Mark 16:9-20 - Grace To You vs. The Evidence

 

            Watch the new video about the false claims that Grace To You has been spreading about Mark 16:9-20 for the past ten years on YouTube.            

It has been almost ten years since Dr. John MacArthur preached a sermon titled “The Fitting End to Mark’s Gospel,” in which he called Mark 16:9-20 a “bad ending.”  Since then, the ministry of Grace to You has promoted his claims over and over.

            But many of his claims are false.  I’m not challenging his doctrines here; I mean that  he says many things in that sermon that are flat-out untrue.  He says things that are fictitious.  In the next ten minutes, I will focus on just some of them.

(1)  John MacArthur says, “I would say there is massive evidence that the Holy Spirit not only inspired the Scripture but preserved it in its purity through all history.”   He also says, “There are twenty-five thousand ancient manuscripts of the New Testament.  Such an abundance preserved by the Holy Spirit through faithful men in the church makes it possible to reconstruct the original books with virtually complete accuracy.”

           There are 1,653 Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark.  Almost all of them – over 99% – include the 12 verses that MacArthur calls a “bad ending.”  There are just three Greek manuscripts in which the text of Mark ends at Mark 16:8.

            If “massive evidence” shows that the text of Scripture has been preserved in its purity through all history, then massive evidence also refutes MacArthur’s idea that Mark 16:9-20 should be rejected.  

            To put it another way:  if “massive evidence” – say, 99% of the Greek manuscripts,  99% of the Syriac manuscripts, 99% of the Latin manuscripts, and 100% of the Ethiopic manuscripts – is what shows us the text that the Holy Spirit has preserved for the church to use, then Mark 16:9-20 is part of that divinely-approved text.  But if, instead, we should rely on 1% of the Greek manuscripts, 1% of the Syriac manuscripts, 1% of the Greek manuscripts, and none of the Ethiopic manuscripts. what happens to MacArthur’s claim about “massive evidence”?  It disintegrates.  It dissolves into dust.

 

(2)  John MacArthur claims that after the Council of Nicea in 325, as Christianity became established as the religion of the Roman Empire, persecution ended, and starting then you have the proliferation of manuscripts.  “They all survived,” he said, “because no one is banning them or destroying them.”

            That claim is downright silly.  Even after Roman persecutions stopped, humidity still worked.  Outside the exceptionally dry climate of Egypt, papyrus manuscripts experienced natural decay.  Eusebius of Caesarea claimed that Emperor Constantine instructed him to make 50 manuscripts for churches in Constantinople.  Do we have 50 Greek manuscripts from the 300s?  No we do not.  The claim that “they all survived” is ridiculous.

 

(3) MacArthur demonstrated his ignorance of New Testament manuscripts again when he identified Codex Sinaiticus as “The earliest and most important of the Biblical texts that have been discovered.”  But Sinaiticus is not the earliest New Testament text; other substantial manuscripts, such as Papyrus 45, and Papyrus 46, are earlier. 

 

(4) As part of the basis for his rejection of Mark 16:9-20, MacArthur appeals to “Eight thousand copies of Jerome’s Vulgate.”  The thing is, in Jerome’s Vulgate, Mark 16:9-20 is included.  MacArthur also appealed to “Three hundred and fifty-plus copies of the Syriac Bible.”  But in the standard Syriac text, Mark 16:9-20 is included. 

 

(5)  MacArthur then says,  “When you compare all of these manuscripts, they’re all saying exactly the same thing.”

            But that is not true.  The text in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus is different from the text of the Vulgate, and it is different from the text of the Peshitta – and one difference is that the Syriac Peshitta and the Latin Vulgate include Mark 16:9-20.  When you compare the vast majority of the Greek, Latin, and Syriac manuscripts, they say the opposite of what MacArthur seems to think they say!

            If we’re going to say, “Let’s accept the text that is supported by all these Greek and  Latin and Syriac manuscripts,” we should be accepting Mark 16:9-20.    

 

(6)  John MacArthur tries to appeal to patristic quotations, claiming that “you can virtually put the entire New Testament together from the quotes of the fathers and it matches perfectly all other manuscript sources.”

