New
Testament scholars continue to spread misinformation about Mark 16:9-20.
The latest perpetrator is Dr. Zachary Cole, a
professor at
Union Theological College.
Dr. Cole received his master’s degree from
Dallas Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. is from the
University of Edinburgh.
Nevertheless – or perhaps one should say
“Consequently” – he has not been well-informed about the last 12 verses of
Mark.
Today, instead of sifting through Dr. Cole’s essay
The
Ending of Mark’s Gospel in a systematic way to clarify all of its
inaccuracies, I wish to address one particular point, as the means of
introducing some important evidence: Cole stated the following:
“Only two copies of Mark seem to suggest that
16:9-20 were not originally written by Mark himself, but these are both early
and reliable witnesses. And we might say that the copies that do
contain 16:9–20, while large in number, are really secondary in importance
because they stand farther away from the event itself. That is why I, along with most New Testament
scholars, are convinced that Mark did not write verses 9-20.”
It
should be noted that some of the manuscripts that include Mark 16:9-20 do not
stand very far away from Vaticanus and Sinaiticus in chronological terms: Codex
Alexandrinus has the passage; so does Codex Bezae
(though partly damaged) and so does Codex
Washingtoniensis. But there is a
larger problem: Dr. Cole has
unfortunately completely ignored the patristic evidence. Although Codex Vaticanus, produced around 325, is the earliest known Greek manuscript of Mark 16, and Codex Sinaiticus is indeed the second-oldest, there is evidence from patristic writings
that belongs in the equation, and this
patristic evidence is older that these two fourth-century manuscripts. Consider:
(1) Justin Martyr. Here is an excerpt, slightly paraphrased,
from chapter 45 of Justin’s work First Apology (composed c. 160 for the Roman Emperor Pius as a defense of
Christianity, which was at the time considered an illegal religion by the Roman
government):
Hear the prophecy that was spoken by David
that God the Father of all would bring
Christ to heaven after He had raised Him from the dead, and would keep Him there
until He has subdued His enemies the
devils, and until the number of those who are foreknown by Him as good and
virtuous is complete, on whose account He continues to delay the end of the
world. These are his words:
“The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right
hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. The Lord shall send to You the
rod of power out of Jerusalem;
and You rule in the midst of Your enemies. With You is the government in the
day of Your power, in the beautiful fellowship of Your saints. From the womb of morning I have begotten You.”
Justin,
in this part of his book, is interpreting Psalm 110 as a prophecy about
Christ. He continues: Where
he says, “He shall send to You the rod of power out of Jerusalem,”
this is a prediction about the mighty word which His apostles, going forth from
Jerusalem,
preached everywhere. And though death is
decreed against those who teach or even confess the name of Christ, we
everywhere both embrace and teach it.
And if you read these words in a hostile spirit, all you can do, as I
said before, is kill us; which indeed does no harm to us, but to you and all
who unjustly hate us and do not repent, brings eternal punishment by fire.”
Notice
the thematic and verbal parallels with Mark 16:17-20. First, five thematic parallels:
●
Justin refers to the ascension of Christ (cf. Mark 16:19)
●
Justin, via Psalm 110:1, refers to Christ being seated at the right hand of God
(cf. Mark 16:19)
●
Justin refers to victory over devils (cf. Mark 16:9 and 16:17)
●
Justin refers to the name of Christ (cf. Mark 16:17)
●
Justin refers to the inability of enemies of Christians to do them real harm
(cf. Mark 16:18).
And a
verbal parallel: when Justin refers to “the mighty word which His apostles, going
forth from Jerusalem, preached everywhere,” he uses the Greek phrase εξελθόντες
πανταχου εκήρυξαν – “went forth everywhere preaching.” The same words, transposed, occur in Mark
16:20: εξελθόντες εκήρυξαν πανταχου –
“went forth preaching everywhere.”
Chapter 45
of Justin’s First Apology is the most
well-known and strongest example of Justin’s familiarity with Mark 16:9-20; it
is not, however, the only example. In
chapter 50, following a quotation from Isaiah 53, Justin writes: “After His crucifixion, even those who were
acquainted with Him all denied and forsook Him.
But later, when He had risen from the dead, and was seen by them, and
they were taught to understand the prophecies in which all of this was foretold
as about to happen, and when they had seen Him depart into heaven, and had
believed, and they received power from there, which was sent to them from Him,
they went forth to the whole race of mankind, and taught these things, and
became known as apostles.”
