Note 5 — Chapter VI · THE VISIONARY EVANGEL

Bernhard Weiss ascribes to Mark the original narrative of the closing events, making Matthew a simple copyist—a matter of no ultimate importance, seeing that it is the same impossible and unhistorical narrative in both documents. Like all the other professional exegetes, Bernhard Weiss and his school have failed to discern that the document reveals not only that it is not an original narrative at all, but that it could not possibly be a narrative. “It was only in the history of the passion,” writes Weiss, “that Mark could give a somewhat connected account partly of what he himself had seen and partly of what he gathered from those who witnessed the crucifixion.”5 Whether “passion” here includes the Agony in the Garden is not clear: as it is expressly distinguished from the crucifixion, which Mark by implication had not seen, the meaning remains obscure. Like the ordinary traditionalists, Weiss assumes that “after Peter’s death Mark began to note down his recollections of what the Apostle had told him of the acts and discourses of Jesus.” Supposing this to include the record of the night of the Betrayal, what were Mark’s possible sources for the description of the Agony, with its prayers, its entrances and exits, when the only disciples present are alleged to have been asleep?