2. The Message to the Church of Pergamos (Rev 2'-"") contains the promise that he who overcomes — refusing at all costs to eat things sacrificed to idols — shall be fittingly rewarded by receiving the hidden manna to eat. There is here probably an allusion to the Jewish tradition that, before the Fall of Jerusalem, the ark and its sacred contents were removed by Jeremiah and hidden in a cave of Mount Sinai (2 Mac 2'), from which they were to be restored to their place at the coming of the Messiah, when all the old miracles would be repeated. ' And at tliat time,' says Apoc. Bar. (xxix. 8), ' the stores of manna shall descend again from above ; and they shall eat of it in those years.' After manna had come to be named 'corn of heaven' (Ps 78^), 'bread of the mighty' (78^), 'heavenly bread' (105*"), panis angdorum {4 Ezr. i. 29), &yyi\tjiv Tj)o<pii (Wis 16-°)', atJL^po(7ia Tpo(pri (19'-''), it was natur- ally regarded not merely as material nourishment but as 'spiritual food' (/jpuJ/a<"r''ei'jiiaTi»t(5"'[l Co 10^]). Like the bread of Christ's own miracles, it had sacramental value, feeding the soul as well as the body (cf. Jn 6*'-**). James Strahan.
MAN-STEALING.— See Men-Stealers.
MANTLE The word 'mantle' occurs in the
RV in lie 1''^ replacing ' vesture' of the AV. The passage is a quotation from Ps 102'"' (='l ; cf. Ps 104". In both places the LXX TrcpttidXatof is a trans- lation of Hob. B'lD^, 'clothing.' The term is ap- propriate to certain over - garments of ancient peoples, which were literally cast around the body, in contrast to the under-garments, which were piit on. In a more restricted sense the same term is employed in I Co 11" to denote 'veil.'
A description of the only specific mantle occur- ring in the relevant section of Scripture will be found under art. Cloke. See also art. Clothes. W. Cruickshank.
MARAN ATHA.— See Anathema.
MARBLE (fidpnapos, Lat. marmor ; from /lop- fiaipeii/, 'sparkle,' 'glisten'). — Marble is the name given to any limestone which is sufficiently close in texture to admit of being polished. It is men- tioned as part of the merchandise of ' Babylon,' i.e. Rome (Rev 18"). It began to be used there for the adornment of buildings about the beginning of the 1st cent. B.C. For a time such luxury was viewed with jealousy by stern republicans (Pliny, HN xxxvi. 7), but the Empire ettected a great change of sentiment, and Augustus boasted, not without reason, that he ' found Rome of brick and left it of marble' (Suet. Octav. xxix.). 'The Emperor obtained this result, seconded by his friend and minister, Agrippa, and succeeded in leaving behind him truly a city of marble, to which the Pantheon bears sufficient witness ' (Mary W. Porter, What Borne was built with, 1907, p. 7). While the white marble of Luna (near the modern Carrara), Hymettus, Pentelicus, and Paros was used for statuarj-, many varieties of coloured marble were available for architecture. See, further, art. Rome.
Literature. — F. Corsi, Detle pietre antiche, Rome, 1S45 ; G. P. MerrUl, Stoiies /or Building and Decoration^, New York,
1903. James Strahan.
MARK (JOHN). — The name appears eight times in the NT (Ac 12'-- =" 15='-™, Col 4'», 2 Ti 4", Philem -■', 1 P 5'*), and the consensus of opinion assigns all the references to one individual. To the Jewish name (John) was added, for use in extra-Palestinian circles, the Latin proenomen Mark * (cf. ' Saul — Paul ' ; see CIG passim). The son of Mary, a prominent and well-to-do member of the early Christian society (Jn 18"«- ", Ac 12'2), to whose house the brethren used to resort, Mark had ea^y introduction to the apostolic cabinet, and probably fell under the influence of the dominating personality of Peter. His non-aggressive tempera- ment has carved out no clear line by which history can remember him. He shines here and there in the borrowed light of greater men and flits ever back into a tantalizing darkness. Hence conjecture has sought to lind him at other points of his career, e.ff. as the man carrying the pitcher of water, as one of the Seventy, as the young man of Mk 14*'. Only one personal note comes to us, and that from the 3rd century. He is termed 6 Ko\ofioS6,KTv\os f (Hippolytus, Philos. vii. 30). Possibly this in- firmity was a natural one (cf. Codex Toletanus,
* The correct form of the name is Maarcus, Mapico?, not MapKoy, as in editions of the NT. This is clear from Greek and Latin inscri]itions (cf. Blass, Gramm. des neutest. Greichisch^, 1902, § 4. 2 (Eng. tr.2, 1905).
