Featured Did the Gospel of Mark have 16:9-20 Originally?

http://www.baptistboard.com/showpost.php?p=1681396&postcount=1

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805447628/?tag=baptis04-20

 

I believe the longer ending is genuine, but don't really have time to discuss it today. I'll just give a few reasons off the cuff:

1. Without an ending of some kind, Mark ends abruptly at v. 8 with "they were afraid" (ephobounto) and then "for" (gar). There is no way that it makes sense for Mark to end his Gospel this way, with fear rather than joy at the resurrection of Christ, then with a conjunction (extremely rare type of ending in ancient Greek).

2. The other endings read like makeshift additions and have very little mss. support.

3. There is abundant mss. support for the longer ending. The problem? It is in mss. in the Byzantine text family and thus is almost automatically dismissed by the critical text crowd, especially since it doesn't fit their "shorter is better" canon, which is provably false. (My Greek student leaves out words quite often when transcribing from the Greek NT by hand, as he likes to do.)

Have to run to the airport. :type:

 

An excellent read. I also highly recommend it. :thumbsup:

 

As To MANUSCRIPTS, there are none older than the fourth century, and the oldest two uncial MSS. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are without those twelve verses. Of all the others (consisting of some eighteen uncials and some six hundred cursive MSS. which contain the Gospel of Mark) contain these twelve verses.

There are also some very curious irregularities with both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. As Dean Burgon testifies, the Vatican manuscript has only one blank space in the entire manuscript and it is here at the ending of Mark 16:8. He says "it is amply sufficient to contain the verses, the column in question being the only vacant one in the whole manuscript." The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels, Volume 1, page 298.

As for Sinaticus, according to Dean Burgon pages 298-299, even Tischendorf (who discovered this codex) believed this whole section was originally canceled out and written over by a different scribe than the one who wrote most of the manuscript. Suddenly the letters in the columns become much larger than at any other place in the codex, either before or after. Dean Burgon points out that if the letters had been written in the normal size, there would be ample room for these missing 12 verses.

Even the UBS, Nestle-Aland critical textual apparatus show the overwhelming textual evidence that exists for the inclusion of these 12 verses. They are contained in the Majority of all remaining Greek manuscripts, including A, C, D, K, and other uncial (capital lettered) copies. They are found in the Old Latin aur, c, d, ff2, l, n, o, q, the Vulgate, the Syriac Curetonian, Peshitta, Palestinian and Harclean ancient versions, as well as the Coptic Sahidic, Boharic, the Gothic, the Armenian, the Ethiopic and the Georgian ancient versions and the early Greek Diatessaron.

 

THE FATHERS. Whatever may be their value as to doctrine and interpretation yet, in determining actual word or their form, or sequence their evidence, even by an allusion, as to whether a verse or verses existed or not in their day, is more valuable than even manuscripts or Versions. There are nearly a hundred ecclesiastical writers older than the oldest of our Greek codices; while between A.D. 300 and A.D. 600 there are about two hundred more, and they all refer to these twelve verses.

1. PAPIAS (about A.D. 100) refers to v. 18 (as stated by Eusebius, Hist. Ecc. iii. 39).

2. JUSTIN MARTYR (A.D. 151) quotes v. 20 (Apol. I. c. 45).

3. IRENAEUS (A.D. 180) quotes and remarks on v. 19 (Adv. Hoer. lib. iii. c. x.).

4. HIPPOLYTUS (A.D. 190-227) quotes vv. 17-19 (Lagarde's ed., 1858, p. 74).

5. VINCENTIUS (A.D. 256) quoted two verses at the seventh Council of Carthage, held under CYPRIAN.

6. The ACTA PILATI (cent. 2) quotes vv. 15, 16, 17, 18 (Tischendorf's ed., 1852, pp. 243, 351).

7. The APOSTOLICAL CONSTITUTIONS (cent. 3 or 4) quotes vv. 16, 17, 18.

8. EUSEBIUS (A.D. 325) discusses these verses, as quoted by MARINUS from a lost part of his History.

9. APHRAARTES (A.D. 337), a Syrian bishop, quoted vv. 16-18 in his first Homily (Dr. Wright's ed., 1869, i. p. 21).

10. AMBROSE (A.D. 374-97), Archbishop of Milan, freely quotes vv. 15 (four times), 16, 17, 18 (three times), and v. 20 (once).

