Vaticanus and the Shorter Ending of Mark

          Codex Vaticanus is our oldest substantial manuscript which includes most of the Gospel of Mark, having been produced around the year 325.  (P45 is older, but is missing most of its pages from Mark.)  This date is based on paleographical grounds.  We usually have no way of knowing if a scribe was young – say, 20 years old – and had just started his career as a scribe, or if he was nearing the end of his career – at, say, 70 years of age.  So there is a default degree of variation of about 50 years in either direction to most paleography-based production-dates. 

          But Christians were not likely to be capable of producing manuscripts like Codex Vaticanus – a large parchment book that probably contained, when produced, almost the entire Greek Old Testament and almost all of the New Testament (it is still debated whether or not Vaticanus initially contained the Pastoral Epistles and Revelation) – until the time when copyists could do so without the threat of Roman persecution, i.e., until 313, when Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, declaring that Christianity was a legal religion.  Another factor influencing the dating of Codex Vaticanus is something it doesn’t have:  the Eusebian Section-numbers, which are in the margin of most other Greek manuscripts of the Gospels.  The other famous very large codex from the 300s, Codex Sinaiticus, has the Eusebian Section-numbers, albeit incompletely and somewhat imprecisely. 

          With the exception of GA 304, a medieval commentary-manuscript which may have been copied from a damaged exemplar, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are the only Greek manuscripts in which the text of the Gospel of Mark stops at 16:8.  (1420 and 2386, once cited by William Lane as if they also stopped the text of the Gospel of Mark at 16:8, have turned out to merely be damaged MSS at this point.)  The copyist of Vaticanus, though, left a blank space after Mark 16:8, including a blank column – the only blank column in the New Testament.  This blank space is sufficient to include verses 16:9-20, as I have shown here. 

          But in Egypt, there was another ending of Mark, known as the “Shorter Ending.”  It is extant (along with at least part of the usual 12 verses) in eight Greek manuscripts:  Codices L (019), Y (044), 083, 099, 274 (in the lower margin), 579, and in 1422 and 2937 (these last two MSS were recently verified by Mina Monier as witnesses to the Shorter Ending and to 16:9-20).  The Shorter Ending, followed by 16:9-20, is also found in Greek-Sahidic lectionary 1602, and in numerous Ethiopic copies.  The double-ending (SE + vv. 9-20, with marginalia) appears to have been distinctly Egyptian at first, before being adopted later adopted in several versions.

          Codex Vaticanus itself, though, is the focus of a specific question which can be answered here:  when the scribe of Vaticanus left blank space after 16:8, was he thinking about the Shorter Ending?

         The answer is, “No,” and this is shown by two things:  first, the Shorter Ending fits in the second column in the blank space following 16:8.  Thus there would be no need to leave column 3 blank.  Second, in Ad Marinum (which is available as a free download from Roger Pearse, so there is no need for commentators to keep repeating (and distorting) Metzger’s misleading context-free snippets (looking at you, Ben Witherington III)), Eusebius never mentions the Shorter Ending when, as he addresses a question about how to harmonize Matthew 28:2 and Mark 16:9, he describes what a person might say about the ending of Mark. (Eusebius wrote in the decades which immediately followed the Diocletian persecution, so it should not be imagined that he had the ability to survey MSS beyond his reach.)

Samuel Tregelles and Mark 16:9-20

           In 1844, the year when Constantine Tischendorf first saw pages of Codex Sinaiticus at St. Catherine’s monastery, Samuel Tregelles released An Account of the Printed Text of the New Testament, a book which had a significant influence among researchers into the text of the New Testament.

          Recently, after discussing Mark 16:9-20 with Stephen Boyce of Explain International, someone observed that my position (that Mark was permanently interrupted as he wrote 16:8, and someone else attached verses 9-20 (from another composition by Mark) to complete the narrative, before the Gospel of Mark began to be disseminated for church-use, and that verses 9-20 are thus part of the original text) resembled the view of Tregelles, and it occurred to me that many discussion-viewers might not know what that means.  (I had read Tregelles, years ago, but on the spur of the moment I couldn’t recall his view in detail.)  So here, I have reproduced a large excerpt from Tregelles’ own statements on the subject, along with a few notes of my own, from pages 246-261 of An Account of the Printed Text of the New Testament.  I have not included the footnotes, in the interest of brevity.  Some readers, wearied by Tregelles’ thoroughness,  may wish to proceed to Tregelles’ closing comments, which I have marked with “···.”

Tregelles wrote:    

          “St. Mark xvi. 9-20. The last twelve verses of this Gospel have some remarkable phenomena connected with their history; in order fully to discuss their authority, it is needful first to establish by evidence of facts certain propositions.

I. That it is historically known that in the early ages it was denied that these verses formed a part of the Gospel written by St. Mark.

II. That it is certain, on grounds of historical transmission, that they were from the second century, at least, and onward, known as part of this book.

III. That the early testimony that they were not written by St. Mark is confirmed by existing monuments.

          After these propositions have been established, the conclusions to be drawn may assume the form of corollaries.

(I)  The absence of this portion from some, many, or most copies of St. Mark’s Gospel, or that it was not written by St. Mark himself, is attested by Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, Victor of Antioch, Severus of Antioch, Jerome; and by later writers (especially Greeks), who, even though they copied from their predecessors, were competent to transmit the record of a fact.

(i) Eusebius, in the first of his Questiones ad Marinum, discusses πως παρα μεν τω Ματθαιω “οψε σαββάτων” φαίνεται εγηγερμενος ο σωτηρ, παρα δε τω Μάρκω “πρωι τη μια των σαββάτων.”  [Tregelles then presents an extract from Eusebius’ composition Ad Marinum, which is similar to what Roger Pearse presents on p. 96 of Eusebius of Caesarea:  Gospel Problems and Solutions, and which translates in that book to: 

“The answer to this would be twofold.  The actual nub of the matter is the pericope which says this. One who athetises that pericope would say that it is not found in all copies of the gospel according to Mark:  accurate copies end their text of the Marcan account with the words of the young man whom the women saw, and who said to them: “‘Do not be afraid; it is Jesus the Nazarene that you are looking for, etc. … ’ ”, after which it adds: “And when they heard this, they ran away, and said nothing to anyone, because they were frightened.”  That is where the text does end, in almost all copies of the gospel according to Mark. What occasionally follows in some copies, not all, would be extraneous, most particularly if it contained something contradictory to the evidence of the other evangelists.”  That, then, would be one person’s answer: to reject it, entirely obviating the question as superfluous.”]

          Tregelles continues:  “Eusebius then goes on to explain the supposed difficulty, irrespective of the supposed authorship of these verses.  This testimony, then, is clear, that the greater part of the Greek copies had not the twelve verses in question.  It is evident that Eusebius did not believe that they were written by Mark himself, for he  says, κατὰ Μάρκον μετὰ τὴν ανάστασιν οὐ λέγεται ὤφθαι τοις μαθηταις.  The arrangement of the Eusebian Canons are also an argument that he did not own the passage; for in genuine copies of the notation of these sections the numbers do not go beyond ver. 8, which is marked σλγʹ (233).  Some copies, carry indeed, this notation as far as ver. 14, and some to the end of the chapter; but these are unauthorised additions, and contradicted by not only good copies which contain these sections, both Greek and Latin (for instance A, and the Codex Amiatinus), but also by a scholion found in a good many MSS. at ver. 8, εως ωδε Εὐσέβιος εκανόνισεν.  It has been objected that these sections show nothing as to the MSS. extant in Eusebius’s time, but only the condition of the Harmony of Ammonius, from which the divisions were taken.  [It does not seem to have occurred to Tregelles that Eusebius, after endorsing to Marinus the inclusion of verses 9-20, could have changed his mind when subsequently creating his Canons.]  The objection is not without significance; but it really carries back our evidence from the fourth century to the third; and thus it is seen, that just as Eusebius found these verses absent in his day from the best and most numerous copies, so was also the case with Ammonius when he formed his Harmony in the preceding century.”

