Response to Peter Head's Case Against Mark 16:9–20
(avg. read time: 19–38 mins.)
Nearly two years ago now, the Text & Canon Institute of Phoenix Seminary featured two articles stating the cases for and against the authenticity of Mark 16:9–20. Since I substantially agree with the case laid out by James Snapp Jr. in favor of this being the ending of Mark, I will not be responding to anything particular about that article. But Peter Head’s response is noteworthy because it is something more than a simple recitation of the typical points made against the authenticity of Mark 16:9–20 drawn from Bruce Metzger. Today, I am responding to that case.
What Counts as Evidence?
First, Head differentiates himself from many in giving due consideration to what actually counts as evidence against Mark 16:9–20. The mere lack of reference to it from some Early Church Fathers does not really tell us anything. As with some examples we cited in our analysis of the evidence for and against the Pericope Adulterae, it would be more significant if there was an extant commentary on Mark from the early era that did not feature the text, but there is no such commentary. What would actually count as evidence against the ending are manuscripts that do not include it and any direct comments by Church Fathers. He follows this up with statements of agreement with Snapp, which I could potentially nitpick for how things are construed, but which I will leave alone as this section is not generally disagreeable.
Differences in Judgment on Second-Century Evidence
He then reviews areas of differences in judgment between himself and Snapp. While he grants the evidence of Irenaeus, he is “not as confident about finding evidence for the Longer Ending of Mark, as part of Mark, within the second-century witnesses such as Justin, Tatian’s Diatessaron, and the Epistula Apostolorum,” although he is more confident that the Gospel of Peter provides evidence for Mark ending at 16:8. For the latter point, he references a chapter in a book by someone else, but we will not be pursuing that trail here, as this is a response to Head. As it is, all we can say is that the text does not parallel anything in 16:9–20, but it does have something paralleling 16:8 in 13. But since the text cuts off soon after (not as in ending there, since it is apparent that the rest of the text is no longer extant), I suppose people will see in this what significance they want to.
For the other texts he cites, he does not say anything in particular about the Epistula Apostolorum (specifically, 10–12 and possibly 30), but he says of Justin Martyr that he “on one occasion in his First Apology 45 (as cited by Snapp) used three words—relatively quite common terminology, about the apostolic mission—that are also found in Mark 16:20, not in the order they are found in Mark, in a vaguely similar context, but without other strong connections with the context in Mark.” This is, indeed, a difference in judgment, as I think Head is underselling this point. Here is the Roberts-Donaldson translation of Justin Martyr that features the full quote of this chapter with the pertinent portion in bold:
And that God the Father of all would bring Christ to heaven after He had raised Him from the dead, and would keep Him there until He has subdued His enemies the devils, and until the number of those who are foreknown by Him as good and virtuous is complete, on whose account He has still delayed the consummation--hear what was said by the prophet David. These are his words: “The Lord said unto My Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. The Lord shall send to Thee the rod of power out of Jerusalem; and rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies. With Thee is the government in the day of Thy power, in the beauties of Thy saints: from the womb of morning have I begotten Thee.” That which he says, “He shall send to Thee the rod of power out of Jerusalem,” is predictive of the mighty word, which His apostles, going forth from Jerusalem, preached everywhere; and though death is decreed against those who teach or at all confess the name of Christ, we everywhere both embrace and teach it. And if you also read these words in a hostile spirit, ye can do no more, as I said before, than kill us; which indeed does no harm to us, but to you and all who unjustly hate us, and do not repent, brings eternal punishment by fire.
The three words in Justin’s text are, as they are directly abutted in Greek (that is “from Jerusalem” does not appear in this position in the Greek): ἐξελθόντες πανταχοῦ ἐκήρυξαν. In Mark 16:20, the order is: ἐξελθόντες ἐκήρυξαν πανταχοῦ. The difference in order simply seems to be a stylistic matter, and Justin’s references to the Gospels tend to be imprecise, but despite Head saying this is “relatively common terminology” (which is true if you are referring to each of the verbs themselves, though the adverb is not nearly as widespread), the terms are not found together anywhere before these two texts, particularly not in the first two centuries CE in reference to the apostolic mission.
As for the matter of context, I should mention that the original draft of my post on Mark 16 linked 1 Apol. 45 with Mark 16:17–20. I have since reduced it to 16:20 to avoid the risk of confusion, though I could have reasonably restricted it to 16:19–20. My point in that original link is that the signs accompanying the proclamation of the gospel in vv. 17–18, while not referenced here, resonate with the context of preaching across the world and in the face of hostility. Likewise, the reference to Ps 110:1 here links with the pervasive influence of Ps 110 (particularly v. 1) in the NT, including in Mark 16:19, where it is linked with his post-resurrection ascension, which is then followed by the disciples going out and preaching. Justin is thus extending the links with the Psalm that were begun with texts like Mark, with which he has a verbal anchor point by the link with 16:20.
