To begin with, the date of composition cannot be far from 75. Mark is not only presupposed by both Matthew and Luke, but in their time had already acquired an extraordinary predominance. To judge by what remains to us of similar products, Mark in its own field might almost be said to reign supreme and reign alone. Such almost exclusive supremacy could not have been attained, even by a writing commonly understood to represent the preaching of Peter, short of a decade or more of years. On the other hand we have the reluctant testimony of antiquity, anxious to claim as much as possible of apostolic authority for the record, but unwilling to commit Peter to apparent contradictions of Matthew, that it was written after Peter's death (64-5).[21] Internal evidence would in fact bring down the date of the work in its present form a full decade thereafter. It is true that there are many structural evidences of more than one form of the narrative, and that the apocalyptic chapter (ch. xiii.), which furnishes most of the evidence of date, may well belong among the later supplements. But in the judgment of most critics this 'eschatological discourse' (almost the only connected discourse of the Gospel) is clearly framed in real retrospect upon the overthrow of Jerusalem and the temple, and the attendant tribulation on "those that are in Judæa." The writer applies a general saying of Jesus known to us from other sources about destroying and rebuilding the temple specifically to the demolition effected by Titus (70). He warns his readers in the same connection that "the end" is not to follow immediately upon the great Judæan war, but only when the powers of evil in the heavenly places, powers inhabiting sun, moon and stars, are shaken (xiii. 21-27). The Pauline doctrine of 2nd Thess. ii. 1-12 is adopted, but with careful avoidance of the prediction that the "man of sin" is to appear "in the temple of God." Paul's "man of sin" is now identified with Daniel's "abomination that maketh desolate" (Dan. xii. 11), which therefore is spoken of as "he" (masculine). "His" appearance will prelude the great Judæan tribulation; but his standing place is ill-defined. It is only "where he ought not." Matthew (following his usual practice) returns more nearly to the language of Daniel. With him the "Abomination" is again an object standing "in _a_ holy place." But Matthew is already applying the prophecy to another tribulation still to come. He does not see that Mark refers to the sack of Jerusalem on which he himself looks back in his addition to the parable of the Supper (Matt. xxii. 6 f.; _cf._ Luke xiv. 15-24), but takes Mark xiii. 14-23 as Jesus' prediction of a great final tribulation _still to come_. Footnote 21: So Irenæus (186) and (by implication) Papias. Clement of Alexandria (210) meets the difficulty by alleging that Peter was still alive, but gave no aid to the writer.