Answering James White's Questions About Mark 16:9-20

            In a recent video, Dr. James White asked some questions about Mark 16:9-20.  Here are some answers.

(1)  How do you define overwhelming evidence?

            Something like this: 
99.9% of the extant Greek manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is something like 1,650 to 3.

99.9% of the extant Latin manuscripts of Mark 16. The score is something like 8,000 to 1 (and the one, Codex Bobbiensis, is the worst-copied Latin manuscript of Mark in existence).

99% of the extant Syriac manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is at least 100 to 1. 

100% of the extant Gothic manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is 1 to 0.

At least 80% of the extant Sahidic manuscript of Mark 16.  The score is at least 5 to 1.

100% of the extant Bohairic manuscripts of Mark 16.  

100% of the Ethiopic manuscripts of Mark 16.  The score is about 200 to 0.   

100% of the extant Greek lectionaries of the Heothina series. 

(The ratios regarding Syriac and Sahidic manuscripts should be increased; I used low amounts here.  The one Syriac manuscript that ends the text of Mark at 16:8 is the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript; the one Sahidic manuscript that ends the text of Mark at 16:8 is Codex P. Palau-Ribes Inv. Nr. 182.) 

(2)  How could Eusebius and Jerome have said what they said?

            For some preliminary data about the testimony of Eusebius and Jerome regarding the ending of Mark, see section #2 of the 2016 post, Mark 16:9-20:  Sorting Out Some Common Mistakes.  As David Parker has acknowledged, Jerome simply recycled material from Eusebius to save time when facing a broad question about reconciling the Gospel-accounts.  (Additional details are in my book, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20.)
            Eusebius worked at Caesarea in the early 300s, and part of the library there had been passed along from Origen in the 200s.  Origen had previously worked in Egypt, and it can be safely deduced that some copies of Mark in Egypt in the 200s ended their text at 16:8.  Eusebius’ comments reflect his awareness of such copies, or of copies at Caesarea descended from such copies. 

            In his composition Ad Marinum, however, Eusebius did not reject Mark 16:9-20.  He addressed Marinus’ question of how a person can harmonize Matthew 28:1-2 with Mark 16:9, regarding the question of the timing of Jesus’ resurrection.  Eusebius said that there are two ways to resolve the question:   one way might be to reject Mark 16:9, and everything that follows it, on the grounds that the passage is not in every manuscript, or is in some copies but not in others, or that it is seldom found.  But that is not the option that Eusebius recommends.  Instead, he advises Marinus to retain the text he has, and to resolve the question by understanding that there is a pause, or comma, in Mark 16:9, so that “early on the first day of the week” refers to the time of Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene, rather than to the time He arose.    

              The Greek text of Eusebius’ composition can be read in Roger Pearse’s free book, Eusebius of Caesarea: Gospel Problems and Solutions, with an English translation.  The things to see are that (a) Eusebius framed the claim that one could reject Mark 16:9-20 on the grounds that it is not in most manuscripts as something that could be said, not as his own favored option, even though there were manuscripts at Caesarea (descended from manuscripts from Egypt) which ended at 16:8, and (b) Eusebius recommended to Marinus that Mark 16:9-20 should be retained, and (c) he used Mark 16:9 on two other occasions in the same composition, and (d) Eusebius showed no awareness of the Shorter Ending.

            (It is extremely likely that Eusebius of Caesarea rejected Mark 16:9-20 when he developed his Canon-Tables, but that is a separate subject from his statements in Ad Marinum.)  

(3) Why do you have early fourth-century codices that do not contain this text?

            We have two fourth-century Greek codices in which Mark stops at 16:8 because those two fourth-century codices were based on manuscripts from, or descended from, Egypt, where Mark 16:9-20 had been lost or taken from the text in a previous generation. 
            Unusual features in Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus show that their copyists were aware of the absent verses; for details see this post about Codex Vaticanus and this post about Codex Sinaiticus.  I show, among other things, that Codex Vaticanus has a blank space after Mark 16:8 that is capable of containing Mark 16:9-20, and that the page on which the text of Mark ends at 16:8 in Sinaiticus is part of a cancel-sheet, that is, four pages that replaced the work of the main copyist.  

(4)  Why do other early fathers never mention material from that passage?  

            Who is Dr. White talking about?  Clement and Origen?  Clement never quoted from 12 entire chapters of Mark.  Saying that Clement never mentioned material from Mark 16:9-20 is like saying, “Clement used Mark 16:9-20 as much as he used 90% of the book.”

            Origen might allude to Mark 16:17-20 in the reworked composition Philocalia, but even if one is not persuaded that he did so, Origen didn’t use the Gospel of Mark very much; there are very large segments of Mark that Origen never quoted.  Here is one way of picturing the situation:  if you divide the text of Mark into fifty-six 12-verse segments, Origen only quotes from 22 of them.  Even if we were to arbitrary increase that amount, and say that Origen used half of the 12-verse segments in Mark, the point would stand that we should approach the data from Origen with the understanding that the chance of Origen quoting from any 12-verse segment of the Gospel of Mark is 50%. 

            Origen did not use 54 consecutive verses from Mark 1:36 to 3:16.  Origen did not use 41 consecutive verses of Mark from 5:2 to 5:43.  Origen did not use 22 consecutive verses from 8:7 to 8:29, and Origen did not use 39 consecutive verses from 10:3 to 10:42. 

            So when he does not quote from 12 verses in Mark 16:9-20, is that supposed to suggest that the passage wasn’t in his manuscripts?  Seriously?  Too many apologists have read “Clement and Origen show no knowledge of these verses” in Metzger’s Textual Commentary, and thought, “Well, that sounds important,” and rephrased Metzger’s claim without ever investigating whether it’s solid evidence, or propaganda.  Well, folks, it is empty propaganda.  Origen shows no knowledge of 450 verses of Mark.  The claim that Origen does not use Mark 16:9-20 – if he wasn’t doing so in Philocalia – has no real force as an argument against the passage, and commentators who use it as if it does deserve to be ignored.

            While we are on the subject of patristic evidence:  when someone claims that early church fathers never use the contents of Mark 16:9-20, that person shows that he is not qualified to give an informed opinion on the subject.  Lots of patristic writers mention material from Mark 16:9-20.  