      
      That claim is fiction.  You can easily demonstrate that it is fiction by picking up a textual apparatus and looking through the list of patristic writers who are listed as support for different rival readings.    

            But MacArthur doesn’t let the obviously false nature of his claim slow him down.  He keeps going:  he says, “There are over 19 thousand quotations of just the Gospels in their writings, and they read the Gospel text the very same way you read them in your Bible today.”   That is another fictitious claim.  MacArthur seems unaware that what he calls a “bad ending” is quoted far and wide by patristic writers from the days of the Roman Empire.

     

(7)  MacArthur continues to spread falsehoods when he compares the history of the transmission of the New Testament with the transmission of Homer’s Iliad.   He claims that “The oldest manuscript of the Iliad that we have is in the thirteenth century A.D.”  That is false.  There are dozens of fragments of the Iliad from way before the thirteenth century A.D.  Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 560, from the 200s, is just one example.  Are the personnel at Grace To You aware that John MacArthur is making these false claims?  Then why has  Grace To You been spreading them for the past 10 years?  Do they just not care?  It’s been ten years.  So much for the pretense that Grace To You believes that truth matters.    

 

(8)  John MacArthur says we can be confident that our English translations are accurate because “We have so many accurate, consistent manuscripts.”  But he’s not relying on many Greek manuscripts in this case; he is relying on three.  One is a medieval commentary-manuscript.  The two early ones are the ones that matter, and one of them has a distinct blank space that includes a whole column after Mark 16:8, and in the other one, the last page of Mark is written by a different scribe than the scribe who wrote the surrounding pages. 

            John MacArthur is thus rejecting the testimony of 1,653 Greek manuscripts, including early manuscripts such as Codex A, Codex C, and Codex D,  and he is basically depending on two Greek manuscripts.  And, inasmuch as they disagree with each other at 3,036 places in the Gospels, they can’t both be very “accurate, consistent” copies of the Gospels.     

(9)  MacArthur claims that “Somewhere along the line, they started piling up optional endings.”  But in real life, besides verses 9-20, there was just one other ending after verse 8:  the “Shorter Ending” – and that was in one particular locale:  Egypt.   It is preserved in eight Greek manuscripts, and all eight of them also support the usual 12 verses.   

            Let me say that again:  a total of eight Greek manuscripts have preserved one rival ending, along with the normal ending.  There is also one manuscript, Codex W, which has extra material between verse 14 and verse 15, but that is an interpolation, not an ending.  The claim that endings “started piling up” is rubbish and nonsense!  Anyone who tells you that there were “several endings” or “various endings” – I’m looking at you, Philip Comfort; I’m looking at you, New Living Translation footnote-maker – is deceiving his readers.     

 

(10)  MacArthur makes his false fantasy even falser, if it were possible, when he says that “Justin Martyr and Tatian show knowledge of other endings,” and that “Even Irenaeus shows knowledge of other endings starting to float around.”

         What Justin Martyr and Tatian and Irenaeus show is that they used a text of Mark that included Mark 16:9-20.  There is no evidence in their writings of any other ending.  MacArthur is just making things up!  Instead, he should state that  Irenaeus' quotation from Mark 16:19 in Against Heresies, Book 3, chapter 10, around the year 180, (long before Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were made in the 300s), it means that Irenaeus’ manuscripts of Mark 16 included verses 9-20.

 

             In conclusion:  I call on John MacArthur to retract the false claims that he has been spreading for the past ten years.  And I call on Grace To You to stop circulating the materials that contain and promote those false claims. 

             Until this is done, I say to everyone who regards John MacArthur as a reliable source of information about New Testament manuscripts, and to everyone who thinks of Grace To You as a responsible organization that would never promote false claims:  you have my pity.

Video Lecture: Mark 16:9-20, the Shorter Ending, and Internal Evidence

 

Lecture 17

Lecture 17 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism is online at YouTube!  In this lecture, slightly more than 25 minutes long, I focus on the internal evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20 - with a lengthy detour about the Shorter Ending.
  Here's an excerpt (from the part about the Shorter Ending):
     The textual variant known as the “Shorter Ending” goes like this:

            “Everything that had been told to them, they related to Peter and those with him.  And after this, Jesus Himself appeared to them and sent forth, through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.  Amen.”

