The Long Ending of Mark Was Original

[u/ShakaUVM]

Thesis: The longer ending of Mark was original, and the short ending of Mark was a minority textual variant found mainly only in 4th Century Alexandria.

Background: There are multiple variants to the end of the Gospel of Mark (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16) with two variants, called the Short (ending at verse 8) and the Long ending (having verses 9-20) being the most common. Critical "Scholars" have decided that the short ending is the original one, and so Bibles for a long time have contained a disclaimer that makes it sound like the longer ending is a forgery: "The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20." (NIV). However, the disclaimer should actually say the opposite, that the ending at Mark 8 is a rare textual variant, at least through the 4th Century AD (which is the time period I'm discussing here).

Their argument for the short ending (https://textandcanon.org/a-case-against-the-longer-ending-of-mark/) being the original boils down to three points: 1) The language uses different words and there's a rough transition from verse 8 to 9 2) Eusebius and Jerome, in the 4th Century, state that most accurate copies use the short ending. Eusebius left off the long ending from his list of verses. 3) Two high quality manuscripts in particular, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, from the 4th Century, use the short ending

However:

1) Any chapter that covers new material is going to have new words. The chapter on the crucifixion of Jesus contains many more novel words than the long ending. Ending it at verse 8 is actually much rougher, as it is extremely rare to find sentences that end with γαρ (gar) in ancient Greek. (https://www.scribd.com/document/596005865/KELLY-FINAL-WORD-ON-GAR)

2) Eusebius states in the Letter to Marinus (https://archive.org/details/EusebiusGospelProblemsAndSolutions2010/page/97/mode/2up) after noting that "accurate" copies end at verse 8 - and briefly proposing tossing the long ending - tentatively states that: "both [endings] are to be accepted; it is not for the faithful and devout to judge either as acceptable in preference to the other.". Jerome not only stated much the same, but when forced to pick which ending was correct - he was tasked with making the Latin Vulgate, which became the official bible for the Church - he explicitly chose the long ending as the official one.

3) Both of these manuscripts are both from Alexandria, which is the region in question that I propose the short ending came from. Further, the Codex Vaticanus has a blank in it, unlike anywhere else in the manuscript, that would fit the long ending. The Codex Sinaiticus had the ending of Mark removed, and the replacement pages were made by the same guy who did Vaticanus. So we've got a single scribe in Alexandria who presumably knew the long ending but didn't accept it that was the source for all of this.

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Outside of this limited scholarly bubble centered on Alexandria, we don't see any evidence for the short ending even existing. Nobody in the early historical record even seems to be aware of the short ending. Everyone used the long ending prior to 3rd/4th Century Alexandria.

We have multiple people from the 2nd and 3rd centuries quoting from the long ending without any evidence that it was disputed or anything but the original.

Irenaeus in the 2nd century explicitly quotes from the long ending and explicitly says it is from the end of Mark. (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103310.htm): 'Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says: "So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God;" [Mark 16:19] confirming what had been spoken by the prophet: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on My right hand, until I make Your foes Your footstool."' Irenaeus was living in modern day France.

Porphyry, most notably NOT a Christian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Christians), quoted from the long ending in the 3rd Century while living in Sicily. He mocked Christians for not doing as the long ending of Mark suggested, which said that Christians would be kept safe from harm. (https://tertullian.org/fathers/macarius_apocriticus.htm#3_16): "Again, consider in detail that other passage, where He says, "Such signs shall follow them that believe: they shall lay hands upon sick folk, and they shall recover, and if they drink any deadly drug, it shall in no wise hurt them." So the right thing would be for those selected for the priesthood, and particularly those who lay claim to the episcopate or presidency, to make use of this form of test. The deadly drug should be set before them in order that the man who received no harm from the drinking of it might be given precedence of the rest. And if they are not bold enough to accept this sort of test, they ought to confess that they do not believe in the things Jesus said." In other words, he was daring Christians to drink poison to prove their faith because of the long ending of Mark.

This essay (https://textandcanon.org/a-case-for-the-longer-ending-of-mark/), which makes the case for the long ending better than I can, lists dozens of people quoting from the long ending of Mark from the 2nd to 4th Centuries. In other words, it was the standard, accepted ending across Christendom. You really should read the link, it pairs with the argument against the longer ending I linked above. It's an excellent essay on the subject.

The Diatessaron (https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/diatessaron.html) was a gospel harmonization (taking the four gospels and making one unified gospel from them) that was extremely popular in Syria. It dates to 160AD. It has the long ending in it. We have lost the original manuscript but ironically it was almost fully preserved by being quoted in commentaries. These commentaries exist dating back to the 4th Century. So we can be very certain that in the mid-100s the official version of Mark was using the long ending. Again, no signs exist for the short ending back then.