          [That the “Ammonian Sections” are the work of Eusebius, and not Ammonius, was later demonstrated by John Burgon in Appendix G of his 1871 book, The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark Vindicated Against Recent Critical Objectors and Established.] 

          [Tregelles then reviews the testimony from Gregory of Nyssa – which, subsequent to Tregelles, was regarded as the work of Hesychius – and Victor of Antioch, noting that Victor’s remark] “is worthy of attention; for his testimony to the absence of these twelve verses from some or many copies, stands in contrast to his own opinion on the subject.  He seems to speak of having added the passage in question (to his own copy, perhaps) on the authority of a Palestinian exemplar.”

          Next, Tregelles reviews a statement from Severus of Antioch, and says, “This testimony may be but a repetition of that already cited from Gregory of Nyssa; but if so, it is, at least, an approving quotation.”

          “It is worthy of remark that both Eusebius and Victor have τῇ μιᾷ where our text has πρώτη; this may be an accidental variation; as they do not afterwards give the words precisely as they had before quoted them; or it may show that they spoke of the passage, ver. 9-20, without having before them a copy which contained it, and thus that they unintentionally used τῇ μιᾷ as the more customary phraseology in the New Testament.

          “Dionysius of Alexandria has been brought forward as a witness on each side.  Scholz refers to his Epistle to Basilides, as though he had there stated that some, or many, copies did not contain the passage; and Tischendorf similarly mentions his testimony; while, on the other hand, Dr. Davidson (Introd. i. 165) places Dionysius amongst those by whom the passage “is sanctioned.”  All, however, that I can gather from his Epistle to Basilides (Routh, Rel. Sac. iii. 223-32) is, that in discussing the testimony of the four evangelists to the time (whether night, or early in the morning) at which our Lord arose from the dead, he takes no notice whatever of Mark xvi. 9; and this he could hardly fail to have done, as bearing more closely on the question, when referring to the beginning of the same chapter, if he had acknowledged or known the last twelve verses. His testimony, then, quantum valeat, is purely negative.

          “Jerome’s testimony is yet to be adduced.  He discusses (Ad Hedibiam, Qusest. II. ed. Vallarsi, i. col. 819,) the difficulties brought forward as to the time of the resurrection. “Hujus qusestionis duplex solutio est; aut enim non recipimus Marci testimonium, quod in raris fertur Evangeliis, omnibus Grceciae libris pene hoc capitulum in fine non habentibus, praesertim quum diversa atque contraria Evangelistis caeteris narrare videatur ; aut hoc respondendum, quod uterque verum dixerit,” etc.  He then proposes to remove the difficulty by a different punctuation, in the same manner as Eusebius and Victor did.”

          “But an endeavour has been made to invalidate Jerome s testimony by referring to what he says in his Dialogue against the Pelagians, II. 15.  “In quibusdam exemplaribus, et maxime in Græcis codicibus juxta Marcum in fine ejus Evangelii scribitur:  Postea quum accubuissent undecim apparuit eis lesus, et exprobravit incredulitatem et duritiam cordis eorum, quia his qui viderant eum resurgentem non crediderunt.  Et illi satisfaciebant dicentes; Sæculum istud iniquitatis et incredulitatis substantia* est, quæ non sinit per immundos spiritus veram Dei apprehendi virtutem: idcirco jam nunc revela justitiam tuam. Cui si contradicitis, illud certe renuere non audebitis; Mundus in maligno positus est,” etc. (Ed. Vallarsi. ij. 744, 5.)  Hence it has been inferred that Jerome contradicts himself as to the Greek copies.  But (i.) that conclusion does not follow, because he may here speak of those Greek copies which did contain the verses in question, and not of the MSS. in general, (ii.) If this testimony be supposed to relate to Greek MSS. in general, it is at least remarkable that we have no other trace of such an addition at ver. 14. [The situation to which Tregelles alluded changed when Codex W was discovered.]  (iii.) Jerome wrote against the Pelagians in extreme old age, and he made in that work such demonstrable errors (e. g. citing II. 2, Ignatius instead of Polycarp), that it would be a bold step if any were to reject an unequivocal testimony to a fact stated in his earlier writings on the ground of something contained in this; especially when, if the latter testimony be admitted as conclusive, it would involve our accepting a strange addition at ver. 14 (otherwise wholly unknown to MSS., versions, and fathers) as a reading then current in Greek copies.

          These testimonies sufficiently establish, as an historical fact, that in the early ages it was denied that these twelve concluding verses formed a part of the Gospel of St. Mark.

(II.) I now pass to the proofs of the second proposition; that it is certain, on grounds of historical transmission, that, from the second century at least, this Gospel concluded as it does now in our copies.

          This is shown by the citations of early writers who recognise the existence of the section in question. These testimonies commence with Irenaeus: “In fine autem Evangelii ait Marcus, Et quidem Dominus Iesus, postquam locutus est eis, receptus est in caelos, et sedet ad dexteram Dei” (C. H. iii. 10. 6).  This sentence of the old Latin translator of Irenseus is thus cited in Greek in confirmation of his having used this part of the Gospel:  Ὁ μὲν ουν κύριος μετὰ τὸ λαλησαι αὐτοις ἀνελήφθε εις τὸν ουρανόν, καὶ εκάθισεν εκ δεξιων του θεου.  Εἰρηναιος ὁ των ἀποστόλων πλησίον ἐν τω πρὸς τὰς αιρέσεις γʹ λόγω τουτο ανήνεγκεν τὸ ρητὸν ὡς Μάρκῳ ειρημένον.  [A footnote in Printed Account states that this was drawn by Cramer from Cod. Harl. 5647, that is, minuscule 72.  What Tregelles presented is a combination of 72’s text of Mark 16:19, and the note in 72’s side-margin.] 

          “Whether this part of St. Mark was known to Celsus has been disputed.  My own opinion is, that that early writer against Christianity did, in the passage which Origen discusses (lib. II. §§ 59 and 70), refer to the appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalen, as found in Mark xvi. 9; but that Origen, in answering him, did not exactly apprehend the purport of his objection, from (probably) not knowing or using that section of this Gospel.  This would not be the only place in which Origen has misapprehended the force of remarks of Celsus from difference of reading in the copies which they respectively used, or from his not being aware of the facts to which Celsus referred.

          Tregelles turns next to Hippolytus, and supplies an extensive quotation from Περὶ Χαρισμάτων Ἀποστολικὴ Παράδοσις “in which this part of St. Mark s Gospel is distinctly quoted.”

          “After these testimonies of the second and third centuries, there are many who use the passage; such for instance as Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Augustine, Nestorius, (ap. Cyr. Alex. vi. 46.)

          Under this head may be mentioned the MSS. and versions in general (the conspectus of their evidence on both sides will be given under the next proposition); and amongst the MSS.  Those may in particular be specified which continue the Ammonian Sections on to the end of the chapter.  This seems to have been done to supply a supposed omission; and in ancient MSS., such as C, it is clear that the copyist took this section for an integral part of the book.

          The early mention and use of this section, and the place that it holds in the ancient versions in general, and in the MSS., sufficiently show, on historical grounds, that it had a place, and was transmitted as a part of the second Gospel.

III. To consider properly the third proposition (that the early testimony that St. Mark did not write these verses is confirmed by existing monuments), the evidence of the MSS. and versions must be stated in full.

