Non-Alexandrian Papyri and Early Versions

            In The King James Only Controversy, author James White made two claims on pages 195-197 that invite clarification.  First, he stated on page 195, “Every papyrus manuscript we have discovered has been a representative of the Alexandrian text-type.” Second, on page 197, he wrote, “An examination of the early New Testament translations reveals they were done on the basis of Alexandrian type manuscripts.”

            Is it true that all of the papyrus manuscripts that have been discovered represent the Alexandrian text-type? No.  The low-humidity climate in parts of Egypt allowed papyrus to survive longer there than in other places, so it would not be particularly surprising if all of the papyri that were found in Egypt contained Egyptian forms of the text.    

            In other locales, papyrus was much more vulnerable to natural decay, which is why we don’t find a lot of New Testament papyri in, say, Ephesus and Athens, for the same reason that we don’t find a lot of ancient Greek sales-receipts there. 

            And yet some New Testament papyri with distinctly non-Alexandrian contents have survived.  Papyrus 45, for example – a heavily damaged manuscript that contains text from the four Gospels and Acts – is the substantial manuscript of (part of) the Gospel of Mark (the surviving portion is from Mark 4-12).  While there is general agreement that P45’s text of Acts is Alexandrian, this is not the case regarding its text of Mark.  Researcher Larry W. Hurtado, in the 2004 paper P45 and the Textual History of the Gospel of Mark, affirmed that P45’s text of Mark was neither Byzantine nor Western nor Alexandrian nor Caesarean.  Hurtado also stated that “This third-century manuscript had numerous readings that previously had been thought to be “Byzantine.””

            Here are some examples of non-Alexandrian readings in Mark in Papyrus 45:
            ● 6:16 – Byz and P45 include οτι (not included in B À).

            ● 6:22 – Byz and P45 read αρεσάσης (B À:  ηρεσεν).

            ● 6:22 –Byz and P45 (here P45 is corrected; the scribe first wrote Herod’s name instead of “the king”) have the word-order ειπεν ο βασιλευς (B À read ο δε βασιλευς ειπεν)    
            ● 6:38 – Byz and P45 have the word-order αρτους εχετε (B L:  εχετε αρτους)  
            ● 6:41 – Byz and P45 have αυτου (not in B À L)

            ● 6:41 – Byz and P45 have παραθωσιν (B À* L have παρατιθωσιν)

            ● 6:45 – Byz and P45 have απολύση (B À L D have απολυει)

            ● 6:48 – Byz and P45 have ειδεν (B À L D have ιδων) [The letters ιδε in P45 here are tentatively reconstructed]

            ● 6:50 – Byz and P45 have -ον so as to read ειδον (B À read ειδαν; D omits)   

            ● 7:5 – Byz and P45 have the word-order οι μαθηται σου ου περιπατουσιν (B À L have a different word-order)

            ● 7:6 – Byz and P45 have αποκριθεις (B À L do not have the word)

            ● 7:6 – Byz and P45 have οτι (B À L do not have the word) 

            ● 7:10 – Byz and P45 have τιμα (B D have τειμα)

            ● 7:14 – Byz and P45 have ελεγεν (B has λέγει)

            ● 7:15 – P45 has -ν κοιν-, supporting inclusion of κοινωσαι (which B does not include)

            ● 7:29 – Byz and P45 have the word-order το δαιμονιον εκ της θυγατρός σου (B À L have a different word-order)

            ● 7:30 – Byz and P45 share the same word-order (B À L have a different word-order; so does D)

            ● 7:31 – Byz and P45 share the word-order, with ηλθεν after the reference to Tyre and Sidon.  B À L D have ηλθεν after Τύρου and before δια Σιδωνος (in B, δια Σειδωνος)

            ● 7:35– Byz and P45 include ευθέως (not included in B À)

            ● 7:35 – P45 is difficult to read but it ends the word with –χθησαν, supporting the Byzantine reading διηνοιχθησαν (B À D have ηνοιγησαν)

            ● 7:36 – P45 is difficult to read but appears to support the inclusion of αυτος (agreeing with Byz and disagreeing with B À L D.