             This is found between verse 8 and verse 9 in six Greek manuscripts:  Codex L, Codex Ψ, 083 – this is the same manuscript as 0112 – 099, and 579.  All six Greek manuscripts that attest to the Shorter Ending also support the inclusion of verses 9-20, although a few of them are damaged.  

                                            

Some of the Greek manuscripts that feature the Shorter Ending between verse 8 and verse 9 also feature notes that introduce each ending.  Codex L has a note that says “In some, there is also this” before the Shorter Ending, and before verses 9-20, Codex L has a note that says, “There is also this, appearing after ephobounto gar.”

This note echoes a situation in which the scribes were aware of some copies in which the Shorter Ending was present after verse 8, and also aware of some copies in which verses 9-20 were present after verse 8.

In Codex Psi, there is no such note between verse 8 and the Shorter Ending, but after the Shorter Ending, Codex Psi has the same note that is seen in Codex L:  “There is also this, appearing after ephobounto gar.”  

083 is a damaged fragment.  After Mark 16:8, 083 has the closing-title of Mark at the end of a column.  In the next column, the Shorter Ending appears, and then before the beginning of verse 9, 083 has the note:  “There is also this, appearing after ephobounto gar.”  It is possible that 083 also had the same note that is found in Codex L before the Shorter Ending, but that part of the page is not extant, so it can only be said that there appears to have been enough room on the page for that note.

083 thus testifies to a situation in which copyists were aware of copies of Mark in which the text of Mark ended at verse 8, copies in which the text ended with the Shorter Ending, and copies in which the text ended with verses 9-20.

099 is another heavily damaged fragment, from the White Monastery in Egypt, assigned to the 600s or 700s.  After Mark 16:8, 099 had a note that is no longer legible.  This is followed by the Shorter Ending.  Then the text of most of 16:8 is rewritten, beginning at the words eichen gar and continuing to the end of the verse.  Verse 8 is followed immediately by verse 9, and verse 9 is followed by the beginning of verse 10, at which point we reach the end of the fragment. 

Greek-Sahidic Lect 1602
(Image from the digital holdings of the 
Albert Ludwig University of Frieburg)

Now we come to the Greek-Sahidic lectionary 1602.  In this witness, assigned to the 700s, the text of Mark 16:8 comes to a close at the end of a page.  At the beginning of the next page, a note introduces the Shorter Ending.  It says, “In other copies this is not written.” 

Then the Shorter Ending appears.  After the Shorter Ending, there is another note – the note also found in Codex L, Codex Psi, and 083:  estin de kai tauta meta feromena.”  Then, like 099, it repeats the second half of verse 8, beginning with the words eichen gar, and verse 8 is followed by verses 9-20.

So:  Codex L, Codex Psi, 083, and the Greek-Sahidic Lectionary 1602 share the same note after the Shorter Ending:  they all introduce verses 9-20 with the note that says, “Estin de kai tauta meta feromena.”

099 and Greek-Sahidic Lectionary 1602 both repeat the same part of verse 8 before verse 9.

Thus, four of the six Greek witnesses to the Shorter Ending are all connected to the same locale, namely, a location in Egypt. 

Greek-Sahidic Lect 1602
(Image from the digital holdings of the 
Albert Ludwig University of Frieburg)

This leaves two minuscules, 579 and 274, as the only remaining Greek witnesses to the Shorter Ending.  The text of Mark in 579 has Alexandrian characteristics, and it is known for featuring a rare method of dividing the Gospels-text into segments that is shared by Codex Vaticanus.  Even though 579 is from the 1200s, its testimony, in which the Shorter Ending follows verse 8, and the Shorter Ending is followed immediately on the next page by verses 9-20, does not take us away from the influence of a very narrow transmission-line. 

   Minuscule 274 has Mark 16:9-20 in its main text.  Mark 16:9 begins on the same line where verse 8 ends.  The Shorter Ending is featured at the bottom of the page, like a footnote, with a column of five asterisks beside it.  An asterisk beside the end of verse 8 conveys that the Shorter Ending was seen in the text at that point. 