          The passage is wholly omitted in Codex B.,* in the Latin Codex Bobbiensis (k), in old MSS. of the Armenian, and in an Arabic version in the Vatican (Cod. Arab. Vat. 13).  [This was later shown to be an effect of damage to the manuscript, as Metzger says in a footnote in his Textual Commentary:  “Since, however, through an accidental loss of leaves the original hand breaks off just before the end of Mark 16.8, its testimony is without significance in discussing the textual problem.”  See also Clarence Russell Williams’ comments about Cod. Arab. Vat. 13 on p. 398 of Williams’ The Appendices to the Gospel of St. Mark, which is contained as the last essay in Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 18 (Feb. 1915, Yale University Press).]  Of these versions, the Codex Bobbiensis adds a different brief conclusion, “Omnia autem quaecunque praecepta erant et qui cum puero [1. cum Petro] erant breviter exposuerunt. Posthaec et ipse jhesus adparuit. et ab orientem usque. usque in orientem. misit per illos sanctam et incorruptam (add. praedicationis, -nem ?) salutis aeternae. Amen.”  And the Armenian, in the edition of Zohrab, separates the concluding twelve verses from the rest of the Gospel.  Mr. Rieu thus notices the Armenian MSS.; “ἐφοβουντο γάρ·   Some of the oldest  MSS. end here : many put after these words the final Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μάρκον, and then give the additional verses with a new superscription, εὐαγγ. κατὰ Μ.  Oscan goes on without any break.”  The Arabic MS. in the Vatican is that described by Scholz in his “Biblisch-Kritische Keise” (pp. 117-126); and though the Arabic versions are of too recent a date to possess much critical value, this MS., so far as may be judged from the few extracts made, seems to be based on an ancient Greek text.  Besides the MS. which omits the verses, they are marked with an asterisk in two cursive copies. [The two cursive copies to which Tregelles referred here are 137 and 138 – neither of which is as Tregelles described it; both have the Catena Marcum and feature the comment that alludes to a cherished Palestinian exemplar.]

          [Tregelles then reviews the note in Codex L that appears before the Shorter Ending, and L’s text of the Shorter Ending.] “Thus far L is supported by the cursive cod. 274, by the marg. of the Harclean Syriac, and by the Latin Codex Bobbiensis (see above). L then continues :  “ἔστην [i. e. -τιν] δὲ καὶ ταυτα φερόμενα μετὰ τὸ Ἐφοβουνται γάρ” ~ - - - - - - - ~ ἀναστὰς δὲ κτλ. (and then follow the twelve verses).

          In Cod. 1, ver. 8 ends on folio 220 A, and at the top of the next page is written in vermillion, ἔν τισι μὲν των ἀντυγράφων ἕως ωδε πληρουται ὁ ευαγγελιστής· ἔως ου καὶ Ευσέβιος ὁ παμφίλου ἐκανόνισεν. ἐν πολλοις δὲ καὶ ταυτα φέρεται (and then follow ver. 9 20).  A similar note or a scholion stating the absence of the following verses from many, from most, or from the most correct copies (often from Victor or Severus), is found in twenty-five other cursive codices; sometimes with τελος interposed after ver. 8.  The absence of Ammonian divisions in A L and other good copies after ver. 8 should here be remembered.

          Such is the testimony of existing monuments confirming the ancient witnesses against this passage.

          On the other hand, the passage is found in the uncial codd. A C D, X Δ, E G Π K M S U V (F is defective); as well as in 33, 69, and the rest of the cursive copies which have been collated.  It is in copies of the Old Latin; in the Vulg. in the Curetonian Syriac, as well as the Peshito and the Harclean (with the marginal note given above), and the Jerusalem Syriac; in the Memphitic, Gothic, and Æthiopic; besides those which have been previously mentioned as characterised by some peculiarity.  The Thebaic is here defective, but it is supposed that a citation in that language may be a paraphrase of ver. 20.  The Gothic is defective in the concluding verses, but enough is extant to show that it recognised the passage; [The final page of Mark in the Gothic manuscript Codex Argenteus, containing verse 12-20 of the sixteenth chapter, was not recovered until 1970, when Franz Haffner found it in St. Afra’s Chapel in the cathedral in Speyer, Germany.] and of the Curetonian Syriac no part of this Gospel is found except a fragment containing ver. 17 to the end of this chapter.

          The Old Latin is here defective in the best copies; for the Codex Vercellensis is imperfect from ch. xv. 15, and Cod. Veronensis from xiii. 24.  Also the Cod. Brixianus is defective from xiv. 70.  The mode in which Cod. Bobbiensis concludes has been noticed already. The Codices Colbertinus, Corbiensis, and others, are those which may be quoted as showing that the Old Latin contains this section.

          It has been suggested that this portion of St. Mark was omitted by those who found a difficulty in reconciling what it contains with the other Evangelists.  But so far from there being any proof of this, which would have required a far less change, we find that the same writers who mention the non-existence of the passage in many copies, do themselves show how it may be harmonised with what is contained in the other Gospels ; we have no reason for entertaining the supposition that such a Marcion-like excision had been here adopted.

          In opposing the authenticity of this section, some have argued on the nature of the contents;‒ that the appearance of our Lord to Mary Magdalene first, is not (it is said) in accordance with what we learn elsewhere; that the supposition of miraculous powers to be received (ver. 17, 18) is carried too far; that (in ver. 16) Baptism is too highly exalted. I mention these objections, though I do not think any one of them separately, nor yet the whole combined, to be of real weight. There is no historical difficulty which would be regarded as of real force, if, on other grounds, doubt had not been cast on the passage; for else we might object to many Scripture narrations, because we cannot harmonise them, owing to our not being acquainted with all the circumstances.  As to the doctrinal points specified, it is hard to imagine what difficulty is supposed to exist; I see nothing that would involve the feelings and opinions of an age subsequent to the apostolic.

          The style of these twelve verses has been relied on as though it were an argument that they were not written by Mark himself.  I am well aware that arguments on style are often very fallacious, and that by themselves they prove very little; but when there does exist external evidence, and when internal proofs as to style, manner, verbal expression, and connection, are in accordance with such independent grounds of forming a judgment, then these internal considerations possess very great weight.

          A difference has been remarked, and truly remarked, between the phraseology of this section and the rest of this Gospel.  This difference is in part negative and in part positive. The phraseology of St. Mark possesses characteristics which do not appear in these verses.  And besides these negative features, this section has its own peculiarities; amongst which may be specified πρώτη σαββάτω (ver. 9), instead of which τη μια των σαββάτων would have been expected: in ver. 10 and 14 sentences are conjoined without a copulative, contrary to the common usage in St. Mark.  εκεινος is used four times in a manner different from what is found in the rest of the Gospel.  The periodic structure of verses 19 and 20 is such as only occurs once elsewhere in this Gospel (xiv. 38).

          Many words, expressions, and constructions occur in this section, and not in any other part of St. Mark:  e. g. πορεύομαι (thrice), θεάομαι (twice), απίστεω (twice), ἕτερος, παρακολουθέω, βλάπτω, επακολουθέω, συνεργέω, βεβαιόω, πανταχου, μετὰ ταυτα, εν τω ονοματι, ὁ κυριος, as applied absolutely to Christ (twice).  Now, while each of these peculiarities (except the first) may possess singly no weight, yet their combination, and that in so short a portion, has a force which can rather be felt than stated.  And if any parallel be attempted, as to these peculiarities, by a comparison of other portions of St. Mark, it will be found that many chapters must be taken together before we shall find any list of examples as numerous or as striking as those which are crowded together here in these few verses.  

          These considerations must be borne in mind as additional to the direct evidence stated before.

          It has been asked, as an argument that the section before us was actually written by St. Mark, whether it is credible that he could have ended his Gospel with . . . ἐφοβουντο γάρ.  Now, however improbable, such a difficulty must not be taken as sufficient, per se, to invalidate testimony to a fact as such. We often do not know what may have caused the abrupt conclusion of many works.  The last book of Thucydides has no proper termination at all; and in the Scripture some books conclude with extraordinary abruptness:  Ezra and Jonah are instances of this.  Perhaps we do not know enough of the circumstances of St. Mark when he wrote his Gospel to say whether he did or did not leave it with a complete termination.  And if there is difficulty in supposing that the work ever ended abruptly at ver. 8, would this have been transmitted as a fact by good witnesses, if there had not been real grounds for regarding it to be true?  And further, irrespective of recorded evidence, we could not doubt that copies in ancient times did so end, for B, the oldest that we have, actually does so.  Also the copies which add the concluding twelve verses as something separate, and those (as L) which give another brief termination, show that this fact is not incredible. Such a peculiarity would not have been invented.

