The Ending of Mark's Gospel

Last Sunday, when I concluded the “Cross & Crown” sermon series on Mark’s Gospel and we witnessed the empty tomb as reported in 16:1-8, you may have noticed some footnotes in your Bible.  The ESV indicates, “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include Mark 16:9-20.”  What does this mean?

Let’s step back and get the big picture.  “Textual criticism” is the discipline that seeks to reconstruct the wording of lost documents based on surviving copies (and “criticism” here simply means “study”—it’s not a negative term).  We don’t have the original Greek New Testament manuscripts (e.g., the actual papyrus sheets on which Mark first wrote his Gospel), though we do have a lot of copies.  And here and there these copies differ from one another in wording (think of what’s involved in copying a book by hand…).  Textual criticism compares the points of variation and draws inferences as to the correct original wording.

If you read the footnotes of your Bible closely, you know there are various places where NT manuscripts differ from one another.  However, these points of variation amount to only a tiny fraction of the entire content of the NT, and in almost all cases scholars can discern the original wording with great confidence.  So it would be wrong to conclude that the manuscript footing beneath your New Testament is shaky—not so, not at all.  In fact, NT manuscript evidence is in a league of its own in terms of quality and quantity, compared to copies of all other ancient writings.  Further, no point of Christian doctrine or the Bible’s message is obscured by the existence of these manuscript variants.  The truthfulness and reliability of Scripture stand strong.

Note, then, that Mark 16:9-20 has only tenuous support—that’s why the ESV editors put it in [[double brackets]]:  the best manuscripts lack these verses.  It may be that Mark intended to end his Gospel with the mention of the women’s astonishment and fear in 16:8—stunned by an empty tomb.  Or, perhaps more likely, it may be that there once was a fuller ending to Mark’s Gospel, but in the providence of God it was allowed to be lost.  If either of these conjectures were correct, the existence of the material in 16:9-20 (with its less solid manuscript support, uncharacteristic vocabulary, and the abrupt connections made by retaining these verses) would then be explained as the addition of a later writer who wanted to fill out Mark’s account with reports of Jesus’ resurrection appearances.

In any case, always remember:  we still have three other Gospels, and Acts, and 1 Corinthians 15, to give us a wide array of extended accounts of the resurrection of Christ.  The eyewitness testimonies contained in Scripture that Jesus was raised from the dead are rich and deep and compelling.

For more information on this general topic, let me encourage you to visit:  michaeljkruger.com (e.g,. here and here; and also peruse his Article Index links for “Textual Criticism” and “Ancient Manuscripts”), the “Textual Criticism” article at bible.org, or see David Alan Black’s short book, New Testament Textual Criticism:  A Concise Guide (Baker, 1994).  Also, the ESV Study Bible comments are a great help.