He then says of the Diatessaron, “It would be similarly possible to come to more cautious conclusions about Tatian’s Diatessaron—where the task of reconstructing Tatian’s work is obviously complex and the problem can be posed simply by noting that Snapp’s evidence for this second-century harmony actually comes from a sixth-century Latin manuscript and a fourth-century Syriac commentary.” This is actually something that Snapp has directly responded to, and I cannot usefully supplement his work, so I will simply refer my readers here.1
Internal Evidence
After this, Head explores four more substantial areas of disagreement concerning internal evidence, the Church Fathers, other external evidence, and method. Regarding internal evidence, he first cites what Snapp himself admits are features which suggest that the ending was not what Mark originally had planned. First is the “reintroduction” of Mary Magdalene. She has been mentioned in 15:40, 47; and 16:1, but to say it is incongruous to introduce her here is to overlook the fact that, for the first time, the narrative focuses on Mary and not the other women, and so Mark gives more information about her (which also anticipates a prophecy of Jesus in 16:17). It is also odd that he says the phrase that introduces her “comes from Luke’s introduction of her in Luke 8:2.” This description is begging the question, of course, but it is also curious that Head would say of a rearranged word order that it is not a clear enough connection with Mark, but he will say here that this simply “comes from” another text. The descriptions from Mark 16:9 and Luke 8:2 are as follows:
Mark 16:9: παρ’ [ἀφ’ in most mss] ἧς ἐκβεβλήκει ἑπτὰ δαιμόνια
Luke 8:2: ἀφ’ ἧς δαιμόνια ἑπτὰ ἐξεληλύθει
Seemingly, a different word order is enough to throw into question the link between Justin and Mark, but that is somehow not the case here where there are also different verbs used. They certainly are similar descriptions, but this appears to be the result of shared knowledge about Mary’s backstory than of one text directly using the other (and that applies in either direction).
Second is the reiteration of the day and time. He says the statement in 16:9 after 16:1 is “in a way that is both unnecessarily repetitive and also in different wording to what was used in 16:1.” I take it that he meant 16:2 rather than 16:1. All that 16:1 says is that the women went out διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου (“after the Sabbath passed”). Then in 16:2 we are told, καὶ λίαν πρωῒ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων ἔρχονται ἐπὶ τὸ μνημεῖον ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου (“[And] Very early on the first day of the week they came to the tomb when the sun had risen”). When we come to 16:9, we see, Ἀναστὰς δὲ πρωῒ πρώτῃ σαββάτου ἐφάνη πρῶτον Μαρίᾳ τῇ Μαγδαληνῇ (“Now after arising early on the first day of the week he appeared first to Mary Magdalene”). It is rather odd to say that this is unnecessarily repetitive precisely because some different terminology is used (along with the term πρωῒ that appears more often in Mark than any other NT book). It is also establishing that this was on the same day, that Jesus had arisen early on that day, and now the focus is on Jesus’s action in appearing to Mary Magdalene rather than on the action of the women like it was earlier.
These points are part of larger claims that the transition between vv. 8 and 9 is too harsh for Mark to have written it and thought it would make sense to not continue the scene with the women. But if that is so, why is it any less of a problem for the idea that a later scribe added the text to an unsatisfying ending? Are we to suppose that this is an “any port in a storm” mentality, that any ending will do and that the scribe who supposedly produced this text just happened to think that way? In any case, this is certainly not the only awkward transition in the NT (e.g., John 14:31–15:1; Acts 12:25 [in the context of 11:27–30 and 13:1]; Rom 10:17).
Third, he mentions the fact that the promised meeting after the resurrection in 14:28 and 16:7 is never explicitly narrated. In his words, “This is a major problem with the Longer Ending of Mark—it doesn’t deliver what both Jesus and the angel promised would take place!” It certainly is odd, but if the Gospel originally ended at 16:8, as Head contends, this is also a problem for his view. He has thus cut off the very branch he was sitting on. I take this as a sign that Mark’s ending was rushed, for whatever precise he was rushed, and so he narrates a meeting of Jesus with the disciples but does not explicitly reference a meeting in Galilee (there are no explicit place settings in 16:9–20 once we leave the tomb). As I said in my own analysis of Mark 16:9–20:
Otherwise, some of the awkward qualities of the ending are explicable by this section having more the character of a summary than a fully fleshed out narrative. For some reason that we can only speculate about, Mark has kept the substance of the ending that is in line with the other Gospels, but has rushed it, so that we never get an explicit note about the disciples meeting Jesus in Galilee like we do in Matt 28:16 (after 28:7, 10). Nor is there a scene spotlighting Peter, like we might expect from 16:7. This “rushed” character is also seen in the telescoping of the narrative, so that what will be fleshed out in Acts is compressed into the last verse, and it otherwise seems as if all of these things happened immediately afterwards. A further indication that we are dealing with a summary is the unusual density of using some form of ἐκείνος as a substantive pronoun (16:10–11, 13, 20; cf. 4:20; 12:4–5).