            In the 100s, Justin Martyr alluded to Mark 16:20.  Tatian incorporated almost the whole passage in his Diatessaron.  And Irenaeus, in what is now France, specifically quoted Mark 16:19, in his work Against Heresies, in Book Three.  In the 200s, passages from Mark 16:9-20 are used in Syriac in the Didascalia Apostolorum, and in a Latin statement by Vincent of Thibaris at a council in Carthage, and in the Latin composition De Rebaptismate, in the 250’s.            

            In the late 200s or early 300s, the pagan writer Hierocles, in the area that is now Turkey, used Mark 16:18 in the course of mockingly challenging Christians to select their leaders by poison-drinking contests.  Also in the 300s, the Latin writer Fortunatianus mentioned that Mark told about the ascension of Christ.  In the same century, the unknown author of the Acts of Pilate used Mark 16:15-16, and so did the author of the Syriac text of The Story of John the Son of Zebedee.    Meanwhile, Aphrahat the Persian Sage utilized Mark 16:17 in his composition First Demonstration, in 337.  Elsewhere, Wulfilas included Mark 16:9-20 in the Gothic version in the mid-300s.  In Syria in the late 300s or early 400s, the translators of the Syriac Peshitta included Mark 16:9-20.  Meanwhile in Milan, Ambrose quoted from Mark 16:9-20 in the 380s. 

            In 383, Jerome made the Vulgate, stating specifically that he had consulted ancient Greek manuscripts for the purpose, and he included Mark 16:9-20.  A little later on, in the early 400s, Jerome made a reference to the interpolation known as the Freer Logion, and said that he had seen it “especially in Greek codices.”  Metzger proposes that the Freer Logion itself was composed and inserted into the text between Mark 16:14 and 16:15 sometime in the second or third century.   

            In the 400s, Patrick quoted from Mark 16:16 in Ireland; Augustine quoted from Mark 16:9-20 in North Africa – and he casually mentioned that his Greek copies affirmed a reading in verse 12 – and Macarius Magnes used it in Asia Minor, and Marcus Eremita used it in Israel, and Eznik of Golb quotes verses 17 and 18 way over in Armenia, and five forms of the Old Latin chapter-summaries, displayed for instance in Codex Corbeiensis, refer to the contents of Mark 16:9-20. 

            How many names of patristic writers who utilized Mark 16:9-20 are found in The King James Only Controversy in the section where James White focuses on external evidence about this passage?    Is Justin mentioned?  No.  Tatian?  No.  White mentioned two Georgian copies made after the time of Charlemagne, but did he mention Irenaeus?  No.  He mentioned the Slavonic version from the ninth century, because he thought it supports non-inclusion (it actually supports inclusion), but did he mention the Gothic version from the fourth century?  No.  Why not?

            James White didn’t mention the evidence from Justin, and Tatian, and Vincent of Thibaris, and Hierocles, and Fortunatianus, and Wulfilas.  But why should his readers feel as if they have been misled?

            James White didn’t mention Acts of Pilate, and the repeated quotations of Mark 16:9-20 by Ambrose in Italy, or by Augustine in North Africa. He didn’t mention that Augustine’s Greek manuscripts had Mark 16:9-20.  But why should his readers feel misled?    

            James White didn’t mention Patrick’s use of Mark 16:15-16 in Ireland, or Macarius Magnes’ extensive use of the passage in Asia Minor, or the use of Mark 16:18 by Marcus Eremita in Israel – but he did not lie to anyone.  Maybe his readers just misunderstood what they were being told.  

            White didn’t mention that Pelagius, Prosper of Aquitaine, and Peter Chrysologus used Mark 16:9-20.  But his readers have not been lied to.   

            James White did not mention a single one of these Roman-era witnesses that support Mark 16:9-20.  He did not mention that Irenaeus, c. 180, had a manuscript that contained Mark 16:9-20, over a century before Vaticanus was made. But why should anyone feel misled by White’s selectivity in choosing what evidence to share, and what to hide?      

(5)  Most importantly, why the differing endings if the one is original?

            Well, let me tell you.  The question is, in part, a request for a hypothesis:  in the first century, after the Gospel of Mark began to be disseminated from the city of Rome (with 16:9-20 included), a copy reached Egypt.  At this point, the last twelve verses were lost; a simple accident is possible, but I think they were removed or obelized (and then later removed) deliberately by someone who recognized them as resembling a short composition which Mark had written on another occasion as a freestanding text, summarizing Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances.  This individual regarded Peter as the primary author of the Gospel of Mark; Mark being merely a recorder and organizer of Petrine material.  He therefore obelized verses 9-20 as something that was not the work of the primary author, and in the next generation, the obelized portion was not perpetuated.   

            Of course we do not have this on video – just as we do not have any of the dozens of scribal corruptions that James White proposes in his book on video.  And this hypothesis can be tweaked without essential change; for example, it is possible that verses 9-20 were removed in a single step.  But this or something like this accounts for the absence of Mark 16:9-20 in Egypt, while the Gospel of Mark spread with 16:9-20 included everywhere else, as the patristic evidence shows – that is, as the patristic evidence would show, if the patristic writers had not been tied up and gagged, and thrown in a pit where they cannot be heard.

            In a later generation, in Egypt, the Shorter Ending was created by someone who could not stand the abruptness of the text in its truncated form (ending at the end of 16:8).  There are six Greek manuscripts that have the Shorter Ending; some of them are damaged, but all six also have verse 9, which implies that all six also had verses 9-20 when the manuscripts were in pristine condition. 

            Did James White tell you about the notes that appear in some of those manuscripts?  No?  Maybe that has something to do with why he is asking this question.  Let’s take a few minutes to zoom in on those notes.  Without getting bogged down in details, the thing to see is that most of these six manuscripts are related to the same narrow Egyptian transmission-stream.  Here are the basic details:

            In Codex L, a note appears before the Short Ending:  “In some, there is also this.”  And between the Shorter Ending and 16:9, a note says, “There is also this, appearing after ‘for they were afraid.”  It may be safely deduced from these notes that the person who wrote these notes knew of some copies with the Shorter Ending after verse 8, and some copies with verses 9-20 after verse 8.

            In Codex Ψ, the six lines that follow the line on which Mark 16:8 ends contain the Short Ending, and then there is a note:  “This also appears, following ‘for they were afraid.’”  The wording of the note is not quite identical to the note in L, but it is very close. 

