Fact-checking Wallace: GA 264 and 1221

            In the previous post, we saw that although Daniel Wallace has claimed (in Perspectives on the Ending of Mark:  4 Views, published by Broadman & Holman) that five manuscripts – minuscules 138, 264, 1221, 2346, and 2812 – contain a simple asterisk alongside Mark 16:9-20 to convey scribal doubt about the passage, 138 contains a note – part of the Catena in Marcum – that affirms the legitimacy of the passage, and the asterisk it displays is merely a marker for the unnumbered section of text that begins at verse 9.  We also saw that 138 contains diple-marks – marks intended to convey that the text they accompany are Scripture – alongside Mark 16:9-20.

            Today, let’s take a look at the next two manuscripts in Dr. Wallace’s list of manuscripts which, he claims, contain a simple asterisk next to Mark 16:9-20 to convey scribal doubt:  264 and 1221.  

             Page-views of GA 264 can be accessed at the Gallica website; it is at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and is catalogued as Greek MS #65. 

            Alongside Mark 16:9 (on fol. 127, numbered on the page as 117), there is an asterisk, sure enough.  There is also a rubric at the top of the page (accompanied by a dot-lozenge), stating that the fourth [sic] Gospel-reading for the morning (an alternative way of referring to the Heothina-series) is on the page.  The asterisk appears at the beginning of the lection identified in the rubric. 

            Similarly, when we turn in 264 to the page that contains Mark 11:12, there is a rubric at the top of the page, consisting of the title for the thirty-third chapter of the book – “About the Withered Fig Tree.”  And, in the outer margin of the page next to the beginning of the thirty-third chapter (i.e., Mark 11:12), there is an asterisk.

            Similarly, when we turn in 264 to the page that contains Luke 18:2, there is a rubric at the top of the page, beginning with the title for the sixty-first chapter of the book – “The Unjust Judge.”  And in the outer margin of the page next to the beginning of the sixty-first chapter of the book (i.e., Luke 18:2), there is an asterisk.

            Similarly, when we turn in 264 to the page that contains Luke 19:29, there is a rubric at the top of the page, consisting of the title for the sixty-eighth chapter of the book – “The Colt.”  And in the outer margin of the page next to the beginning of the sixth-eighth chapter of the book (i.e., Luke 19:29), there is an asterisk.

            Similarly, when we turn in 264 to the page that contains Mark 14:12, there is a rubric at the top of the page, beginning with the title for the forty-fifth chapter of the book – “The Passover.”  And in the outer margin of the page next to the beginning of the forty-fifty chapter (i.e., Mark 14:12), there is an asterisk.

            I leave it to my readers to discern whether these asterisks were (a) intended to convey doubt about the genuineness of Mark 16:9, and Mark 11:12, and Mark 14:12, and Luke 18:2, and Luke 19:29, or (b) part of the lectionary apparatus, intended to show the lector the beginning of the section which was mentioned in the rubric at the top of the page.

 Page-view 111
of Minuscule 1221

            What about GA 1221?  This manuscript is in the library at St. Catherine’s Monastery near Mount Sinai, catalogued as Greek manuscript #184.  Its online page-views at the Library of Congress’ website, though black and white, are crisp and clear. 

            Even if only the portion of 1221 that contains the Gospel of Matthew had survived, we could reasonably deduce that when this manuscript was pristine, it contained Mark 16:9-20, because in the upper margin of the last page of Matthew, there is a rubric for the first selection in the Heothina-series of eleven readings about the resurrection – the third of which is Mark 16:9-20.  A manuscript with any part of the series denoted would have the rest as well.  But no deduction is needed, because the beginning of Mark 16:9 is plainly displayed on page-view 111. 

            There is no asterisk accompanying Mark 16:9-20 in GA 1221.  At the top of the page, there is the rubric for the third Heothinon, along with its incipit:  “The third reading about the resurrection – ‘At that time, Jesus rose from the dead early.’”  At the beginning of the lection named in the rubric, we find a dot-lozenge.  In addition, on each side of the dot-lozenge, there is the τελος-symbol signifying the end of the preceding lection, and the αρχη-symbol signifying the lection’s beginning. 