That last point briefly addresses another issue that Head raises, to which I refer to Snapp for further detail in my original post. He also makes much of the uses of the conjunctions καί and δὲ but has fallen far below making any sort of compelling case in the absence of detailed comparison elsewhere in Mark.2
Moreover, I argue that the ending still does fit with the Gospel as a whole, reflecting many characteristics of the first chapter. One, the only references to the Lord (κύριος) that are not in dialogue appear in Mark’s opening quotation in 1:3 and in 16:19–20. Two, the opening concerns Jesus’s predecessor in preaching while the closing concerns Jesus’s successors in preaching. Three, the only references to literal baptism (which are not part of John’s appellation, as in 6:14, 24) are in 1:5, 8–9; and 16:16. Four, Mark brackets his narrative with the Spirit’s descent from heaven (1:10) and Jesus’s ascent into heaven (16:19). Five, the verb phrase κηρύσσω τὸ εὐαγγέλιον appears only in 1:14 and 16:15. Such fittingness seems to demonstrate an overarching vision of linking the beginning and the end, but not so much a short-term vision of forming an ending that dots every i and crosses every t of the last few chapters (which otherwise might have been accomplished with more time).
The final point of internal evidence he appeals to is how, supposedly, Mark 16:9–20 draws upon parallel materials in other Gospels:
In relation to content there is a significant issue that the Longer Ending draws upon parallel material in the other Gospels. The individual appearance to Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9–11) parallels John 20:14–18; the appearance to two people walking in the country (Mark 16:12–13) parallels the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13–35; the appearance to the eleven while reclining (Mark 16:14) parallels Luke 24:36–43; the commissioning (Mark 16:15) parallels Matthew 28:19–20; and the mention of the ascension (Mark 16:19) parallels Luke 24:50–51. This synthesizing feature of the content of the Longer Ending has long been recognized as reflecting a different relationship to the other Gospels than is reflected within Mark’s Gospel.
Again, Head is begging the question here, as other scholars he cites have done. In other situations, parallels between Mark and other Gospels would be regarded as these other Gospels using Mark as a source. But no positing of a relationship involving copying or one text directly drawing from another is necessary here one way or the other to account for these similarities. There are substantially fewer similarities relative to word count that we can see here for Mark 16:9–20 with other Gospels than what we have observed between Mark 16:1–8 and the other Synoptics here (my planned book will involve comparison with John as well). And even in that case, each of the Gospels was more different when compared to the others than they were alike.
I will provide charts below for reference, which means I must again give some guidance on how they are marked. For all texts, plain font words are absolute similarities between texts, italics signify either a different form of the same word or a synonymous word, and bold font signifies what is unique to each text. For text with two parallels, all these same rules apply. For texts with three parallels, single-underlined words signify elements shared between two texts. The same applies to texts with four parallels, but elements shared between three texts are doubled underlined. The first similarity score is based on absolute verbal similarity of identical wording, even when the similarities appear incidental. The second similarity is based on weighted verbal similarity, including scores of 0.75 for each word that is a different form of the same word in a parallel text and of 0.5 for each word that is a synonym for a word in a parallel text (again, this applies even in the cases of apparent incidental similarity). The < symbol signifies that the word order of similarities also varies between texts, meaning that the actual degree of similarity is less than the number figure indicates. Here are the comparisons of Mark 16:9–20 with the other Gospels that I have previously made charts for:
First of all, I should address the lack of examination where Head points to parallels. I have not included Mark 16:12–13 with Luke 24:13–35, but the only lexical links between them are contained in the phrase “two of them,” and “two” is a different nominal case in each text. If this is supposed to be referencing the same story and Mark’s version is dependent on the text of Luke, it has a horribly obscure way of showing it. The stories are not even framed and presented in the same way. (They may be ways of referring to the same story, but the point is that there is no clear sign of dependence in any case.) The appearance to the disciples while reclining in 16:14 is supposed to parallel Luke 24:36–43, but this is again horribly obscure. Maybe Head is just taking cues from Nestle-Aland or from Kelhoeffer, whose work is a prime example of the convoluted theories some use to explain the origins of Mark 16:9–20 because it does not appear in two Greek manuscripts from before the year 1000. Of course, yet other texts are brought in to shore up such problems, such as Acts and other texts from the Gospels outside of the resurrection narratives. In the end, it appears that someone besides Mark performed the equivalent of dumping five 1,000-piece puzzles into a pile and hastily assembling the mess into his own 1,000-piece puzzle, since he was apparently trying to do it quickly. That scenario may sound preposterous, and that is because it is, just like this theory of this coherent, albeit rushed, story being assembled in this fashion. The parallels we can identify are superficial and anyone who makes the supposition that this text was Frankensteined together has difficulty explaining why a scribe with access to any/all of these endings of other Gospels (as well as Acts) composed 16:9–20 and not something 1) more like any of them, 2) more robust than any of them (so as to include as much as possible), or 3) more harmonized with other Gospels than any of them (as we see attempts to harmonize these texts in writing as early as the second century). In fact, as we can see from Eusebius (Gospel Problems and Solutions, “To Marinus” 1), the text raised other issues for harmonization.