            083 is a damaged fragment, but enough has survived to show that 083 has the closing-title “Gospel According to Mark” after 16:8, and then has the Shorter Ending in the next column, and before 16:9, the note, “There is also this, appearing after ‘for they were afraid,’” exactly as in Codex L. 

            099, which is even more fragmentary than 083, has a feature which creates a link to a locale in Egypt.  16:8 is followed by a gap, which is followed by the Shorter Ending, which is followed by another gap.  Then, instead of the beginning of 16:9, the contents of 16:8b are repeated (beginning with ειχεν γαρ αυτας τρομος ) and after 16:8 is completed, 16:9 begins.

            Why does this link these manuscripts to Egypt?  Because of the Greek-Sahidic lectionary 1602 – which James White mislabeled “l, 1602” in the second edition of his book, just as he mislabeled lectionary 153 as “l, 153” on the previous page.  In l 1602, a note appears between 16:8 and the Shorter Ending:  “In other copies this is not written.”  Then, after the Shorter Ending, there is the same note that appears in Codex L.  After the note, instead of beginning 16:9, the text resumes in 16:8b (at ειχεν γαρ, as in 099), which is followed by 16:9ff. 

            To review:  L and Ψ and 083 and  l 1602 have the note “There is also this, appearing after ‘for they were afraid,’” before 16:9.  099 and l 1602 both repeat the text of 16:8b before 16:9.  Thus, all five of these witnesses are traced to the same narrow transmission-stream, where Sahidic was read (i.e., in Egypt).     

 

            That leaves two Greek manuscripts with the Shorter Ending:  579 and 274.  579 (from the 1200s) does not share any of the notes that L, Ψ, 099 and 083 have, but it shares (approximately) the rare chapter-divisions that are displayed in Codex Vaticanus, the flagship manuscript of the Alexandrian Text.  It also shares many readings with Vaticanus, such as the non-inclusion of Luke 22:43-44 and Luke 23:34a.

            That leaves 274.  In the main text of 274 (from the 900s), 16:9 begins on the same line on which 16:8 ends (the verses are separated by an abbreviated lectionary-related note, “End of the second Heothina-reading”).  The Shorter Ending has been added in the lower margin of the page, to the right of a column of five asterisks; another asterisk appears to the left of 16:9 so as to indicate where the Shorter Ending was seen in another manuscript.    The Shorter Ending in 274 is more like an incidental margin-note, mentioning an interesting feature in some secondary exemplar, than part of the manuscript’s text copied from the main exemplar.

           

            The takeaway from this is that the Greek witnesses for the Shorter Ending echo situations in one particular locale, namely Egypt, where Mark 16:9-20 was first lost (or excised), and the Shorter Ending was then created to relieve the resultant abrupt stop of the narrative, and then copies appeared in which 16:9-20 followed 16:8.  Copyists in Egypt, facing some exemplars with no text after 16:8, and some exemplars with the Shorter Ending after 16:8, and some exemplars with verses 9-20 after 16:8, resolved the situation by including both endings.  Meanwhile, everywhere else – from Ireland to France to Rome to North Africa to the coast of Italy to Asia Minor to Palestine to Cyprus to Israel to parts of Egypt to Syria to Armenia – copies of Mark were being used in which 16:8 was followed unremarkably by 16:9-20.          

            The Sahidic, Bohairic, and Ethiopic versions, like almost all versions, echoed the Greek manuscripts accessible to their translators:  the earliest strata of the Sahidic version echoes a situation in Egypt when and where the text of Mark ended at 16:8; the versions with the double-ending (always with the Shorter Ending first, when it appears in the text – for it would be superfluous after 16:20) echo later situations.  (Notably, the Garima Gospels, the oldest Ethiopic Gospels-manuscript, does not have the Shorter Ending after 16:8; it has 16:9-20.)

                       

            If Dr. White has any other questions on this subject, or still feels obligated to put Mark 16:9-20 in a "Maybe Scripture, Maybe Not" category, I will be happy to discuss this topic with him in a formal debate – anywhere, any place, any time.

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

Mark 16:9-20 and the Strange Scholarship of BAR

This is a sequel to my post Mark 16:9-20 and Early Patristic Evidence.  A fellow researcher, upon encountering my post, referred me to an article at the website of the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine:  James Tabor’s The Strange Ending of the Gospel of Mark and Why It Makes All the Difference.  I saw this material when it was first published, and I had hoped that the editors of BAR might let Tabor’s embarrassing inaccuracies (and lack of quotation-marks when borrowing from Metzger’s Textual Commentary) quietly slip into the shadows.  Alas, the article is still being circulated and still needs to be addressed.

In the interest of brevity I will not address the parts of the article in which Tabor promotes his books and his view on peripheral subjects, and via this step alone I have spared myself from delving into most of the article. 

Rather than convey his position in anything like a restrained and measured tone, Tabor describes Mark 16:9-20 in boisterous terms:  he calls this passage “concocted” and “patently false” and “forged” and “bogus” and a “forgery” and he then attempts to make a case for his own belief that Mark believed in something other than the bodily resurrection of Jesus.  But where and how does he present the evidence?  His presentation of external evidence begins and ends with this excerpt: 

            “The evidence is clear. This ending is not found in our earliest and most reliable Greek copies of Mark.  In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger writes: “Clement of Alexandria and Origen [early third century] show no knowledge of the existence of these verses; furthermore Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them.” ”

Tabor’s concise description misleads his readers at every step:  he fails to mention that he is referring to only two manuscripts as “our earliest and most reliable Greek copies,” namely Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus – and he fails to mention that both of these manuscripts contain unusual features at or near the end of Mark that indicate that their copyists were aware of the existence of the missing verses.  In Codex Vaticanus, for example, the copyist left a distinct blank space (including an entire blank column) just the right size for a skilled scribe to fit verses 9-20.  In Codex Sinaiticus, the four pages containing Mark 14:54-Luke 1:76 written by the main copyist are not extant; the four pages which now exist in the manuscript are a single sheet of parchment (written on the front and back and folded down the center, so as to form four pages) which replaced the work of the main copyist; for details see the post Codex Sinaiticus and the Ending of Mark).  He fails to mention that over 1,500 Greek manuscript of Mark include 16:9-20.       