            ● 8:13 – P45 has εις το πλοιον, agreeing with D; Byz has εις πλοιον; B À L do not have the phrase)

            ● 8:15 – P45 ends the verse with Ηρωδιανων, agreeing with the Caesarean text (W Θ 565 f¹  f¹³)

            ● 8:19 – P45 and Byz share the word-order πληρεις κλασματων ηρατε (B À L have κλασματων πληρεις ηρατε; D has κλασματων ηρατε πληρεις

            ● 8:20 – P45 and Byz have ειπον (B L have λεγουσιν αυτω; À has λεγουσιν)  

            ● 8:34 – P45 and Byz have ακολουθειν (B À L have ελθειν)

            ● 8:35 – P45 and Byz share the word-order αυτου σωσαι (B has εαυτου before ψυχην σωσαι) 

            ● 8:36 – P45 and Byz have εαν (B À L do not have the word)

            ● 8:36 – P45 and Byz have κερδηση (B À have κερδησαι)

            ● 8:37 – P45 and Byz have δωσαι (B À* have δοι; À^c has ιδω)

            ● 8:37 – P45 and Byz have αυτου (B has εαυτου)

            ● 9:2 – P45 and Byz have μεθ’ (B À L D have μετα)          

            ● 9:6 – P45 and Byz have ησαν (B À D have κφοββοι)

            ● 9:20 – P45 and Byz share the word-order ευθεως το πνευμα (B À L have το πνευμα ευθυς; D has το πνευμα.

             

            Thus, while P45 is far from a strong ally of the Byzantine Text, it is certainly not an Alexandrian manuscript in Mark chapters 8 and 9.  In addition, notice the eleven readings introduced by red dots; these readings shared by P45 and the Byzantine Text are not shared by the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian and Western forms of the text.  (How seriously should we take Dan Wallace’s claim – repeated by James White – that there are no more than eight uniquely Byzantine readings to be found among the papyri?  A question of methodology occurs to me:  if Dan Wallace were to take in hand the text of Mark 6-9 in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform, would he ever find the Byzantine Text?  How many readings in Mark 6-9 are uniquely Byzantine?)    

           Papyrus 38, a single damaged leaf from a codex of the book of Acts, has been assigned to the early 200s – about the same period when P45 was made – and its text is definitely Western, not Alexandrian.  Papyrus 29 was also identified by Bruce Metger as an ally of the Western Text.

            Papyrus 48, despite being small and difficult to read, is generally regarded as having a text that is more closely allied with the Western Text than with the Alexandrian Text.    

            Papyrus 41, from the 700s, is Greek-Coptic manuscript containing a form of the Western Text of Acts (chapters 17-22).                                                     

            In addition, although the text of uncial 0176 is written on parchment rather than papyrus, that is not a valid reason to ignore it.  Here we have a miniature codex from Oxyrhynchus, made in the late 300s or 400s, with a text that is practically indistinguishable from the Byzantine Text.   

            Also, analysis of the text of several other papyri is inconclusive as far as the task of categorizing the text’s type is concerned, usually because the papyrus is a small fragment, or because its text is hard to read, or because its contents are limited mainly to a passage where there are not a lot of textual contests.  These include Papyrus 17, Papyrus 19, Papyrus 69, Papyrus 70, Papyrus 98, Papyrus 107, Papyrus 108, Papyrus 109, Papyrus 110, Papyrus 111, Papyrus 113, Papyrus 114, Papyrus 115, Papyrus 116, Papyrus 118, Papyrus 121, Papyrus 122, and Papyrus 126.

            Papyrus 37, containing text from Matthew 26, has a non-Alexandrian text.    

            Papyrus 72 is basically Alexandrian in First Peter and Second Peter, but in Jude its text is definitely not Alexandrian.

            Papyrus 2 is probably not a continuous-text manuscript; assigned to the 600s, it contains text from Luke 7 and John 12, in a Western form. 

            Papyrus 3 is also probably the remains of a lectionary; it is assigned to the 500s or 600s and contains a non-Alexandrian form of Luke 7:36-45 and Luke 10:38-42.

            Papyrus 104, though very small, betrays non-Alexandrian influence via the non-inclusion of Matthew 21:44.

                         
            And that, I think, is sufficient to demonstrate that the claim that all of the papyri support the Alexandrian Text is false. 