          It has also been urged with great force that the contents of this section are such as preclude its having been added at a post-apostolic period, and that the very difficulties which it contains afford a strong presumption that it is an authentic history: the force of this argument is such that I do not see how it can be avoided; for even if a writer went out of his way to make difficulties in a supplement to St. Mark’s Gospel, it is but little likely that his contemporaries would have accepted and transmitted such an addition, except on grounds of known and certain truth as to the facts recorded.  If there are points not easy to be reconciled with the other Gospels, it is all the less probable that any writer should have put forth, and that others should have received, the narrative, unless it were really authentic history. As such it is confirmed by the real or supposed points of difficulty.

          As, then, the facts of the case, and the early reception and transmission of this section, uphold its authenticity, and as it has been placed from the second century, at least, at the close of our second canonical Gospel; and as, likewise, its transmission has been accompanied by a continuous testimony that it was not a part of the book as originally written by St. Mark; and as both these points are confirmed by internal considerations― 

          The following corollaries flow from the propositions already established:‒

[···]

          I. That the book of Mark himself extends no farther than ἐφοβουντο γάρ, xvi. 8.

          II. That the remaining twelve verses, by whomsoever written, have a full claim to be received as an authentic part of the second Gospel, and that the full reception of early testimony on this question does not in the least involve their rejection as not being a part of Canonical Scripture.

          It may, indeed, be said that they might have been written by St. Mark at a later period; but, even on this supposition, the attested fact that the book once ended at ver. 8 would remain the same, and the assumption that the same Evangelist had added the conclusion would involve new difficulties, instead of removing any.

          There is in some minds a kind of timidity with regard to Holy Scripture, as if all our notions of its authority depended on our knowing who was the writer of each particular portion; instead of simply seeing and owning that it was given forth from God, and that it is as much his as were the commandments of the Law written by his own finger on the tables of stone.  As to many books of Scripture, we know not who the writers may have been; and yet this is no reason for questioning their authority in the slightest degree.  If we try to be certain as to points of which there is no proof, we really shall find ourselves to be substituting conjecture in the place of evidence.  Thus some of the early Church received the Epistle to the Hebrews as Holy Scripture; who, instead of absolutely dogmatising that it was written by St. Paul ‒ a point of which they had no proof ‒ were content to say that “God only knoweth the real writer”: and yet to many in the present day, though they have not one whit more evidence on the subject, it seems, that to doubt or disbelieve that Epistle to have been written by St. Paul himself, and to doubt or disbelieve its canonical authority, is one and the same thing.  But this mode of treating Scripture is very different from what ought to be found amongst those who own it as the word of God.

          I thus look on this section as an authentic anonymous addition to what Mark himself wrote down from the narration of St. Peter (as we learn from the testimony of their contemporary, John the Presbyter); and that it ought as much to be received as part of our second Gospel, as the last chapter of Deuteronomy (unknown as the writer is) is received as the right and proper conclusion of the books of Moses.

          I cannot but believe that many upholders of orthodox and evangelical truth practically narrow their field of vision as to Scripture by treating it (perhaps unconsciously) as though we had to consider the thoughts, mind, and measure of apprehension possessed personally by each individual writer through whom the Holy Ghost gave it forth.  This is a practical hindrance to our receiving it, in the full sense, as from God; that is, as being really inspired: for, if inspired, the true and potential author was God, and not the individual writer, known or anonymous. 

          We know from John the Presbyter just enough of the origin of St. Mark’s Gospel to be aware that it sprang from the oral narrations of the Apostle Peter; and we have the testimony of that long-surviving immediate disciple of Christ when on earth (in recording this fact) that Mark erred in nothing.  But even with this information, if we thought of mere human authorship, how many questions might be started : but if we receive inspiration as a fact, then inquiries as to the relation of human authors become a matter of secondary importance.  It has its value to know that Apostles bore testimony to what they had seen of Christ’s actions, and that they were inspired to write as eye and ear witnesses of his deeds and teaching.  So it is of importance to know that in this Gospel we have the testimony of Peter confirmed by John the Presbyter; but the real essential value of the record for the continuous instruction of believers, is that inspiration of the Holy Ghost which constitutes certain writings to be Holy Scripture.  Those which were originally received on good grounds as such, and which have been authentically transmitted to us, we may confidently and reverently receive, even though we may not know by what pen they were recorded. 

          To sum up:  Tregelles believed that verses 9-20 were not written by Mark, but that verses 9-20 nevertheless “have a full claim to be received as an authentic part of the second Gospel,” just as Deuteronomy 34 is received as the proper conclusion of the books of Moses.

Mark 16:9-20, Irenaeus, and Ephraim the Scribe

          Earlier this month at The Gospel Coalition’s blog, Elijah Hixson posted some thoughts about Mark 16:9-20, addressing the question of why anyone would question the authenticity of the passage – as several Bibles versions, such as the ESV, incite readers to do, by means of their vague and misleading footnotes.  Hixson points out that although such footnotes refer ambiguously to “Some manuscripts” or “Some of the earliest manuscripts,” the actual number of Greek manuscripts of Mark in which the text ends at the end of 16:8 is exactly two.       

            Hixson also points out that those two manuscripts are from the 300s, and “around AD 180, Irenaeus unambiguously quoted Mark 16:19.”  He also points out that two other writers from the 100s, Justin Martyr and Tatian, “likely knew the verses.”  Thus the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20, besides being supported by over 1,600 Greek manuscripts (and hundreds of Greek lectionaries), is supported by the very early patristic evidence.  Furthermore, the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 is supported not only in terms of antiquity (the oldest witnesses) and quantity (the greatest amount of witnesses), but also in terms of range of attestation:  Mark 16:9-20 has early support from numerous authors – not named by Hixson – in many different locations across the Roman Empire (from Patrick in Ireland, to Ambrose in Milan, to Augustine in North Africa, to Macarius Magnes (and the pagan author whose work he addresses) in Asia Minor (SW Turkey), to Aphrahat in Syria, and to Eznik of Golb in Armenia, to name a few). 

            Hixson did not go into detail about the very strong patristic support for Mark 16:9-20.  He gave an inordinate proportion of his attention to evidence against the inclusion of these 12 verses.  Nevertheless, I like his conclusion:  “Because Mark 16:9-20 is undeniably early, is present in 99 percent of manuscripts, and has traditionally been considered canonical, I recommend keeping it in the text.” 

            Hixson qualified that, stating, “It’s probably not from Mark” – but the crucial question concerns its presence, or absence, in the autograph, not its authorship.  If we were to start erasing every part of Scripture that is present due to the involvement of a redactor or supplemental author, the books of Psalms, Proverbs, Jeremiah, etc., would significantly shrink. 

            Some other commentators on Mark 16:9-20 have misled their readers in ways that Hixson avoided:

 ● Dan Wallace’s NET’s text-critical note on Mark 16:9-20 fails to mention Irenaeus, Justin and Tatian.  The NET’s note only mentions Eusebius and Jerome with the statement, “Jerome and Eusebius knew of almost no Greek mss that had this ending,” and avoids mentioning their use of the passage.         

            Wallace, Evans, Wright, and numerous other commentators have made false claims that Mark 16:9-20 is marked by text-critically significant asterisks and obeli in non-annotated manuscripts.

            ● Norman Geisler and numerous other commentators have spread the false claim that Mark 16:9-20 is absent from “many manuscripts.”

            ● Ben Witherington III and several other commentators have spread the false claim that Eusebius showed no knowledge of Mark 16:9-20.

            ● John MacArthur made over a dozen false claims about evidence pertinent to Mark 16:9-20, in the course of a 2011 sermon in which he called Mark 16:9-20 “a bad ending.”

            (The cascade of misinformation about Mark 16:9-20 from commentators and Bible-footnotes escaped mention in the recent book Myths & Mistakes.)

            Although Hixson did not fall into such egregious errors, there are five ways in which his good analysis might be made better.