Thus, the Greek evidence points to Egypt as the locale where the Shorter Ending originated, and nothing points anywhere else. 

Versional evidence interlocks with this very well.  The Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis, the only manuscript in which only the Shorter Ending is included after verse 8, almost certainly was produced in Egypt, written by a scribe who did not know Latin very well.    

The Bohairic-Arabic MS Huntington 17, made in 1174, has verses 9-20 in the text, and the Shorter Ending is in the margin.

The Ethiopic version was closely considered by Bruce Metzger in 1980, in the course of a detailed essay in which he retracted the claim that some Ethiopic manuscripts of Mark do not have Mark 16:9-20.  Metzger observed that out of 194 Ethiopic manuscripts consulted by himself and another researcher, 131 included both the Shorter Ending and verses 9-20. 

Some copies of the Harklean Syriac version, made in the early 600s on the basis of manuscripts in Egypt, also feature the Shorter Ending as a supplemental reading; verses 9-20 are in the Syriac text.

            According to E. C. Colwell, even a medieval Armenian manuscript, Etchmiadzin 303, which has verses 9-20 at the end of Mark, managed to include the Shorter Ending as the final verse of the Gospel of Luke. 

            The Shorter Ending clearly had wide distribution in versional transmission-lines.  But those lines all echo, in one way or another, a form of the text that began in Egypt, when verses 9-20 were circulating everywhere else.           

Before moving on to the internal evidence, it should be observed that it is misleading to convey that there were “multiple endings” of the Gospel of Mark, as if four or five different endings were written to continue the narrative after verse 8.

Aside from the abrupt non-ending at verse 8, there are two independent endings of the Gospel of Mark:  one is the Shorter Ending, attested in six [2022 update:  eight] Greek manuscripts, all of which also support verses 9-20.  The other one is verses 9-20.     

The Freer Logion, which was mentioned in the previous lecture, is not a different ending.  It is a textual variant.  Its existence depends upon the previous existence of verses 9-20.  It does not turn into a different ending any more than a whale turns into an eagle when a barnacle attaches itself.

   Likewise, the notes in some members of the family-1 cluster of manuscripts do not turn verses 9-20 into something that is not verses 9-20.  

   And, the inclusion of both the Shorter Ending and verses 9-20 is also not a different ending; it is the combination of the two endings that circulated side-by-side in Egypt. 

   And, as far as I can tell, non-annotated Greek manuscripts in which Mark 16:9-20 is accompanied by asterisks or obeli do not really exist.

   So when someone refers to “multiple endings” as a reason to doubt the genuineness of verses 9-20, the first thing to do is to clarify that in terms of independent endings of the Gospel Mark after verse 8, there are exactly two.

P.S. Thanks to Georgi Parpulov and Daniel Buck for help finding those page-views of Gr.-Sah. Lect 1602!

Minuscule 490: Remarkably Unremarkable!

            One of the most ordinary Gospels-manuscripts you will ever see is minuscule 490, housed at the British Library (catalogued as B.L. Additional MS 7141 – formerly listed as minuscule 574).  It has some decoration – all in red pigment – and headpieces before the beginning of each Gospel, but there are no Evangelists’ portraits; no multi-color initials – nothing particularly eye-catching.  Let’s take a closer look, though, to see if there is GA 490 has anything interesting textually.

            Like a lot of other medieval Gospels manuscripts, 490 does not begin immediately with the Gospels’ text:  first there is Eusebius’ letter Ad Carpianus, explaining how to make use of the Eusebian Canon-tables and Sections.  (in 490, the letter is framed within a quatrefoil frame, on four pages, sort of like the format in GA 114.  The quatrefoil is barbed on the first and last page of Ad Carpianus (written in red).  On the second and third pages of Ad Carpianus, the quatrefoil is accompanied by drawings of four birds.  The next eight pages contain the Canon-tables themselves.  Next comes the list of 68 kephalaia (chapters) for the Gospel of Matthew. 

 

The first headpiece in 490.