            Other such uses of the dot-lozenge can be found in 1221 at the following places; you can consult the pictures of the pages with these passages by following the embedded links:

                        ● Before Mark 2:13 (the beginning of chapter 6, for which the rubric appears in the lower margin),

Close-up:  a dot-lozenge
separates Mk. 16:8 and 16:9 in 1221,
between "stop" and "start" symbols.

                        ● Halfway through Mark 5:24 (the beginning of chapter 13, for which the rubric appears in the lower margin),

                        ● Halfway through Mark 6:7 (the beginning of chapter 14, for which the rubric appears in the upper margin).  

                        ● In Luke 1:24,

                        ● Before Luke 1:26 (which is especially notable because the τελος-symbol and  αρχη-symbol appear here the same way they appear between Mark 16:8 and 16:9),

                        ● Before Luke 1:57,

                        ● At the beginning of Luke 2:1 (the beginning of chapter 1, for which the rubric appears in the upper margin),

                        ● At the beginning of Luke 2:21,

                        ● Halfway through Luke 2:22,

A dot-lozenge separates
Luke 1:25 and 1:26 in 1221,
between "stop" and "start" symbols. 

                        ● At the beginning of Luke 2:42 (where, again the dot-lozenge is bracketed by a τελος-symbol and  αρχη-symbol – and then appears another, smaller dot-lozenge), and 

                        ● At the beginning of Luke 3:1 (the beginning of chapter 5, for which the rubric appears in the lower margin).

            Obviously, the dot-lozenge in 1221 between Mark 16:8 and 16:9 is not an asterisk, any more than the other dot-lozenges are – and, like the others, it has nothing to do with expressing scribal doubt. 

            Next:  Fact-checking Wallace about GA 2346, 2812, and 137.

Fact-checking Wallace: GA 138

            “Second, the scribe might simply place an asterisk or obelisk in the margin, indicating doubt about these verses.  Such a symbol is found in at least five manuscripts.”  So goes a claim made by Daniel Wallace in his chapter of Perspectives on the Ending of Mark:  4 Views.  Wallace was describing two ways in which “some doubts about the authenticity of the LE” [“LE” meaning Mark 16:9-20, the Longer Ending] are indicated by copyists – the first way being the inclusion of a note.  

            Wallace’s statement runs parallel to a claim popularized by the late Bruce Metzger in his A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament:  “Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that the older Greek copies lack it, and in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document.”

            Metzger’s vagueness is remarkably unhelpful; the members of the jury are left to wonder about how many manuscripts constitute “not a few,” and the little detail about the identity of those “other witnesses” – manuscripts without notes, but with asterisks or obeli – is not provided.

            Dr. Wallace, however, gave specifics:  in a footnote, Wallace listed the five manuscripts to which he referred:  “MSS 138, 264, 1221, 2346, and 2812, listed on 407 in Markusevangelium, ANTF 27.  Parker, Living Text, 127, adds 137 to this list.”

            With the addition of minuscule 137, the list of manuscripts which are claimed to have a simple asterisk accompanying Mark 16:9-20 to express scribal doubt about the passage reaches a total of six.  Page-views of all six of these manuscripts are online.  Let’s have a look!  Today we will consider the first manuscript in the list, GA 138.

Use this embedded link
to see the page-view with
Mark 16:9 in GA 138
at the Vatican Library.

            GA 138 is at the Vatican Library, catalogued as Vat. Gr. 757.  It is a commentary-manuscript in which the text is written segment by segment, with the commentary interspersed between segments of text.  The text of chapter 16 of Mark begins on page-view 156, where 16:1-5 is presented as a segment of text (accompanied in the margin by diple-marks), identified in the margin as section #231.  (These sections are the Eusebian Sections, used in the Eusebian Canons.)  It is followed by commentary.  On the next page, after the rest of the commentary on 16:1-5, the text of 16:6-8 is presented (accompanied in the margin by diple-marks, and identified as sections #232 and #233).  This, too, is followed by commentary (some of which is based on Eusebius’ comments in Ad Marinum). 

