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| Mark first proclaimed Christianity to the Inhabitants of Egypt. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XVI.—Mark first
proclaimed Christianity to the Inhabitants of Egypt.
1. And
they say that this Mark was the first that was sent to Egypt, and that
he proclaimed the Gospel which he had written, and first established
churches in Alexandria.394
394 That Mark labored in Egypt is stated also by Epiphanius
(Hær. LI. 6), by Jerome (de vir. ill. 8), by
Nicephorus (H. E. II. 43), and by the Acta Barnabæ,
p. 26 (Tischendorf’s Acta Apost. Apocr. p. 74), which were
written probably in the third century. Eusebius gained his knowledge
apparently from oral tradition, for he uses the formula, “they
say” (φασὶν). In chap.
24, below, he says that Annianus succeeded Mark as a leader of the
Alexandrian Church in the eighth year of Nero (62 a.d.), thus implying that Mark died in that year; and
Jerome gives the same date for his death. But if the tradition that he
wrote his Gospel in Rome under Peter (or after Peter’s death, as
the best tradition puts it, so e.g. Irenæus) be correct, then this
date is hopelessly wrong. The varying traditions are at best very
uncertain, and the whole career of Mark, so far as it is not recorded
in the New Testament, is involved in obscurity. |
2. And the multitude of
believers, both men and women, that were collected there at the very
outset, and lived lives of the most philosophical and excessive
asceticism, was so great, that Philo thought it worth while to describe
their pursuits, their meetings, their entertainments, and their whole
manner of life.”395
395 See
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