"Some Manuscripts Say . . ." - The Problem with Footnotes

          Why are the footnotes in most English translations of the New Testament so unhelpfully vague?  “Some manuscripts say this.”  “Other manuscripts say that.”  While some readers may appreciate being notified about the presence of textual variants, the immediate effect of such vague footnotes is to render the passage doctrinally useless, unless both variants mean the same thing.  Furthermore, the use of “some” and “other” to describe manuscript evidence can be highly misleading. 

          Let me show you what I mean by sharing some details about textual variants in four passages from the Gospel of Matthew, and how they are treated in the ESV (English Standard Version) and in the HCSB (Holman Christian Standard Bible).  (Bear in mind that the HCSB is about to be re-issued in a revised form as the Christian Standard Bible, and there is no guarantee that their footnotes will be identical.  The ESV can also change from one edition to another.)  I will first present each passage as it is translated in the New King James Version, just to provide a frame of reference.    

● MATTHEW 12:47

NKJV:  Then one said to Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.” 

ESV:  Matthew 12:47 is not included in the ESV.  A footnote states, “Some manuscripts insert verse 47:  “Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak to you.””

HCSB:  And someone told Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to You.”  A footnote says, “12:47 Other mss omit this verse.”

            What has happened is that in an ancestor-manuscript of the three primary Alexandrian manuscripts of this passage – Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Codex L (019) – a copyist accidentally skipped from the word λαλησαι at the end of verse 46 to the same word at the end of verse 47, thus losing all the words in between.  The mistake was a relatively early one – impacting not only the Alexandrian Text’s leading witnesses but also an early form of the Syriac text.  However, not only does the longer reading account for the shorter reading in this case, but the external support for the inclusion of the verse is massive and ancient.  It includes almost all Greek manuscripts (not some bare majority, but over 99%, including Codices D and W) and a strong array of Old Latin copies, the Vulgate, and the Peshitta.  In addition, a comparison of two Middle Egyptian evidence may confirm the passage’s vulnerability to accidental loss:  Mae-2 (Schoyen Codex 2650) does not have the verse, but Mae-1 (the Scheide Codex, from c. 400 or slight later) has the verse.  

            Some additional details are worth noting.  In Codex D and some other manuscripts (including L and Θ), the order of the last two words in verse 46 is reversed; this may echo an early copyist’s practical attempt to decrease the perceived risk of losing verse 47 via parablepsis.  In Codex Sinaiticus, the copyist did not only skip all of verse 47 but also the last portion of verse 46, losing the words ζητουντες αυτω λαλησαι (“seeking to speak with Him”).   This level of sloppiness should be a concern.

            Footnotes which do not convey the limited range of the non-inclusion of Matthew 12:47, and which fail to convey the mechanism which accounts for the accidental loss of the verse, are worse than no footnote at all.  It would be better for the compilers of the ESV’s base-text of to acknowledge that their favored manuscripts are defective at this point (as Michael Holmes has done in the SBL-GNT).    

● MATTHEW 13:35a

NKJV:  “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,”  

ESV:  “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:” –

A footnote states:  “Some manuscripts Isaiah the prophet”

HCSB:  “so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled:”  (no footnote).  

            In New Testament passages that quote from the Old Testament without naming the specific reference, some copyists were tempted to embellish the text.  We can observe this, for example, in Codex Bezae (D) in Matthew 1:22; the name “Isaiah” is inserted into the text.  We see the same tendency in modern paraphrases; in Eugene Peterson’s The Message, for example, when a New Testament author quotes from the Old Testament, The Message often inserts the name of the Old Testament book, whether it is specified in the Greek text or not. 

            Occasionally, reckless copyists who made such embellishments assigned quotations to the wrong source.  In Codex Sinaiticus, for example, in the margin alongside Matthew 2:5-6, the name “Isaiah” appears in a vertically-written note to identify the prophet whose work is quoted in the text.  The prophet being quoted, however, is Micah, not Isaiah.  A little further along in Codex Sinaiticus, the name “Numbers” appears in a vertically-written note alongside Matthew 2:15, even though the text cited in Matthew 2:15 is Hosea 11:1.       

          The same thing has happened in Codex Sinaiticus in Matthew 13:35, except the embellishment has been inserted directly into the text; Codex Sinaiticus is one of the few manuscripts that reads “Isaiah the prophet” in Matthew 13:35.  This reading was known in the late 300’s by Jerome, who expressed a belief that the passage had previously referred to “Asaph the prophet” and that copyists who did not recognize Asaph’s name changed it to “Isaiah.” 

            The external evidence for the non-inclusion of Isaiah’s name in Matthew 13:35 is enormous and wide-ranging:  it is supported by B, D, W, and by every branch of the Byzantine Text, and by all known Syriac, Latin, Sahidic, and Armenian copies.             

            The attribution of the quotation to Isaiah is an error, and to some textual critics, this makes it likely to be original, on the grounds that it is thus the more difficult reading.  Hort, in 1881, demonstrated his non-belief in inerrancy in his Notes on Select Readings, stating, “It is difficult not to think Ἠσαίου [Isaiah] genuine.”  Eberhard Nestle (the originator of the Nestle-Aland compilation) embraced the erroneous reading in his 1901 Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the Greek New Testament.  On page 251, after acknowledging that this reading was only attested by a smattering of extant manuscripts, but was also mentioned by Eusebius and Jerome (both of whose explicitly rejected it), Nestle wrote, “It was used still earlier by Porphyrius as a proof of Matthew’s ignorance.  It is certainly, therefore, genuine.” 

            Nestle seems to have put a high degree of confidence in the ability of Porphyry to resist the temptation to use scribal mistakes as ammunition for his jibes, and a low degree of confidence in the ability of Christian copyists to simply reproduce the contents of their exemplars.  He does not explain why the same scribes who allowed Jeremiah’s name to stand in Matthew 27:9 (where some initial puzzlement is natural, considering Matthew 27:9-10 is mostly based on Zechariah 11:12-13) found it intolerable to read Isaiah’s name in Matthew 13:35.  The explanation of the evidence is not complex:  the name “Isaiah” crept into the transmission-stream as an early copyist’s erroneous attempt to specify which prophet was being cited – and, when this embellishment was recognized as what it was, it was duly resisted and jettisoned.        