            On the next page, as the commentary continues, the left margin of the writing is disrupted, but no text is lost; it appears that the copyist was avoiding a flaw in the parchment.  On the ninth line, the text of Mark 16:9 begins.  In the outer left margin there is a single asterisk, and diple-marks accompany the text of Mark 16:9-14. 

            After 16:14, the commentary continues, and when one examines the last five lines of the commentary on Mark 16:9-14, one finds the portion of the Catena in Marcum (a commentary, much of which consists of a compilation of extracts from various authors such as Origen and Chrysostom, attributed to Victor of Antioch) in which the commentator responds to a claim which was mentioned (but not approved) by Eusebius of Caesarea in his composition Ad Marinum, to the effect that verses 9-20 are not often encountered.  The commentator’s note begins in Greek with the words Παρὰ πλείστοις ἀντιγράφοις οὐ κεῖται: 

“In many copies, the rest does not appear there in the Gospel of Mark, for certain persons have thought it to be spurious.” [Or perhaps this last phrase means, “and because of this, certain persons have thought it to be spurious.”] “But we, from accurate copies – having found it in many of them, corresponding to the Palestinian Gospel of Mark  – have, as truthfulness requires, also included the account of the resurrection of the Master, after ‘for they were afraid.’”  

            (If one were to take in hand John Burgon’s 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated, and turn to Appendix E, one would find this entire note, in Greek, with an apparatus indicating textual variations extracted from an assortment of manuscripts that contain the Catena in Marcum.)               

            After that, the text of Mark 16:15-18a (θανάσιμόν τι) completes the rest of the page.  On the next page, Mark 16:18b-20 is written (with diple-marks in the margin), followed by commentary.

            Plainly, GA 138 does not have “a simple asterisk.”  GA 138 contains the Catena in Marcum, including the note that affirms the presence of Mark 16:9-20 in many copies and in a Palestinian manuscript of Mark that was considered particularly accurate.  The asterisk in the margin alongside the beginning of Mark 16:9-20 is a side-effect of the non-inclusion of the passage in the Eusebian Canons; it does not express scribal doubt; it denotes the beginning of the section for which there was no Section-number.           

            Next:  Fact-checking Wallace about GA 264 and 1221.

____________

Quotations from Perspectives on the Ending of Mark: 4 Views © 2008 Broadman & Holman Publishers, All rights reserved.

A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament is © 1971 by the United Bible Societies.  All rights reserved.

Student's Toolkit: When Your Professor Rejects Mark 16:9-20

          How should preachers handle Mark 16:9-20?  Since I regard this passage as sacred Scripture, I encourage them to preach from it.  I also recommend that they point out to their congregations that most English versions have headings or footnotes which state that some manuscripts (or, the two earliest manuscripts) of Mark do not contain these 12 verses.  Then, point out that footnotes have to be concise, and cannot be expected to always adequately describe the evidence.  Sometimes they even contain mistakes, like the notes about Mark 16:9-20 in the NET, the CSB, the ESV (until 2010), and the hyper-paraphrase known as The Message.

Hey NavPress:  are you ever going to
correct this false footnote?

  

          The impression given by vague footnotes changes drastically when the evidence is described in precise terms:  two Greek manuscripts from the 300’s, and one medieval commentary-manuscript, conclude the text of chapter 16 at the end of verse 8; meanwhile over 99% of the Greek manuscripts (over 1,600, including ancient ones, contrary to the footnote in The Message) support these verses.  In addition, patristic writers used these verses as Scripture in the 100’s, including Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus, the last of whom specifically quoted Mark 16:19 in Book Three of his composition Against Heresies (c. 180).  

          In a way, the answer to the question, “Is Mark 16:9-20 part of the canon of Scripture?” – Yes, or No – will also answer the question, “Did the early Christian church hand down the Greek text of the New Testament in a form which accurately conveyed the message of the original text?”.  For clearly the presence or absence of these 12 verses changes the narrative quite a bit.  Most folks will grant that since we trust the early leaders of the church where the canon is concerned, we should trust them where the text is concerned as well – not necessarily in fine details (where their own quotations vary), but at least where readings that heavily impact the meaning are concerned.  