On fol. 8, the text of Matthew begins, written in two columns (27 lines per column), below a leafy headpiece that fills about half the page.  There is a sketch of an antelope in the margin alongside the headpiece.  Except for the initial “B,” which is drawn in red, resembling a stylized vine, the changed when the Scriptural text begins; everything up to this point is red; the text after this point (except initials) is brown.  (Section-numbers and Canon-numbers, titloi, chapter-numbers, and the lectionary apparatus (dividing the text into lections for the Synaxarion) are in the margins in red.) 

On 10r, Matthew 2:11 reads εἰδον (“saw”), like most manuscripts, disagreeing with Stephanus’ ευρον (“found”). 

On 10v we see that sacred names are not contracted with 100% consistency; in Matthew 3:2, ουρανων (“of heaven”) is spelled in full.  On 58r, κυριε (“Lord”) is written in full in Matthew 27:63, where the Pharisees address Pilate.

On 11r, “and fire” is not included at the end of Matthew 3:11.  

On 14r, an incipit-phrase, ειπεν ο Κς (“The Lord said”) is written in the margin alongside the beginning of Matthew 5:31.

On 15v, Matthew 6:13 includes the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer.

On 21v, a small cross has been drawn in the margin alongside Matthew 9:36.
On 26r and 26v, the copyist worked around a hole in the parchment.  (Similarly, the copyist avoided writing on a small tear in the parchment later in Matthew 12:45 and 12:50, and on folio 36.)  More small holes and tears appear further along in the manuscript.

On 40v, Matthew 20:16b is included in the text, at the end of a lection.

On 47v, alongside Matthew 24:1, the small cross (with dots, arranged ⁜) appears again.

On 53v, the lectionary apparatus (written in this instance in different ink) includes, after Matthew 27:39, instructions for the lector to jump to Luke.

On 57r, Matthew 27:35b is not in the text.

On 59v, the text of Matthew ends in the first column; the closing title is written in red.

After Mark’s kephalaia-list, the text of Mark begins on 61r; a red headpiece fills part of the first column.  Mark 1:2 reads “in the prophets.”
On 61v, Mark 1:16 reads αμφίβληστρα 

On 64r, Mark 2:17 ends with “to repentance,” at the end of a lection.

On 73v, Mark 7:16 is in the text, at the end of a lection.

On 78r, Mark 9:29 includes “and fasting.”

On 83r, a cross is sketched in the margin alongside Mark 11:27.

On 92r, Mark 15:28 is not included.  On 92v, a note in the lower margin introduces the tenth of the 12 Passion-lections.

On 93v, Mark 16:9 includes ο Ις (“Jesus”) after Αναστας (“Rising”).

The text of Mark ends on 94r; the kephalaia-list for Luke begins in the second column of the page.

The text of Luke begins on 95r. 

On 106r, a cross is sketched in the margin alongside Luke 5:27. 

On 106v, Luke 6:1 includes δευτεροπρώτω.

On 111r, Luke 7:31 does not include “And the Lord said.”

On 116v, Luke 9:23 includes “daily” (καθ’ ἡμέραν)

On 118v, ως καὶ Ἡλίας ἐποίησε (“as Elijah also did”) is included in Luke 9:54, filling exactly one line.  In Luke 9:55-56, the last part of verse 55 and all of verse 56 are present.

On 124r, Luke 11:54 includes ζητουντες and ινα κατηγορήσωσιν αυτου.

On 128r, Luke 13:19 includes μέγα (agreeing with P45 Byz A W Pesh).

On 134r, Luke 17:9 includes ου δοκω.

On 136v, in Luke 18:24, περίλυπον γενόμενον is included.

On 140v, in Luke 20:23, τί με πειράζετε is included.

On 144v, in Luke 22:31, ειπε δε ο Κς is included.

On 145r, Luke 22:43-44 is included.  A lectionary note in 22:45, after μαθητας, in different writing, mentions the jump to Matthew (cf. 53v).

On 147r, Luke 22:17 is included.

On 147v, Luke 23:34b is included.  In the lower margin, there is a note to introduce the eighth Passion-lection (Lk. 23:32-49).  

On 148v, in Luke 24:1, καί τινες συν αυταις is included.

On 150r, before Luke 24:36, ⁜ appears in the text.

The text of Luke concludes on 151r in the first column.  The chapter-list for John, in red, occupies the second column.