            Footnotes which merely say that “Some manuscripts” have Isaiah’s name in Matthew 13:35 mislead the typical reader twice.  First, the term “some” does not convey that the number of manuscripts which have Isaiah’s name in this verse is very small.  Second, such a footnote fails to inform the reader about the scribal tendency to embellish non-specific references, and to provide names for prophets and other individuals whose names are not supplied in their exemplars.  (Even Papyrus 75, for example, has an embellishment in Luke 16:19, where a name is given to the rich man).  With these two factors in view, the reader is equipped to evaluate the evidence; without them, the sketchy footnotes only succeed in puzzling the reader.

● MATTHEW 14:30a

NKJV:  “But when he saw that the wind was boisterous”

ESV:  “But when he saw the wind” with a footnote:  “Some manuscripts strong wind.”

HCSB:  “But when he saw the strength of the wind” with a footnote: “Other mss read the wind”

            Here the editors of the ESV and the editors of the HCSB disagreed about which reading belongs in the text.  The phrase that is found in almost all Greek manuscripts is βλέπων δε τον ανεμον ισχυρον, but the ESV is based on the text of Codices B, À, and 33, which do not have the word ισχυρον.  The Middle Egyptian Schøyen Codex also supports non-inclusion of this word.  The shorter reading is efficiently explained by the longer reading:  a copyist whose work influenced the exemplars of the Alexandrian Text’s flagship manuscripts carelessly skipped from the letters -ον at the end of ανεμον to the same letters at the end of ισχυρον, accidentally losing the letters in between and thus losing the word ισχυρον. 

            Footnotes which give readers no clue about how the omission originated are not just unhelpful; they raise doubts about the stability of the text even in cases where a little information about word-endings has a strong clarifying effect.  Of course if a translation (in this case, the ESV) has adopted the incomplete text, those who want to maintain its credibility might want to avoid mentioning such inconvenient details. 

● MATTHEW 17:21

NKJV:  “However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”

ESV:  Matthew 17:21 is not included in the ESV.  A footnote states:  “Some manuscripts insert verse 21:  But this kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting.”

HCSB:  Matthew 17:21 is included in the text, within brackets:  “[²¹However, this kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting.]”

            Out of about 1,700 Greek manuscripts of Matthew 17, almost all of them include verse 21, including the uncial codices D, L, Σ, and W, which represent different transmission-branches or locales.  The verse is also included in most Old Latin copies, and in the Vulgate.  The ESV, however, is based on the Nestle-Aland compilation, which does not include this verse because this verse is not included in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and a few other witnesses representative of the Alexandrian Text; nor is this verse supported by two representatives of an early Syriac version of the Gospels. 

            Earlier than any of those witnesses, however, were the manuscripts used by Origen in the early 200’s – and Origen quoted this verse in his Commentary on Matthew, in Book 13, chapter 7.  In the mid-300’s, Basil of Caesarea also quoted this verse.  Ambrose of Milan used it, slightly later, in his Epistle 65, part 15.  So did John Chrysostom, in his Homily 57 on Matthew, and Hilary of Poitiers.  It is also included in the Peshitta (with fasting mentioned before prayer).

            Bruce Metzger – one of the compilers of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament – wrote in his influential Textual Commentary that “There is no good reason why the passage, if originally present in Matthew, should have been omitted.”  I must suspect that the UBS committee’s search for a reason for excision was awfully brief, because it is not difficult to perceive that a Christian copyist could easily be alarmed by the thought that readers might conclude that the eternal Son of God needed to fast in order to control fallen angels.  (The same consideration motivated the excision of the words “and fasting” from Mark 9:29 in the Alexandrian Text; the presence of the words in Mark are confirmed, however, not only by almost all manuscripts, but also by Papyrus 45.) 

            In this case, referring to “Some manuscripts” and “Other manuscripts” obscures rather than illuminates the real state of the evidence, in which over 99% of the manuscripts favor the inclusion of the verse, and in which it is cited by patristic sources going back to the early 200’s.  Such vague footnotes do more harm than good.  They provide only an illusion of informing the reader, while failing to share information about meaningful aspects of the relevant evidence, such as the scope and antiquity of the evidence.

            The misleading vagueness in the footnotes for these four passages is typical of the textual footnotes that occur throughout the ESV.  The term “some” is used to describe about a dozen manuscripts, and it is also used to refer to over 1,600 manuscripts.  There is no way to tell from the footnotes what kind of evidence is meant by “some” manuscripts.  No attempt is made to explain to the reader how the reading in the footnote originated.  That is remarkably unhelpful.            

            If the editors of modern English translations wish to turn the margins of our Bibles into a collection of trivia about the mistakes made by ancient copyists, we should at least insist that they present the evidence fairly, instead of inviting readers to look at the manuscript-evidence through lenses that are foggy, distorted, and broken.         

            Textual footnotes should be helpful, concise, and focused.  When early patristic evidence is relevant, it should be mentioned.  (For instance, it is certainly deceptive to tell readers that “The earliest manuscripts” do not include Mark 16:9-20 without mentioning that Irenaeus quoted Mark 16:19 around 180, over a century before the two Greek uncials that omit verses 9-20 were made.)  When a textual variant is supported by fewer than ten Greek manuscripts, or when a variant’s support is almost exclusively from one transmission-branch, the scope of the evidence should be pointed out.  Exactly how to do this, while maintaining conciseness, is a challenge, but it will be far better to undertake that challenge than to continue to distract and puzzle Bible-readers with misleading footnotes.

_______________

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 

The Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) is © Copyright 2000 Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee.

The New King James Version (NKJV) is Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. 

Why the ESV is Errant in Matthew 1:7-10

          “All Scripture is breathed out by God.”  That statement is not only the introductory phrase of Second Timothy 3:16 in the English Standard Version; it is also an affirmation in the introduction of the ESV Reader’s Gospels  (in more traditional wording):  “All Scripture is inspired by God.”  At the ESVBible website, a brief essay teaches that “As the Bible is the inspired word of God, presenting us with God’s words as mediated through human language, it is likewise inerrant and infallible.”

          Evangelical theologians may therefore have good reason to wonder why the ESV New Testament promotes two errors on its first page.  I refer to the ESV’s erroneous claims that Asaph and Amos were among the kings of Judah in the ancestry of Christ.  The answer to this question involves textual variants.  

          The ESV’s preface was intended to give readers the impression that the ESV is a direct descendant of the KJV:  the ESV, the writer claims, “stands in the classic mainstream of English Bible translations,” and continues “the Tyndale-King James legacy,” and so forth.  However, those who read the section of the preface sub-titled Textual Basis and Resources will find a statement that the ESV New Testament is based on the fourth edition of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament and on the 27^th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece – which is another way of saying that the ESV New Testament was translated from a base-text that is very similar to the compilation produced by Westcott and Hort in 1881 – a compilation which thoroughly replaced the primarily Byzantine base-text of the KJV New Testament with primarily Alexandrian readings, resulting in over 5,000 changes.     