Tabor also repeats Bruce Metzger’s claim that Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses, letting readers imagine on their own that the writings of Clement and Origen are jam-packed with quotations from the rest of the Gospel of Mark, while in real life Clement of Alexandria hardly ever made specific quotations from the Gospel of Mark except for one long extract from chapter 10.  To put it another way:  according to the data in Carl Cosaert’s research, Clement of Alexandria does not makes specific citations from Mark chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15, and 16.  Even if tomorrow someone were to discover a dozen citations from Mark made by Clement, the implication would not change:  Clement cited the Gospel of Mark only very rarely and his lack of usage of Mark 16:9-20 is merely a symptom of his general neglect of the entire book.  What Tabor (and Metzger) says about Mark 16:9-20 as a passage not used by Clement can be said about almost every 12-verse segment of the book, outside chapter 10.    

As for Origen, while he cited Mark more often than Clement did, he did not cite it anywhere near the frequency with which he cited the other Gospels.  As far as I can tell via a study of Origen’s major works, Origen cited nothing in Mark 3:19-4:11 (28 consecutive verses), or in 5:2-5:43 (41 consecutive verses) or in 8:7-8:29 (22 consecutive verses), or in 10:3-10:42 (39 consecutive verses), or in 1:36-3:16 (54 consecutive verses).  If we should conclude that a non-use of Mark 16:9-20 means that the verses were absent in Origen’s copies (as Tabor seems to expect his readers to conclude that it does), then by the same measure, they would conclude that Origen had a much shorter text of Mark.  Whereas the proper conclusion is simply that Origen’s non-use of Mark 16:9-20 – if a reference in Philocalia 5 does not allude to Mark 16:17-20 – is a side-effect of his general preference for the other three Gospel-accounts.

Tabor also misrepresents (because Metzger did) the testimony of Eusebius and Jerome; those who seek a more realistic and informed perspective on their testimony may want to bypass the misleading snippets used by various commentators and read Eusebius’ comments for themselves in Eusebius of Caesarea – Gospel Problems and Solutions, and to compare it to Jerome’s Epistle 120 – To Hedibia, and notice (as D. C. Parker noticed) that Jerome’s comment is not a personal observation by  Jerome about Jerome’s manuscripts; it is part of Jerome’s Latin abridgment of part of Eusebius’ Ad Marinum, cobbled together in response to Hedibia’s general question about how to harmonize the Gospels regarding events that followed Christ’s resurrection.  Those who take the time to do so will see that Eusebius, rather than forcefully reject Mark 16:9-20, advised Marinus about how to punctuate and pronounce (and thus retain) Mark 16:9; they will also see that Eusebius used Mark 16:9 himself on two other occasions in the same composition.  

Tabor then mentions “two other endings,” and here too he misleads his readers.  For he fails to mention that when every Greek manuscript that includes the Shorter Ending – all six of them – was made, the usual 12 verses were included too.  And he says that these endings show up in “various manuscripts” but there is only one manuscript that has what he describes as an ending:  the Freer Logion, found in Codex W.  Furthermore, it is plainly false to call the Freer Logion another ending, because it is not an ending; it is an interpolation, as you can see (page-views below).  This material does not appear after Mark 16:8.  It appears between Mark 16:14 and 16:15, right where Jerome mentioned in one of his writings that he had seen it, “especially in Greek codices.”    

            And that is where Tabor’s presentation of the external evidence ends; the remainder of the article is not much more than restatements of the author’s unorthodox beliefs regarding the nature of the resurrection of Christ.  Where does he mention that Irenaeus specifically quoted Mark 16:19 around the year 180, over a century before Codex Vaticanus was made?  Nowhere.  Where does he mention that manuscripts representing the Byzantine, Western, Caesarea, and Alexandrian text-types include Mark 16:9-20?  Nowhere.  How is it that in a footnote Tabor mentions (via a quotation from Metzger’s Textual Commentary) two Georgian manuscripts from the 800s and 900s, but none of the patristic utilizations of Mark 16:9-20 from the 300s and 400s?  Is evidence from the Vulgate, from Codex Alexandrinus, from Codex Bezae, from Apostolic Constitutions (380), from Ambrose, from Augustine, and from Jerome suddenly so trivial as to be ignored?  No?  Then why – I ask the editors of BAR – was none of this mentioned in their article?     

            No matter what the answer is – whether such glaring omissions and evidence-molding were intentional or accidental – it seems obvious that BAR should be considered a dry well – or worse, a poisoned well – by readers thirsty for accurate descriptions of the external evidence pertinent to important text-critical questions about the text of the New Testament.

Mark 16:9-20 - Sorting Out Some Common Mistakes

          Last week, as Easter approached, many sermon-preparing preachers pondered what to do with Mark 16:9-20. They approached their trusted commentaries and found . . . a spectacular mess. The amount of misinformation that continues to circulate about these 12 verses is staggering. Here are 12 claims about Mark 16:9-20 that should not be taken at face value.

(12) “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses.” When Bruce Metzger first made this claim in 1964 on page 226 of the first edition of The Text of the New Testament, he wrote, “Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius show no knowledge of the existence of these verses,” but by the time Metzger wrote A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament for the United Bible Societies, he had removed the reference to Eusebius (that is, Eusebius of Caesarea, an important bishop in the early 300’s – more about him later). It would have been better to remove the sentence altogether, because it has misled many commentators (some of whom repeat Metzger’s statements almost word-for-word).
          While there is no clear quotation of Mark 16:9-20 in Clement’s writings, there is also no clear quotation from chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 15 and 16 of Mark. Aside from one large and loosely quoted citation from chapter 10, Clement hardly ever used the Gospel of Mark. Clement’s testimony does not mean anything about Mark 16:9-20 that it does not mean about 12 entire chapters of Mark.
          Origen, similarly, did not use the Gospel of Mark nearly as much as he used the other Gospels. In his major works, Origen quotes nothing from 3:19-4:11 (28 consecutive verses), from 5:2-5:43 (41 consecutive verses), from 8:7-8:29 (22 consecutive verses), or from 10:3-10:42 (39 consecutive verses), or Mark 1:36-3:16 (54 consecutive verses). So why, when Origen does not use Mark 16:9-20, should this indicate anything special? If Origen did not use Mark 16:9-20, that only means that Mark 16:9-20 has something in common with 33 other 12-verse segments of the Gospel of Mark.
          But it is possible that in Philocalia, chapter 5, Origen alluded to Mark 16:15-18. In the course of linking together a series of Scripture-citations, Origen stated, right after alluding to Luke 10:19, “Let a man observe how the apostles who were sent by Jesus to proclaim the Gospel went everywhere, and he cannot help seeing their superhuman daring in obedience to the divine command.”  While this is not a direct quotation, Origen may have been referring to the instructions to preach the gospel in Mark 16:15, and to the spread of the message everywhere in 16:20, and to the apparently daring actions described in 16:18. The thematic parallel between Luke 10:19 and Mark 16:18 renders this a real possibility.
          Considering Origen’s general tendency to neglect the Gospel of Mark, and considering that it is difficult to refute the idea that Origen alluded to Mark 16:15-20 in Philocalia, his testimony should be considered neutral.
          Since the names of Clement and Origen were thrown into the textual apparatus of both the Novum Testamentum Graece and the Greek New Testament of the United Bible Societies, as if they clearly testified against Mark 16:9-20, generations of commentators have misrepresented their non-testimony as if it is some sort of thunderous declaration.   In 2007, author Stephen Miller was spreading the completely false claim (in Barbour Publishing’s The Complete Guide to the Bible) that Clement of Alexandria had written a commentary in which he confirmed that Mark ends at 16:8.