The text of John begins on 152r.  A three-sided frame surrounds the book’s title in the headpiece in the first column.

On 153r, John 1:29 has ὁ Ιωάννης after βλεπει.

On 158v, John 4:42 includes ὁ Χς.

On 159v, John 5:3b-4 is included.  Verse 4 begins αγγελος γαρ κυ, agreeing with A K L Δ.

On 162v, in John 6:22, εκεινο εις ὁ ενέβησαν οι μαθηται αυτου is included.

On 166v, in John 7:46, ως ουτος ὁ ανος is included, occupying a single line.

On 167r, John 8:12 follows 7:52 without interruption on the same line.  The pericope adulterae is completely absent.

On 169r, in John 8:59, διελθων δια μέσου αυτων και παρηγεν ουτως is included.

On 175r, John 12:1 includes ὁ τεθνηκώς.

On 182v, in John 16:16, οτι υπάγω προς τον πρα is included.

On 188v, before John 19:25, ⁜ appears in the text. 

On 192v, the text of John ends in the first column.  In John 21:23, τι πρός σε is included. The line-length slightly decreases, vortex-style, for 12 lines.  There is a simple decoration to indicate the end of the book but there is no closing book-title or subscription. 

            The text of GA 490 is an exceptionally pure – that is, unmixed – Byzantine Text.  It was skillfully written.  (Perhaps it was made “in house” at a monastery; there are no stichoi-notes.)  Except for the non-inclusion of the pericope adulterae, it is very similar to the Gospels-text in the 1982 Hodges-Farstad Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text.  Movable-nu is very often dropped.  At random, I picked page 270 of the Hodges-Farstad text (containing Luke 21:7-18) to compare to 490.  In Luke 21:7-18, I found exactly one difference between Hodges-Farstad and 490:  in verse 7, 490 has μέλλει instead of μέλλη. 
            Incipit-phrases are not present in the main lectionary apparatus, but some have been added in secondary, scrawled margin-notes for the 12 Passion-time lections.

            Because 490’s text is so similar to the standard Byzantine text, the most unusual thing about it may be the titles of the four Gospels:  the headpiece to Matthew introduces all four Gospels in its central quatrefoil:  ΣΥΝ ΘΩ ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΤΩΝ ΤΕΣΣΑΡΩΝ  ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΣΤΩΝ.  Four circles, within the four corners of the headpiece, contain four segments of the title for the Gospel of Matthew:  ΕΚ ΤΟΥ + ΚΑΤΑ + ΜΑΤ + ΘΑΙΟΝ.

            Mark’s title:  ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΕΚ ΤΟΥ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ

            Luke’s title:  ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΕΚ ΤΟΥ ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ

Claudius James Rich

            John’s title:  ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΕΚ ΤΟΥ ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΝΗΝ ΑΓΙΟΥ

           

            It is unusual to see ΕΚ ΤΟΥ in the titles in a continuous-text manuscript.  It is not unique – Codex L also has “ΕΚ ΤΟΥ” in its title for Matthew, and 1241’s title for Matthew includes ΣΥΝ ΘΕΩ.  Chief members of family 13 (and 1071) also have εκ του in at least one Gospel-title.  It is not easy to intuit the reason for these unusual titles.  Perhaps the person who added the titles in the headpieces was used to putting titles in lectionaries.

           

            Another thing about 490 worth noticing is that it came to light back in the 1820’s as part of the collection of antiquities left by Claudius James Rich (1787-1821), a notable British scholar who traveled widely in the Middle East.

Codex Regius (019) - The Manuscript-King of France

The first page of Mark
in Codex L.

          Many of the manuscripts currently in the National Library of France – the Bibliothèque nationale de France – were once part of the royal library.  It is for this reason that Codex L (019), a Gospels-manuscript from the 700’s, is known as Codex Regius – the royal book.  A strong case can be made that Codex L is the most important New Testament manuscript in France.  Its text and its history are both highly interesting.

