This last Sunday we finished our journey thru the Gospel of Mark and came to one of the more puzzling sections of scripture, Mark 16:9-20. The NIV translation (and most others) says, “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20. “
What does that mean?
It means that when scribes first started making copies of Mark’s account of Jesus life, verses 9-20 were not part of those first copies. It’s very clear that this section was added, as the style and vocabulary are different than the rest of the book. In other words, they were added by someone later, possibly a second century scribe. As a result, there were likely a few different alternate endings that began to circulate with Mark’s original work.
There are any number of reasons why an ending may have been added. Here are a couple possibilities.
· It could be that the original work had been damaged and so someone felt the liberty to add onto what would have been viewed by some as an awkward ending at verse 8.
· It could be that a generation later a scribe was looking at the other Gospels and thought more detail should be added about what happened after the resurrection for future generations.
While the ending was clearly added, the historicity of what was added would have still been accepted by the church because verses 9-20 are verified by other scripture. This is why, even though it was added later, its continued to circulate with the original writings of Mark.
Here are some cross references between the ending of Mark and other places in scripture:
9-11 —> Luke 24:11
12-13 —> Luke 24:13-32
14 —> Luke 24:36-43
15 —> Matthew 28:18-20
16 —> John 3:16-17
17-18 —> Possibly Acts 28:3-5 but clearly the idea of divine signs accompanying believers works is seen throughout the book of Acts and still today.
19 —> Acts 1:9
20 —> The rest of the New Testament
Should this addition make us question the trustworthiness of the Bible?
The New Testament alone has over 24,000 manuscripts and fragments, far more than any other ancient writing1. With all of those copies there are bound to be differences (also called variants) among them and there certainly are…in fact there are thousands of variants.
It’s estimated that about 70% of those variants are differences in spelling. There are of course other variants that seem a bit more substantial (article link) but even then about 99% of variants are trivial and no variants in the ancient texts affect a single issue having to do with the Christian doctrine (aka what we believe).
Of all the ancient writings there is no other work that compares to the Bible. It is remarkably trustworthy as an ancient manuscript and the sole source of our faith and practice. The Christian faith starts with an introduction of Jesus to shepherds, the announcement of his resurrection to women, and his most prominent followers were peasants.
The scriptures themselves are not edited to make any of this look better. One of the key leaders of the Jesus movement was Peter who was the one to pass on the information of Jesus life to Mark, who wrote it down. He could have edited the story to not include his own denials of Jesus and overly impulsive and downright foolish vows and actions, but he didn’t. It’s not just a remarkable story but a supernatural one, that at times, makes little sense. Yet it has continued to spread to every corner of the globe and has become the largest and most transformative belief system in the history of mankind.