A note about Mark 16:9-20
in GA 22.

            (1)  Hixson commended the treatment that the medieval scribe Ephraim in GA 1582 gave to Mark 16:9-20.  However, there was more to Ephraim’s treatment that Hixson did not mention.  Yes, Ephraim perpetuated the note, Ἔν τισι μεν τῶν ἄντιγράφων, ἔως ώδε πληροῦται ὁ ἐυαγγελιστής, εως ου και Ευσεβιος ο Παμφίλου εκανόνισεν· ἐν πολλοῖς δὲ ταῦτα φέρεται – “In some of the copies, the evangelist finishes here, up to which point also Eusebius of Pamphilus [i.e., Eusebius of Caesarea, who was a student of Pamphilus] made canon sections. But in many the following is also contained.”  But he also did something else.

            Ephraim included another note (also borrowed from his exemplar) at Mark 16:19:  Ειρηναιος ο των αποστόλων πλησίον εν τω προς τας αιρέσεις Τριτωι λόγωι τουτο Ανήνεγκεν το ρητον ως Μάρκω ειρημένον – that is, “Irenaeus, who lived near the time of the apostles, cites this from Mark in the third book of his work Against Heresies.”

            If footnote-formaters really want to emulate Ephraim, (as the Tyndale House Greek New Testament attempts to do) they should not only mention that 99% of the extant Greek manuscripts of Mark – or “many,” as Ephraim’s note says – include Mark 16:9-20, but also mention that Irenaeus quoted from Mark 16:19 when he wrote Book 3 of Against Heresies in about A.D. 180 – long before the production of any extant manuscript that contains Mark 16.

Top:  The last page of Mark in Codex B,
ending the text at 16:8.
Bottom:  the same page, with 16:9-20
superimposed in the copyist's lettering.

             (2) In addition to mentioning that Vaticanus (B) and Sinaiticus (ℵ) are the only Greek manuscripts of Mark in which the text of 16:8 is followed by nothing but the closing title, it would be helpful to draw readers’ attention to the remarkable unusual features in these manuscripts pertaining to the ending of Mark:  Codex Vaticanus has a distinct blank space after the end of Mark 16:8 – the only such blank space in the entire New Testament portion of the manuscript, and (contra Wallace) the only blank space that is not explained as a natural effect of factors involved in the codex’s production.  Verses 9-20 fit within this blank space with a minimal reduction in letter-spacing. 

            Meanwhile, Codex Sinaiticus contains a replacement-sheet at the end of Mark – that is, the four pages that contain Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 were not produced by the same copyist who made the surrounding pages – and the rate of letters-per-line by the copyist who produced the text on those pages (almost certainly the diorthotes, or supervisor) shows that he made a deliberate effort to avoid leaving a blank column after 16:8.  Thus while B and ℵ echo exemplars in which verses 9-20 were absent, they also attest to their copyists’ awareness of exemplars in which verses 9-20 were included.

            (3)  Witnesses for Ephraim’s note, and for the Shorter Ending, should be brought into focus.  Hixson mentioned that “At least 23 Greek manuscripts that include Mark 16:9-20 also have anomalies like extra endings or notes that express doubts concerning the authenticity of these verses.”  It should be emphasized that the manuscripts with additional notes are not independent witnesses; they represent the family-1 manuscript-cluster, echoing the same scribal tradition shared by Ephraim’s exemplar. 

            Manuscripts 1, 205, 2886 [that’s 2886, the same MS also known as 205abs, not 2866 – readers of my book, Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20, be aware that there is a typo there!], 209, and 1582 descend from a common ancestor, and manuscripts 15, 22, 1110, 1192, and 1210 share the same pedigree; they echo the same note that Ephraim preserved but without mentioning Eusebius’ cross-reference system (probably because when and where these copies were made, the Eusebian Canons had already been expanded to include the verses).               
            Manuscripts 20, 215, and 300 share the note ἐντεῦθεν εως το τέλος ἔεν τισι τῶν ἀντιγράφων οὐ κεῖται· ἐν δε τοις ἀρχαίοις πάντα ἀπαράλειπτα κεῖται,” that is, “From here (i.e., the end of 16:8) to the end forms no part of the text in some of the copies. But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact.”  These three manuscripts also share the Jerusalem Colophon, showing their contact with the same transmission-line.

            So, ten of Hixson’s 23 manuscripts echo the same source, and three of them echo another source.  If we are serious about applying the old axiom, “Manuscripts must be weighed, not counted,” then the relationships of these manuscripts’ texts, as echoes of the same voice, should be highlighted.  

           

            (4)  While the subject of the relationships of witnesses is in view, Jerome’s dependence, in his Epistle 120, To Hedibia, upon Eusebius’ earlier comments in Ad Marinum, should be revisited.  Hixson claimed:  “Even though Jerome and Severus were clearly drawing from Eusebius’s work, nothing in their experience with manuscripts prevented them from repeating Eusebius’s claims that the majority of manuscripts (Jerome), or at least the most accurate ones (Jerome and Severus), lacked those verses.” 

            However, that is only part of the picture.  Jerome’s use of Eusebius’ much-condensed claim as the basis to reject the passage (and thus resolve the perceived discrepancy under discussion) should not be considered without also considering Jerome’s acceptance of the passage: 

            After Jerome says: 

            This problem has a twofold solution.  Either we do not accept the testimony of Mark, because this final portion is not contained in most of the Gospels that bear his name – almost all the Greek codices lacking it –

            he proceeds:

            or else we must affirm that Matthew and Mark have both told the truth, that our Lord rose on the evening of the Sabbath, and that He was seen by Mary Magdalene in the morning of the first day of the following week.
            And he proceeds to take the second option:

            So this is how this passage of Saint Mark should be read:  “Jesus arising,” place a little pause here, then add, “on the first day of the week in the morning appeared to Mary Magdalene,” so that, being raised, according to Saint Matthew, in the evening of the last day of the week, He appeared to Mary Magdalene, according to Saint Mark, “the morning of the first day of the week,” which is how John also represents the events, stating that He was seen on the morning of the next day.

            Jerome could have said, “Since the passage is absent from most copies of the Gospel of Mark, we should reject it.”  But he did just the opposite.  He casually left his abridgment of Eusebius’ claim about Greek manuscripts where he dropped it, and did not pick it up again, because his purpose was to resolve a harmonization between two passages which both he and Hedibia already accepted. 

            Also relevant to the evidence from Jerome are (1) the possibility that Jerome expected Hedibia to recognize that he was borrowing from Ad Marinum, and (2) his statement in his Preface to the Vulgate Gospels (383/384) that he edited the Vulgate Gospels on the basis of ancient Greek manuscripts, and (3) his statement in 417, in Against the Pelagians, that after Mark 16:14, there was – “in certain exemplars, especially in Greek codices” – the interpolation known as the Freer Logion.  Jerome pictured the Freer Logion as something unusual, while the presence of Mark 16:14 was ordinary.  A heavy spotlight has been put on Jerome’s casual use of Eusebius’ statement about manuscripts in Ad Marinum, while Jerome’s complete acceptance of Mark 16:9-20 – an acceptance somewhat difficult to account for, if almost all Greek codices available to him ended Mark’s text at verse 8 – has tended to be pushed into the shadows.  
          

            (5) Hixson stated that the note preserved by Ephraim “probably predates 10th-century Ephraim by a few hundred years.”  However, as observed by K.W. Kim in 1950 in his article Codices 1582, 1739, and Origen in the Journal of Biblical Literature, the most recent patristic citations in the margin-notes in 1582 are from Basil of Cappadocia (329-379); a reasonable explanation for the non-use of more recent writings is that Ephraim’s exemplar was made only shortly after Basil’s death.  However, 1582 also has a note about the pericope adulterae  – which is found in f-1’s flagship members at the end of the Gospel of John  – which reads, “The chapter about the adulteress: in the Gospel according to John, this does not appear in the majority of copies; nor is it commented upon by the divine fathers whose interpretations have been preserved – specifically, by John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria; nor is it taken up by Theodore of Mopsuestia and the others.  For this reason, it was not kept in the place where it is found in a few copies, at the beginning of the 86th chapter [that is, the 86th Eusebian section], following, ‘Search and see that a prophet does not arise out of Galilee.’” 