(11) “Mark 16:9-20 is omitted by important Ethiopic codices.”  This claim can still be found in influential commentaries and apologetics-handbooks. It still circulates on page 322 of the fourth edition of The Text of the New Testament, the work of Metzger (now deceased) and his student Bart Ehrman.  The late Eugene Nida also was guilty of spreading this claim.  However, in 1980, Metzger demonstrated in a detailed essay (published as chapter 9 in a volume of New Testament Tools and Studies) thatthe statement is false.  Metzger concluded that the claim was based on a mistake made by researchers in the 1800’s regarding three Ethiopic manuscripts – all three of which really contain the passage.  To repeat: all known undamaged Ethiopic manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark include 16:9-20.
          Furthermore, research on the Ethiopic version has not stood still since 1980: the Garima Gospels, an Ethiopic manuscript which was previously thought to have been written around A.D. 1000, was tested via carbon-dating, and its production-date was reassigned to 430-540.  The Garima Gospels contains Mark 16:9-20 immediately after 16:8.

(10) “Some early manuscripts add the Freer Logion between verses 14 and 15.”  This claim used to be part of a footnote in the English Standard Version, and to this day, Tyndale House Publishers are spreading this claim in a footnote in the New Living Translation.  During Jerome’s lifetime (in the late 300’s and early 400’s), this claim was true; Jerome reported that the Freer Logion appeared in the Gospel of Mark after 16:14 “especially in Greek codices.”  However, the number of manuscripts that exist today and which are known to contain this interpolation is exactly one:   Codex Washingtoniensis, which resides at the Smithsonian Institution.

(9) “The Freer Logion is ‘another ending’ to the Gospel of Mark.” James Tabor, a professor at UNC Charlotte, has written (on page 231 of his 2006 book The Jesus Dynasty) that “Two other “made-up” endings were later put into circulation, as shorter alternatives to this longer traditional ending.”  Tabor thus errs in two ways:  first, the Shorter Ending was created to round off the otherwise abrupt ending at 16:8, not with an awareness of 16:9-20.  Second, the Freer Logion is not “another ending.” It is an interpolation which never stood, and could not stand, as an ending by itself.
          A footnote in the NET Bible correctly locates the Freer Logion “between vv. 14 and 15” but erroneously describes it as “a different shorter ending.”  The late Robert Grant wrote that Codex W “contains a different ending entirely.”  Although this claim is easy to demolish by consulting Codex W, several preachers and commentators (and Bible footnote-writers!) continue to echo this legend of “various endings,” as if verses 9-20 face a host of competitors besides the Shorter Ending.

MS 274, with Mark 16:6-15 in the text,
and the Shorter Ending in the lower margin,
with explanations of the meta-text.  

(8) “Some manuscripts have the Shorter Ending after Mark 16:8, and some have verses 9-20 after 16:8.”  This is technically true, but the term “some” is so vague that it deceives the reader.  The number of Greek manuscripts that contain the Shorter Ending in any way at all is six. (A footnote in the NET gives the false impression that the number is higher – partly by listing the same manuscript twice, as 083 and as 0112.)  The number of Greek manuscripts in which 16:8 is followed by 16:9 is over 1,640. (In the medieval manuscript 274, the Shorter Ending is written in the lower margin, linked by asterisks to 16:8, which is followed in the text by 16:9 which begins on the same line on which 16:8 ends.)

          Of the five Greek manuscripts in which the Shorter Ending is between 16:8 and 16:9, Codex L and 083 have a note preceding 16:9 (to the effect of, “In other copies, the following material appears after ‘for they were afraid’”) which is also found in the Greek-Sahidic lectionary 1602.  This establishes this arrangement of the text as a localized Egyptian treatment – that is, four of the Greek manuscripts with the Shorter Ending between 16:8 and 16:9 display a distinctly Egyptian form of the text, indicating that the Shorter Ending originated in Egypt (which suggests, in turn, that only in Egypt did the text of the Gospel of Mark lack verses 9-20 in the early centuries in which the Gospel of Mark was circulated).

(7) “Codex Sigma does not contain Mark 16:9-20.”  Codex Σ, also known as Codex 042 and as the Rossano Gospels, is an important Greek manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark. It was probably made for a member of the royal family of the Byzantine Empire.   It is one of the earliest illustrated manuscripts of the Gospels in existence. Bruce Metzger, in his influential book, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography, stated that Codex Σ does not contain the text of the Gospel of Mark after 14:14.  However, that error is the direct descendant of a typographical error that appeared in the third edition of F. H. A. Scrivener’s Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, in which on page 158, the Roman numerals “xvi” (that is, 16) were erroneously mixed up and “xiv” (14) was printed instead. (William Sanday mentioned this typographical error in 1885, in an article in Studia Biblica, but apparently this was not noticed by Metzger.)
          Because mistakes of this sort have not been corrected, the claim that “Mark 16:9-20 is contained only in later manuscripts” has been allowed to circulate for over 20 years in a footnote in Eugene Peterson’s The Message.  Such a claim is succinctly refuted by a consultation of the early manuscripts Alexandrinus, Bezae, Ephraemi Rescriptus, and Washingtoniensis.

