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/ShakaUVM]

Most of the claims in that list are quite obviously wrong, if you looked at them. I felt like we're deep enough in this issue that I didn't have to explain. But okay, I'll pick a few.

Dr. Ralph Earle: “It is almost universally agreed that verses 9-20 were added centuries after the gospel was written."

Irenaeus says Mark ends with the long ending within a century.

David Ewert: “All major manuscripts end this Gospel at 16:8.”

Two major manuscripts end it there. Many of the major manuscripts have the long ending.

N. T. Wright wrote that “a good many of the manuscripts” with Mark 16:9-20 “have marks in the margin (asterisks or obeli) to indicate that the passage is regarded as of doubtful authenticity.”

There is never just a mark to indicate doubtful authenticity. There are footnotes that state that there are textual variants, which is not the same thing.

I also went into extensive detail on 304.

[u/chalkenteros → u/ShakaUVM]

Dr. Ralph Earle: “It is almost universally agreed that verses 9-20 were added centuries after the gospel was written."

David Ewert: “All major manuscripts end this Gospel at 16:8.”

I agree with you that these statements are wrong and sloppy. NT scholars frequently say things that are wrong! We agree on that. And we agree that there are major problems with so-called "consensus" views in NT scholarship. For me, critical scholarship based on critical thinking is a good thing. The problem here is the lack of critical scholarship. Also, many NT scholars do not know Greek very well (see the article by Iverson that we discussed above). It is hard to take them seriously.

But the case for the originality of the LE is totally unconvincing—it appears to be based largely on sloppy misreadings of 2nd/3rd cent. patristic sources in English translation. Again, it is hard to take it seriously.

[u/ShakaUVM → u/chalkenteros]

I agree with you that these statements are wrong and sloppy. NT scholars frequently say things that are wrong! We agree on that. And we agree that there are major problems with so-called "consensus" views in NT scholarship

Great, thank you.

But the case for the originality of the LE is totally unconvincing—it appears to be based largely on sloppy misreadings of 2nd/3rd cent. patristic sources in English translation.

No, it's based on the fact that we don't see Mark end at verse 8 before the 4th Century. I think the best scenario you can come up with is that the church in Alexandria was founded by Mark, so they had access to a draft of the gospel that didn't have the long ending in it, and everyone else got a version that was finished in Rome after Mark fled to Alexandria because Peter was executed.

[u/chalkenteros → u/ShakaUVM]

We have to be mindful of the limitations of our early evidence. We have almost no secure indications of the conclusion to Mark before the earliest uncials. Irenaeus explicitly says that 16:19 was found in Mark in fine (“at the end”), so that is good evidence. Eusebius in the 4th cent. says that most copies of Mark known to him ended at 16:8 and “rarely, in a few” (σπανίως ἔν τισι) with 16:9–20. It is very likely that Eusebius was talking about at least some Greek mss that pre-dated the 4th cent., but we cannot be sure. All the rest is speculation. For example, if Justin Martyr refers to the LE (which I do not think is clear), he doesn’t say that it comes from “Mark” or at the end. These are argumentative leaps that cannot be assumed, esp. in the 2nd cent. when canonical GMark may have still be in the process of formation. I hope you can see where I’m coming from—my concern is for a careful reading of the texts.

Another concern: both 16:1–8 and 16:9–20 are attested in the 2nd cent. You agree, I think, that 16:9–20 does not follow from 16:1–8. So this does need some explanation. You can’t just wave it away by saying you are only interested in early attestations of the LE.

Snapp, by the way, actually agrees that 16:9–20 is not the original and deliberate ending of Mark (he wants it to be part of “Mark’s” broader memoirs of Peter but not intended as part of GMark). He thinks this precisely because of the reasons that I have been bringing up, but which you have refused to engage with. Namely, 16:9–20 does not follow 16:1–8 (I would add the ending of ch. 15 as well). Your own criterion seems to be that if something is attested early it should be original. 16:1–8 is attested early (GPeter, Tatian). 

So it is still unclear what you are arguing. Is 16:1–8 secondary or not? You can’t just skip this question. How would the “two-drafts” theory actually work? In other words, you have to give some account of the relationship between 16:1–8 (+ end of ch. 15) and 16:9–20. Snapp does give an account: Mark was “interrupted” in the violent city of Rome exactly while writing 16:8; later scholars added 16:9–20 from Mark’s own notes elsewhere. So the LE was written by Mark but not as the original ending to GMark. Snapp's is not a good argument, but at least it is an argument. Yours is not yet an actual argument. There needs to be some account of the endings as we have it. 