            The names of the authors in this note push the production-date of the exemplar of 1582 forward a bit; it must be later than Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444).  But even if we were to posit that Ephraim’s exemplar was produced a full century after Cyril’s death, a production-date in the mid-500s would be a bit more than “a few hundred years” before the mid-900s.
         
            More could be said about some other things that Hixson mentioned, but for additional details I refer readers to my book, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20, and for some interesting analysis of Jerome’s letter to Hedibia, see Andrew Cain’s 2003 article Defending Hedibia and Detecting Eusebius: Jerome’s Correspondence with Two Gallic Women (Epist. 120-21).

POSTSCRIPT

            To shine some light on the testimony of Eusebius, whose words are habitually blurred and misrepresented by commentators, here are three relevant extracts from Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ad Marinum, where he discussed the ending of Mark.  (Based on Roger Pearse’s 2010 Eusebius of Caesarea – Gospel Problems & Solutions.) 

From Q-&-A #1: 

            Your first question was:  How is it that the Savior’s resurrection evidently took place, in Matthew, “late on the Sabbath,” but in Mark “early in the morning on the first day of the week”?

            The answer to this would be twofold.  The actual nub of the matter is the pericope which says this.  One who athetises that pericope would say that it is not found in all copies of the Gospel according to Mark:  accurate copies end their text of the Marcan account with the words of the young man whom the women saw, and who said to them, “Do not be afraid; it is Jesus the Nazarene that you are looking for, etc. …”, after which it adds, “And when they heard this, they ran away, and said nothing to anyone, because they were frightened.”  That is where the text does end, in almost all copies of the gospel according to Mark.  What occasionally follows in some copies, not all, would be extraneous, most particularly if it contained something contradictory to the evidence of the other evangelists.

            That, then, would be one person’s answer:  to reject it, entirely obviating the question as superfluous.

            Another view, from someone diffident about athetising anything at all in the text of the gospels, however transmitted, is that there is a twofold reading, as in many other places, and that both are to be accepted; it is not for the faithful and devout to judge either as acceptable in preference to the other.

            Supposing the latter point of view to be granted as true, the proper thing to do with the reading is to interpret its meaning.  If we were to divide up the sense of the wording, we would not find it in conflict with the words in Matthew to the effect that the Savior’s resurrection was “late on the Sabbath,” because we shall read the words in Mark: “Having risen again early in the morning” with a pause, punctuating after “Having risen again,” and making a break in the sense before the following words.  Let us then refer “having risen again” back to Matthew’s “late on the Sabbath,” because that was when the resurrection had taken place; but the next part forms part of a separate idea, so let us connect it with the words that follow:  “early in the morning on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary of Magdala.”

            As confirmation, that is what John has told us, as well:  he too testifies that Jesus had been seen by the Magdalene early in the morning on the first day of the week. In this way, therefore, he appeared to her “early in the morning” in Mark also.  It was not that the resurrection took place early in the morning; it was well before that, “late on the Sabbath,” as Matthew has it.  That was when he appeared to Mary, after his resurrection; the appearance was not at the time of the resurrection, but “early in the morning.”

            Thus two points of time are presented here:  that of the resurrection, “late on the Sabbath,” and that of the Savior’s appearance, “early in the morning,” as written by Mark in words to be read as including a pause:  “Having risen again.”  Then the next words are to be pronounced after our punctuation-mark: “early in the morning on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary of Magdala, from whom he had driven out seven devils.”

FROM Q-&A #2, Part 9 (Where Eusebius suggests that there were two women known as Mary Magdalene):

            It is perfectly reasonable to say that two Marys came from the same place, Magdala.  There is then no difficulty in saying that one of them was the Magdalene who, in Matthew, came to the tomb late on the sabbath; and then again that the other, also a Magdalene, came there early in the morning, in John, and that she is the one of whom it is stated in Mark (according to some copies) that “he had cast seven devils” out of her, and also presumably the one who heard the words “Do not touch me” –but not the one in Matthew, about whom, even if she too was certainly from Magdala, the divine scripture makes no such derogatory statement. 

FROM Q-&-A #3, Part 4:

            Supposing, however, that it is conceded that it is not the same one, but that there is one Mary who is there with the other Mary, according to Matthew, and a different one who, in John, comes to the tomb alone, early in the morning, while it was still dark; all doubt would then be resolved.  There would be, late on the sabbath, the women who arrive first, being more fervent and having more faith; they hear the Savior’s greeting, worship him, and are found fit to clasp his feet. Then the Mary in John would be a different person, who gets there later than the others, early in the morning; this would be the same one from whom, according to Mark, he had cast out seven devils.



Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.

Codex Sinaiticus and the Ending of Mark

            In the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, between verses 8 and 9, the English Standard Version has a prominent heading-note:  “(SOME OF THE EARLIEST MANUSCRIPTS DO NOT INCLUDE 16:9-20).”  Some other versions contain a similar note at this point, and most of them are similarly vague.  The ESV also has a long footnote which begins, “Some manuscripts end the book with 16:8; others include verses 9–20 immediately after verse 8.”  This is spectacularly inaccurate:  the number of Greek manuscripts which include Mark 16:9-20 is over 1,600; the number of Greek manuscripts in which the text of Mark clearly ends at the end of verse 8, followed by nothing but the closing-title, is exactly two.    

          Among major translations, only the New King James Version uses precise language in its note about Mark 16:9-20:  “Verses 9-20 are bracketed in NU-Text as not original.  They are lacking in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, although nearly all other manuscripts of Mark contain them.”  (“NU” in this footnote stands for the Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies compilation, which very heavily favors the Alexandrian Text.) 

            Even the NKJV’s footnote, however, tells only part of the story.  The patristic writer Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (or Lyon – ancient Lugdunum), writing around 184, specifically quoted Mark 16:19 in Against Heresies, Book Three, chapter 10.  This shows that the passage was in the text of the Gospel of Mark in manuscripts used by Irenaeus over a century before either Vaticanus or Sinaiticus were made.  Irenaeus’ contemporary Tatian utilized Mark 16:9-20 in his Diatessaron, too, and Justin Martyr almost certainly borrowed language from Mark 16:20 in chapter 45 of his First Apology, around 160.  Granting that detailed information cannot be expected of footnotes, it is unacceptable to put fourth-century manuscripts in the spotlight while keeping second-century patristic evidence in the shadows.

            But today, the early and widespread patristic evidence that supports Mark 16:9-20  is not my focus.  Instead, I want to look at the unusual features that we find in Codex Sinaiticus with a focused lens, setting aside the warped lens through which two Greek manuscripts appear as “Some” and 1,600 manuscripts appear as “others.”            

            The first thing to notice about the pages of Codex Sinaiticus on which the Gospel of Mark concludes is that they are replacement-pages.  They were not written by the same copyist who wrote the text on the surrounding pages.  Instead, the text on these four pages was written by the diorthotes, or proof-reader, of the manuscript, while it was still in production. 

 

Columns 9, 10, 11, and 12 of the cancel-sheet
in Codex Sinaiticus.

          The second thing to notice is the remarkable inconsistency in the rates of letters-per-column on these replacement-pages.  Like the other pages of Codex Sinaiticus in the Gospels, these four pages are formatted so as to have four columns per page, and 48 lines per column.  Columns 1-10 contain text from Mark 14:54-16:8, and columns 11-16 contain text from Luke 1:1-56.  The main copyist tended to write about 635 words per column.  Thus, the 16 columns of the pages that he wrote – the pages which the diorthotes removed and replaced – had room for 10,160 letters, if written at the copyist’s normal rate.  The text of Mark 14:54-16:8 on the replaced pages probably consisted of 5,698 letters.  Divided into columns of 635 letters each, the copyist would thus reach the end of Mark 16:8 just before reaching the end of the ninth column. 