          In Matthew 1:7-10, there is a contest between Ασα (Asa) and Ασαφ (Asaph), and between Αμων (Amon) and Αμως (Amos).  The compilers of the UBS and NA-texts, like Hort, rejected the readings that are found in the vast majority of manuscripts (and in diverse early witnesses including Codex Washingtoniensis, Old Latin Codex Vercellensis, the Vulgate, the Sinaitic Syriac, and the Peshitta), and adopted the Alexandrian readings Ασαφ and Αμως, thus conveying errors, inasmuch as Asaph was a songwriter (the author of several psalms) and Amos was a prophet who prophesied in the time of Uzziah.  (Uzziah is mentioned in the genealogy in Matthew 1:8-9).  Neither Asaph nor Amos was an ancestor of Jesus.  

Codex K (Cyprianus) displays the Byzantine reading.
In 1:7, note the interesting proximity of Ασα
to the letters σαφ in the next line.

         It is for that very reason that Ασαφ and Αμως were preferred by the editors of the ESV’s base-text, on the premise that copyists would tend to replace difficult readings with non-problematic ones, instead of the other way around.  The preference for the more difficult reading – a text-critical canon sometimes expressed in Latin as lectio difficilior potior – initially seems to compel the adoption of Ασαφ and Αμως.  However, that impression may be reversed when additional factors are considered.

          The late Bruce Metzger, in his argument for Ασαφ, mentioned a statement from Lagrange (an earlier scholar) to the effect that inasmuch as anyone making this genealogy-list would have to consult the Old Testament, and anyone reading the Old Testament would see the kings’ correct names, “It is necessary, therefore, to suppose that Ασαφ is a very ancient [scribal] error.”  Metzger dismissed that line of reasoning via the supposition that “the evangelist may have derived material for the genealogy, not from the Old Testament directly, but from subsequent genealogical lists, in which the erroneous spelling occurred.”

          However, there is no evidence for the use of such a hypothetical genealogical list in the hands of the evangelist; meanwhile the evidence for Matthew’s familiarity with the Old Testament permeates his Gospel-account.  In addition, considering that Matthew knew the Old Testament and treated it as authoritative, which source is he more likely to have favored when they disagreed:  the Old Testament text, or some “subsequent genealogical list” (assuming that he ever had one)?  

          Metzger attempted to present Ασαφ and Αμως as if the evangelist merely had a strange way of spelling Ασα and Αμων.  Footnotes in the ESV make the same attempt.  However, on balance, the evidence that Metzger cited weakens his position.  In the Septuagint, out of the many occurrences of Asa’s name, he is almost always called Asa; the few intrusions of Ασαφατ and Ασαφ and Ασαβ are simply scribal mistakes.  As Jonathan Borland has pointed out:  “That only these few comparable examples exist out of 90 or so instances of the two names in the LXX demonstrates just what one should expect: while the vast consensus of manuscripts always distinguished the names, less than 10 percent of the time a single scribe (with the exception of 2 Chr 29:13 where 3 manuscripts vary) wrote one name for the other.” 

          Before I offer an explanation of the origin of the Alexandrian reading, it may be appropriate to point out the diverse name-spellings found in the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text in Matthew 1:1-13: 

1:2 – ﬡ (Sinaiticus) reads Ισακ instead of Ισαακ.

1:3 – B (Vaticanus) reads Ζαρε instead of Ζαρα.

1:4 – ﬡ reads Αμιναδαβ correctly the first time the name is written, but Αμιναδαμ the second time.

1:5 – B, ﬡ, and P1 read Βοες against diverse opposition favoring Βοοζ.  (Nevertheless the UBS-compilers adopted Βοες).

1:5 – B and ﬡ and some Alexandrian allies read Ιωβηδ instead of Ωβηδ.  (33: Ιωβηλ.)

1:6 – ﬡ* reads Σαλομων instead of Σολομωνα.

1:6 – B reads Ουρειου instead of Ουριου.

1:7 – ﬡ reads Αβια, Αβιας instead of Αβια, Αβια.

1:8 – B and ﬡ read Οζειαν instead of Οζιαν. 

1:9 – ﬡ reads Αχας, Αχας instead of Αχαζ, Αχαζ.

1:10-11 – B and ﬡ read Ιωσειαν, Ιωσειας instead of Ιωσιαν, Ιωσιας.

1:12-13 – B reads Σελαθιηλ instead of Σαλαθιηλ, in addition to reading γεννα instead of εγεννησεν three times.

1:13 – ﬡ* reads Αβιουτ instead of Αβιουδ.

          (Except for the readings in 1:5, these readings disagree with both the UBS/NA compilation and with the RP2005 Byzantine Text.  This shows a high level of variation in the spelling of proper names in the Alexandrian text-stream.)  

          Several Old Latin manuscripts agree with the Alexandrian text’s readings for Asaph and Amos.  While, on one hand, this gives the reading some diversity, on the other hand it may indicate that at these points the primary Alexandrian witnesses ﬡ, B, and P1 reflect an early Western intrusion. 

          In 1885, J. Rendel Harris proposed that the reading Ασαφ, Ασαφ originated as the result of a “ghastly line-errors,” that is, Ασαφ was accidentally written when a copyist’s line of sight drifted to the letters σαφ in the nearby word Ιωσαφατ.  He suggested that the same phenomenon can account for the origin of the reading Αμως, Αμως – the copyist’s line of sight straying, in this case, to the letters ωσ in the nearby word Ιωσειαν.  Harris concluded, “It can hardly be accidental that this coincidence of letters is found in the proper names.  And this simple paleographic explanation being given, is not to be shaken by an array of excellent MSS in which the archaic error may be preserved.”  (The same sort of syllable-interchange may account for ﬡ’s reading Σαλομων in verse 6, echoing the Σαλ from Σαλμων’s name in verse 5.)

          I am not persuaded by Harris’ theory; the occurrence of two such mistakes so close together seems unlikely.  However, I am also not persuaded by proponents of the idea that Matthew would risk confusing his readers by listing Asaph and Amos as kings of Judah, knowing that his readers would recognize Asaph as a well-known psalm-writer, and Amos as a well-known prophet.   

