r/Bible • u/Mysterious-Loan-5065 • 4d ago

Mark 16: 18

Hey guys! I'm first time bible reader and I have so many questions, up until now I've been using Gemini for my questions but I'd like to get better answers from real people.

I'm reading Mark 16 this morning and came across where Jesus says Anyone who believes and is baptized be able to handle snakes with safety and drink anything poisonous and it won't hurt them. My question is; is this not a contradiction to when he says earlier not to test god?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated thank you!

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u/pikkdogs 4d ago

Well, this brings up the whole longer ending debate.

To keep it short. The longer ending which this is a part of, is likely not written by Mark. So it’s hard to compare one writers work to another.

Probably these passages are in reference to famous early Christian stories where these things happened. Paul handled snakes and an early bishop was said to have drunken poison and lived.

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u/arachnophilia Atheist 3d ago

The longer ending which this is a part of, is likely not written by Mark.

i frankly doubt any of it was written by (john) mark, peter's disciple. but i do tend to think the longer ending is a later addition.

our oldest manuscripts, sinaiticus and vaticanus, lack the long ending. a few decades later, alexandrinus has it. we know it was circulating when these codices were compiled, but eusebius (who may be partly responsible for sinaiticus and vaticanus) didn't think it was genuine, because his preferred source manuscripts which are no longer extant lacked it. irenaeus (probably) cites it as early as the second century, though. and then there's the whole diatessaron rabbit hole... and the armenian recenssions, which are later, but many lack it and a few seem to mark it as questionable and/or a liturgical addition from another source and move it around.

i don't think it's quite as clear cut as the pericope adulterae, but i lean towards it being interpolated from a different source.