          In the replacement-pages, however, the text of Mark 16:8 does not end near the bottom of column nine.  It ends in column ten – even though the diorthotes probably wrote 84 fewer letters of Mark than what the main copyist had written on the replaced pages.  This raises a question:  why did the diorthotes make the text of Mark 16 extend into column 10, instead of finishing it in column nine?

A comparison of the rate of letters-per-column
shows a significant decrease in columns 5-9,
and a drastic increase in columns 11-16.

To answer that question, we must examine the columns of Luke 1:1-76 that the diorthotes wrote on the replacement-pages.  A simple count of the number of letters in each column of text demonstrated the extensive variation in the rate of letters-per-column.  

Before proceeding further, it may be worth pointing out the following:  Mark 16:9-20 contains 971 letters (depending on textual variants).  Even if the main copyist had accidentally skipped the same 106 letters that the diorthotes skipped in 15:47-16:1, the remaining 886 letters would not fit into the remaining space after 16:8 (which would have a normal capacity of 662 letters) in columns nine and ten.  Thus, whatever motivated the diorthotes to replace the four pages that the main copyist produced, it was not because those pages contained Mark 16:9-20. 

(If one wanted to write Mark 14:64-16:20 in columns 1-10, the resultant average rate of letters per column in columns 1-10 would jump to 667 letters per column.  Such script-compression is technically possible:  an average rate of letters per column of 673 is observed in columns 11-16 in the cancel-sheet.  But the main copyist, unlike the diorthotes, had no reason to suddenly compress his script.)

           Now let’s turn our attention to the columns in the replacement-pages that contain text from the Gospel of Luke.  If the main copyist had accidentally repeated a large chunk of text, and the diorthotes made the replacement-pages in order to remove the repeated lines, this would require the corrector to fill the space with fewer letters than the original pages had contained.  But what we see in columns 11-16 is a staggering increase in the rate of letters-per-line.  Instead of 635 letters per column, we see here in Luke an average rate of 691 letters per column.  If we work from the premise that the text of Luke began at the top of column 11 in the replaced pages, then the diorthotes made the replacement-pages in order to correct a large omission that the main copyist had committed. 

            With that premise in place, it looks as if a section of text consisting of over 330 letters was absent from the main copyist’s text of Luke 1:1-56.  Probably the main copyist accidentally skipped from either the beginning of Luke 1:34 to the beginning of 1:38 (losing, in the process, 311 letters).  (An alternative is that he skipped from the beginning of Luke 1:5 to the beginning of Luke 1:8, thus losing 319 letters, but this would almost require that he was not thinking at all about what he was writing.)  Without those 311 letters, the text of Luke 1:1-56 that is on the replacement-pages consists of 3,835 letters occupying six columns, which yields 639 letters per column – well within the  copyist’s natural range of variation.      

            What if, instead, the main copyist began the text of Luke 1 at the top of column 10?  In that case, it would appear that the main copyist accidentally repeated a large portion of text in Luke 1.  If we add to 4,146 letters an additional 311 letters, caused by the repetition of verses 34-37, we reach a total of 4,475 letters occupying seven columns of text.  Divided into seven, this yields (again) 639 letters per column – well within the copyist’s natural range of variation.     

The replacement-pages consist of a single
sheet of parchment, folded in the middle.

           So:  while we can discern that the creation of the replacement-places was due to a problem in the text of Luke 1:1-56a, a definitive reconstruction of the format of the text on the replaced pages is not easy to make, because a reconstruction involving an omission in a text in which Luke 1 began at the top of column 11, and a reconstruction involving a repetition in a text in which Luke 1 began at the top of column 10, are both feasible.  These competing possibilities, however, should not obscure the observation that in neither reconstruction is Mark 16:9-20 present on the replaced pages. 

            The remarkable range of variation in the diorthotes’ rate of letters per column in the cancel-sheet tells a little story about how the text on these pages was written – and this may imply something interesting about the ending of the Gospel of Mark.  Instead of beginning at Mk. 14:54, the diorthotes realized that the main challenge he faced would be to format the text in such a way that the final line of the final column ended exactly where final line of the final column of the replaced pages ended.  With this in mind, he began the replacement-pages by writing Luke 1:1 at the top of column 11.  (This was a practical precautionary step, inasmuch as in the event that his attempt was unsuccessful, he would have thus saved himself the trouble of writing out the text of Mark 14:54-16:8 only to have to start the whole thing over.) 

            Only after he had carefully succeeded in cramming Luke 1:1-56a into six columns did the diorthotes begin to write Mark 14:54b at the top of column 1.  He wrote columns 1-3 without any unusual deviation from the usual rate of letters per column (635, 650, and 639).  In column 4, he accidentally reverted to the use of the lettering-compression he had used when writing the text of Luke 1:1-56; this is why there are 707 letters in column 4.  Then, realizing what he had done, he compensated by slightly stretching out his lettering in columns 5, 6, 7, and 8.  But after accidentally skipping most of Mark 16:1, he still did not have enough text to reach column 10, even writing at a rate of 600 letters per column (30 letters less than usual). 

          The diorthotes could have simply written the rest of chapter 16, up to verse 8, in his normal lettering, and thus finished Mark in column 9, with a blank column between the end of Mark and the beginning of Luke.  But he made a conscious decision not to do that.  Instead, he stretched out his lettering even more, so as to write only 552 letters in column 9.  Thus he had 37 letters remaining to place in column 10. 

With all these things in the equation, let’s again approach the question:  why didn’t the diorthotes finish Mark 16:8 in column 9, and thus leave a blank column before the beginning of Luke?  Why did he stretch out his lettering (and write Jesus’ name in Mark 16:6 in its full, uncontracted form) so as to make his lettering reach the tenth column? 

          Conceivably, a strong sense of aesthetics motivated the diorthotes to avoid leaving blank columns between books in the same genre (genres such as Poetry, Minor Prophets, Gospels, Epistles).  In Codex Sinaiticus, a book usually begins at the top of the column which immediately follows the previous book, unless a new genre is being introduced.  Four columns (a single page) are blank after the Gospel of John.  Six columns separate the end of Philemon from the beginning of Acts.  A blank column separates the end of Acts and the beginning of James. 

This pattern, however, was not kept with complete consistency.  There is no blank column between Jude and Revelation, and there is no blank column between Revelation and the Epistle of Barnabas, although there is a blank column between the end of the Epistle of Barnabas and the beginning of the Shepherd of Hermas.  And in the Old Testament portion of Codex Sinaiticus, after the end of the book of Judith, the first column of the next page is blank, followed by the beginning of First Maccabees at the top of column 2.

          That last detail is particularly instructive, because the diorthotes served as copyist for the book of Tobit and Judith.  Apparently, another copyist (Scribe A) had finished a section which concluded at the end of Esther in the second column of a page.  The same copyist had also made a section containing First Maccabees, beginning in the second column of a page.  The diorthotes faced the task of writing the contents of Tobit and Judith in another section to be placed between the two already-written sections, beginning where the other copyist had left off.  After completing Tobit and most of Judith, he realized (as Dirk Jongkind has noted) that he didn’t have enough text to reach the column next to the beginning of First Maccabees.  For this reason, he resorted to stretching out his lettering (in much the same method that is seen in Mark 16:2-7) and wrote one or two fewer lines per column.  His efforts, however, were still not sufficient, and that is why a blank column precedes First Maccabees.  It is a “seam,” so to speak – merely a side-effect of a quirk that occurred in the production of the manuscript.

          Besides a desire to insert blank space only between books of different genres, something else seems to have motivated the diorthotes to take drastic action to avoid leaving a blank column between Mark and Luke:  a determination to avoid leaving a feature which could be considered memorial-space for the absent twelve verses.  Occasionally, copyists encountered readings in their exemplars which lacked material that the copyists recollected from another manuscript they had encountered; they copied the text of the exemplar but left blank space – memorial-space – to express the thought that something was missing. 