         What has happened, I suspect, is that an early Western scribe, unfamiliar with Old Testament chronology, introduced the names of Asaph and Amos as a primitive attempt to pad Jesus’ Messianic résumé, so to speak, by adding prophets among his ancestry.  The tampering of this scribe influenced the Western transmission-line represented by some Old Latin copies.  When these Western readings intersected with the Alexandrian transmission-line, they blended into a crowd of orthographic variations – that is, in some Western Old Latin copies, and in Egypt, the names of Asaph and Amos were assumed to be variant-spellings referring to Asa and Amon, and for that reason, they were not corrected.  Elsewhere, though, these readings were either never encountered, or were almost always rejected as variants which Matthew had not written and which he had been highly motivated not to write. 

          Among the passages in the ESV New Testament which its editors should revisit when preparing the next edition, Matthew 1:7-10 is near the top of the list.  Ask yourselves, ESV editors:  where is the evidence for Metzger’s theory that Matthew used a “subsequent genealogical list” instead of simply consulting the Old Testament text?  And how realistic is the theory that Matthew would take for granted that his readers would identify Asaph and Amos as kings of Judah?  Why wouldn’t Matthew – especially if one affirms that Matthew was writing under the inspiration of God –write the usual names?  The rationales which some commentators, advocating the Alexandrian readings, have attributed to Matthew, may more readily be assigned to scribes.

          Lectio difficilior potior has its limits.  However difficult it may be to picture a scribe introducing the names of Asaph and Amos into the text of Matthew 1:7-10, whether accidentally or deliberately, it is much more difficult to picture Matthew (or any first-century author familiar with the contents of the Old Testament) doing so. 

The English Standard Version (ESV) is Copyright ©2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.  All rights reserved.  

Codex Vaticanus and the Ending of Mark

            “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9-20.”   So says a bracketed heading-note in the English Standard Version.  The number of Greek manuscripts in which the text stops at the end of 16:8 is three.

            Minuscule 304 is one of those three.  It is a medieval commentary-manuscript in which the text of Matthew and Mark is interspersed with commentary-material.  Its text in Mark is essentially Byzantine and the manuscript appears to have undergone some damage near the end.  There’s nothing about 304 that would suggest that it has more weight than any other medieval manuscript. 

            The other two manuscripts in which Mark’s text stops at 16:8 are another story:  Codex Vaticanus (produced c. 325) and Codex Sinaiticus (produced c. 350) are the oldest and second-oldest Greek manuscripts of Mark 16.  (These two manuscripts are not the earliest evidence pertaining to the ending of Mark, just the earliest manuscripts.  Patristic writers in the 100’s, 200’s, and early 300’s utilized the contents of Mark 16:9-20, but the manuscripts used by those writers are not extant.)  I have previously described the unusual features in Codex Sinaiticus involving the ending of Mark.  Today, let’s examine the last page of Mark in Codex Vaticanus. 

The last page of Mark in Codex Vaticanus.

          The text on this page begins in 15:43, and ends at the end of 16:8, on the 31^st line of the second column.  The closing book-title appears a little further down the second column.  The third column is completely blank.  It was normal for copyists to begin books at the tops of columns, and thus some space was typically left below the end of each book before the next book began at the top of the next column (except in those cases where the book happened to conclude right at the end of a column).  It was not normal, however, for the copyist of Vaticanus to leave an entire column blank.  This is the only blank column in the New Testament portion of Codex Vaticanus.

           Of course this raises a question:  why did the copyist leave this column blank?  The obvious answer is that the copyist was aware of copies that contained verses 9-20, and although his exemplar lacked these verses, he left space to give the eventual owner of the manuscript the option of including them in the event that another exemplar was available.

            The blank space is not quite adequate to include verses 9-20.  If one were to erase the closing-title and write the contents of verses 9-20, beginning at the end of v. 8, using the copyist’s normal handwriting, there would still be four lines of text yet to be written when one reached the end of the last line of the third column.  It is perhaps for this reason that Daniel Wallace, referring to this blank space in his chapter of the 2008 book, Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, has said, “The gap is clearly too small to allow for the LE.”  In the same book, Maurice Robinson affirmed, “The space is insufficient to contain the entire LE.”  Their co-author J. K. Elliott stated less definitively, “Vaticanus actually contains a blank column after 16:8 that could possibly contain verses 9-20, suggesting that its scribe was aware of the existence of the longer reading.”

The last page of Mark in Codex Vaticanus with verses 9-20
in the blank space after v. 8, using cut-and-pasted characters
from Mark 15:43-16:8 on the same page.  

           If a copyist were to resort to compacted lettering – the script that the copyist of Sinaiticus used in the first six columns of the text of Luke – then the blank space is practically an exact fit.  In a reconstruction of Mark 16:9-20 (shown here) in the blank space after 16:8, using characters that were written elsewhere on the page in Mark 15:43-16:8, verse 20 concludes on the next-to-last line of the third column.     

            Although the implication that the copyist of Codex Vaticanus clearly recollected 9-20 when he wrote the text of Mark 16:1-8 from an exemplar that did not have verses 9-20, Daniel Wallace has proposed a different explanation, namely, that the copyist was using an exemplar in which the Gospels, though containing the Alexandrian text, were arranged in the Western order (Mt-Jn-Mk-Lk), and although the copyist rearranged the Gospels into the order Mt-Mk-Lk-Jn, he added a blank space to represent the blank space at the end of his exemplar.  This theory seems like the result of a determined effort to dismiss the obvious implication of the blank column.  Where is the evidence that the Alexandrian form of the Gospels-text was ever anything but in the order Mt-Mk-Lk-Jn?  (In Papyrus 75, John follows Luke.)  And why would any copyist regard the blank space at the end of an exemplar as a feature worth replicating?  Any manuscript, unless its text happened to end at the end of its last column, would contain some blank space at the end.   And why would a copyist replicate such a blank space, but not the order of the books?  And why would a copyist consider such a blank column worth replicating, but not add a blank column between John and Acts, or between Acts and James, or between Jude and Romans? 

            In addition to the contrived idea of an Alexandrian Gospels-exemplar with the Gospels arranged in the Western order with blank space at the end which the copyist wished to replicate, Wallace has questioned the significance of the blank space by pointing out that there are three large blank spaces in the Old Testament portion of Codex Vaticanus.  However, all three of those blank spaces are accounted for by special factors:

● One of these blank spaces is the space between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament; the last page of the Old Testament portion concludes with the apocryphal text of Bel and the Dragon, incorporated into the Septuagint’s text of Daniel.  To expect the Gospel of Matthew to begin in the next column would be a preposterous expectation. 

