Second Sunday of Advent; 10 December 2023; Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8.
The textual history of Mark’s Gospel is puzzling. The most ancient manuscripts end with 16:8, which itself ends with the post-positive conjunction gar. It is simply impossible to end a sentence with a post-positive conjunction: it makes no logical sense. And the Gospel appears to begin just as abruptly. The first sentence reads like an incipit, and its text is contested in early manuscripts, some including the phrase “the Son of God,” and others omitting it, and the phrase, “as it is written in the prophet Isaiah” seeming like it should be explaining something coming before it.
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