Evidence from the Church Fathers
Speaking of which, that leads to Head’s discussion of the Church Fathers. He first points to the evidence of Eusebius and Jerome’s oft-referenced statements. I dealt with these statements in my Mark analysis, so I will reiterate my points here.
Eusebius says (in the text cited as “To Marinus” in Gospel Problems and Solutions 1) that “in almost all copies” (σχεδὸν ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς ἀντιγράφοις) of Mark, the Gospel ends at v. 8, which he further reinforces with saying it is “seldom/occasionally” (σπανίως) followed with the pericope in question.3 But we must remember two things about this comment. One, despite this claim, Eusebius accepted this text and proceeded in his argument on that basis in providing a second solution to a difference between Matthew and Mark. Two, Eusebius is not making some objectively universal claim about Greek manuscripts in his time, much less of manuscripts produced since Mark was completed, as if he had access to them all. He was bishop of Caesarea, a major manuscript center, which may well have been where B and א were produced.4 With “Alexandrian” texts coming here (which scholars have tended to identify B and א as being), it is perhaps unsurprising that the majority of Mark manuscripts that Eusebius was familiar with did not feature the ending. But that is not how Metzger and others who are less cautious reference it (some even saying that “all” manuscripts at this time lacked the ending, in which case one wonders where it came from and why Eusebius had this discussion, but it is not as if Eusebius’s dialogue is fully played out or properly referenced by scholars who appeal to this point). Rather, the suggestion is that the majority of manuscripts up to and including the ones of this time period did not feature the ending. But this hardly seems to be the case, given what I noted elsewhere in my Mark 16 analysis. If we look at writers before and up to a century after Eusebius, we see that the Greek manuscripts with this ending of 16:9–20 were reference points for writers or translations used by writers in/from Phrygia (Papias), Syria Palestine (Didascalia Apostolorum, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Apostolic Constitutions, and Victor of Antioch), Gaul (Irenaeus), Assyria (Tatian), possibly Egypt (Epistula Apostolorum, if it is not from Syria or Asia), Africa Proconsularis (Tertullian, Vincent of Thibaris, Augustine, and maybe the author of On Rebaptism), Rome (Justin Martyr, Hippolytus, and Jerome had manuscripts from here), Persia (Aphrahat), Italy (Ambrose of Milan and Chromatius of Aquileia), Mesopotamia (Ephrem the Syrian), the British Isles (Patrick), and Greece (if Macarius Magnes is Macarius of Magnesia or otherwise from Greece). How likely is it that, supposedly, manuscripts that only accounted for a tiny sliver from somewhere in the second to the early fifth centuries were responsible for such a wide distribution of witnesses in multiple languages?