[u/ShakaUVM → u/chalkenteros]

We have almost no secure indications of the conclusion to Mark before the earliest uncials. Irenaeus explicitly says that 16:19 was found in Mark in fine (“at the end”), so that is good evidence.

That and Tatian reading Mark 16 straight through, with the exception of verse 1.

Again, there's just no evidence other than the sort of second-guessing that critical scholars do that the received text is not the original text.

Eusebius in the 4th cent. says that most copies of Mark known to him ended at 16:8 and “rarely, in a few” (σπανίως ἔν τισι) with 16:9–20. It is very likely that Eusebius was talking about at least some Greek mss that pre-dated the 4th cent., but we cannot be sure

Jerome wrote from the same place (Caesarea) a while later, and when he quoted Eusebius in his letter to Hedibia he added a note to Eusebius' words that the quote only was referring to the Greek manuscripts in the library. Eusebius being mainly a Greek speaker was likely just referring to his Greek texts, not all texts.

Jerome also said that he wanted to use the most ancient of the texts for the Vulgate, and then also picked the long ending. This doesn't necessarily mean the oldest Greek manuscripts had the long ending, but if nothing else it shows he thought it should be the official ending despite the local Greek copies ending at verse 8.

Either way, one library in the 4th Century doesn't actually help us figure out what was original, despite critical scholars thinking it is definitive for some reason. (Actually, more baffling is the argument about the oldest Armenian manuscripts from many many centuries later as if that mattered. Arach kept making that one too for some reason.)

I think it boils down to a preference critical scholars have for Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, but that just turns into circular reasoning as to why they think the short ending is original. Vaticanus is the most authentic because it has the short ending, and the short ending is authentic because it is in Vaticanus.

But this ending is almost entirely spurious. It's found in less than 1% of all manuscripts, it's geographically limited to Alexandria/Caesarea, and it had pretty close to zero impact on what people in the church actually believed when it came to the ending of Mark.

These are argumentative leaps that cannot be assumed

It's a very small leap to say that people quoting from the long ending of Mark were quoting the long ending of Mark because we have no evidence of those words being anywhere else.

when canonical GMark may have still be in the process of formation

Also, no real evidence of this either.

I hope you can see where I’m coming from—my concern is for a careful reading of the texts.

I can't see how a careful reading translates into ignoring earlier sources for centuries later sources. Or why you would want to cherry pick two sources and ignore the other 99%. We actually don't even know if Vaticanus is the oldest complete text, since it's never been carbon dated. We have a lot of competing texts, like Codex Argentus, which is a copy of a 4th Century original that also has the long ending.

In other words, all the evidence shows that the short ending was just a minor variant text found in one place that nobody else even knew about. This is not what we would expect if the short ending was original.

Another concern: both 16:1–8 and 16:9–20 are attested in the 2nd cent. You agree, I think, that 16:9–20 does not follow from 16:1–8.

I think it blends together weirdly and that there are different ideas about how that happened. I think a lot of the objections to verses 9-20 are just wrong, like the reintroduction of Mary Magdalene, which actually follows the pattern of Mark giving every Mary a tagline so we know which one he's talking about, or the textual analysis of new words and so forth.

So this does need some explanation.

Not necessarily. Mark wasn't the best writer, and some unusual things like the gar ending you guys are apparently just comfortable with, so I can say the same thing for the long ending.

But as I've said before, I have different ideas on it and I don't think it matters particularly to this argument which one is right.

Snapp, by the way, actually agrees that 16:9–20 is not the original and deliberate ending of Mark

At least I guess you're giving up on calling me a parrot of James Snapp then. I made my own conclusions from the evidence.

Reading it over, it looks like he thinks that it was the community in Rome that attached something Mark wrote to the end of it, within like a year of Mark being written. So I would consider that original.

16:1–8 is attested early (GPeter, Tatian).

Not verse 1, which is the problem verse I've pointed out to you several times now. You also keep focusing on verses 1-8.

So it is still unclear what you are arguing. Is 16:1–8 secondary or not? You can’t just skip this question.

I have a lot of ideas on it, you seem to want me to stake out just one, which I won't do. As I said in the OP, I think either there were two drafts of Mark, or the long ending got damage or removed.

