποτικὴν ἀνάστασιν, μετὰ τὸ “ἐφοβοῦντο γὰρ,” τουτέστιν ἀπὸ τοῦ “αναστὰς δὲ πρωῒ πρώτῃ σαββάτου” καὶ καθ’ ἑξῆς, μέχρι τοῦ “διὰ τῶν ἐπακολουθούντων σημείων, ἀμήν.” / But even if the words "And having risen early" along with the words following, do not appear in the existing Gospel with most copies, as they are considered spurious, we however, having found them in most of the accurate copies, and in accordance with the Palestinian Gospel, exactly as the truth of Mark is, we have added together also that in it, that follows the Master's resurrection, after the words "for they were afraid," that is, from "and having risen early on the first day of the week" and so on, up to the words "by the signs accompanying, amen."
Furthermore, is Palestine even on the map of likely Markan provenances? Why would a Palestinian copy of gMark be regarded as authoritative?