This summary of
the activities of the apostles after the resurrection does not contain any
precise and direct quotation of the Gospels; however, when Justin writes “And afterwards, when he had risen from the
dead and appeared to them” – in Greek, ‛Υστερων
δε, εκ νεκρων ανασταντος και
οφθεντος αυτοις – this bear a close
resemblance to the text of Mark 16:14 as preserved in Codex Alexandrinus: ‛Υστερων
δε ανακειμένοις αυτοις τοις
ενδεκα εφανερώθη, και ωνείδισεν την απιστείαν αυτων και σκληροκαρδίαν ότι τοις
θεασμένοις αυτον εγηγερμενον εκ νεκρων
ουκ επίστευσαν.
Mark 16:9:
αναστάς (raised) / πρώτη (first) / εφάνη
(appeared)
First Apology chapter 67: ανέστη
/ πρώτη / φανείς
Dialogue with Trypho chapter 138:
αναστάς / πρώτης / εφάνη
The
significance of this correspondence increases when it is noticed that Matthew,
Luke, and John tend to use other terms to describe Jesus’ appearance on the
first day of the week.
(2)
Tatian. In the 170s, Tatian, a student of Justin, made
a composition called the Diatessaron. It
consisted of the contents of the four Gospels rearranged as one continuous
narrative, in more or less chronological order.
In later generations, Tatian was widely regarded as a heretic (although
a case might be made that he was merely very ascetic), and his writings were
either destroyed or allowed to rot away; as a result we do not have any copies
of the Diatessaron in Greek or Syriac today, even though hundreds of copies
once existed. Two of the most important
witnesses to the arrangement of the text in Tatian’s Diatessaron are the
Gospels-text of Codex Fuldensis (an important Latin manuscript made in 546) and
the Arabic Diatessaron (produced in 1043 by a
copyist who stated in a note that he was translating from a manuscript of the
Syriac text of the Diatessaron which had been made in 873).
The
Latin Gospels-text in Codex Fuldensis represents, in terms of its verbiage, the
Vulgate. Similarly, the Syriac
Gospels-text in the Arabic Diatessaron has been conformed to the Peshitta. (The reason for this, presumably, is that the
scribes were suspicious of Tatian’s wording, but were willing to perpetuate his
harmonization-work.) For this reason,
neither of these two sources, standing on its own, is a safe guide on which to
base a reconstruction of the wording
of the Diatessaron as made by Tatian.
When they stand in agreement, however, as flagship representatives of a
geographically Western transmission-branch and of a geographically Eastern
transmission-branch, their combined testimony strongly indicates the arrangement in which Tatian blended together the text of the Gospels.
As I showed in 2012 in an article in
the journal The Heroic Age (available to read online),
the arrangement of the contents of Mark 16:9-20 in Codex Fuldensis and in the
Arabic Diatessaron match up rather well.
For example:
● Both use Mark 16:10 after Luke 24:9,
● Both use Mark 16:12 between Luke 24:11 and 24:13.
● Both use Mark 16:13b between Luke 24:13-35 and
part of 24:36.
● Both use Mark 16:14 between Matthew 28:17 and
28:18.
● Both use Mark 16:15 between Matthew 28:18 and
28:19.
● Both use “and sat down at the right hand of God”
(from Mark 16:19) between Luke 24:51 and 24:52.
There are
some differences, too (see for details the article in The Heroic Age),
but inasmuch as (a) Mark 16:9-20
was blended with the other Gospels in the transmission-branch that led to Codex
Fuldensis, and (b) Mark 16:9-20 was
blended with the other Gospels in essentially the same way in the
transmission-branch that led to the Arabic Diatessaron, the conclusion that Mark
16:9-20 was in the source of both branches seems irresistible.
In addition, Ephrem Syrus, who wrote a commentary
on the Diatessaron in Syriac in the 360s, mentioned in the opening sentence of
the eighth part of the commentary that Jesus told His disciples, “Go into all the world and baptize in the name of the
Father, and Son, and Spirit.” This is a
combination of Mark 16:15a and
Matthew 28:19. (It should be understood
that analyses of Ephrem’s testimony prior to 1957 were made without awareness
of the contents of Chester Beatty Syriac Manuscript 709, a Syriac manuscript
produced in about A. D. 500 which includes most of Ephrem’s commentary.)