Likewise, Jerome’s statement from Ep. 120 (to Hedibia) is typically treated as if it is independent testimony from an ancient scholar known for his text-critical work, which just so happens to resemble the verbiage of Eusebius (Head at least acknowledges there is a relationship here). Jerome’s letter actually matches Eusebius’s responses to his questions beyond the noted verbiage of how many Greek copies lack the ending (he specifies “Greek” since he was writing in Latin). Such similarities of wording and substance fit with Jerome’s admitted tendency (which others will readily recognize when reading his work in light of earlier authors) of borrowing from other writers in what he dictated to his amanuensis without clearly remembering (and thus marking) which words were his and which were theirs (Jerome, Ep. 112.4; also preserved in Augustine, Ep. 75.4). As such, it would be no surprise that he was paraphrasing Eusebius in response to a broad, but somewhat similar question to the sort that Eusebius addressed from Marinus. But even if we were to disregard these things, appealing to Jerome for the argument that the original ending was 16:8 runs into the same problems we found in Eusebius. Of course, Jerome seems to have had access to more manuscripts than did Eusebius, not least since he consulted manuscripts in Rome prior to his coming to Bethlehem. But if he were to have independently said that most manuscripts lacked this ending, we would still need to explain why this overturns the implicit testimony of the variety of authors noted above. We would also need to explain why he ultimately sided with Eusebius in answering according to the belief that this ending belongs in Mark and, going even further, in including it in his Vulgate, for which he consulted Greek manuscripts to correct Latin ones (Preface to the Gospels; Ep. 27). Some, like Daniel Wallace, might wish to posit that Jerome suffered a failure of nerve, so to speak, and did not want to upset his readers too much, despite his (supposed) personal beliefs.5 Such a characterization of Jerome is difficult to take seriously for anyone with passing familiarity with his work. Particularly relevant is how he marked the stories of Bel and the Dragon and Susanna, additions to Daniel in the LXX, so as to indicate that these stories were not originally part of the Hebrew texts. When he makes note of this in the prologue to his Commentary on Daniel, he also notes that Eusebius made appeal to the same fact in argument with Porphyry when he criticized Daniel. Neither Jerome nor Eusebius worried about making these remarks for stories that were popular among Christians (and Jerome himself notes that people were critical of this move of his), yet both of them ultimately proceeded to act in affirmation of the ending of 16:9–20. While Jerome marked these additions to Daniel while still keeping them in his Vulgate, he did no such thing for Mark 16:9–20, which he preserved without comment or need for qualification.
Additionally, Head cites Hesychius of Jerusalem and Severus of Antioch. I did not reference them in my Mark analysis because there are significant issues with doing so, one of which is that I was trying to restrict myself to sources my readers could easily find translations of online in their full context, and these are not as easily locatable as those I referenced. Other issues arise in both what the texts actually say and what the significance is. The statement he references from Hesychius (Collections of Difficulties and Their Solutions) is evidently not about the ending of Mark’s whole Gospel but simply the ending of that particular story/account, and he alludes to Mark 16:9 elsewhere in his work.6
The statement he references from Severus of Antioch comes from his Hom. 77 (Homily/Oration on the Resurrection), which has sometimes been attributed to Hesychius. From the quote, though, one would not know that he went on to reference Mark 16:19 as “written by Mark” to address a cited difficulty or that this whole part of his homily shows dependence on Eusebius’s “To Marinus,” which he definitely knew (see Ep. 108). He proceeds through the argument in the same way making the same harmonization as Eusebius.7 Much like commentators reciting the arguments of Metzger, we can thus not take for granted that Severus is an independent witness supporting what Eusebius said.
Other External Evidence
When Head moves to other external evidence, he naturally first mentions Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, the oldest extant manuscripts that feature the relevant portion of Mark. Both of the manuscripts definitely leave out the ending, but it is arguable, as I noted in my Mark 16 post, that both of them indirectly attest to knowledge of the ending. It was obviously around by the time these manuscripts were written. But yes, Sinaiticus in particular seems quite intentional in its scribe’s rejection of the ending.
His other argument in this section is that the earliest manuscripts of various versions also lack the ending, “There is good evidence that the earliest form of the Gospel of Mark, as translated into Latin, Syriac, Sahidic Coptic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Armenian, and Georgian, all consisted of the text of Mark ending at 16:8. This is further very significant confirmation of the testimony of Eusebius as to the state of the text of Mark in the manuscripts of the fourth century.” After listing these manuscripts, he then draws this inference:
In each of these language groups, later witnesses include the Longer Ending, but that does not detract from the force of this observation. The general direction of travel in the manuscript evidence as we have it for Greek, Sahidic, Latin, Syriac, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Armenian, and Georgian, moves from an original, shorter Mark towards incorporating a version of Mark with the Longer Ending.
In other words, the Greek manuscript evidence, and the evidence within these six linguistic areas, works in the opposite direction to that proposed by James Snapp (and others). In short, it is not evidence that an original long form of Mark was subsequently edited down, but is in fact evidence for the opposite: the earliest form of Mark known in these areas ended at Mark 16:8, and this was subsequently supplemented with one or more of the available additional endings.