          The patristic writers (and anonymous compositions) who show, in one way or another, that they used manuscripts of Mark that included 16:9-20 include Ambrose and Aphrahat and “Apostolic Constitutions” and Augustine and “Acts of Pilate” and “De rebaptismate” and “Doctrine of Addai” and “Enthronement of Michael” and Epiphanius and “Epistula Apostolorum” and Eusebius and Eznik of Golb and Fortunatianus and Fulgentius and Hierocles (a pagan writer) and Hippolytus and Irenaeus and Jerome and John Cassian and Justin Martyr and Leo and Macarius Magnes and  Marcus Eremita and Marinus and “Martyrium Arethae” and Nestorius and Patrick and Pelagius and Peter Chrysologus and Philosturgius and Prosper of Aquitaine and Pseudo-Didymus and Severus of Antioch and Tatian and Tertullian and Vincent of Antioch and Vincentius of Thibaris and Wulfilas – plus several forms of the Old Latin chapter-summaries of Mark, and Syriac section-divisions.  Most people conclude that all this makes it obvious that the people who recognized the New Testament canon also recognized Mark 16:9-20 as Scripture.   

  

          Some seminary professors, however, are not like most people.  What should a seminary student do when a professor denies that Mark 16:9-20 belongs in the Bible – implicitly tipping his hand on the question of whether or not he believes that the Greek-speaking churches handed down the text of the Gospels with sufficient accuracy to preserve the original message without drastic adulteration or loss?  Here are four suggestions.

1.  In the classroom, ask your professor for details about the evidence pertaining to this passage.  If he says things like, “Clement and Origen do not use it,” or, “Eusebius and Jerome say that it was absent from the best copies,” and if his description of the manuscript-evidence is vague, it is safe to deduce that your professor has only a marginal and shallow grasp of the evidence, and that his statements are mere mirrors of Bruce Metzger’s obsolete Textual Commentary which was designed to defend the readings adopted in the UBS Greek New Testament.      

2.  Meet with your professor privately and inquire about how much attention he has given to this textual variant.  It is quite possible that he has never read a single commentary written by an author who defends the passage.  Introduce him to resources that may be new to him, such as Roger Pearse’s Eusebius of Caesarea – Gospel Problems & Solutions (which shows what Eusebius really wrote, instead of just misleading snippets and summaries), and Carl Cosaert’s The Text of the Gospels in Clement of Alexandria (which shows how exceedingly rarely Clement quoted from Mark), and the 2016 edition of my book, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20 (which covers external evidence and internal evidence in minute detail).  Nicholas Lunn and David W. Hester, too, have both recently written in favor of this passage.

3.  Treat your professor like he has a brain and is not obligated to conform to groupthink or “conventional wisdom.”  Scholars and teachers should be especially happy when they learn that a position to which they once subscribed is not really sustained by the available evidence – even when abandoning that position means admitting not only that they were wrong, but that the “scholarly consensus” is also wrong.  Your professor probably already has some opinions that are shared by only a small minority of his peers; encourage him to investigate the ending of Mark with the same curiosity that led him to those minority opinions.   

4.  Keep the lines of communication open.  It may seem natural to want to ignore a teacher who advocates the view that practically the entire Christian church outside the borders of Egypt failed to hand down a form of the Greek text of the Gospels that conveyed the meaning of the original text.  However, your professor might gradually realize, if he is encouraged to continue to investigate the subject, that a lack of meaningful peer review has allowed research on the ending of Mark to stagnate (as one can see by observing the many commentaries that simply rephrase Metzger’s words). 

           Your professor may then perceive that the scholarly consensus on this subject has grown unjustifiably entrenched, even though more evidence than ever before has come to light supporting the genuineness of these 12 verses.  With prayerful and gentle but persistent interaction, attempt to guide your professor to a new appreciation for the longstanding ecclesiastical acceptance of a form of the text that includes Mark 16:9-20.  This might even provoke similar journeys regarding other textual variants.        

[This post is intended as a response to a recent post by Danny Akin at the Gospel Coalition blog, and echoes it in some respects for rhetorical effect.]