t Several explanations of this term have heen given : (1) that it means ' deserter " (Tregelles) and is applied to Mark because of his defection at Perga ; but one so honourabl.v remembered would not be so opprobriously nicknamed ; (2) that Mark was a Levite and 'amputasse sibi post fidem pollicem dicitur ut sacerdotio reprobus haberetur' (Monarchian Prologues [TU XV. 1 [1896] 10]) ; but this is probably an inference from his kinship (di/ei/^ios) with Barnabas ; (3) that the term is meta- phorical and refers to the abrupt ending of the Second QospeL
MARK (JOHJs)
MAKKKT-PLACK
Preface in Wordsworth-Wliite, ^ovum Testa- mentum Latine. 1SS9-1U05, p. 171), and caused him to take habitually a secondary place throughout life, a servus scrvornm del. He stands out succes- sively as the assistant of Barnabas, Pa.il, and Peter. 1. Association with Paul and Barnabas.- Having displayed practical gifts probably in the inline reliif wor/in Judi^a, Mark returned to Syria with Paul and Barnabas and was cliosen to jo^urnev with tliem (Ac 1'2" 13») His duties may {,e assumed to have been.not unlike those, mutatis mutam/is, discharged by the secretary of a n.odein evangelistic campaign— the selection of routes, arrangement for hospitality, interviews and genera detail (but cf. F. H. Chase, art. ' Mark (John) in HDB) At Perga he cut himself adrift from the partv-it may be because, being sensitively timid From his physical defect, he shrank from the hTzardousicnture across the Taurus ; or, holding the narrower views of his teacher Peter concerning the Gentiles, he was out of sympathy with a cam- paign that had overshot its intentions ; or because soine filial duty called him (cf Ramsay. St. Paul the Traveller, 1895, p. 90). His reason certain v did not satisfy Paul. After the Jerusalem Council, when the two colleagues contemplated a return visit to their churches (Ac 15»), Paul came into sharp collision with Barnabas, who wished again to take his cousin Mark with them and they separated. Barnabas and Mark sailed for Cyprus probably as unauthorized evangelist, while Paul with Silas left for Syria under tlieofiicial benedic- tion (wapadodds TV xip'" ^o" k^P'-"" '"^^/.'^•' "^^f^^""'; 2! In Cyprus and Egypt—The veil is not lifted on the doings of the missionaries to Cyprus. 1 hey were among their own people there. Barnabas was apparently a native (Ac 4'«), and his act of self- sacrifice on behalf of the cause he served inay have predisposed the honest-minded among his com- patriots to listen to him with peculiar attention Mark, too, was a Hellenist andliad Cyprian blood in his veins. The prophets, according to the late and unreliable Acts of Barnabas (nepiooot Bap./a/3a), had no honour in their own country, and Barnabas sufiered martyrdom. Mark may then have passed to Egypt, and traditions certainly point that way. Eusebius {HE ii. 16), Jerome {de Vir Illustr. 8), the Apostolic Constitutions (vii. 46), and Epiphanms (Ha:r li 6) unite in their testimony on the point. Thoufh their details will not precisely fit, we may Sossibly regard Mark as the founder of the Christian Church in Alexandria and as its hrst bishop. Jerome makes out that he died there m AD 62 (' Mortuus est autem octavo Neronis anno et sepultus AlexandriiE succedente sibi Anniano ). But ' the statement seems to be merely an unsound inference from the Eusebian date for the succes- sion of Annianus' (Swete=, p. xxvii) to the see of