11. CHRYSOSTOM (A.D. 400) refers to v. 9; and states that vv. 19, 20 are "the end of the Gospel".

12. JEROME (b. 331, d. 420) includes these twelve verses in his Latin translation, besides quoting vv. 9 and 14 in his other writings.

13. AUGUSTINE (fl. A.D. 395-430) more than quotes them. He discusses them as being the work of the Evangelist MARK, and says that they were publicly read in the churches.

14. NESTORIUS (cent. 5) quotes v. 20 and

15. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA (A.D. 430) accepts the quotation.

16. VICTOR OF ANTIOCH (A.D. 425) confutes the opinion of Eusebius, by referring to very many MSS. which he had seen, and so had satisfied himself that the last twelve verses were recorded in them.

 

I think it was a part of his gospel the whole time.

 

I don't see this as a problem. I had a book published in 1979 in which the first two chapters were narrative and the 3rd and 4th were hortatory but with a number of poems in ch. 3. So the book actually had three different styles in it, with differing vocabulary in each. The content of the longer ending of Mark is such that it is only natural for the vocabulary to be different.

Having said that, various authors have contradicted the supposed style difference, including Burgon, Maurice Robinson and others. Robinson has a detailed examination of the issue in his entry in Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, pp. 59-66. I don't have time now, but I'll share his research later.

 

I finally have some time to post. Here is some of Dr. Robinson's research on the thematic aspects of the LE. The LE has 166 words, "with approximately 15 being unique (9.04%)" (p. 65). Dr. Robinson compares these figures to other comparing it to other Markan passages.

First of all, this particular point was actually from Bruce Terry's research. Terry shows that Mark 15:40-16:4 has "20-22 items used once in Mark within that portion, with some 13 words hapax (used nowhere else--JoJ) to Mark" (ibid).

Again, Dr. Robinson shows that Mark 4:26-29, which doesn't occur in other Gospels, has 62 words, with "7 peculiar to Mark (11.2%), along with some short phrases" (ibid). Then Mark 14:42-52 has parallels, but it is the only Gospel to recount the young man fleeing naked. "Of the 202 words that make up this pericope, 15 are hapax within Mark (7.4%), with 3 or 4 uniquely Markan phrases also present" (ibid).

What does this mean? The percentages in the LE are "midway between," meaning that the literary style of the LE is easy to attribute to Mark. Any argument from style about the LE of Mark fails in this respect.

 

I have always found word percentage as a poor argument for authorship of any kind. Between the flexibility of an author's use of language, appropriate words for various situations, and the use of amanuenses; it is really not helpful at all, IMO.

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Which side are you coming down on?

Dr. Robinson's use of statistics here is, as you know, to counter the view that statistics prove the LE to be by someone other than Mark. As Wallace put it, "Then there is the statistical argument about words and phrases that Mark is fond of, and how such words do not occur in the LE" (ibid, p. 29). Therefore, I think it is a completely valid point, since it uses the critic's method to disprove the critic.

 

And what if the real ending really is the longer one?
a whole lot of people are in trouble for taking away from the word of God.

not to mention missing out on one of the best clear cut great commission verses!

also the resurrection..

 

The Charismatics twist the LE of Mark to fit their own doctrines. They are of no concern to me in determining whether or not it is genuine.

Also, as Jordan pointed out, the LE has a clear statement of the Great Commission. If the Charismatics were serious about obeying the LE, they would concentrate on reaching the world for Christ instead of their false doctrines and practices.

With no Great Commission, as per the shorter ending or the no ending (Daniel Wallace) positions, Mark is bereft of closing impact, since the other three Gospels all have a version of the Great Commission. Therefore all English translations that I know of have the LE, even if they copy the critical Greek texts by putting it in brackets.

 

By the way, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary just finished a conference on this very subject. You can read about it on Dr. David Alan Black's blog at: http://daveblackonline.com/blog.htm. Just scroll down to the Sunday April 27 entry.

I can't wait for the book to come out! Dr. Maurice Robinson, one of the speakers, has been doing research in this subject, collating the mss. on the subject--something that to my understanding has not been done, at least for many years.

 

I goofed here. The conference last week was on the passage about the woman taken in adultery, not the LE of Mark. I should have remembered this since I've been quoting from the book from the LE of Mark conference.

Sorry about that!

 

It's okay, I have been following it two through Dr. Black's blog and links. The speakers and commentary on their speeches refer to the LE quite a bit.