Critics are often looking for any apparent “error” in the New Testament, and many such accusations center around the New Testament citations of the Old Testament. One of the most classic examples is found at the beginning of Mark’s gospel. Mark claims to be quoting Isaiah, but only half of the words he cites actually come from that prophet. The other half is from Malachi. Is Mark confused? Is he trying to trick the readers into thinking all the words are from Isaiah when some are from a completely different book? Or, perhaps, are such critics simply ignorant of the ancient context and the perfectly legitimate literary technique Mark is using here? Let’s take a closer look:
The verses in question
Mark opens his gospel with the following citation:
“As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘Behold, I send My messenger ahead of You, Who will prepare Your way; The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight.'” (Mark 1:2-3).
This verse is indisputably quoting two separate verses, one from Isaiah and the other from Malachi:
“‘Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,’ says the Lord of hosts,” (Malachi 3:1).
“A voice is calling, ‘Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God,'” (Isaiah 40:3).
While it is worth noting that many later manuscripts of Mark simply read “as it is written in the Prophets” (see translations such as the KJV, NKJV, MEV, etc.), the earliest manuscripts specifically cite “Isaiah the prophet,” and most scholars today (including faithful, Christian scholars) think that the “Isaiah” version is the original reading. For the sake of argument, we will assume that this is correct. So, is Mark in error? How should we understand this?
Mixed citations in the ancient world
We are accustomed to a particular, modern way of citing sources. When we quote someone in a published writing, we note the name of the specific person who said it and the title of the book or article in which they said it, as well as the year, page number, etc. When quoting the Bible, we cite the book, chapter, and verse numbers so that people can easily find exactly where the quote came from.
But the ancient world was not like this, nor could it be. Books were handwritten, so there were no standard page numbers. In some cases, even the title of a book might vary from one copy to another. The biblical books didn’t have standard chapter divisions, and verse numbering was not invented yet. It should come as no surprise to us, then, that citing sources worked very differently then than it does now, even on the most basic level.
One specific way authors used and cited sources that is quite alien to us now is this idea of mixed or composite quotes. If an author was fairly sure his readers were very familiar with two specific writers or documents, he could put words from both of them together to draw out a bigger point and trust that the readers (or hearers, as books were often read aloud to groups) would follow what he was doing. You can see examples of this from both the Old and New Testaments in our article Does Matthew 27:9-10 misquote Jeremiah? But to show that this was not unique to the biblical authors, let’s take a look at the Roman writer Plutarch. For example, he writes in one place:
“These things retard the tongue, as Demosthenes says, ‘Stop the mouth, constrict the throat, and leave one with nothing to say. You be different from the wicked, since it is possible [for you]'” (Plutarch, Moralia, 88c).
Plutarch seems to attribute all of these words to Demosthenes. That is, at least, the only source that he mentions. Yet, Demosthenes only wrote, “stop the mouth, constrict the throat, and leave one with nothing to say.” The other half of this citation is actually from Euripides.1 Similarly, Plutarch elsewhere attributes a quote to the Homeric hero Agamemnon. While all of the lines in that citation come from the Illiad, only some are quotes from Agamemnon, the rest coming from the character Alexander.2 Plutarch is clearly familiar enough with Homer that it is highly unlikely for this to be a mistake, and his readers were equally familiar, so it is just as unlikely that Plutarch was trying to trick or deceive them. No, he fully expected his audience to know the words he was pulling together from different contexts and to follow the point he was making with them. This, again, was a relatively common ancient approach.
Conclusion
Other examples could be added, but this is sufficient to show that Mark is not a hapless buffoon bungling the Scriptures, nor is he a trickster trying to pull one over on his readers. There is no error here at all. Using the citation methods of his time period, Mark is bringing quotes from two different sources together in a way that other authors of his time did, combining related statements from both sources to make a bigger point while only mentioning one of them. In Mark’s case, he was drawing together the testimony of two prophets to show the significance of John the Baptist’s ministry and how it began the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. His original readers would have almost certainly known the prophets well enough to see this.