          Perhaps the best-known example of this occurs in Codex Vaticanus.  In this manuscript, the copyists never left blank space between books, except between the Old and New Testament, and at two production-seams (once where the format shifts from three-columns-per-page to two-columns-per-page, leaving a large gap, and once (at the end of Tobit) where the work of one copyist ends and another copyist’s work begins), and in one other place:  the end of Mark, where, after the copyist wrote 16:8, the closing-title appears below it, and the next column is blank.  In addition, if a copyist were to erase the closing-title, and insert Mark 16:9-20 after 16:8 using the same script-compression technique seen in Sinaiticus in Luke 1:1-56, all twelve verses would neatly fit into the remaining space.      

A digital image of the last page of Mark in Codex
Vaticanus, with memorial-space for verses 9-20,
is at the Vatican Library's website.

          A second example occurs in Codex Regius (L, 019) after John 7:52, where the copyist left some blank space, including an entire blank column, before writing 8:12.  The copyist thus expressed his awareness of the existence of John 7:53-8:11.  This blank space in Codex L is not nearly sufficient for the absent 12 verses (or even for 8:3-11), but it nevertheless demonstrates the copyist’s knowledge of the existence of the passage.  (The apparatus in the 28^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece lists “L*vid” as a witness for the inclusion of John 7:53-8:11, and “L^c” as a witness for non-inclusion, even though it is obvious that the manuscript never contained these verses.)

          The diorthotes of Codex Sinaiticus may have realized that if he did not stretch his lettering so as to be able to put some text in column 10, he would run the risk that the resultant blank column would be interpreted as memorial-space.”  The possibility cannot be ruled out that his exemplar concluded Mark’s text in column 9 and left column 10 as memorial-space in a format similar to that of Codex Vaticanus.  The diorthotes of Sinaiticus apparently staunchly rejected Mark 16:9-20:  not only did he stretch the text of Mark 16:2-8, which prevented any future readers from interpreting a blank column as memorial-space, but he practically turned his arabesque-design following Mark 16:8 – a design which was usually much less ornate – into a fence, emphatically spread across the column, before the closing-title.  (I recommend using the zoom-feature at the Codex Sinaiticus website to see this feature in detail.)  

            The diorthotes’ embellished arabesque was noticed in the 1800’s by several researchers, including John Gwynn and George Salmon.  The arabesque-designs that the diorthotes drew at the end of Tobit, at the end of Judith, and at the end of First Thessalonians (where he had made another cancel-sheet) are much simpler than the one that follows Mark 16:8.  Salmon drew the conclusion that “The scribe who recopied the leaf betrays that he had his mind full of the thought that the Gospel must be made to end with efobounto gar, and took pains that no one should add more.”

George Salmon (1819-1904) -
New Testament scholar,
mathematician, and chess player.

            In 1883, John Gwynn wrote, “As regards the omission of the verses of S. Mk. xvi. 9-20, it is not correct to assert that Cod. À betrays no sign of consciousness of their existence.  For the last line of ver. 8, containing only the letters TOGAR, has the rest of the space (more than half the width of the column) filled up with a minute and elaborate “arabesque” executed with the pen in ink and vermilion, nothing like which occurs anywhere else in the whole MS. (O.T. or N.T.).”       

             No other reason comes to mind to explain why the diorthotes enlarged and embellished his arabesque-design here, and only here.  Salmon’s deduction appears to be correct:  the mind of the diorthotes was full of the thought that Mark should end at the end of 16:8.  This implies that the diorthotes was aware of at least one other way in which the Gospel of Mark concluded. 

            Which ending did the diorthotes reject:  verses 9-20, or the Shorter Ending, or both?  When we consider that Codex Sinaiticus was almost certainly produced at Caesarea, the answer is clear:  the diorthotes was aware of, and rejected, verses 9-20. 

            Now let’s pause and consider something that was written by Eusebius, who was bishop of Caesarea in the early 300’s.  In his composition Ad Marinum, Eusebius addressed a question:  “How do you harmonize Matthew’s statement that Jesus’ resurrection was “late on the Sabbath” with Mark’s statement that it occurred “early in the morning on the first day of the week”? 

            In the course of his answer, Eusebius mentioned that there were two ways to resolve the perceived discrepancy:  one person might say that the passage in Mark (beginning at 16:9) is not in every manuscript, or is not in the accurate manuscripts, or is hardly found in any of them, or is present in some copies but not in all of them, and is therefore superfluous, especially considering that it might seem to contradict the other accounts.  But – Eusebius continued – someone else, reluctant to dismiss anything he finds written in the Gospels, may accept both accounts instead of picking and choosing between them.  Granting this premise, the way to resolve the perceived difficulty is to simply read the phrase in Mark with a comma:  as “Having risen, early in the morning on the first day of the week He appeared to Mary Magdalene.”  This is in agreement with what John says.  The meaning is not that Christ’s resurrection was “early in the morning,” but that this is the time when He appeared to Mary, afterwards.

            Twice more in Ad Marinum, Eusebius utilizes Mark 16:9.  At one point Eusebius mentions a theory that there were two women named Mary Magdalene, and points out that one of them would be “the one of whom it is stated in Mark, in some copies, that he had cast seven demons out of her.”   In the course of answering another question, Eusebius again mentions the theory that there were two Mary Magdalenes, and mentions that the Mary Magdalene mentioned by John would be the same person from whom, according to Mark, he had cast out seven demons.  In this third utilization of Mark 16:9, Eusebius did not bother to mention anything about manuscripts.  

            While what Eusebius says in Ad Marinum throws a hot informative light upon the various wax commentaries which misrepresent Eusebius’ statements about the ending of Mark, his comments are instructive for the question at hand because of what he does not say.  Eusebius displays no awareness whatsoever of the existence of the Shorter Ending. 

            If we take the evidence that Codex Sinaiticus was produced at Caesarea c. 350 (perhaps under the supervision of Acacius) alongside the evidence that the Shorter Ending was not known at Caesarea in the early 300’s, then we may conclude that the ending of Mark 16 rejected by the diorthotes of Codex Sinaiticus was verses 9-20. 

            This would be consistent with what may be deduced from a comparison of the treatment given to Mark 16:9-20 in Ad Marinum and in the Eusebian Canons.  When Eusebius wrote Ad Marinum, he was comfortable with the inclusion of the passage and went through two verbose paragraphs to explain to Marinus how Mark 16:9 should be read and how the opening sentence should be pronounced.  By the time he developed the Eusebian Canons and Sections, though, Eusebius had decided not to include the passage.  It would not be surprising if Acacius, bishop of Caesarea from 339 to 365, inherited the latter view and enforced it when he oversaw the production of new parchment manuscripts, including Codex Sinaiticus, based on old papyrus copies which were wearing out.  (Jerome, in Lives of Illustrious Men – see chapters 98 and 113 – and in Epistle 141, Ad Marcellam), mentions that Acacius and his successor Euzious engaged in this enterprise.  Jerome did not specify that Acacius and Euzois preserved the texts of exemplars of books of the Bible, but it seems highly probable, and would explain the use of a Western copy as a secondary exemplar in John 1:1-7:38 of Codex Sinaiticus – and not just any Western copy, but one with some affinities to the text used by the Gnostic heretic Heracleon, which had been cited by Origen in his response against Heracleon.)       

            The thing to see here, regarding the ending of Mark, is that when we take a close look at the two Greek manuscripts in which the text of Mark clearly stops at 16:8, with nothing afterwards except the closing-title, one of them (Vaticanus) expresses the copyist’s awareness of the absent 12 verses by the addition of memorial-space, and in the other one (Sinaiticus), the last chapter of Mark is written on replacement-pages by a copyist who probably indicates his own awareness of, and rejection of, the absent 12 verses via his script-expansion (avoiding a blank column) and arabesque-enhancement.  

           These extra details should be kept in mind when reading Bible-footnotes about Mark 16:9-20 which frame the manuscript-evidence in vague terms without mentioning the patristic evidence.