          Although it is sometimes claimed that the scholars of the 1500’s only had access to relatively young and unimportant manuscripts, that is not the case.  Codex L is a very important manuscript of venerable age, and its readings were cited by Stephanus in the notes of his 1551 Greek New Testament; it was identified as witness ηʹ, that is, #8.  This manuscript has long been recognized by the compilers of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece as a member of the elite group of “Consistently cited witnesses of the first order” for all four Gospels – one of only eight uncial manuscripts that share this status.  Its uncial text is written in two columns per page, with many initials decorated in red, green, and blue.    

          In the Gospel of Matthew, L’s text initially looks like nothing very unusual; for the first 17 chapters, it is essentially Byzantine.  Around Matthew 17:26, however, its character abruptly becomes Alexandrian, as if, somewhere in its ancestry, a copyist began to conform an Alexandrian manuscript to the text of a Byzantine exemplar, but gave up at this point.  This makes its agreements with the Byzantine Text in the remaining portion of the text (agreements such as the inclusion of Luke 22:43-44 and John 5:4) all the more weighty.  (For more information see Robert Waltz’s description of the codex at the newly updated Encyclopedia of New Testament Textual Criticism.)  

The Alexandrian
addition in Matthew 27:49.

          Codex L features a distinctly Alexandrian reading at Matthew 27:49 that states that Jesus was pierced with a spear before He died.  This reading, also supported by Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, has been consistently ignored by the annotators of most modern English translations, even though it has far more Greek support than the famous abrupt ending of Mark.  In the ESV and CSB, there is no mention of this variant.  It is no wonder that so many evangelicals consider it is a good idea to prefer the Alexandrian Text over the Byzantine Text, and regard Vaticanus and Sinaiticus as superior manuscripts, when they are kept in the dark about errant passages such as this one embedded in the Alexandrian Text.             Codex L also agrees with À and B by lacking the story about the adulteress after John 7:52.  However, there is more to the picture:  after John 7:52, the copyists of Codex L left “memorial space” in the manuscript, signifying that although their master-copy did not contain the absent passage, the copyists recollected its presence in another manuscript, or in other manuscripts.  (Someone later drew a doodle in part of the blank space.)
          Codex L represents two opposite testimonies regarding John 7:53-8:11 – on one hand, its main exemplar apparently did not have these verses; on the other hand, the copyists clearly knew the passage and wanted future readers to know that they knew.  (Alas; we cannot know whether or not Codex L contained the pericope adulterae at the end of the Gospel of John.  Codex L’s last extant page ends in John 21:15.)

The blank space in Codex L
between John 7:52 and 8:12.

          Codex L’s most famous feature involves the ending of the Gospel of Mark.  Codex L’s scribes inserted a row of “>” marks below the first column of a page, where Mark 16:8 ends (with the letters το γαρ on the final line, which happens to be a feature shared by À and B).  At the top of the next column, a framed note says, Φερετε που και ταυτα, that is, accounting for an itacism in the first word, “Some have this too.”  This is followed by the paragraph known as the Shorter Ending.  Here is the exact text of the Shorter Ending as it appears in Codex L, line by line:

Πάντα δὲ τα παρη / γγελμενα τοῖς / περι τον πετρον / συντομως ἐξη /
γγιλαν – Μετα / δὲ ταῦτα καὶ αὐτος / ο ΙΣ, ἀπο ἀνατολης / και ἀχρι δυσεως / ἐξαπεστιλεν δι / ἀυτων το ϊερον / καὶ ἀφθαρτον κη / ρυγμα – της αἰω / 

νιου σωτηριας – .

After Mark 16:8, the Shorter
Ending appears,
preceded and followed
by notes, followed by 16:9.

          Unlike the text of the Shorter Ending found in Codex Ψ (which includes the word εφανε – appeared –  after Jesus’ name), the fragment 099, some Sahidic manuscripts, Bohairic MS Huntington 18, and the Ethiopic version (which support εφανε αυτοις – appeared to them), Codex L does not specify that Jesus appeared to the apostles.  In this respect, although Codex L, as a manuscript, is centuries younger than the fifth-century Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis (which has the reading adparuit, i.e., apparuit – appeared), the text of the Shorter Ending in Codex L appears to echo an earlier stage of the Shorter Ending’s existence.