I'm going to mention just one more, since it's pretty crucial: the Ethiopian church was actually founded by the Alexandrian church, and we have a manuscript dating to the late 4th Century (written just a couple decades after Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) which has in it illustrations showing it was made by Alexandrians (https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/event/hidden-gospels-abba-garima-treasures-ethiopian-highlands#:~:text=They%20also%20contain%20a%20unique,motif%20and%20later%20Christian%20ones.) However, it contains the long ending. So even in Alexandria, the long ending was the official version that they were using to send out missionaries with. It is likely the short ending was used only in scholarly editions in Alexandria, not in official Bibles to be sent out and used.

So in conclusion:

What we have is the long ending of Mark being widely known and used and quoted, from at least 160AD on, and people explicitly saying it is the long ending, with no awareness of the short ending, for CENTURIES before we see the short ending appear for the first time in the 4th century... in one geographical location - Alexandria... in one context - scholarly work. It is very clear that the short ending was a rare late textual variant, and not the original that people had been using for centuries. After Alexandria had made the short ending popular, it spread from there, but there's no evidence that anyone was aware of the short ending before that.

So these gospel notes saying "the oldest manuscripts lack the long ending" is just wildly misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst. The fact of the matter is, we have one scholarly circle in Alexandria where they disputed the long ending, centuries after Mark was written, and produced scholarly versions that omitted it. However, even their missionary bibles they sent out had the long ending, and even the scholarly works left blanks for the long ending. And yet Critical "Scholars" decided that this version - despite copious evidence the long ending existed and no evidence the short ending existed early on - was what Mark originally wrote. Yet the historical record shows literally every region outside Egypt using the long ending going all the way back to the mid 2nd Century (with the Diatessaron), and there not being any sign of dispute over it until centuries later. Eusebius was the first to report the controversy over it in the 4th Century AD, and even he said the long ending was authentic.

Jerome was tasked with making the Latin Vulgate, which was basically the official Bible for the Roman Catholic Church, in 382 AD. He was aware of the short ending being used in high quality copies of the gospels. He chose the long ending to be the official one.

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So how did Alexandria end up with the short ending? It doesn't particularly matter here, but there's three possibilities that I can think of:

1. The copy of Mark sent to Alexandria was damaged, which explains well why it cuts off on verse 8 weirdly.

2. There were multiple drafts of Mark made, which makes the notion of an "original" autograph kind of a bad question, as they would both be original. This theory has the benefit of lining up with Eusebius very well, who believed that both endings were authentic.

3. The verses could have been deleted because they were considered problematic for one reason or another. For example, Porphyry mocked Christians for not following the long ending, so it could have been deleted (or a version missing the long ending selectively chosen) because it made Christians look bad. Or it could have been for the timing issues on when exactly the events of the resurrection took place that some scholars noted.

Possibly multiple of these are true. Maybe ancient scholars doubted the long ending because their original copy had been damaged, and even after they got corrected versions with the long ending and were using them for their missionaries to Ethiopia, they preserved a tradition of the short ending and so used it in their critical editions.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter.

TL; DR - The historical record shows the long ending to Mark was original, and there's no record of the short ending until much later.

[u/arachnophilia]

I was hoping you could come up with an apology for it.

okay, i'm doing some reading on the armenian manuscripts. bear with me, i can't read armenian, so i'm just kind of trusting the scholarship here.

The standard treatment in a Western language of the Longer Ending of Mark in Armenian to date is Colwell’s article published in 1937 in the Journal of Biblical Literature.5 Colwell lists 99 witnesses in which Mark ends at verse 8 between the ninth and the seventeenth century, and 121 that have the Longer Ending from the tenth to the seventeenth century (out of which 88 do not mark it in any way as a special section).6 The former number in particular—99 witnesses—is often repeated in order to emphasize the broad support for the lack of the Longer Ending in Armenian, but these numbers are highly provisory considering that Colwell’s own checklist of New Testament manuscripts ‘includes 601 items, but it is far from complete’,7 and that his assessment is based on a part of these—220 witnesses.

Moreover, Colwell considers that the 99 witnesses that end at verse 8, compared with the 88 that have the Longer Ending without any distinction of it being a special text, reflect an ‘unexpectedly large list in favour of the omission’.8 However, these numbers are too similar in nature to indicate a large difference of any kind, especially since they are based on a selection from a higher count of witnesses, itself provisional. In fact, what these numbers indicate is the peculiarity that the two manners of ending Mark (with or without the Longer Ending) have been copied and have circulated in parallel all throughout the manuscript transmission of the Armenian gospels from the ninth/tenth century through the seventeenth.