● One of these blank spaces occurs at the end of Second Esdras, before the beginning of the book of Psalms.  Only two lines of text are placed in the first column of the last page of Second Esdras, and after the closing-title (and what appears to be the signature of someone named Klement, possibly a former owner of the codex), the rest of the page is blank.  But the reason for this is obvious:  the book of Psalms begins on the very next page, and the text of Psalms is formatted in two columns, rather than three.  It was absolutely necessary to begin Psalms on a new page, due to the difference in the number of columns on the page.

● One of these blank spaces occurs between the end of the book of Tobit and the beginning of the book of Hosea.  The text of Tobit concludes in approximately the middle of the second column of a page, and the third column is blank.  Wallace claimed that “The gap at the end of Tobit lacks sufficient explanation.”  However, the explanation becomes obvious upon close examination.

            One copyist’s work ended at the end of Tobit, and another copyist’s work begins with the Prophetic Books, which begin with the Minor Prophets, which begin with Hosea.  At this point where one copyist’s work was connected to another copyist’s work, what we have after the end of Tobit is simply leftover space.  This should become very obvious when we notice that the leftover space after the end of Tobit did not initially consist of just the remainder of the page.   As Dirk Jongkind mentioned on page 31 of Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, besides the one and a half columns on the remainder of the page on which Tobit concludes, there was an entire unused page (front and back) after that – the last leaf of quire 49 – that was cut out when the manuscript was sewn together. 

            To restate:  what we have in Codex Vaticanus between Tobit and Hosea is nothing but a “seam,” so to speak, that resulted from the production-process, where one copyist’s work was attached to the pages produced by another copyist.  The situation is entirely different in Mark, where Mark 16:8, and the blank space, are on one side of a page, and the beginning of Luke is on the opposite side, and the text on both sides is, of course, written by the same copyist. 

            Wallace’s claim that “All in all, the reasons for the gaps are anything but clear” is not true.  Every blank space between books in Codex Vaticanus is fully capable of obvious explanation: 

(1)  The blank space before Psalms was required by the shift from a three-column format to a two-column format. 

(2)  The blank space before Hosea is a production-seam, where one copyist’s work was attached to another copyist’s work. 
(3)  The blank space between the Septuagint’s text of Daniel (concluding with the story of Bel and the Dragon) is the end of the Old Testament portion.   
(4)  The blank space after Mark 16:8 was elicited by the copyist’s recollection of verses 9-20.

            So:  there is more to the picture than the simple statement that “Some early manuscripts do not include verses 9-20.”  As far as early Greek manuscripts are concerned, “Some” = two.  “Early” = over 100 years later than clear patristic use of the contents of verses 9-20.  And “Do not include” = do not include, but show their copyists’ awareness of, verses 9-20.

  

The ESV versus the ESV

The ESV:  When will it be finished?

          The English Standard Version, released in 2001 by Crossway, has rapidly become one of the top five most popular English translations in the United States.  It has been marketed as an “essentially literal” translation – the translation that the New Revised Standard Version was supposed to be:  as literal as possible, as free as necessary (to use Bruce Metzger’s catch-phrase).  Among evangelical scholars, the ESV is generally regarded – as the late Rod Decker stated in a detailed review – as “a viable translation for both local church and personal use.”  Several prominent evangelicals have approved it, including John Piper and Al Mohler.
          Textually, the ESV is a direct descendant of the RSV, which was widely rejected by evangelicals.  (The ESV’s preface – or, in some editions, its appendix – describes the ESV as if it has descended from the KJV and has a claim to the “Tyndale-King James legacy,” but such a claim seems hard to maintain when one considers that the ESV’s New Testament base-text disagrees with the KJV’s base-text in thousands of places.)  However, the ESV itself is mainly a product of evangelical scholars whose work has yielded many improvements over the RSV.  The ESV is likely to become the #1 or #2 all-purpose English translation among American evangelicals.
          Hopefully it will be finished someday.  The ESV has repeatedly been altered, and there is no sign that alterations will not continue to be made.  The ESV released in 2007 was not the same as the ESV that was issued in 2001, and the ESV that was issued in 2011 was not the same as the ESV that was issued in 2007.  Oxford University Press has published an edition of the ESV with a very significant difference from previous editions:  it includes the Apocrypha.  What will the ESV look like in 2020 or 2030?  No one really knows but God. 

          The ESV has a Translation Oversight Committee (consisting of between 12 and 14 individuals) which seems to be responsible for considering changes to the ESV’s text.  With Wayne Grudem and R. Kent Hughes on the Translation Oversight Committee, will future editions of the ESV remove Mark 16:9-20 from the text?  Will passages currently within double-brackets (such as John 7:53-8:11) be absent in the ESV of the future?  Andreas Köstenberger, the person responsible for the ESV Study Bible’s notes for the Gospel of John, has stated that the story about the woman caught in adultery “should not be regarded as part of the Christian canon” and has clearly expressed the opinion that the passage should not appear “in the main body of translations, even within square brackets,” so such a scenario seems not only possible but probable.  An edition of the ESV based 100% on the Alexandrian Text may be just around the corner.

One of the covers used
for the Gideons ESV.

        On the other hand, the English Standard Version was recently issued in an edition which reflects a more genuinely eclectic approach:  the Gideons, a ministry focused on Bible-distribution, has begun distributing a special edition of the ESV which is different from the usual 2011 edition in many respects.  In the New Testament, the Gideons English Standard Version – which I call the GESV, for convenience – abandons the base-text of the 2011 ESV in favor of readings found in the Textus Receptus.  As a result, some verses which are absent in the ESV, and other verses which are drawn into question by the formatting in the ESV (usually via brackets and vaguely worded footnotes), are fully restored in the GESV.

          A researcher named Joshua Holman has gone through the ESV and identified the points where the ESV and GESV differ.  To see the entire list of differences between the text of the GESV and the text of the ESV, see Joshua Holman’s list.  Here is a representative sample of the differences, compiled from his data (accompanied by some of my own comments):    

Matthew 1:7-8 – GESV reads “Asa” instead of the ESV’s “Asaph,” thus removing a reading which Bruce Metzger described as an error.

Matthew 1:10 – GESV reads “Amon” instead of the ESV’s “Amos,” thus removing another reading which Bruce Metzger described as an error.

