Textual Criticism and the End of Mark's Gospel: But is it Bible?

I am an Evangelical Christian pastor. I believe that the Bible is God's Word. So do I believe that Mark 16:9-20 are God's Word even though I believe they were not part of Mark's Gospel originally? Here's my (slightly nuanced) answer:

1. Believing that the Bible is God's Word does not imply a belief that there can be no additions or updating to what the original author of the text wrote. For example, I believe that it is more than likely that Moses did not write verses 5-12 of Deuteronomy 34, which describe his death and subsequent legacy. Likewise, there are dozens of places in the Old Testament in which place names have been updated or editorial explanation is supplied (e. g., the comment in 1 Sam. 9:9 that "the prophet of today used to be called a seer"). Thus, I don't believe that the authority of the Scriptures is at stake when I say that verses 9-20 may not have been included in Mark's original Gospel.
2. Canonicity matters. In the history of the canonization of the Scriptures (the process by which the Church identified which books were Scripture and which were not), verses 9-20 were recognized as historic and authentic tradition directly tied to Jesus and the apostles. So even though it is likely that Mark didn't write these lines, they were nevertheless accepted as Scripture at a very early date. So though I'm not completely confident that verses 9-20 should be there, and would advise people against snake handling as part of worship, I'm happy to include them in the Scriptures as the Church has since Justin Martyr's day.
   

Textual Criticism and the End of Mark's Gospel: Where Does it End?

Based on the manuscript evidence, a lot of debate surrounds the ending of Mark. This is because two of the oldest, best, and most complete manuscripts we have of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus (commonly abbreviated in scholarly reference by the Hebrew letter aleph and the letter B, respectively), do not contain verses 9-20. Based on the guidelines I shared with you in the last post, the oldest, shortest, most difficult reading seems to be the one which ends the Gospel of Mark at verse 8. Yet verse 8 seems like an incredibly weird place for Mark's Gospel to end, because verse 8 ends with "They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid." This isn't quite the triumphant story of Resurrection presented everywhere else in the New Testament. Adding to the puzzle are these facts: 1) verses 9-20 include a sudden shift of subject (from "women" to a presumed subject of "Jesus," whose name doesn't appear in the Greek); 2) about 1/3 of the words in verses 9-20 are words that either don't appear elsewhere in Mark or are used in a very different way than in the rest of his Gospel; 3)Mary Magdalene is introduced with a descriptive phrase in v. 9 as if she hasn't just been mentioned in v. 1; 4) based on what the angel has just told the women, Mark would have been expected to include a description of Jesus' Galilean resurrection appearances, but he does not; 5) Matthew and Luke follow Mark's account closely until verse 8, but then diverge sharply, suggesting that Mark did not have verses 9-20 originally present.

Four theories have been put forth to explain this, each of which has been defended by serious, Bible-believing scholars:

1. Verses 9-20 are original to Mark, but are simply missing from Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. In support of this theory is the fact that Justin Martyr (d. 145) and Tatian (in his Diatesseron from about 170) as well as Iraneus and Hippolytus (Church Fathers from the 2nd and 3rd centuries) quote from these verses. In addition, almost all of the other manuscripts from the 5th century and later include verse 9-20. It is thus quite possible that these later manuscripts (from the 4th century) were copying from texts whose last page was missing.
   
2. Mark finished his Gospel and it went beyond verse 8, but the original ending was lost before it was copied, so verses 9-20 were added later to finish it. There is almost no way of proving this, but it is a logical possibility.
3. Mark didn't finish his Gospel for some reason (such as sudden death), and a later writer added verse 9-20. Again, this is possible, but there is no way of proving it.
4. Mark purposely ended at verse 8, but a later editor added verses 9-20. This seems difficult, though possible, for the simple reason that verse 8 does seem like an odd place for the story to end.
   

After considering all the possibilities and wrestling with their implications, it seems to me that it's not quite possible to know the answer to this question with certainty. The textual evidence we have, while it is voluminous and reliable, (and far beyond the textual evidence for any other ancient document to boot!), it is not as exhaustive as we would like.

My conclusion based on the evidence we have is that either Mark ended his Gospel at verse 8 or that his original ending (which was more similar to Luke or Matthew) was lost at an early stage of transmission and that verses 9-20 were added by a later editor.