(6) “Mark 16:9-20 is absent from the Old Latin manuscripts.”  This claim has been spread by commentators such as James Edwards, and by apologists such as Ron Rhodes.  In the real world, however, only one Old Latin manuscript containing its original pages of Mark 16 does not follow Mark 16:8 with 16:9: Codex Bobbiensis, the worst-copied manuscript of the Gospels ever made in any language.  In Mark 16, the copyist of Mark 16 added an interpolation between verses 3 and 4, and removed part of verse 8, before adding the Shorter Ending, but with several bad mistakes (such as writing “puero” (“child”) instead of “Petro” (Peter), and writing “from the east, even unto the east”). (The copyist of Codex Bobbiensis seems to have lacked a basic familiarity with the contents of his exemplar; even in Matthew 6:9, he mangled the Latin phrase for “Thy kingdom come.”)
          Mark 16:9-20, or part of it (sometimes parts are lost due to incidental damage), is included in the Old Latin copies Corbeiensis (ff2, from the 400’s – although most of verses 15-18 have been extensively damaged), and the combined fragmentsn and o (from the 400’s) together contain the passage up through verse 13, and then the rest, respectively.   In addition, some manuscripts of the Vulgate contain Old Latin chapter-summaries which originated as features of Old Latin manuscripts; the final entry in these chapter-summaries (which have several forms) fits the contents of Mark 16:9-20.
          The Latin manuscripts Aureus (aur, 600’s/700’s), Colbertinus (c, made in the 1200’s, but unquestionably perpetuating an early non-Vulgate text after chapter 6), Rhedigerianus (600’s/700’s), and Monacensis (q, from the 500’s or 600’s) also include Mark 16:9-20.

(5)  “The Vulgate and the Peshitta end the text of Mark at 16:8.”  This false claim was promoted by John MacArthur in a sermon he preached on June 5, 2011.   The sermon-transcript is still distributed by Grace To You.  With a straight face, immediately after telling his listeners that “Both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus end Mark at verse 8,” MacArthur mentioned that we have 8,000 copies of the Vulgate, and 350-plus copies of the Peshitta, and then said, “We have all these ancient manuscripts that when compared all say the same thing.”  MacArthur’s claim is far removed from reality:  the Vulgate Gospels (the Latin translation produced in 383-384 by Jerome, who stated that he prepared its text with the use of ancient Greek manuscripts – that is, Greek manuscripts already ancient in 383) include Mark 16:9-20 and so does the Peshitta.

(4)  “Many ancient manuscripts contain scribal notes to indicate that verses 9-20 were regarded as a spurious addition.”  The vague and imprecise claim by Metzger that “Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it” has been stretched and warped almost beyond recognition by other commentators whose research about this passage consisted mainly of reading Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 

            Out of over 1,640 Greek manuscripts of Mark, about 60 contain the Catena Marcum in one form or another in their margins.  This collection of patristic comments usually includes both a comment by Eusebius of Caesarea, and a response by Victor of Antioch (a fifth-century author who is sometimes credited with the compilation of the catena/commentary.  These comments, however, are really only 60 repetitions of two patristic comments.    

Fourteen Greek manuscripts are known to have special notes about Mark 16:9-20.  (That’s 14 out of over 1,640 manuscripts – less than 1%, contrary to the impression you might have gotten from Craig Evans or N. T. Wright.)  While, obviously, any manuscripts mentioned in another manuscript must be older than the manuscript that mentions them, none of the notes specify that “the older manuscripts” lack the passage.  Three of these manuscripts (20, 215, and 300) even share a note which says, regarding the end of 16:8, “The text from here to the end is not in some copies.  But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact.”  Thus instead of conveying scribal doubt, this note emphasizes the presence of the passage in ancient copies. 

Five manuscripts (1, 205, 205abs, 209, and 1582) share a note which says, before 16:9, “In some of the copies, the Gospel concludes here, and Eusebius Pamphili’s Canons also stop here.  But in many, this [i.e., verses 9-20] also appears.”  Again, the intention of the note-writer appears to have been to defend the acceptance of these 12 verses, rather than to draw them into doubt.  Another group of five manuscripts (15, 22, 1110, 1192, and 1210) shares the same note, but without the reference to the Eusebian Canons.  The wording of the note is so similar that these ten manuscripts cannot constitute independent witnesses; these notes descend from a common source, and after the Eusebian Sections were expanded, the part about the Eusebian Canons was removed.  Lastly, a note in minuscule 199 (from the 1100’s) states succinctly, “In some of the copies, this [i.e., verses 9-20] is not present, but the text stops here” (that is, at the end of 16:8). 

The testimony of the 14 manuscripts with special notes about Mark 16:9-20 (mainly of an affirming nature) boils down to two small groups:  one that shares the “Jerusalem Colophon,” and one that consists of members of the family-1 cluster of manuscripts.

(3)  “In many manuscripts of Mark without notes, the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli to convey scribal doubt about its legitimacy.”  This claim, considering that it is completely untrue, has been circulated with remarkable zeal by commentators.  There are some copies (such as minuscule 138) that feature an asterisk (or a similar symbol) which refers to reader to a comment in the margin (usually to part of the Catena Marcum).  And there are some copies which feature lectionary-related marks or rubrics between Mark 16:8 and 6:9.  But there are no manuscripts which simply contain asterisks or obeli alongside Mark 16:9-20 to convey scribal doubt.

Asterisks in MS 264 -- at Mk. 16:9,
but also at Mk. 11:12 and 14:12.

            In 2007, Daniel Wallace identified five manuscripts in which, he asserted, a scribe placed an asterisk to convey doubt about the passage:  138, 264, 1221, 2346, and 2812.  However, 138, 2346, and 2812 are among the manuscripts with the Catena Marcum; they have marks at the beginning of 16:9, but these marks serve the same purpose as footnote-numbers, to notify the reader of the existence of a note about the passage further down the page (or on a following page). 

            Minuscule 264 has an asterisk alongside Mark 16:9, but this has no text-critical significance; the same symbol occurs in 264 alongside Mark 11:12, and 14:12, and elsewhere; it is part of the lectionary-apparatus. 