(3) Irenaeus. In the course of his writings, Irenaeus – a prolific
and prominent bishop in the second century – mentions that as a youth growing
up in Asia Minor, he had heard the voice of
Polycarp, who had heard John. As an
adult, Irenaeus moved to the city of Lugdunum (Lyons), where he served as bishop. He also visited Rome in 177.
In Book Three of Against
Heresies, chapter 10, (written around the year 180) Irenaeus says: “Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel,
Mark says: ‘So then, after the Lord
Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on
the right hand of God.’”
This plainly
shows that in the manuscripts of Mark that Irenaeus read, around 150 years
before Codex Vaticanus was produced, Mark 16:9-20 was part of the text of the
Gospel of Mark.
(4) Epistula Apostolorum. This second-century composition by an unknown
author is little-known now, and was completely unknown before its discovery in
1895. Epistula Apostolorum does not explicitly quote from Mark 16:9-20,
but its parallels with Mark 16:9-20 indicate that the author used part of Mark
16:9-20 as the basis for his plotline (as Robert Stein has granted):
● In
Epistula
Apostolorum, the apostles are depicted rejecting a woman’s claim that
she had seen the risen Jesus, something that occurs in the Gospels only in Mark
16:10-11.
● In Epistula
Apostolorum, Jesus is pictured saying to the apostles, “Go ye and preach to
the twelve tribes, and preach also to the heathen, and to all the land of Israel from the east to the west and
from the south unto the north, and many shall believe on <me> the Son of
God.” “Go ye and preach” is reminiscent of Mark 16:15.
● In Epistula
Apostolorum, chapter 1, Jesus is
depicted appearing to the women at the tomb “as they mourned and wept,” which
is quite similar to the description of those to whom the women reported the
good news in Mark 16:10, “as they mourned and wept.”
● In Epistula Apostolorum, Jesus rebukes the
disciples by saying, “You are yet slow of heart,” which resembles the rebuke of
their hard-heartedness described in Mark 16:14.
● In Epistula Apostolorum, Jesus says to the
disciples, “Whoever shall hear you and believe on Me shall receive from you the
light of the seal through Me, and baptism through Me,” and, “They shall receive
the baptism of life and the remission of their sins at My hand through you,”
which conveys the sentiment of Mark 16:16, mentioning belief and baptism
together.
While
these are small points, their cumulative impact confirms that the author of Epistula
Apostolorum recollected the contents of Mark 16:9-20.
(5)
Hierocles. Hierocles was a pagan writer (and a
prominent office-holder in the Roman government in Bithynia) who wrote a short
work called
Truth-loving Words (or,
Words for the Truth-lover) around the
year 305, in which he recycled some material that had been composed by his
teacher, Porphyry, in a longer composition around the year 270.
Later, c. 405, a writer named
Macarius
Magnes (that is, Macarius from the city of
Magnesia) wrote
Apocriticus, a response to Hierocles’ book, unaware that Hierocles
was the author.
Macarius Magnes quoted
one of the jibes made in the book:
“Consider in detail that other passage,
where he [Jesus] says, ‘Such signs shall follow those who believe: they shall
lay hands upon sick folk, and they shall recover, and if they drink any deadly
drug, it shall by no means hurt them.’ So
it would be proper for those selected for the priesthood, and particularly
those who lay claim to the bishop’s or president’s office, to make use of this
form of test. The deadly drug should be
set before them in order that the man who received no harm from the drinking of
it might be given preference over the rest.
And if they are not bold enough to accept this sort of test, they ought
to confess that they do not believe in the things Jesus said.”
This
is the same kind of challenge that some
Muslim propagandists
make in our own times, inviting Christians to drink poison as a demonstration
that they believe the Bible, ignoring the prohibition against putting God to
the test.
(Macarius Magnes, rather than
argue that the passage is not genuine, first pointed out that accepting such a
challenge would not really prove anything, inasmuch as unbelievers as well as
believers sometimes may recover from poisoning, and then argued that the
passage should be understood as an analogy – the poison being representative of
the deadly effects of sin, which are remedied by the administration of baptism
upon a believer, so that the person’s rebellious nature dies, but the person
himself is unharmed.)