This conclusion may raise an additional question in some people's minds, (i.e., "But if verses 9-20 aren't original, are they Bible?") but that is a subject which merits its own post. If you've made it this far, you can surely hang on for one more!

Textual Criticism and the End of Mark's Gospel: An Introduction to Textual Criticism

One of my purposes in maintaining this humble (very humble) little blog is to provide an outlet for me to offer information to the members of my congregation which might not fit very well into a sermon. After eight months of study together on Sunday mornings, we are wrapping up Mark's Gospel this coming Sunday.

Mark ends with verses that are typically set off with a note indicating that "the earliest and best manuscripts do not contain verses 9-20." This kind of thing causes a lot of confusion among people who love and study the Scriptures, because they rightly wonder: "Is this part of the Bible or not?" Answering that question is a little more complicated than it might initially appear, but I will attempt to answer it as completely as I can in this and subsequent posts. In what remains of this one, I'd like to give a brief, highly condensed overview of the discipline of textual criticism.

First, let me say what textual criticism is and is not. It is not criticizing the text of the Bible, eliminating those portions with which we disagree or find unpalatable. It is instead the determined effort to derive the original text of an ancient document by comparing the various manuscripts of that document. Thus, textual criticism is a discipline which affirms that the original text matters, and since we are talking about the Scriptures, I have to say that I heartily agree. I want to be sure that I know exactly what God said in His Word, because I am shaping my life around it.

There are approximately 10,000 Greek manuscripts (i. e., hand copies) which reproduce all of or portions of the New Testament, dating from approximately 100 AD up to just past the invention of the printing press in 1440. In addition, there are thousands more quotes of the New Testament text in the writings of the Early Church Fathers, thousands more in the lectionaries (early worship guides), and the non-Greek translations of the text in languages like Syriac, Ethiopic, and Coptic. Text critics compare all these manuscripts to derive, as completely as they can, the content of the original. This is necessary because hand copying then, as now, is an imperfect process, leading to frequent variations in spelling, word order, and even subtractions from or additions to the text. All of these variations are called variants, and there are about 100,000 total in the New Testament. Of these variants, only 500 have any textual significance whatsoever, while the remainder are insignificant differences in spelling (e.g., Simon Peter vs. Simeon Peter) or word order (e.g., Jesus Christ vs. Christ Jesus). It is also worth noting for those interested also that none of these 500 variants have any impact on any major Christian doctrine, but that what has been called "Mark's Long Ending" is among them.

Text critics compare the manuscripts and then utilize the following rules to derive the original text:

1. The oldest reading is preferred. Generally speaking, a variant which appears in a manuscript nearer in time to the original writing is more likely to be original than one that appears later because there is presumably less time for errors to arise. Thus, a 4th century manuscript is generally given more weight than a 7th century manuscript, but a 2nd century manuscript is preferable to either one.
   
2. The shortest reading is preferred. The tendency of ancient texts is for them to become longer, as scribes added words to clarify difficult grammar, explain hard sayings, or sometimes even mistakenly incorporate a previous scribe's marginal notes. This is not an absolute rule, as sometimes the shorter text is shorter because the scribe accidentally left out part of the text due to the presence of repeated words (a phenomenon called homoeoteleuton).
   
3. The most difficult reading is preferred. This criteria is closely related to #2 above, as scribes had a tendency to "smooth out" things which seemed contrary to piety and then-current ecclesiastical practice, harsh, or superfluous.
   
4. The reading which explains the others is preferred. Comparing all the manuscripts, which one seems to be the best candidate for being the source from which the others were derived?
   

By applying these rules, it is possible to determine with a high degree of probability what the exact words of the original text were.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Special thanks to Tammy Wynette for giving me the title for this post.

If there is a word that accurately summarizes Jesus' teaching on most subjects, its probably the word hard. As people said about another subject he taught on, "This is hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60). Jesus is simply so stark, so unequivocal, so absolute, so hard to follow.

In our day, there is probably no subject (other than perhaps sexual morality) on which it is more difficult to proclaim Jesus' teaching than the subject of divorce. Self-identified Christians (at least according to Barna) get divorced at about the same rate as non-Christians, with 30% or so eventually walking away from their covenant partner. This is a tragedy, a demonstrable failure of discipleship of huge proportions. Listen to the Pharisees and Jesus from Mark 10:

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

"What did Moses command you?" he replied

They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away."