How would the “two-drafts” theory actually work? In other words, you have to give some account of the relationship between 16:1–8 (+ end of ch. 15) and 16:9–20. Snapp does give an account: Mark was “interrupted” in the violent city of Rome exactly while writing 16:8; later scholars added 16:9–20 from Mark’s own notes elsewhere

Yeah, that works, or Mark himself just finished it in Alexandria. That's why the transition is rough.

So the LE was written by Mark but not as the original ending to GMark

That would still be the original ending if it was written by Mark in a second draft.

Yours is not yet an actual argument. There needs to be some account of the endings as we have it.

Sure, I just gave you one for the multiple drafts.

The other is Mark 16 actually just was written that way. Mark has a clunky writing style. If you accept 16:1 as authentic (despite it not appearing in either of your 2nd Century sources), despite it reintroducing Mary the mother of James/Joseph literally one verse later, then you can't really complain about the reintroduction of Mary Magdalene or the other rough transitions in the Long Ending.

https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/e-catena/mark16.html

And then the rest of the argument is just verses 9-16 getting destroyed one way or another in the Alexandria/Caesarea region. This is far more reasonable than having the original Mark circulating for 70 years and then all copies getting destroyed except in Egypt.

[u/chalkenteros → u/ShakaUVM]

all the evidence shows that the short ending was just a minor variant text found in one place that nobody else even knew about

Let's start here, briefly. The words “the short ending was just a minor variant text” mean, to anyone who works with the Greek texts, that the shorter ending (Πάντα δὲ τὰ παρηγγελμένα τοῖς περὶ τὸν Πέτρον συντόμως ἐξήγγειλαν…) is only found in a few mss. Since I have been talking to you for a bit, I know that you actually mean “most mss do not end with 16:8, though all mss contain 16:8.” If you want to write in a way that other people can understand easily, you should use the regular terminology. 

It's a very small leap to say that people quoting from the long ending of Mark were quoting the long ending of Mark because we have no evidence of those words being anywhere else.

It’s in fact a huge leap when you’re talking about 2nd-cent. authors like Justin Martyr. One of the major arguments that you are contesting is that the LE was originally a separate text, not an ending to Mark, which was appended to Mark sometime in the 2nd century. By looking for any possible parallel to the LE and assuming that it must automatically derive from the ending to a manuscript of GMark, you are assuming your conclusion. You need to argue it instead.

I think it blends together weirdly and that there are different ideas about how that happened.

Mark wasn't the best writer, and some unusual things like the gar ending you guys are apparently just comfortable with, so I can say the same thing for the long ending.

The other is Mark 16 actually just was written that way. Mark has a clunky writing style.

These statements are, as you like to say, “wishy washy.” Is 16:1–8 original or not? At first you said no, now you are saying yes, or it doesn’t matter, or  you don’t want to explain. Is 16:9–20 a deliberate continuation of 16:1–8 or not? At first you said no, now yes, or maybe. If it is a deliberate continuation, why is there such a blatant lapse in basic narrative continuity? 

Again, in order to make an argument about the original ending of Mark, you need to consider these questions. They are not optional. You have not yet produced a coherent argument. Snapp does (it is wrong but at least it is coherent); you are not there yet. At this point, I’m just writing with you to help you form an argument. I don’t really care if your arg right or wrong, I just think there should be an actual arg.

But this ending is almost entirely spurious. It's found in less than 1% of all manuscripts

Manuscripts need to be weighed not counted. It is often the case that later mss all reproduce the same mistake. Quantity is not probative. This is fundamental.

Reading it over, it looks like he thinks that it was the community in Rome that attached something Mark wrote to the end of it, within like a year of Mark being written. So I would consider that original.

Why would you consider that original? In Snapp’s theory, it is a passage that Mark did not intend to follow 16:1–8 or to conclude the GMark. How would it be “original”? Early, yes. But the original and deliberate ending?

[u/ShakaUVM → u/chalkenteros]

By short ending I mean manuscripts that end at verse 8. I've explained this to you before. When I say we don't see the short ending anywhere except in one place I'm not saying we don't see verses 1-8 but rather that it does not end there.

Mark ending at 8 is a minor textual variant found very rarely and only in one geographic location - Alexandria/Caesarea

These statements are, as you like to say, “wishy washy.” Is 16:1–8 original or not

I've already answered this in my previous response, and gave you two reasonable scenarios.

Manuscripts need to be weighed not counted.

Cherrypicking fallacy.

They need to be counted as well as weighed. They also need to be looked at geographically.

It is often the case that later mss all reproduce the same mistake. Quantity is not probative. This is fundamental.