Matthew 1:25 – The GESV states that Mary gave birth “to her firstborn son,” unlike the ESV, which states that she gave birth “to a son.”

Matthew 5:44 – The GESV includes the phrases in which Jesus says to “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you,” unlike the ESV which does not include these two phrases in this verse.

Matthew 6:13 – The GESV presents the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer as part of the text, whereas the ESV only provides it in a footnote.

Matthew 12:47 – The GESV includes this verse in the text, unlike the ESV which places it in a footnote with the introduction, “Some manuscripts insert verse 47.”  The vast majority of Greek manuscripts includes this verse.  It seems obvious that the verse was accidentally skipped when an early copyist’s line of sight drifted away from one set of letters to the same set of letters further along in the text (an occurrence called parablepsis). 

Matthew 17:21 – The GESV includes this verse, which is only in a footnote in the ESV.

Matthew 18:11 – The GESV includes this verse, which is only in a footnote in the ESV.

Matthew 19:9 – The GESV has, as the verse’s final phrase, “and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”  The ESV does not include this phrase in the text. 

Matthew 23:14 – The GESV has this verse in the text, unlike the ESV which only presents it in a footnote.  It seems obvious that it was accidentally skipped when an early copyist’s line of sight drifted away from one set of letters to the same set of letters further along in the text. 

Matthew 26:45 – The GESV frames Jesus’ first sentence as a question, whereas the ESV presents it as if Jesus said, “Sleep and take your rest later on.” 

Mark 7:16 – The GESV includes this verse in the text; the ESV only presents it in a footnote.

Mark 9:29 – The words “and fasting” are included at the end of the verse in the GESV.  In the ESV they are only presented in a footnote.  Over 99% of the manuscripts of Mark include the words, including Papyrus 45 (barely, due to damage).

Mark 9:44 and 9:46 – The GESV includes these two verses, which are not in the text of the ESV. 

Mark 9:49 – The GESV includes the phrase, “and every sacrifice will be salted with salt,” which is not in the text of the ESV.

Mark 10:24 – The GESV states that Jesus said, “Children, how difficult it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God,” where the ESV presents Jesus saying, instead, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!” 

Mark 11:26 – The GESV includes this verse, which is not included in the ESV’s text.  It seems obvious that it was accidentally skipped when an early copyist’s line of sight drifted away from one set of letters to the same set of letters further along in the text.           

Mark 15:28 – The GESV includes this verse, which is not in the text of the ESV.  The shorter reading can be accounted for as the result of a scribal accident, or as an intentional excision intended to alleviate the perception of a discrepancy caused by having one prophecy fulfilled in two different ways (cf. Luke 22:37).   

Mark 16:9-20 – The GESV includes the entire passage without brackets, without a heading-note, and without a footnote.  The ESV encloses the passage within double-brackets, accompanied by a heading (“Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9–20”) and an imprecisely worded footnote.  It is not easy for readers to perceive from such footnotes that the inclusion of this passage is supported by over 99% of the Greek manuscripts of Mark 16 and by some patristic writers (such as Irenaeus) who wrote before the production of the earliest existing manuscripts of Mark 16.  

Luke 2:43 – The GESV refers to “Joseph and his mother” where the ESV refers to “His parents.”

Luke 4:44 – The GESV refers to Galilee, rather than Judea. 

Luke 17:36 – The GESV includes this verse, which is not in the text of the ESV.  It seems obvious that it was accidentally skipped when an early copyist’s line of sight drifted away from one set of letters to the same set of letters further along in the text.

Luke 23:17 – The GESV includes this verse, which is not in the text of the ESV. 

John 5:3-4 – The GESV includes the entire passage about the angel stirring the water.      

John 7:8 – Whereas in the ESV, Jesus says, “I am not going up to this feast,” in the GESV Jesus says, “I am not yet going up to this feast.”  (In this case, by the way, the ESV disagrees with the oldest manuscripts.)  

John 7:53-8:11 – The GESV prints the text in its entirety without notes.  In the ESV, the entire passage is placed within double-brackets, with a cautionary heading (“The earliest manuscripts do not include 7:53–8:11”) and a footnote. 

          The GESV includes (without any footnotes) Acts 8:37 (a verse utilized by Irenaeus in the 100’s and Cyprian in the 200’s), Acts 28:29, and Romans 16:24.  The word “broken” is included in First Corinthians 11:24, and so is the phrase “through his blood” in Colossians 1:14.  In First Timothy 3:16, the text in the GESV reads, “God was manifested in the flesh” instead of the ESV’s “He was manifested in the flesh.”  Somewhat surprisingly, John 1:18 and the fifth verse of Jude in the GESV are the same as in the ESV.  

          The GESV does not represent a thorough departure from the Alexandrian Text in favor of the Textus Receptus or the Byzantine Text.  In First John 5:7, the Comma Johanneum, a reading with hardly any Greek manuscript support, is nowhere to be seen.  But neither are many Byzantine readings, even some for which the support is widespread, ancient, and exceeds 95% of the Greek manuscripts.  Most of the differences occur at point in the text where an ordinary reader might easily sense that something is amiss (due to the lack of a verse-number), and in well-known passages where the Alexandrian reading might appear puzzling. 

          Besides the textual differences, the GESV excludes the ESV’s many footnotes that draw attention to textual variants (particularly when the major Alexandrian manuscripts disagree with each other), such as at Mark 1:1 (where a footnote in the ESV informs the reader that some manuscripts omit the words “Son of God”) and Luke 22:43-44, Luke 23:34a, etc. 

          Although I do not agree with every adjustment that has been made in the GESV, and wish that the Gideons’ edition of the ESV had embraced many more Byzantine readings, overall it is a step in the right direction – away from the almost exclusively Alexandrian Nestle-Aland base-text, toward a more truly eclectic one.  If it were up to me, all ESV’s would be more like the GESV.  I’m glad the GESV has been made.

          The arrival of the Gideons ESV does, however, raise a question:  if the ESV is going to continue to be tweaked indefinitely, and if it is going to circulate in editions with the Apocrypha, and in editions which vary significantly in their treatments of over three dozen verses, and which might vary even more in the future, then in what sense is the English Standard Version a standard?  Granting that post-publication refinements have been needed (and some still are needed), at some point the plumb line has to stop swinging.

     

More Problems in Biblical Archaeology Review's Treatment of the Ending of Mark

(14)  “Form 3b (the long form with asterisks or notes) is represented by the Revised Version of 1881, the Jerusalem Bible (1966) and the New King James Version (1982).”

