VI. The Apocryphal ACTA PILATI (sometimes called the “Gospel of Nicodemus”) Tischendorf assigns without hesitation to the iiird century; whether rightly or wrongly I have no means of ascertaining. It is at all events a very ancient forgery, and it contains the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th verses of this chapter.(40) VII. This is probably the right place to mention that ver. 15 is clearly alluded to in two places of the (so-called) “APOSTOLICAL CONSTITUTIONS;”(41) and that verse 16 is quoted (with no variety of reading from the _Textus Receptus_(42)) in an earlier part of the same ancient work. The “Constitutions” are assigned to the iiird or the ivth century.(43) VIII and IX. It will be shewn in Chapter V. that EUSEBIUS, the Ecclesiastical Historian, was profoundly well acquainted with these verses. He discusses them largely, and (as I shall prove in the chapter referred to) was by no means disposed to question their genuineness. His Church History was published A.D. 325. MARINUS also, (whoever that individual may have been,) a contemporary of Eusebius,—inasmuch as he is introduced to our notice by Eusebius himself as asking a question concerning the last twelve verses of S. Mark’s Gospel without a trace of misgiving as to the genuineness of that about which he inquires,—is a competent witness in their favor who has hitherto been overlooked in this discussion. X. Tischendorf and his followers state that Jacobus Nisibenus quotes these verses. For “Jacobus Nisibenus” read “APHRAATES the Persian Sage,” and the statement will be correct. The history of the mistake is curious. Jerome, in his Catalogue of Ecclesiastical writers, makes no mention of Jacob of Nisibis,—a famous Syrian Bishop who was present at the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325. Gennadius of Marseille, (who carried on Jerome’s list to the year 495) asserts that the reason of this omission was Jerome’s ignorance of the Syriac language; and explains that Jacob was the author of twenty-two Syriac Homilies.(44) Of these, there exists a very ancient Armenian translation; which was accordingly edited as the work of Jacobus Nisibenus with a Latin version, at Rome, in 1756. Gallandius reprinted both the Armenian and the Latin; and to Gallandius (vol. v.) we are referred whenever “Jacobus Nisibenus” is quoted. But the proposed attribution of the Homilies in question,—though it has been acquiesced in for nearly 1400 years,—is incorrect. Quite lately the Syriac originals have come to light, and they prove to be the work of Aphraates, “the Persian Sage,”—a Bishop, and the earliest known Father of the Syrian Church. In the first Homily, (which bears date A.D. 337), verses 16, 17, 18 of S. Mark xvi. are quoted,(45)—yet not from the version known as the Curetonian Syriac, nor yet from the Peshito exactly.(46)—Here, then, is another wholly independent witness to the last twelve verses of S. Mark, coeval certainly with the two oldest copies of the Gospel extant,—B and א.