            Similarly, minuscule 1221 has lozenge-dots – four dots arranged in a north-south-east-west pattern –  between Mark 16:8 and 16:9, but the same symbol appears in 1221 after Mark 2:12, halfway through Mark 5:24, and at Mark 6:7.  In Luke, it appears at the beginning of 1:26, at the end of 1:56, and after 2:40.  These symbols were added for the convenience of a lector and have no text-critical significance.

            Minuscule 137, another manuscript with the Catena Marcum in its margins, is sometimes also mentioned in the list of manuscripts alleged to have asterisks accompanying Mark 16:9-20.  Good digital images of this manuscript were recently made available at the Vatican Library, and they show that the symbol between 16:8 and 16:9 is a simple superscripted red cross-mark (“+”), conveying that a note in the catena pertains to this section – and a corresponding red cross-mark appears, as expected, two pages later, at the foot of the page, accompanying the pertinent portion of the Catena Marcum.

(2)  “Eusebius and Jerome state that these 12 verses were absent from all Greek copies known to them.”  The distorted claim made by Ben Witherington III about this is just one example of what appears to be a venerable tradition of misrepresenting the evidence from Eusebius and Jerome.  Fortunately, a definitive edition of Eusebius’ composition Ad Marinum has finally been published, and its readers can see the context of the snippets which commentators typically frame as if they are the independent affirmations of Eusebius and of Jerome. 

            At the outset of the first chapter of Ad Marinum, Eusebius tackles Marinus’ question about how Matthew’s account of the timing of Christ’s resurrection can be harmonized with Mark’s account.  Readers may be surprised to learn the details of Eusebius’ reply.  He tells Marinus that the question may be dealt with in two ways.  Someone might render the question superfluous by rejecting Mark 16:9-20 on the grounds that the passage in Mark is not found in all manuscripts, or is not in the accurate copies, or is only in a few copies, or is only in some copies.  But someone else, finding both passages in the text of his Gospels, and considering it unfitting for a faithful and pious person to pick and choose between the accounts, would accept both passages, and read Mark 16:9 with a pause, or comma, after “Having risen,” so as to express the understanding that the sentence describes the time at which Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, rather than the time of His resurrection. 

            Eusebius promotes the second option, rather than the first one.  In the course of answering Marinus’ second question, Eusebius mentioned that “It is stated in Mark, according to some copies,” that Jesus cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene.  And while answering Marinus’ third question, Eusebius stated “According to Mark, He had cast out seven demons” from Mary Magdalene.” 

            Eusebius thus quoted Mark 16:9 three times – which is hardly how one treats a passage that one rejects.  But how should we understand what he says about the absence of Mark 16:9-20 in the accurate manuscripts, and in the great majority of manuscripts?  As things that one might say, which is precisely how Eusebius framed them.  One could only count and evaluate the manuscripts one encountered.  A writer in Egypt, for example, might say that verses 9-20 were seldom found, whereas someone in Marinus’ locale might only be familiar with manuscripts that included the passage.  The thing to see is that Eusebius did not frame this as if it was his own personal observation; neither he nor anyone else in the early 300’s had the ability to survey all the libraries in all the churches following the disruptions that were part of the Diocletian persecution in the early 300’s.  If Mark 16:9-20 had been in only a few manuscripts known to Eusebius, and Eusebius had regarded those few manuscripts as inaccurate, he would have had no reason to offer Marinus any other option besides the first one. 

            Eusebius probably changed his mind on this subject when he made the Eusebian Canons and Sections, inasmuch as the already-mentioned annotation in the family-1 cluster of manuscripts says that Eusebius did not include this passage in the canon-tables.  But when he wrote Ad Marinum, Eusebius plainly advised Marinus to retain the passage.    

            And what about Jerome?  Jerome included Mark 16:9-20 in the Vulgate Gospels in 383, and in 417, in Against the Pelagians, he cited Mark 16:14 as he explained where he had seen the Freer Logion “especially in Greek copies,” taking for granted that his readers would recognize Mark 16:14.  At no point did Jerome ever suggest that he had included Mark 16:9-20 because of pressure to do so.  So how, at a time when numerous other patristic writers were openly utilizing Mark 16:9-20, could Jerome possibly say, as he says in his lengthy Epistle to Hedibia, that Mark 16:9-20 is missing from almost all copies, particularly the Greek ones? 

            The answer is simple:  Hedibia had asked Jerome to explain the differences in the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and post-resurrection appearances, and Jerome, in response, rather than go through the trouble of writing an original reply, made a loose abridged translation of portions of Ad Marinum.  It is in that part of Jerome’s Epistle to Hedibia that the pertinent statement is embedded. 

            As David Parker has observed, Jerome’s Epistle to Hedibia “is simply a translation with some slight changes of what Eusebius had written.”  To restate:  in this part of Epistle to Hedibia, we are not reading a spontaneous comment by Jerome; we are reading Jerome’s loose Latin translation of Eusebius’ statements, complete with the opening line that there are two ways to handle the question, and the concluding recommendation to retain the passage and to read Mark 16:9 with a pause after “Having risen.” 

                       

(1)  “The earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not contain verses 9-20.”  This is very far from the whole truth.  In two (and only two) Greek manuscripts from the 300’s, the text of Mark ends at the end of 16:8.  But in one of them, Codex Vaticanus, the copyist left blank space after 16:8 – including an entire blank column – as if the passage was absent from his exemplar, but he recollected it from some other manuscript that was unavailable to him.  And in the other one, Codex Sinaiticus, four pages that were produced by the main copyist were replaced by pages which his supervisor wrote; the text of Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 was not written by the same copyist who wrote the surrounding pages.  In addition, the person who wrote the text on these four pages made a special effort to avoid leaving a blank column – a step which implies that he was aware of a way to conclude the Gospel of Mark other than at 16:8. 

            If we deduce (in agreement with J. Rendel Harris, T. C. Skeat, and other researchers) that Sinaiticus was made at Caesarea, and if we also notice that when Eusebius of Caesarea commented about the ending of Mark, he displayed no awareness of the Shorter Ending (even when the subject invited and even demanded mention of the Shorter Ending, if it had been known), we may conclude that the alternative text in the minds of the copyists of both Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, when they produced the anomalous features at the end of Mark in their manuscripts, was verses 9-20. 

