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4TH CENTURY.--Cureton's Syriac and the Gothic Versions. The Syriac
Table of Canons. Eusebius, Macariuus Magnes, Aphraates, Didymus,
the Syriac "Acts of the Apostles",
Epiphahgius,
Leontius,
Ephraem,
Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine.
Even after the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS
were written,
the testimony to
Mark 16: 9-20 still continues.
5TH CENTURY.--The Armenian Version.
Codices A and 100:
Leo,
Nestorius, Cyril of Alexandria, Victor of Antioch, Patricius, Marius Mercator.
6Th and 7TH CENTURY.--Codex D. The Gregorian and Ęthiopic Versions,
Hesychius,
Gregentius,
Prosper,
John Abp. of Thessalonica
and
Modestus, Bishop of Jerusalem.
Writing to Bishop Ellicott with regard to the last twelve verses of Mark 16:,
Dean Burgon says:
"Permit me to declare that I hold your disallowance of S. Mark 16: 9-20 to be the
gravest and most damaging of all the many mistakes which you and your friends have
committed. `The textual facts' say you, `have been placed before the reader, because the
Truth itself demanded it'. This, with Canon Cook, I entirely deny. It is because the
textual facts have NOT been placed before the reader that I am offended."
In his "unanswered and unanswerable" work on Mark 16:, Dean Burgon had already
written:
"The consentient witness of the manuscripts is even extraordinary. With the exception
of the two uncial manuscripts just named, there is not one codex in existence, uncial or
cursive (and we are acquainted with at least eighteen other uncials and about six hundred
cursives of this gospel) which leaves out the last twelve verses of S. Mark. The omission
of these twelve verses, I repeat, in itself destroys our confidence in Codex B (Vaticanus)
and Codex Sinaiticus."
Speaking of the R.V. marginal note, he comments:
"But now, for the use of whom has this piece of information been volunteered? Not
for the learned certainly, it being familiarly known to all, that codices B and Aleph alone
of manuscripts (to their own effectual condemnation) omit these 12 verses. They also
know that these 12 verses have been made the subject of a separate treatise extending to
upwards of 300 pages--which treatise has now been before the world for a full decade of
years, and for the best of reasons has never yet been answered."
We trust that sufficient has been said to enable the reader to form his own conclusions
about Mark 16: 9-20, and we now pass on to Luke 2: 14.
The Revisers' Reading of Luke 2: 14.
The R.V. of Luke 2: 14 reads as follows:
"On earth peace among men in whom He is well pleased."