            This may be an appropriate moment for a brief detour, to consider a few inaccuracies written by the expert annotators of some relatively recent English translations. 

            ● A note in the Jerusalem Bible stated, “Many MSS omit vv. 9-20.”     

            ● The New American Standard Bible, in a 1977 edition, presented verses 9-20 in brackets, followed by the Shorter Ending in brackets and italicized; a footnote to the Shorter Ending stated, “A few later mss. and versions contain this paragraph, usually after verse 8; a few have it at the end of chapter.” This note’s claim is untrue.  No Greek manuscripts are extant in which the text of Mark ends with the Shorter Ending, either after verse 8 or after verse 20.           

            ● The English Standard Version, in a 2007 edition, featured a note which stated that “A few manuscripts insert additional material after verse 14.”  In real life, only one extant manuscript (Codex W) does so.  I am not sure which worries me more:  the sloppy scholarship that allowed such a note to be written, or the negligent peer review that allowed it to be distributed for over a decade.

            ● The New Living Translation still contains a note which says that “Some early manuscripts add” the Freer Logion.  It also features a note which refers to “various endings to the Gospel,” ensuring that the state of the evidence remains fuzzy to NLT-readers.

(15)  “Whether examining ancient manuscripts or consulting modern English translations, a reader of the Gospel of Mark encounters an astonishing number of alternative endings for the gospel.”

            That is astonishingly sensationalistic writing.  As previously noted, 1,600+ Greek manuscripts display verses 9-20 after verse 8; in two Greek manuscripts the text clearly ends at the end of 16:8, and in six Greek manuscripts (concentrated in Egypt) the Shorter Ending and verses 9-20 are both presented, usually with brief notes.  (The inclusion of the Freer Logion between 16:14 and 16:15 in Codex W is not another ending, any more than a ship becomes a different ship after a barnacle attaches itself to the hull.)  So in terms of independent texts that appear after 16:8, we observe two endings – not “an astonishing number.”          

 

(16)  [Referring to the reading in Codex W, i.e., verses 9-20 with the Freer Logion between 16:14 and 16:15]  “In short, the historical support for this form is relatively late and very slender.”

           

            Slender?  Yes.  Relatively late?  No.  Holmes described Codex W as a manuscript from “the fourth- or fifth-century.”  Codex Vaticanus – the earliest extant Greek manuscript of Mark 16 – is also from the fourth century.  Reckoning that these production-dates are assigned on the basis of paleography, and also taking into account our inability to discern if a specific copyist produced a specific manuscript near the beginning, or near the end, of his career, it is not impossible that the elderly copyists of Codex Vaticanus and the middle-aged copyists of Codex Sinaiticus and the young copyists of Codex W passed each other in the streets. 

(17)  “At the time of Eusebius in the early fourth century, however, the long form still was found in only a small minority of manuscripts.”

            Holmes thus treated Eusebius’ statements anachronistically, as if Eusebius had taken a survey of manuscript-collections throughout the Roman Empire.

(18)  “The historical evidence for Form 3a is early (third quarter of the second century) but very narrow until the fifth century or later.”

            That’s ridiculous, as can easily be seen from the use of Mark 16:9-20 by Irenaeus (in Gaul, in the 100’s), Hippolytus (in Rome, in the early 200’s), Eusebius (in Caesarea, in the early 300’s), Wulfilas (in Goth-controlled territory, in the mid-300’s), and other early writers in other locales.  The level of spin in Holmes’ claim is almost amusing.   

(19)  “Neither Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) nor Origen (c. 185-254) indicates any awareness of anything beyond 16:8.  But this is an argument from silence, so not too much weight can be placed on it.”

        You can say that again – especially since Clement never makes any quotations from Mark chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, and 16 (unless, in a comment on Jude verse 24 preserved by Cassiodorus, Clement uses Mark 16:19), and since Origen fails to quote from huge chunks of Mark; when we see Origen fail to quote from 54, and 41, and 22, and 25, and 39, and 46, and 63 consecutive verses, his non-use of 12 consecutive verses cannot validly be considered evidence of the contents of his copies of Mark.  Why is this never mentioned by Holmes? 

(20)  “The earliest manuscript witnesses for Form 1, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, date to about the same time [that is, contemporary to Eusebius of Caesarea], but have been shown to preserve a textual tradition that dates back to around the time of Irenaeus (c. 175).”

            Do you see what Holmes is doing here?  A footnote in his Bible Review article explains his approach:  the discovery of P66 and P75, he says, “demonstrates that these two fourth-century manuscripts in fact preserve a textual tradition that dates back at least to around the time of Irenaeus.”  He thus treats an extrapolation from manuscripts produced in the fourth century as if this should have the same weight as clear patristic utilizations of Mark 16:9-20 in the second century. 

            Such jugglery is not the same as the enterprise of “measuring Hercules by his foot.”  It is more like attempting to draw Hercules’ beard by measuring his foot.  It is unobjectionable to deduce that Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are descended from the same text-stream of which Papyrus 75 is a core member, and of which P66 is a not-so-strong member.  It is not valid, however, to treat manuscripts which do not contain a single word from the Gospel of Mark as if they shed light on any specific textual variant in the Gospel of Mark. 

            If it is valid to build second-century evidence out of general affinities and inferences, then let’s notice the general affinity between Papyrus 45 and Codex W in the Gospel of Mark, and infer that Papyrus 45, in its pristine form, agreed with Codex W at the end of Mark.  If you see why this approach would be unsound then you see why Holmes’ approach is unsound.  (In addition, one could ask that if it is okay to treat two fourth-century witnesses as evidence for an ancestor-text in c. 175, why is it not okay to treat four second-century witnesses as evidence for an ancestor-text in c. 65?)

           

(21)  “In summary, the evidence for a short form of Mark ending at 16:8 is both early (mid- to late second century) and broad.”

            A number of points may be made in response:
            ● His “mid- to late second century evidence” for the abrupt ending at the end of 16:8 is not evidence.  His earliest evidence is in the fourth century.        

            ● He misrepresents Eusebius’ description of the manuscript-evidence (reading it as if it is a direct observation, rather than something that Eusebius framed as something that someone might say) and reads Eusebius’ statement anachronistically, as if the manuscripts encountered by Eusebius were typical of manuscripts everywhere.