This is certainly an interesting argument and one that I could see to seem compelling because it is shorn of context. For Old Latin manuscripts, we clearly have Latin witnesses going back before the example he lists—Codex Bobiensis—including Tertullian, Scorp. 15 (16:18); Apol. 21 (16:15, 19); Hippolytus of Rome, Apostolic Tradition 32.1 (16:18); Vincent of Thibaris, Seventh Council of Carthage (ANF 5:569 [16:15–18]); and the work On Rebaptism 9 (16:14). Furthermore, even after Jerome composed the Vulgate in the late fourth century, some Old Latin manuscripts took over chapter divisions from before Jerome. An early example of this is Codex Corbeiensis II, wherein the 47th chapter for Mark was Mark 16:9–20.
The Sinaitic Syriac is not strictly dependent on the aforementioned Codex Bobiensis, but there is a clear relationship between them in how they share unusual variants in Matt 1:25; 4:17; and Mark 8:31–32 among others, and they both omit Matt 5:47 and 9:34. But it is an eclectic text. It is also predated in Syria and Assyria (or other areas where Syriac was used) by Ep. apost. 10–12 (16:10–11, 14–15), 30 (possibly 16:15)[if the text was written in Syria]; Did. apost. 23 (16:15, 20); Aphrahat, On Faith 17 (16:16–18); (possibly) Ephrem the Syrian, Comm. Diatessaron; and, most significantly, Tatian’s Diatessaron, which was the most popular version of the Gospels in Syria before the Peshitta. Moreover, it is not certain if the Sinaitic Syriac text is the oldest one, as it could be that the Curetonian Gospels may be a manuscript of similar age and this manuscript did contain the ending when it was fully intact, as it does preserve 16:17–20. The Peshitta itself may predate the manuscript, but what is significant is that the manuscript (along with the Curetonian Gospels) preserves the Old Syriac from before the Peshitta.
The oldest Sahidic manuscript cited, which may be older than is suggested here, is more straightforward. It appears to resemble other manuscripts considered “Alexandrian,” like the two Greek witnesses cited above (though not all such texts once considered “Alexandrian” omit the ending). But for whatever reason what is true of the Sahidic version with this manuscript is not also true of the Bohairic, and they were both dialects of Coptic.
The Christian Palestinian Aramaic version he cites is complicated. One would not know, just from the citation, that the text of Mark ends at v. 8a, and not at the end of v. 8. But the manuscript is fragmentary and also does not include Mark 1:1–4:7a; 4:17b–8:6a; 8:22b–9:38a; 10:3b–45a; 11:4b–12:15a; 12:27b–40a; 13:8–15:43a.8 It is thus not at all clear that this text of the Gospel actually ended there. And the ending is otherwise attested in this language.
The Armenian and Georgian witnesses, as he notes, are not nearly as old as these manuscripts, and the latter is dependent on the former. But it should be noted that the earliest productions of Armenian manuscripts go back to the early years of the fifth century, and Eznik of Kolb (in Against the Sects or On God 112) references part of Mark 16:9–20 well before our earliest manuscript in Armenian. And on these versions as a whole, I will reference Snapp’s comments again:
I have not addressed the evidence from the Armenian and Georgian versions because research into these versions has not yet reached a firm conclusion about the contents of Mark 16 in the earliest stages of these versions; Colwell’s investigation, made in 1937, cannot be considered sufficient, considering how many Armenian manuscripts have been catalogued since that time. But a few generalized remarks here may be better than nothing at all. Bruce Metzger’s statement in A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament that “about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, and the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written A.D. 897 and A.D. 913)” do not contain Mark 16:9-20 is technically true. (Metzger’s information was from the 1930’s. Many more Armenian copies have been catalogued since that time.) But he did not inform his readers that all those Armenian manuscripts are medieval. Nor did he mention that the Georgian version was translated from Armenian; as a result, most readers are likely to get the false impression that the Armenian and Georgian versions represent two independent lines of evidence.
In addition, Dr. Metzger did not reveal that hundreds of other Armenian manuscripts include Mark 16:9-20. One of those copies is Matenadaran-2374 (formerly known as Etchmiadsin-229), a Gospels-manuscript produced in 989 which, according to an annotation, was copied from “authentic and old” exemplars. The covers and illustrations that accompany the main part of Matenadaran-2374 are from the 500’s or 600’s, and if they were taken from the manuscript of which Matenadaran-2374 is a copy (which is likely), this implies a line of descent for this particular Armenian manuscript that goes back to the earliest detectable stages of the transmission of the text of the Gospels in Armenian. In addition, Armenian and Georgian patristic writings (already described) add further confirmation that Mark 16:9-20 was used in Armenia and Georgia long before the earliest existing Armenian and Georgian manuscripts of Mark were produced.9
In short, the evidence is not as straightforward as Head presents it to be. Moreover, it is incredibly odd reasoning to say that this shows how the progression went in all of these languages. After all, in some of these cases we have witnesses that contradict the idea that the earliest text in these versions lacked the ending. Since the ending was clearly known before our earliest manuscript evidence in those cases, why would we think that this was the pattern in each language? And how is that supposed to have worked? Was the earliest text without the ending earmarked when it arrived for translation into each new language and only later did other manuscripts come in to add the ending?