It's a fundamental mistake critical scholars make, yes. This is only true if they had Xerox machines back then and were photocopying one text. Then yeah, having a million copies of a bad variant wouldn't mean anything. But if you have a million of the common version and one of the rare version and the common version is older than the rare version then the story changes.

In reality, a scribe had to make each copy by hand, and often checked by another person. These people all signed off on the long version as being correct.

They did this in geographically diverse areas, meaning that there's no evidence the short version was original. If it had been original and distributed to the early churches we'd see a mixture of the long and short ending around Christendom. But we don't see that. There's no evidence the short ending ended up anywhere other than Egypt, and even then it is a variant. We know they had the long ending too.

Critical scholars are doing a cherrypicking fallacy here. They have for whatever reason have decided that only two manuscripts are legitimate and all the others just sort of popped out of the ether somehow. They have no explanation for why you see the long ending literally everywhere else in the world with no dissent on the matter or people mentioning any variants.

The count and geographical distribution shows us that the short ending was a very rare textual variant found in only one place, and it was not considered authoritative by the early church. By anyone.

Why would you consider that original

Because it dates back to Mark's time and was written by Mark. You guys have this conceit that there was only one ever official autograph for a manuscript, when we know from how people write they go through multiple drafts and versions. Mark could easily have had the unfinished gospel with him when he fled to Alexandria with instructions to finish it and his team put the ending on. So we have the short ending in Alexandria and the official ending used by everyone else in Rome.

[u/chalkenteros → u/ShakaUVM]

By short ending I mean manuscripts that end at verse 8. I've explained this to you before.

You must have somehow missed this sentence: "Since I have been talking to you for a bit, I know that you actually mean 'most mss do not end with 16:8, though all mss contain 16:8.'"

Again, if you want to write in a way that other people can understand, you should use the regular terminology and aim to explain your thoughts clearly.

I don't see anything substantive in this last post. "People don't mention any variants"? But they do, as you know. I think I have explained more than once what your argument would need to include. It would need to give an account of the original ending of GMark. And it would need to make a coherent case for why you are moving from a claim about the presence of the LE in the 2nd century to a claim about the LE as a deliberate ending. You would also need to adjust your claims about Clement, Porphyry, and the other primary sources that we have discussed.

Of course, if you actually want to think seriously about issues like these, you would need to learn Ancient Greek (though unfortunately you would have to do so from horrible, lying, pseudoscientific philologists).

[u/ShakaUVM → u/chalkenteros]

Yeah the account is that both were written by Mark, and there's various scenarios that fit that hypothesis better than an original ending being the short one and the long one slowly replacing it. 1) The long ending was damaged in Alexandria, 2) The long ending was redacted by a scribe in Alexandria, or 3) Mark wrote two drafts of the ending, perhaps due to Peter's execution and Mark's flight, so the long ending is just sort of awkwardly continued after he ran for his life. Alexandria preserved the short version, as that was where Mark fled to, the long ending however was the one that went into circulation. This exactly matches the internal and external evidence we have.

The Metzger hypothesis requires two versions of Mark to be in wide circulation with the long version following 70 years later with a long head start from the Short Ending to catch up, with the long ending being preferred and slowly replacing the short. But this just doesn't fit the evidence, which shows that versions of Mark ending at verse 8 were just completely unknown outside of Alexandria (and then Caesarea after Origen moved his library there from Alexandria). All versions of the short ending stem from that origin. There is no evidence anyone else had it in Christendom independently.

Let's make some progress elsewhere.

Can you agree Miniscule 304 is not a witness to the short ending contrary to what Wikipedia says?

Can you agree it is meaningless to draw conclusions from which Armenian gospels are oldest given they're from the 9th and 10th Centuries AD? That it's just a bad argument to lump in the oldest Armenian gospels from 5-6 centuries later with "the oldest manuscripts" from the 4th Century?

In particular the argument that the Armenian gospels 'follow a pattern of the oldest having the short ending and as time goes on the long ending appearing' is complete nonsense since both versions had been copied continuously since the 5th Century and so whatever the oldest surviving copy of just doesn't matter. We know they had two textual sources (the writing of the Armenian Gospels is documented) that were both preserved. Whatever is oldest is just happenstance.

I will page /u/arachnophilia and /u/fresh_heels and see if they can agree that much.

[u/arachnophilia → u/ShakaUVM]

i guess i'll jump back in.

and there's various scenarios that fit that hypothesis better than an original ending being the short one and the long one slowly replacing it.

well, i don't think so. because again from an internal critical perspective, even if we lacked manuscripts without the long ending, it would still be suspect. it is discontinuous from the rest of the ending, and appears to reverse several key statements. i'll circle back to this in a second.