            But another factor should also be mentioned whenever the earliest manuscripts are mentioned:  the relevant patristic evidence that supports the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20, which pre-dates Vaticanus and Sinaiticus by over a century.  In the 100’s, Justin Martyr (160, in First Apology ch. 45), and the author of Epistula Apostolorum (c. 150/180), and Tatian (172, in his Diatessaron), and Irenaeus (c. 184, in Book 3, chapter 10 of Against Heresies) all utilized material from Mark 16:9-20 in one way or another.  Irenaeus quoted 16:19, specifying that he was quoting from near the end of Mark’s Gospel. 

            Granting that footnotes in Bibles must be brief, is it too much to ask that when two manuscripts from the 300’s are mentioned in a note about Mark 16:9-20, two or three patristic writers from the 100’s should be also be mentioned? 

            Summing up:  when you read a Bible-footnote about the ending of Mark, or a sermon-transcript, or a commentary or apologetics-handbook or blog, and notice that something is amiss, I encourage you to contact the publisher and the author and inform them about the relevant data.  After 100 or 200 people point out the mistake, they might do something about it, if they are not too busy. 

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 2: Wasserman: The PA as an Editorial Expansion

Tommy Wasserman, who came all the way from Sweden, argued that the PA is not authentic.  Wasserman’s lecture involved a digital slideshow, which resisted his efforts to make it work, but eventually surrendered after a valiant struggle with Dr. Black’s research assistant Jacob Cerone.  Wasserman reviewed the opposing views about the PA (mentioning that SEBTS professor Andreas Köstenberger rejects the passage), briefly surveyed some external evidence, including the testimony of Didymus the Blind, and proceeded to plunge into a comparison of the PA and some other disputed passages.  His purpose for doing so was to illustrate a couple of points:  (1)  in the early witnesses, textual alterations tend to be accidental, not editorially motivated, and (2) even where scribes took liberties with the text, the scribal activity was limited to individual words or phrases; no scribal omissions involve the omission of an amount of text anywhere near the size of the PA.

            

Wasserman reviewed some readings which reflect editorial activity; these include the incident in the Diatessaron (≈ Luke 4:29-30) in which Jesus flies, the “fire in the Jordan” mentioned by Justin, the incident of Jesus’ bloody sweat and strengthening angel (Luke 22:43-44), Luke 9:54-56 (the “Shall we call down fire?” incident), Luke 23:34a (“Father forgive them,” etc.), the Syriac expansion of Luke 23:48 (“Woe unto us,” etc.), the Freer Logion, John 5:4’s description of the angel moving the water at Bethesda, and the expansions of Luke 6:4 and Matthew 20:28 in Codex D and some other Western witnesses.

Wasserman also mentioned that Hugh Houghton has discovered that in an early form of the Old Latin chapter-lists (capitula), there is a chapter-title for the story of the adulteress that includes the term moechatio.  This loan-word seems to imply that in the branch of the Old Latin tradition that produced this form of the capitula, the PA was inherited, in its normal location following John 7:52, from a Greek source.  This implies that the PA was present in a Greek copy of John’s Gospel in the 200s (or was it the 300s?   It wasn't clear to me which century Wasserman meant; Houghton seems to put the origin of the Old Latin capitula in the 200s); nevertheless Wasserman argued that this only implies that the PA is an early interpolation rather than a late interpolation.

What, then, should be done with the PA?  Wasserman proposed that instead of rejecting the PA, the church should consider enlarging its effective canon, imitating the churches in Ethiopia.  Jude, he noted, used the Book of Enoch, even though it was not written by Enoch, so why shouldn’t Christians feel free to use the PA even though it was not part of the original text of the Gospel of John?  If we do not want to criticize Jude for using the Book of Enoch, then doesn’t the same principle preclude the criticism of those who use the PA? 

●●●●●●●●●●

Some thoughts: 

Wasserman’s list of passages which display editorial activity cuts both ways:  while one could argue that it shows that scribes tended not to remove large portions of text, it also shows that scribes tended not to add large portions of text.  So, while the excision of the PA would be a special case, its insertion would be a special case too.  If Wasserman has shown anything via this comparison, it is only that the PA is a special case, a point which is granted by all sides.

Also, Wasserman’s list of proposed editorial expansions seems problematic in two ways. 

First, it included some very isolated readings.  For example, Justin’s “fire in the Jordan,” the Sinaitic Syriac’s “Woe unto us” insertion, Codex D’s Man-on-the-Sabbath episode at Luke 6:4, its extra saying after Matthew 20:28, and its comment about the size of the stone in Luke 23:53, and Codex W’s Freer Logion, all have extremely limited support among Greek manuscripts.  (One could add to this list the expansion in Luke 11:2.)  The reception of those readings is so limited that they are not really analogous to the reception of the PA; rather, they are contrary to it:  the very limited attestation of these expansions shows the opposite of what Wasserman proposed; that is, they show that editorial expansions that spread much beyond their origination-point tended to be rejected.  That’s why their Greek manuscript support is teensy-tiny. 

Second, it included some passages which may have been editorially omitted rather than added.  If the rejection of Luke 9:54-56 (regarding which Burgon mentioned the possibility of loss due to lectionary-influence), and the rejection of Luke 22:43-44, and the rejection of Luke 23:34 (regarding which see Nathan Eubank’s 2010 JBL article) are necessary for Wasserman’s case, then his case is precarious.                                

Dr. Wasserman does not recommend that the church should stop using the story of the adulteress, but I strongly suspect that his line of reasoning will bounce off those who both reject the PA and subscribe to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  That is, if one maintains that (a) the church regards Scripture as authoritative because it regards Scripture as inspired, and (b) the text that the church recognizes as inspired is the original text, not a form of the text that includes material of scribal origin, then it follows that if the PA is regarded as material of scribal origin, then it will not be regarded as authoritative Scripture.  Jude’s use of Enoch will be placed alongside Paul’s use of the writings of Epimenides as a quotation made to illustrate a point, not to endorse its source.

It was remarkable to hear, from a presenter who had already stated his view that the PA is an interpolation, the review of a substantial amount of external evidence in favor of the early date of the passage.  The evidence presented by Wasserman practically requires the existence of a manuscript of John with the PA in the early 200s, contemporary with P66 (the earliest Greek manuscript that does not include the PA).  As Keith (I think) quipped at one point during the conference, we don’t see the fire – i.e., the manuscripts have not survived – but we see a lot of smoke – i.e., we see evidence that there were Greek manuscripts in the 200s that included the PA.