this is from Kim Riddlebarger
Before we turn to our text this morning, you have undoubtedly noticed that I am ending our study of
Mark’s Gospel at verse 8 of chapter 16. The reason for this is that the so-called “longer ending”
of Mark is very likely not canonical–that is, it is not part of the original gospel.
A sermon is not an appropriate place for a lesson in textual criticism, which is the science of determining
the original text of the various books of the New Testament, but we need to talk about this briefly. When
a gospel or epistle of the New Testament was first written, the original text of that document is called the
autograph. This is the document which we believe was given under divine inspiration. That original
autograph was then carefully copied by hand because of the need to read these letters in the churches,
scattered around the Mediterranean world and elsewhere. Professional scribes were often employed, but
over time copy errors crept in, and a later scribe who copied a manuscript already containing an error,
would quite naturally copy that error into his own manuscript. These copyist errors are called “textual
variants.” The older and better manuscripts are much more likely to be free of such errors.
While this sounds like this would undercut the authority of the New Testament–it does just the opposite.
The early church placed great emphasis upon the preaching of the biblical text, so that literally hundreds
of manuscripts were prepared and circulated everywhere Christianity spread. The problem is not a lack
of biblical manuscripts, but too many manuscripts, many of them quite early. Textual criticism seeks to
identify the earliest and best manuscripts and almost always gets us back to the original wording of the
autograph. Furthermore, in no case is any doctrine affected by these variants and in any good English
translation of the Bible, wherever there is a known textual variant it is clearly marked off as not being in
the best and earliest manuscripts. That’s the case with Mark 16:9-20.
(See the discussions in: Lane, The Gospel According to Mark, 601-605; France, The Gospel of
Mark, 685-688; Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (New York:
United Bible Societies, 1975), 122-128.)
While the longer ending of Mark first appears at some point in the fourth century, Mark’s gospel ends at
verse 8 in the best and oldest New Testament manuscripts. A number of church fathers (Clement and
Origen) who quote from Mark, never mention the longer ending and wrote as though verse 8 was the end
of the gospel. The two most famous biblical scholars of the early church (Eusebius and Jerome) were
both aware of the longer-ending, but believed that it was not in the best and earliest manuscripts available
to them. They rejected the longer-ending as a scribal addition and not part of the original text of Mark.
There are a couple of reasons why this longer ending began circulating. Mark either abruptly ended his
gospel at verse 8, or the original copy of Mark, which was written on a scroll, may have been damaged
(and the end torn off) so that the original ending was lost. Given the abrupt ending, a copyist then wrote
a summary of what happened after verse 8, and based this upon things mentioned in the other gospels.
There is also a one verse ending in some manuscripts, but it never got the support the longer ending did.
Over time, this 11 verse summary was appended to the end of the gospel, and after several hundred years
went by, it was simply included as a part of the gospel. So, our modern English versions include it, as
they should, but mark it off as not included in the best and earliest manuscripts. So it is not as though
Christian are hiding a corrupt text of the New Testament. On the contrary, textual criticism has proven
that we have at least 99% of the autographic text, and in those few places where there are any questions
(like Mark 16:9-20), the variants are included so that people can make up their own minds.
In any case, I think that the evidence is very clear that the canonical gospel ends at verse 8, and that
longer ending is highly unlikely to have been authored by Mark.
--Kim Riddlebarger
1 comment:
Hello Kim.
It looks like you may have been misinformed about some of the evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20. I encourage you not to accept any view until you have looked into this more closely. Here are some corrections and observations to consider:
(1) Mark 16:9-20 consists of 12 verses, not just 11.
(2) The longer ending of Mark is supported in patristic texts (Justin Martyr's "First Apology"), the "Epistula Apostolorum," Tatian's "Diatessaron," and Irenaeus' "Against Heresies" III:10:5-6); it does not first appear in the fourth century.
(3) It's the abrupt ending that has no attestation until the fourth century, in two Greek manuscripts.
(4) Clement of Alexandria and Origen do not quote very much from Mark; there are very many 12-verse sections of Mark that they do not use. So this negative evidence, an argument from silence, is feathery.
(5) Jerome did not say that Mark 16:9-20 was not in the "earliest and best" manuscripts; he stated that it was absent from almost all Greek codices, and when he said this he was simply repeating, loosely, Eusebius' earlier comment. Jerome did not reject the passage: he included it in the Vulgate and cited it elsewhere in his writings (with the assumption that his readers would find it in their copies).
(6) Several things in Mark 16:9-20 cannot be explained by the theory that the author patched together things from Matthew, Luke, and John. Particularly, the way Mark 16:12-14 is presented as two scenes does not at all seem dependent upon Luke 24, where the two travelers' report, and the appearance of Jesus to the disciples, occupy only one scene.
(7) Rather than being part of the Gospel of Mark "after several hundred years went by" Irenaeus' citation of Mark 16:19, quoting it as part of Mark's Gospel, proves that it was in his copy of Mark, over a century before the two manuscripts in which it is not contained.
(8) In those two early Greek manuscripts that do not contain Mark 16:9-20, one of them has a prolonged blank space after 16:8, as if the copyist was aware of the missing verses, and in the other one, the pages from mark 14:54 to Luke 1:56 are not the pages written by the main copyist; they are replacement-pages.
(9) It should be remembered that the canonical form of a book is not a matter of authorship; a canonical book may have more than one author. The measure of canonicity should be the form of the book when it was initially released for church-use and transmission. By that standard, a strong case can be made that Mark 16:9-20 is part of the canonical text of Mark.
For more information see
www.curtisvillechristian.org/MarkOne.html
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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