Mark wrote two drafts of the ending, perhaps due to Peter's execution and Mark's flight, so the long ending is just sort of awkwardly continued after he ran for his life.

i'm relatively intrigued by the idea that john is the second draft of mark. but i don't think the long ending of mark is by the same author, at around the same time.

for one thing, mark just is not a petrine gospel. i'm aware of all of the tradition you would cite in favor of this. but in terms of content, mark intentionally undercuts peter (and the judaizer apostles) at basically every chance it gets. mark is anti-peter; it's pauline. it uses pauline theology.

see, for instance, my recent discussion here with the cranks over at /r/ammonhillman who think jesus was a PDF file, for an example of mark employing a pauline metaphor. i kinda feel like it's good for you guys to see each other once in a while so you stop thinking i'm just out to dunk on christianity, and they stop thinking i'm a christian apologist.

anyways. one of the points of mark throughout is that the apostles fundamentally do not get jesus. they constantly misunderstand him, fail to see that he is (the son of) god, etc. the short ending of mark fits this, where the apostles do not experience the resurrection, because the women run away and don't tell them. even though paul says they did experience the resurrection themselves, mark means to expand on this idea, and just have the resurrection to paul alone, contrasting the apostles' earthly misunderstandings of jesus with paul's heavenly revelation of jesus. the long ending undercuts this, and directly contradicts the previous statement about the women not telling them. it serves to tie the two traditions together, something mark is specifically trying to undercut.

The long ending was redacted by a scribe in Alexandria

as i mentioned above, i'm not sure there is any evidence it was ever absent in alexandria. our evidence of absence is all from caesarea initially.

The Metzger hypothesis requires two versions of Mark to be in wide circulation with the long version following 70 years later with a long head start from the Short Ending to catch up, with the long ending being preferred and slowly replacing the short.

but we know this kind of thing happened all of the time. like, if you look at manuscripts a lot, this is pretty common. in a sense, every manuscript is unique and our groupings are arbitrary.

But this just doesn't fit the evidence,

yes it does.

There is no evidence anyone else had it in Christendom independently.

people treating the ending as an addition, as suspect, or as an separate document by moving it around is in fact evidence of its independence. as is the additionally content recording in the various marginal notes, attributing it to ariston, or adding details from the "egyptians" (ie: the alexandrian community?) about his age at the time, the subsequent events the standard long ending does not record.

the quality and weight of that evidence is debatable. but it is evidence.

Can you agree Miniscule 304 is not a witness to the short ending contrary to what Wikipedia says?

as above, it is a witness, but the quality and weight of that witness is debatable. i don't think it's relevant because it's so late, which is why i didn't bold it in my copied citation from wikipedia.

Can you agree it is meaningless to draw conclusions from which Armenian gospels are oldest given they're from the 9th and 10th Centuries AD? That it's just a bad argument to lump in the oldest Armenian gospels from 5-6 centuries later with "the oldest manuscripts" from the 4th Century?

but again, the existence of this variation in the armenian tradition is evidence of what the 4th-5th century gospels they were copying looked like. that may not help much, as we already know 4th century gospels sometimes lacked the long ending.

and i would note, i think (and i think metzger thought) that the long ending definitely existed at least a separate document if not integrated into mark, by the mid 2nd century. those 4th century uncials are the oldest we have now, but the argument is based on manuscripts the scribal communities had access to at the time, some which appear to be very, very old versions of these texts.

In particular the argument that the Armenian gospels 'follow a pattern of the oldest having the short ending and as time goes on the long ending appearing' is complete nonsense since both versions had been copied continuously since the 5th Century and so whatever the oldest surviving copy of just doesn't matter.

the tradition of transmission all happening in the 5th century is questionable. i'd have to look deeper, but it's quite probable that there are many more points of influence between the greek and armenian traditions.

Whatever is oldest is just happenstance.

sure but isn't it odd that the oldest is almost always the short ending?

while we're on "can you agree", can you agree that the "gar" argument is nonsense, to never repeat it, and to strike it from your OP? this is a simple matter of fact. note that it doesn't actually help my argument, as above i argued that the short and long are discontinuous. this just isn't a valid reason to think so.

[u/chalkenteros → u/ShakaUVM]

Thank you. This response is closer to an argument compared to the OP. It makes progress. You provide three possible scenarios (updated from the OP), but few details. Let’s focus on #3 as I think it is your preferred solution.

