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Mar_16:12-13. A meagre statement of the contents of Luk_24:13-35, yet provided with a traditional explanation ( ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορφῇ ), and presenting a variation ( οὐδὲ ἐκείνοις ἐπίστευσαν ) which betrays as its source[184] not Luke himself, but a divergent tradition.
μετὰ ταῦτα ] (after what was narrated in Mar_16:9-11) does not occur at all in Mark, often as he might have written it: it is an expression foreign to him. How long after, does not appear. According to Luke, it was still on the same day.
ἐξ αὐτῶν ] τῶν μετʼ αὐτοῦ γενομένων , Mar_16:10.
περιπατοῦσιν ] euntibus, not while they stood or sat or lay, but as they walked. More precise information is then given in πορευομένοις εἰς ἀγρόν : while they went into the country.
ἑφανερώθη ] Mar_16:14; Joh_21:1, He became visible to them, was brought to view. The expression does not directly point to a “ghostlike” appearance (in opposition to de Wette), since it does not of itself, although it does by ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορφῇ , point to a supernatural element in the bodily mode of appearance of the risen Lord. This ἐν ἑτέρᾳ μορφῇ is not to be referred to other clothing and to an alleged disfigurement of the face by the sufferings borne on the cross (comp. Grotius, Heumann, Bolten, Paulus, Kuinoel, and others), but to the bodily form, that was different from what His previous form had been,—which the tradition here followed assumed in order to explain the circumstance that the disciples, Luk_24:16, did not recognise Jesus who walked and spoke with them.
Mar_16:13. κἀκεῖνοι ] these also, as Mary had done, Mar_16:10.
τοῖς λοιποῖς ] to the others γενομένοις μετʼ αὐτοῦ , Mar_16:10; Mar_16:12.
οὐδὲ ἐκείνοις ἐπίστ .] not even them did they believe. A difference of the tradition from that of Luk_24:34, not a confusion with Luk_24:41, which belongs to the following appearance (in opposition to Schulthess, Fritzsche, de Wette). It is boundless arbitrariness of harmonizing to assume, as do Augustine, de consens. evang. iii. 25, Theophylact, and others, including Kuinoel, that under λέγοντας in Luk_24:34, and also under the unbelievers in the passage before us, we are to think only of some, and those different at the two places; while Calvin makes the distribution in such a manner, that they had doubted at first, but had afterwards believed! Bengel gives it conversely. According to Lange, too, they had been believing, but by the message of the disciples of Emmaus they were led into new doubt. Where does this appear? According to the text, they believed neither the Magdalene nor even the disciples of Emmaus.
[184] De Wette wrongly thinks (following Storr, Kuinoel, and others) here and repeatedly, that an interpolator would not have allowed himself to extract so freely. Our author, in fact, wrote not as an interpolator of Mark (how unskilfully otherwise must he have gone to work!), but independently of Mark, for the purpose of completing whose Gospel, however, this fragment was subsequently used.