            ● He interprets the annotation in f-1 (and the note in some of the Jerusalem-colophon-group MSS) as if it is “attests to the existence of manuscripts that end at 16:8” – which is correct – without considering that these MSS are echoing older annotations from a shared source, and without considering that the oldest forms of the annotations support the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 by appealing to the majority of MSS, or to the ancient MSS.  Whatever weight is given to these witnesses for the abrupt ending, bit more weight should be placed on the scales in favor of the inclusion of 16:9-20. 

            ● On the basis of the Sinaitic Syriac and Codex Bobbiensis, he concludes that “the short form was widely dispersed geographically at an early period.”  Yet somehow, the even earlier Syriac support for Mark 16:9-20 from Aphrahat and Ephrem Syrus, and the earlier Latin support for Mark 16:9-20 from the Vulgate, leads Holmes to the conclusion that the evidence for Mark 16:9-20 is “very narrow.”  This is a terribly uneven treatment of the evidence.

(22)  “In favor of the originality of the long form, some scholars have suggested that the short form was created by Alexandrian biblical scholars who were embarrassed by the references to handling snakes and drinking poison and therefore deliberately excised verses 9-20.” 

            Holmes is referring to a theory offered by William Farmer in 1974.  This explanation for the loss of verses 9-20 in an Egyptian text-stream is the easiest one to deflect, and the only one Holmes mentions.  The theory of simple accidental loss of the final page of an early copy, the theory of excision due to a copyist’s misunderstanding of a lectionary-related note (“The End of the Second Gospel” after Mark 16:8 – meant to refer to the second Gospel-reading in the Heothina cycle of lections), and my own theory that an Alexandrian copyist removed verses 9-20 because he considered it a separate composition, are not even mentioned.

(23)  “At least 17 words or phrases (for example, “form,” 16:12; “not believe,” 16:11, 16) found in 16:9-20 do not occur elsewhere in Mark or are used with a different sense than elsewhere in the gospel.”

            That’s all fine as far as it goes, but if readers were aware of Bruce Terry’s research of the internal evidence, in which he pointed out that a nearby 12-verse passage (Mark 15:40-16:4) contains 20 (or 22, depending on textual variants) words found nowhere else in the Gospel of Mark, and that Mark 1:1 through 12 contains 16 once-used words, and that 14:1-12 contains 20 once-used words the existence of 17 once-used words (and phrases) in Mark 16:9-20 would tend to be seen as an example of a recurring phenomenon in the Gospel of Mark, rather than as evidence that Mark did not write verses 9-20. 

            In addition, Holmes only told one side of the story, mentioning none of the Marcan features displayed in 16:9-20, such as the words αναστας, πρωϊ, αγρον, εφανερώθη, σκληροκαρδίαν, 

κατακριθήσεται, αρρώστους, and πανταχου, and the phrase in 16:15, εις τον κόσμος άπαντα κηρύξατε το ευαγγέλιον, to which the verbiage of Mark 14:9 is very similar.      

(24)  “In the end, verses 9-20 give every indication of having been tacked on to the end of 16:8, probably sometime early in the second century.”

            Holmes is partly right:  Mark 16:9-20 does look “tacked on,” for all the reasons that he lists:  the transition from 16:8 to 16:9 is awkward; Mary Magdalene is reintroduced; the day and time are restated; Mary’s companions are suddenly off the narrative stage; the resurrection-appearances in 16:9-20 are situated in, or near, Jerusalem, although Galilee would be expected in light of 14:28 and 16:7.  All of these points indicate that this passage was not composed by someone whose purpose was to conclude the narrative that otherwise would end at 16:8.  However, this works against the idea that the passage is a second-century pastiche as effectively as it works against the idea that Mark wrote these verses to conclude his account. 

            I consider the following scenario the best explanation of the evidence, both external and internal:

            (1)  Mark, before composing his Gospel-account, wrote a short freestanding summary of Jesus’ resurrection-appearances.  This text was known and used in Rome in the 60’s.

            (2)  Mark, as he was writing his Gospel-account, was interrupted by an emergency as he was writing 16:8.  He left the city of Rome, leaving behind his unfinished account.

            (3)  Mark’s colleagues in Rome, possessing Mark’s unfinished Gospel-account, and Mark’s short summary of Jesus’ resurrection-appearances, were unwilling to distribute Mark’s Gospel-account in its obviously unfinished form.  So instead of composing a fresh ending, they combined the two Marcan compositions.

            (4)  After those two texts had been combined and only then – Christian copyists at Rome began to produce and distribute copies of the Gospel of Mark for church use.  (Verses 9-20 thus form part of the original text of the Gospel of Mark, just as Proverbs 30 and 31 are part of the original text of Proverbs, and Jeremiah 52 is part of the original text of Jeremiah, even though they were not added by the primary human author of those books.)

            (5)  One recipient of a copy of Mark 1:1-16:20, when encountering 16:9-20, recognized it as a separate text which he had already encountered.  He therefore separated it from the rest of the text, in accord with the meticulous Alexandrian practice of preserving only the text which came directly from the primary author.  The consequently abruptly-ending form of Mark’s Gospel was circulated in Egypt.

            (6)  Some Egyptian copies with the abruptly-ending text of Mark were transported to Caesarea, where they were known to Eusebius in the 300’s.  Eusebius was unaware of the existence of the Shorter Ending.

            (7)  Someone in Egypt, unable to tolerate the abrupt ending, composed the Shorter Ending. 

            (8)  When copies with verses 9-20 entered the Egyptian text-stream where the Shorter Ending was circulating, copyists reacted by combining the Shorter Ending and verses 9-20, putting the Shorter Ending first because (a) it had been the first ending they had encountered, and (b) it tidily wraps up a lection after 16:8, but would be a textual island after 16:20.  Meanwhile, outside Egypt, copies of Mark 1:1-16:20 were distributed far and wide, as the patristic evidence plainly shows.

           

            Perhaps some readers will prefer the idea that Mark deliberately stopped writing at the end of 16:8 – thus misrepresenting the women as if they remained silent, and trapping the reader in a state of empty and unfulfilled expectation.  Hort regarded such a notion as absolutely impossible.  Whatever conclusion one reaches, the path toward a conclusion should be made without the encumbrances of half-truths, exaggerations, distortions, inaccuracies, falsehoods, and selective evidence-picking which currently pervade not only the Biblical Archaeological Review article, but also the vast majority of commentaries on the Gospel of Mark.    

●●●●●●●

(For more information about the evidence pertaining to the ending of the Gospel of Mark,

including details about some evidence which was mentioned here only briefly (such as the anomalies

in Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, and the comment of Victor of Antioch), see my book,

Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20.)