Also, has Head forgotten that the fact that the earliest extant manuscripts are the earliest extant manuscripts is a result of historical accident? Obviously, there were once earlier manuscripts, but they have since been lost, whether they are waiting to be rediscovered, they have decomposed, or they have been destroyed. In the same way, what parts of early manuscripts are preserved for us today—there are earlier incomplete copies of Mark than the two earliest witnesses cited—is a matter of historical accident. Why, then, should we assent with such confidence to such wide-ranging reconstructions of historical situations on the basis only of manuscripts that happen to be the earliest ones directly available to us, especially when we have countervailing evidence? Moreover, it is odd for him to say the text in each of these cases was “subsequently supplemented with one or more of the available additional endings.” Since he has only mentioned the Shorter Ending and the Longer Ending, I would think it would make more sense to say “one or both,” but perhaps he is invoking the misleading idea of the variety of endings for Mark. Also, Codex Bobiensis, which he cited as the earliest extant Old Latin manuscript (which may or may not be true), is literally the only manuscript that uses the so-called “Shorter Ending” as an ending for Mark without 16:9–20. In every other case in which that portion of text appears, it is with 16:9–20.
Method
Finally, he addresses the issue of method, by which he means the appeal to the principle of textual criticism that the reading which explains the other readings is to be preferred. On his view, it is much easier to explain 16:9–20 as an ending if the Gospel originally ended at 16:8 than it would be to explain the cases of manuscripts ending at 16:8 if 16:20 was the original ending. I have argued against this in my Mark 16 analysis. Despite the intuitive force of the argument that it is easier to explain why the ending would be added rather than omitted, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain this ending’s pervasiveness when you consider the following factors. One, this is not a simple matter of setting “Byzantine” texts (which are naturally more numerous) against “Alexandrian” and/or non-“Byzantine” texts in general, but of one reading represented by a variety of lineages (including mixed-lineage cases), including of “Alexandrian” texts, against a reading represented in two distinctly “Alexandrian” texts and other ones of similar “Alexandrian” descent. It is not only the vast, vast majority reading when we take into account the massive production of “Byzantine” manuscripts in the second millennium, but even before then among manuscripts and patristic witnesses in many settings. Two, we have second-century evidence for this ending, arguably in the earliest decades of the second century with the indirect testimony of Papias, and no second-century evidence that is unambiguously against it. Three, despite what is made of the comments of Eusebius and Jerome, this ending proliferated so much that it appears not only in so many manuscripts, but also in the works of so many authors in so many locations across multiple languages, as well as the several traditions of liturgies and lectionaries. Four, as far as we know, no one, not even those more knowledgeable about the manuscripts, mounted an articulated defense of 16:8 as the proper ending, as even Eusebius and Jerome accepted 16:9–20. Though this last point is an argument from silence, it is a curious thing that there is no evidence of early interpreters trying to explain the ending at 16:8, with the problems it causes and the lack of satisfaction. Again, modern and postmodern scholars have poured much effort into such explanations, but their ancient predecessors do not appear to have been interested or externally motivated in a similar way. Of course, of all the arguments, this is the one most vulnerable to being overturned with the discovery of other ancient Christian literature, but that seems unlikely, as there are not even secondhand references to such things or responses to the same. Not only do we have no evidence, but the ancient Church seems to have been unaware of it, too. All of this is not easy to explain from the opposite position; because of the complexity of factors involved, it may be more difficult to explain than the alternative.