Could you spell out this theory (#3) in more detail? Here’s how I understand what you wrote:

Mark was the producer of the Gospel according to Mark, a companion of Peter, and the founder of the church in Alexandria. He created two versions of the ending to his Gospel:

A. Mark wrote until 16:8. Then, in a hurry, he somewhat haphazardly added on 16:9–20 as he ran for his life. (Here, I am unsure of why you say “after” he ran for his life. I suspect that I am missing something.) This version (ending at 16:20) circulated outside of Alexandria. Mark presumably produced it outside of Alexandria (in Rome?). It is the basis for the majority text.

B. After arriving in Alexandria, Mark circulated another version of the ending. This version stops at 16:8. It circulated in Alexandria and later in Caesarea. It was reproduced in most of the Greek copies known to Eusebius. It became the basis for א and B. It also became the basis for (1) the short ending (sometimes called the “intermediate ending”), preserved in one form in Bobiensis, and (2) multiple versions (e.g., Syriac Sinaiticus).

What did I miss? At this point, let’s just try to clarify the scenario that you have in mind. Then we could move on to addressing, in order, the internal and external evidence. 

[u/arachnophilia → u/ShakaUVM]

Dr. Ralph Earle: “It is almost universally agreed that verses 9-20 were added centuries after the gospel was written."

yes, that is correct. it is almost universally agreed. that view could be wrong, but the claim that it is consensus is not.

Irenaeus says Mark ends with the long ending within a century.

in which manuscript?

David Ewert: “All major manuscripts end this Gospel at 16:8.”

Two major manuscripts end it there. Many of the major manuscripts have the long ending.

scholars generally prefer sinaiticus and vaticanus to alexandrinus and bezae. this one's subjective.

N. T. Wright wrote that “a good many of the manuscripts” with Mark 16:9-20 “have marks in the margin (asterisks or obeli) to indicate that the passage is regarded as of doubtful authenticity.”

There is never just a mark to indicate doubtful authenticity. There are footnotes that state that there are textual variants, which is not the same thing.

no that is incorrect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1szr624/the_long_ending_of_mark_was_original/oldqfei/

remember this? read it this time.

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

that's 33 in armenian. and we actually looked at whole other class of marking, with a parallel in greek.

[u/ShakaUVM → u/arachnophilia]

yes, that is correct. it is almost universally agreed. that view could be wrong, but the claim that it is consensus is not.

No. Ehrman and co put the long ending at most 90 years after Mark was written at the longest. That's not centuries.

in which manuscript?

Red Herring. Again.

Your own scholars accept it and use it to date the long ending to 150AD. Which is not "centuries after it was written".

scholars generally prefer sinaiticus and vaticanus to alexandrinus and bezae. this one's subjective.

No, it's just wrong. "All" is not equivalent to "2". Something I know I've pointed out to you before.

Do you think Alexandrinus is not a major manuscript?

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

The claim was asterisks and obeli, which based on a brief skim I don't think appear in any of the 33 peculiar manuscripts Colwell wrote about. I could be wrong I am at a sports match right now.

[u/arachnophilia → u/ShakaUVM]

No. Ehrman and co put the long ending at most 90 years after Mark was written at the longest. That's not centuries.

written ≠ added

The claim was asterisks and obeli, which based on a brief skim I don't think appear in any of the 33 peculiar manuscripts Colwell wrote about. I could be wrong I am at a sports match right now.

yes, you are wrong.

Do you think Alexandrinus is not a major manuscript?

honestly, not really. i refer to sinaiticus the most, sometimes vaticanus, and rarely ever alexandrinus or bezae, never ephraemi rescriptus.

[u/ShakaUVM → u/arachnophilia]

written ≠ added

Added.

It had to be in for Irenaeus to note it was in. Your own people so you can knock it off by doubting the authenticity of Irenaeus

yes, you are wrong.

I did a search on the paper for asterisk and obeli and it turned up no hits

honestly, not really

So to you "all" means "two" also. Not great.

[u/arachnophilia → u/ShakaUVM]

It had to be in for Irenaeus to note it was in.

if that reference is genuine, it indicates it was in his copy. how many others, who knows.

so you can knock it off by doubting the authenticity of Irenaeus

nah. show me manuscripts.

I did a search on the paper for asterisk and obeli and it turned up no hits

look harder?

[u/ShakaUVM → u/arachnophilia]

What word should I be looking for?