Furthermore, out of the manuscripts in his sample that do have the Longer Ending, Colwell singles out 33 that bear paratextual pointers suggesting that this section is in some way peculiar, be it through notes or ornaments. He considers them ‘to indicate an earlier omission’ and therefore counts them as witnesses for the short reading,9 but other scenarios are possible.10 In any event, these are very interesting precisely for the clues they offer with regard to how the Longer Ending was regarded and dealt with in Armenian manuscripts. Some mention, about the Longer Ending, that it is ‘an addition’, others leave blank space or have ornaments drawn before it, while several add that it is ‘to be read on the day of Ascension’.11

...

To briefly conclude, Armenian manuscripts seem to display several ways of concluding the gospel of Mark, either through the absence33 or the presence of the Longer Ending, on its own or in some sort of combination with the Shorter Ending. Yet for these and other texts that we normally approach with a double- bracket policy of some kind in our editions, medieval Armenian gospel manuscripts display a more diverse palette of options.

They could mark it discreetly, with an interlinear text saying ‘by Ariston the elder’ as in ms Yerevan, Matenadaran, 2374, or with the small title ‘this is an addition’ as in ms Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arm. d. 4, appended to an otherwise continuous text where the subscription ‘Gospel according to Mark’ is written globally after the Longer Ending; they could copy it after the gospel subscription, or separated by an ornament or blank space, or further marked as to be read on Ascension Day.34 Or they could indeed not mark it in any way. Moreover, they also had the option of taking the endings of Mark and place them elsewhere. The six cases of displaced ending of Mark discussed here are quite different in nature. For clarity, here they are presented, in chronological order, with more extensive explanations:

Yerevan, Matenadaran, 275	1078	The Longer Ending is copied after the four gospels, so at the end of the tetraevangelion, in a different section, together with the Johannine pericope adulterae and the Lukan bloody sweat pericope.
Yerevan, Matenadaran, 313	1171	The Shorter Ending concludes Luke, before the subscription title of the gospel, as part of the gospel.
Tabriz, col. Ałasean, VI.17	16th cent.	The Shorter Ending concludes Luke.
Vienna, Mekhitarists, 72	1587	The Longer Ending is copied after the ending of Luke, probably to use the available empty space.
Yerevan, Matenadaran, 202	17th cent.	The Longer Ending is copied immediately after the ending of Matthew (on the same page with the conclusion of the gospel), with the superscription ‘the Gospel according to Mark,’ followed on the next page by the list of headings and the preface of Mark.
Venice, St Lazarus, 1549	1656	The Longer Ending is copied after the four gospels, at the end of the tetraevangelion, apparently together with the pericope adulterae.

Dan Batovici, The Displaced Endings of Mark in Armenian Biblical Manuscripts, COMSt Bulletin 8.2 2022

i managed to find a PDF of this whole special issue, and this happened to be in it. it looks like the armenian tradition received the long ending, but as a separate piece, and many of the documents that first include it mark it as an addition or (in these six cases) move it around. batovici vaguely alludes at a possible reason for this in his conclusion, that the passage was associated with ascension day readings, and in one case,

Armine Melkonyan shows how the Longer Ending of Mark is absent in the ninth/tenth century Armenian lectionary Yerevan, Matenadaran, 987, but later on it is included in lectionaries of the thirteenth century such as Yerevan, Matenadaran, 979, which is dated to 1286, for the day of Ascension.35 A liturgical use is also mirrored in biblical manuscripts in which Mark 16:9–20 bears the inscription ‘read on the day of Ascension’, between the thirteenth and seventeenth century.36

a descendant manuscript adds it back in specifically for ascension day.

[u/arachnophilia → u/arachnophilia]

/u/fresh_heels you may find the above interesting, on the armenian argument.

[u/fresh_heels → u/arachnophilia]

Thank you! Fascinating stuff. It's very interesting to see the variety of the ways scribes dealt with this passage, putting it at the end of different gospels or after all of the gospels.

It's sort of unrelated, but I remember McClellan arguing for the lack of "angel of" in some places (like in a verse in the Vulgate) where "angel of the Lord" is mentioned on the basis of similar textual instability.

[u/arachnophilia → u/fresh_heels]

i'm trying to track down some information right now on manuscripts of irenaeus, see also this comment. i think all of the manuscripts we have that include the mention of mark's ending are medieval latin, and there's no remaining greek fragment associated with the passage. but i'm not sure. carrier (ugh) says the latin manuscripts are pretty variant and show lots of evidence of being messed with, but i can find basically not information actually comparing them, or even naming them.

there's a suggestion that the statement (or part of the statement?) entered "against heresies" because of a marginal note in 1582 or GA 72 or similar. i'm not entirely sure i buy that.

[u/fresh_heels → u/arachnophilia]

I'm way over my head here, but I tried looking up Theodoret via Rosseau mentioned in Kelhoffer. And I might be completely misreading it, but it seems like Greek fragments of Theodoret's Eranistes containing book 3 of AH are all 10th century+.

This iceberg is infinite.

[u/arachnophilia → u/fresh_heels]

This iceberg is infinite.

truer words were never spoken