"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate."

When they were in the house again, his disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

This is hard teaching. It cuts completely across the grain of our modern culture, both in society at large and, sadly, also in parts of the church. Here's a summary:

1. Divorce occurs because repentance doesn’t. Divorce always involves sin. Often there are greater and lesser degrees of sin by the two spouses, but at the root of divorce is sinful selfishness and a declaration that “I will have my way.” There’s no such thing as loving divorce, is there? Not according to Jesus. Can a man divorce his wife? Yes. But doing so is evidence of a hardened heart toward God and that person to whom you made your vows.
2. Stop looking for loopholes. Jesus' called the Pharisees to look not just at the part of the Law that permitted divorce (Deut 24:1-4), but at the whole Law, including the part which made clear God's design for marriage (from Gen. 2). They were focused on the exceptions and "loopholes" to obeying God rather than focusing on obeying God and following his blueprint for marriage, which includes a permanent union. Though the Law permits hard-hearted people to divorce, such was never God's purpose, plan, or ideal.
   
3. Divorce and remarriage = adultery. Jesus himself recognizes adultery as legitimate grounds for divorce in Matthew 19, and in that same passage seems to say also that a person who got divorced under those circumstances can remarry without restriction or breaking God’s commandment. In the same way, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 permits believers to divorce their unbelieving spouses who abandon them as a consequence of their commitment to Christ, though Bible teachers disagree over whether Paul allows people to remarry in such a case. But we should be careful about allowing our commitment to "interpreting Scripture with Scripture" to rob Jesus' words of their force and hardness here. I think Jesus doesn’t mention any of these exceptional circumstances for the very simple reason that he knows that we will fixate on the exceptions so as to justify our actions and never have to come face to face with our hardened, sinful hearts and actually repent and glorify God in the midst of the ups and downs of our marriages.

What would happen to us in the church, I wonder, if we actually embraced Jesus' teaching in all of its glorious hardness and tried to live it out by God's grace and with the empowerment of the Spirit?

On Hell

As a Gospel preacher, I find that one of the most uncomfortable parts of sharing Christ is telling people about hell. I'd really rather not do so, especially in the midst of a culture in which preaching about hell is considered not just unspeakably gauche, but also a big reason why evangelicals like me are regarded as intolerant, unloving bigots. Yet Jesus is certainly one of the most acerbic preachers on the topic I've ever seen. Here he is, in his own words, from Mark 9:43-48:

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where

“‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’

If we're going to share Christ with people, we must do so as Jesus did, not merely inviting people into a life of following Christ, but also warning them out of hell. We must tell them not just the good news of Jesus sacrifice but also the "bad news" of God's holy eternal wrath against sin for which Jesus' death is the only acceptable propitiation.

I know that I am perhaps guilty of preaching to the choir on this, as this is a completely obvious truth to most of my readers. Yet I think it's a point worth making because I find even in my own heart both a deep love for non-Christians as well as a hesitancy to tell them about the full seriousness of their sinful condition. And I dare not let the latter dominate the former, lest I become an unfaithful Christ follower.

Have you lost your life?

When a man was made a knight he would first kneel before his lord. Then he would bow his head, offering the lord both the back of his neck and his sword. He was placing himself deliberately in a vulnerable position, from which the lord could kill the knight, if he so desired. The knight, through this ceremony, was making a dramatic promise. It said, “I offer my life to you. I grant you the power of life and death over me. I am now a dead man. I no longer live for myself, but for you." Meanwhile, the lord would acknowledge this promise and all that it implied by tapping him on both shoulders with the flat of the blade in a symbolic beheading.

According to Jesus, the life he calls us to involves identically the same process:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? ~ Mark 8:34b-37

Though many may have forgotten, this is a HUGE part of what becoming a Christian means. It means losing our lives (at least symbolically, and perhaps even literally) for Jesus' sake and acknowledging him as our sovereign Lord. It includes recognizing that He can send us where He will and call us to action according to His plans. Our life is no longer our own, and we owe to our Lord complete allegiance.