Although
Hierocles’ quotation is inexact, it shows that his manuscripts of the Gospels,
extant in 305, contained Mark 16:18 – unless this part of Hierocles’ work is
just an extract from the work of Porphyry, in which case the quotation echoes
manuscripts from the 270s or earlier.
(6) Aphrahat the Persian Sage. This
Syriac writer, before the end of the year 336, used Mark 16:16-18 in the 17th
paragraph of his composition Demonstration
One: Of Faith:
“When
our Lord gave the sacrament of baptism to His apostles, He said to them,
“Whosoever believes and is baptized shall live, and whoever does not believe
shall be condemned.” At the end of the
same paragraph, Aphrahat (also known as Aphraates) writes: “He also said thus: ‘This shall be the sign for those who
believe: they shall speak with new
tongues, and shall cast out demons, and they shall place their hands on the
sick, and they shall be made whole.”
In the interest of brevity I shall not go into detail about
the evidence from Tertullian, Hippolytus, De
Rebaptismate, Vincentius of Thibaris, Acts
of Pilate, and other sources; the data can be found in Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20. The testimony of Justin, Tatian, Epistula Apostolum, Irenaeus, Hierocles,
and Aphraates (representing different locales) is sufficient to demonstrate
that Mark 16:9-20 was widely used as Scripture in the early church.
Now then: Aphrahat
was a contemporary of the copyists who made Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. The other six patristic witnesses pre-date Vaticanus
and Sinaiticus, and in the case of Justin, Tatian, Epistula Apostolorum, and Irenaeus, the contest is not close; their
testimony is over a century earlier.
Inasmuch as Dr. Cole says that manuscripts such as Alexandrinus,
Bezae, Codex W, and hundreds of
medieval manuscripts of Mark “are really secondary in importance because they
stand farther away from the event itself,” what happens when that line of
reasoning is applied to Vaticanus and Sinaiticus when they are compared to the
testimony of Justin, Tatian, Epistula
Apostolorum, and Irenaeus? Logic
would seem to compel the conclusion that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are roughly
equal in weight with the combined testimony of Hierocles and Aphrahat, and
really secondary in importance when compared to Justin, Tatian, Epistula Apostolorum, and Irenaeus.
Let’s revisit the last two sentences in that quotation from Dr. Cole:
Cole:
“We might say that the copies that do
contain 16:9–20, while large in number, are really secondary in importance
because they stand farther away from the event itself. That is why I, along with most New Testament
scholars, are convinced that Mark did not write verses
9-20.”
He is referring to the greater age of
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus compared to the manuscripts that include the
passage. But Hierocles and Aphrahat are just as close to the event itself as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. (A little closer, actually.) Will Dr. Cole admit therefore that
Hierocles and Aphrahat are just as close to the event as Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus? Will he concede now that
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are really secondary in importance, when compared to Justin,
Tatian, Epistula Apostolorum, and
Irenaeus, because those two manuscripts stand farther away from the event itself? Your move, professor.
There are
other problematic claims in Dr. Cole’s recent essay but I will stop here for
now – almost. Just two more things. First, it should never be overlooked (although
practically all commentators do, and certainly all Bible footnote-writers do)
that while Vaticanus and Sinaiticus attest to the non-inclusion of Mark
16:9-20, they both have unusual features that reveal their copyists’ awareness
of the absent verses. I have explained
this in two previous posts: Codex
Vaticanus and the Ending of Mark and Codex
Sinaiticus and the Ending of Mark.
Second,
Dr. Cole describes Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are “our earliest and best copies
of Mark’s Gospel” but this must be qualified and clarified. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are indeed our earliest manuscripts, but it is
obvious that Irenaeus and other early patristic writers possessed earlier manuscripts which included Mark
16:9-20. Their manuscripts were not kept
in Egypt,
(where the climate was more favorable to papyrus-preservation), but that is not
a valid reason to ignore them as Dr. Cole has done (for in his essay he
completely avoided the patristic evidence).
As for
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus being the “best copies”: suppose someone said, “My two ships are the
best of all ships,” but you noticed that although their hulls were far above
average quality at many points, each had two gaping holes in the stern. Would you still call those the best ships? Arguing for a reading because it is found in
“the most reliable manuscripts” or “the best manuscripts” is like arguing that
the New England Patriots
must have won a specific football game because the New England Patriots win more
football games than other teams.
[Readers are invited to explore the links for additional resources.]
