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Mar_16:19-20. The Lord Jesus therefore (see the critical remarks). οὖν annexes what now emerged as the final result of that last meeting of Jesus with the eleven, and that as well in reference to the Lord (Mar_16:19) as in reference also to the disciples (Mar_16:20); hence μὲν … δέ . Accordingly, the transition by means of μὲν οὖν is not incongruous (Fritzsche), but logically correct. But the expression μὲν οὖν , as well as ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς , is entirely foreign to Mark, frequently as he had occasion to use both, and therefore is one of the marks of another author.
μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς ] cannot be referred without harmonistic violence to anything else than the discourses just uttered, Mar_16:14-18 (Theophylact well says: ταῦτα δὲ λαλήσας ), not to the collective discourses of the forty days (Augustine, Euthymius Zigabenus, Maldonatus, Bengel, Kuinoel, Lange, and others); and with this in substance agrees Ebrard, p. 597, who, like Grotius and others, finds in Mar_16:15-18 the account of all that Jesus had said in His several appearances after His resurrection. The forty days are quite irreconcilable with the narrative before us generally, as well as with Luk_24:44. But. if Jesus, after having discoursed to the disciples, Mar_16:14-18, was taken up into heaven ( ἀνελήφθη , see Act_10:16; Act_1:2; Act_11:22; 1Ti_3:16; Luk_9:51), it is not withal to be gathered from this very compendious account, that the writer makes Jesus pass from the room where they were at meat to heaven (Strauss, B. Bauer), any more than from ἐκεῖνοι δὲ ἐξελθόντες it is to be held that the apostles immediately after the ascension departed into all the world. The representation of Mar_16:19-20 is so evidently limited only to the outlines of the subsequent history, that between the μετὰ τὸ λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς and the ἀνελήφθη there is at least, as may be understood of itself, sufficient space for a going forth of Jesus with the disciples (comp. Luk_24:50), even although the forty days do not belong to the evangelical tradition, but first appear in the Acts of the Apostles. How the writer conceived of the ascension, whether as visible or invisible, his words do not show, and it must remain quite a question undetermined.
καὶ ἐκάθισεν ἐκ δεξιῶν τ . Θεοῦ ] reported, it is true, not as an object of sense-perception (in opposition to Schulthess), but as a consequence, that had set in, of the ἀνελήφθη ; not, however, to be explained away as a merely symbolical expression (so, for example, Euthymius Zigabenus: τὸ μέν καθίσαι δηλοῖ ἀνάπαυσιν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν τῆς θεῖας βασιλείας · τὸ δὲ ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ οἰκείωσιν καὶ ὁμοτιμίαν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα , Kuinoel: “cum Deo regnat et summa felicitate perfruitur”), but to be left as a local fact, as actual occupation of a seat on the divine throne (comp. on Mat_6:9; see on Eph_1:20), from which hereafter He will descend to judgment. Comp. Ch. F. Fritzsche, nova opusc. p. 209 ff.
As to the ascension generally, see on Luk_24:51.