And this is another part of my analysis that addresses what could have happened with the ending:
If 16:9–20 is the authentic ending of Mark, how do we explain how it could have been lost in some manuscripts? I am not particularly confident in the idea that heretical copyists (or copyists sympathetic to heretical ideas) deliberately omitted the ending, since this somehow left the endings of the other Gospels more or less untouched (to the extent that no one doubts these other endings as authentic).10 In fact, I am not particularly settled on any proposal, not least because other theories I have seen are not mutually exclusive, and there could be multiple factors. I offer those here as possibilities. One, the ending could have been lost in some codex copies. Nicholas Lunn studied a sample of uncials number 01–045 and of minuscules number 1–800, finding that 11 of the uncials featured defective endings of books while 103 of the 800 minuscules had similarly defective endings.11 It is not inconceivable that this ending could have been on one page of one or more of the most ancient manuscripts that ended up lost. Codex Bobiensis (itk) may also provide support for this, since it is the only manuscript that ends like it does with an ending that is otherwise combined with 16:9–20 in manuscripts where it appears, and even some of the manuscripts that feature part of the ending are themselves defective/damaged copies. Even beyond Lunn’s study, one could add from the uncials 099, 0112, and 0257 as having defective endings of Mark alone, despite them featuring some portion of vv. 9–20 (0287 is fragmentary and, remarkably, the only discernible text from Mark is 16:19). Two, a scribe might have misinterpreted lectionary divisions, which were not always consistently applied, wherein ἀρχή and τέλος are applied to the beginning and end of a lectionary reading. But if the latter fell at the end of v. 8, since we have seen how 16:9–20 is treated as a separate lectionary unit, it could have been misinterpreted as the end for Mark and vv. 9–20 would be left out of the copy produced thereafter. Three, the text might have been excised out of apologetic considerations. We have already seen difficulties that Eusebius and Jerome encountered in harmonizing this text with other Gospels (particularly Matthew), and others, recognizing the awkwardness of some elements of the ending and the difficulties in clarity about fitting it with other Gospels, may have opted for excising it altogether to make harmonization somewhat easier. This theory is not special pleading, as we can see that Eusebius and Jerome had no problem with noting that a text was not original to address objections in apologetic contexts. This tactic was rather more legitimate in the case of Bel and the Dragon and Susanna, as those stories were not part of the original version of Daniel known in Hebrew and Aramaic. But someone else, perhaps with reinforcement from the other factors, may have thought it easier to excise this text for similar reasons when dealing with difficulties if he thought there were doubts about it anyway. I would also direct my readers to other apologists, teachers, and formally educated Christians of our own day who, when faced with objections concerning Mark 16:9–20, fall back on the notion that the ending is not original as a sufficient way of addressing those objections.12
The rest of the article consists of his conclusion about what we are to do with 16:9–20 in light of his argument against its authenticity. He thinks it should occupy a quasi-canonical space like the Apocrypha in Anglicanism. And so it has often been treated among scholars, as well as those translations that print it with brackets and notes. But there is no need for such treatment. There are curiosities in the transmission of Mark 16:9–20, but there is not sufficient reason to doubt that it is the authentic ending to the Gospel according to Mark.
More recently, see Mina Monier, “Tatian and the Arabic Diatessaron: Mark’s Ending as a Case Study,” JSNT 46 (2023–2024): 261–93.
In contrast, see Nicholas P. Lunn, The Original Ending of Mark: A New Case for the Authenticity of Mark 16:9-20 (Eugene: Pickwick, 2014), 136–208, esp. 159–61.
The text and translation can be found on pp. 96–97 of the pdf at https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2015/12/12/eusebius-of-caesarea-gospel-problems-and-solutions-now-online-in-english/.
J. K. Elliott, “T. C. Skeat on the Origins and Dating of Codex Vaticanus,” in The Collected Biblical Writings of T. C. Skeat, ed. J. K. Elliott, NovTSup 113 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 281–94.
Daniel B. Wallace, “Mark 16:8 as the Conclusion to the Second Gospel,” in Perspectives on the Ending of Mark: 4 Views, ed. David Alan Black (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2008), 23. In his words, “call it antiquity, tradition of timidity, or not wanting to rock the boat too much.”
B. F. Wetscott and F. J. A. Hort note in their Appendix “Notes on Selected Readings” that, “Another work attributed to Hesychius (Quaest. lii in Cotel. M.E.G. iii 45) has been supposed to imply the absence of vv. 9—20, by saying that Mc ‘ended his narrative when he had told in a summary manner the particulars down to the mention of the one angel’. But the context shews that the writer is speaking exclusively of the appearances to the women, and has specially in view the absence of the additional incident supplied by Lc xxiv 24: moreover in Quaest. i, p. 40, he uses a phrase founded on xvi 9.” B. F. Wetscott and F. J. A. Hort, “Appendix” in Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek with Notes on Selected Readings (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1882), 34.
Ibid. Also see John Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses of S. Mark Vindicated Against Recent Critical Objectors and Established (Oxford; London: Parker, 1871), 57–59, 267–68 (Appendix C).
James Snapp, Jr., “Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20,” May 2015 (available online at: https://www.academia.edu/12545835/Authentic_The_Case_for_Mark_16_9_20) [19–20].
Lunn, Original Ending, 343–52.
Ibid., 338, 352–55.
For more on these factors and others, see Snapp, “Authentic,” 165–81.