          After the Shorter Ending, a framed note in Codex L says, εστην δε και ταυτα φερομενα μετα το εφοβουντο γαρ – that is, “There is also this, appearing after efobounto gar.”  After this, the first part of verse 9 begins, filling the last two lines of the column; the first line is written in red, with a large initial “A” colored with red and green.  The next two pages contain Mark 16:9b-20, with distinctive variants which confirm what the notes already show:  not only does Codex L display a distinctly Egyptian treatment of the ending of Mark, but the text of verses 9-20 here is in a distinctly Egyptian form, with readings that set it apart from the other text-types. 

         Here are some non-Byzantine readings in Mark 16:9-20 in Codex L:

9 – L reads παρ’; Byz reads ἀφ’.

11 – L reads Εκεινοι; Byz reads Κἀκεινοι.

14 – L omits αυτοις (probably a simple parableptic error); Byz reads αυτοις.

16 – L adds ο before βαπτισθεις; Byz does not.

17 – L reads ακολουθησει ταυτα; Byz reads ταυτα παρακολουθήσει.

17 – L omits καιναις; Byz reads καιναις.

18 – L reads και εν ταις χερσιν; Byz does not.

18 – L reads ἀρωστους; Byz reads ἀρρώστους.

19 – L omits ουν; Byz reads ουν.

19 – L reads ΚΣ ΙΣ (i.e., Lord Jesus); Byz reads Κύριος (i.e., Lord).

Mark 16:9b-17a

          Inasmuch as these readings were not derived from the Byzantine text of verses 9-20, the implication is that they attest to a local form of the text in Egypt.  And inasmuch as the text of the Shorter Ending in Codex L precedes the form attested by Codex Bobiensis (from the early 400’s), we are probably looking at an Egyptian text from the late 300’s on any given page of Mark, Luke, and John in Codex L.  Although, as a manuscript, Codex L is a few centuries later than Codex Sinaiticus, in terms of their texts, Codex L’s text, in general, is only a few decades later than Codex Sinaiticus, where Codex L is free of scribal errors that originated with its copyist.  Codex Regius is truly worthy of royal status among Greek manuscripts of the Gospels.

          Here are some additional details about this manuscript which may come in handy for those who wish to study it further.  (Digital page-views can be accessed at the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, and the images of Codex L there have all been conveniently indexed.  A PDF of the manuscript can also be downloaded from the BnF website.)  It is missing a few pages, which contained Matthew 4:22-5:14, Matthew 28:17-20, Mark 10:16-20, Mark 15:2-20, and John 21:15b-25.  Also, some of its pages are bound out of order, so when you look through the digital images, the pages containing John 5:29b-7:34a appear in Matthew, after Matthew 14:8a (and before Matthew 18:10b), and the pages containing Matthew 14:8b-18:10a appear in John, after John 5:29a (and before John 7:34b). 

Mark 16:17b-20,
the subscription,
and the beginning of
the chapter-list
for Luke.

          Codex L has some interesting meta-textual (or para-textual) features, too.  Chapter-lists precede Matthew, Mark (incomplete, due to the loss of a leaf), and Luke, but not John.  The numerals for the Eusebian Sections and Canons appear in the margins, but they contain lots of mistakes, as if the person who added them was not quite sure what he was doing.  The manuscript also contains αρχη (start) and τελος (stop) symbols to signify the beginnings and ends of lections.  Red crosses accompany some lections that were particularly important.  A foot-index (similar, in concept, to individual lines of a line-by-line canon-table) comes and goes.  And, in the upper margins, most of the chapter-titles have survived, written in red.  The scribe frequently added embellishments to capital letters at the beginnings of sections, especially alpha, epsilon, kappa, omicron, and tau.  In a few places, the middle bar of the large initial epsilon is transformed into a forearm; the large initial at the beginning of Luke is a good example of this.

          Finally, one more feature of Codex L may be mentioned:  its division of the text into sentences.  Although Codex L is by no means unique, the correspondence between its sentence-divisions, and our modern verse-divisions, is rather impressive.  On page after page, they square up remarkably well.  It is tempting to think that when Stephanus established our modern-day verse-divisions in the 1550's, it was after a careful consultation of the sentence-divisions in this manuscript at Paris.