           

            Is the claim that the early New Testament translations were done on the basis of Alexandrian type manuscripts any better?  No.  Certainly the affinities of the Old Latin version(s) favor the Western Text far more than the Alexandrian Text.  The Gothic version has long been regarded as a strong ally of the Byzantine Text, and although research by Roger Gryson may yield a slight adjustment of that assessment, it is not a drastic reappraisal.  The Sinaitic Syriac and the Curetonian Syriac are both characterized as Western, and the Peshitta agrees with the Byzantine Text about 80% of the time.  The Gospels-text of the Armenian version, and the Old Georgian version which echoes an early form of it, are Caesarean rather than Alexandrian.

            Only in Egypt is there clear evidence that early translators were aware of the existence of the Alexandrian Text.  To different degrees, the Egyptian languages (or dialects) of Sahidic, Bohairic, Achmimic, and Middle Egyptian reflect a primarily Alexandrian base-text.  The earliest strata of the Sahidic version is aligned closely with the text of Codex Vaticanus.  This relationship is demonstrated succinctly and effectively by evidence from their texts of Acts 27:37, where Luke mentions (in the Nestle-Aland compilation) that there were 276 souls aboard the ship.  In both Codex Vaticanus and in the Sahidic version, the text says that “about 76” souls were on board.

            F. F. Bruce, in his commentary on Acts, offered a compelling explanation for the reading in B and the Sahidic version – an explanation that had already been offered by John Burgon in his book The Revision Revised.  It may be worthwhile to present a full extract from Burgon:

            “Whereas the Church has hitherto supposed that S. Paul’s company ‘were in all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls’ (Acts xxvii. 37), Drs. Westcott and Hort (relying on the authority of B and the Sahidic version) insist that what S. Luke actually wrote was ‘about seventy-six.’  In other words, instead of διακόσιαι ἑβδομηκονταέξ, we are invited to read ὩΣ ἑβδομηκονταέξ.  What can have given rise to so formidable a discrepancy?  Mere accident, we answer.  First, whereas S. Luke certainly wrote ἧμεν δέ ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ αἱ πᾶσαι ψυχαί, his last six words at some very early period underwent the familiar process of Transposition, and became, αἱ πᾶσαι ψυχαί ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ ; whereby the word πλοίῳ and the numbers διακόσιαι ἑβδομηκονταέξ were brought into close proximity.   (It is thus that Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, &c., wrongly exhibit the place.)  But since “276” when represented in Greek numerals is СΟϛ, the inevitable consequence was that the words (written in uncials) ran thus:  ΨΥΧΑΙΕΝΤΩΠΛΟΙΩϹΟϛ.  Behold, the secret is out!  Who sees not what has happened?  There has been no intentional falsification of the text.  There has been no critical disinclination to believe that ‘a corn-ship, presumably heavily laden, would contain so many souls,’ – as an excellent judge supposes.  The discrepancy has been the result of sheer accident:  is the merest blunder.  Some IInd-century copyist connected the last letter of ΠΛΟΙΩ with the next ensuing numeral, which stands for 200 (viz. Ϲ); and made an independent word of it, viz. ὡς – i.e., ‘about.’  But when Ϲ (i.e., 200) has been taken away from ϹΟϛ (i.e., 276), 76 is perforce all that remains.”

James White, February 19, 2019

            This faulty reading in the text of B and the Sahidic version requires such a special set of circumstances to come into existence that it suggests that the Sahidic version not only is related to the Alexandrian Text in general but also to Codex Vaticanus specifically.                       

            In conclusion:  the claims that have been tested here are not just wrong; they are horribly, catastrophically wrong.  One might say that they are laughably wrong, but considering that they continue to mislead readers of The King James Only Controversy (published by Bethany House), this is no laughing matter. 



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

Cherry-picking in Edinburgh

            Have you ever been misled by “cherry-picking”?   I bought a new car last week! – a new Hot Wheels car.  I won half a million dollars yesterday! – in a game of Monopoly.  Details matter, and the omission of important details can result in the spread of false impressions.

            Teachers and commentators who describe evidence very selectively risk giving false impressions to their students and readers.  This is unfortunately a frequent phenomenon when it comes to the way the evidence pertaining to John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20 is described,   The result:  students leave the classroom, or readers leave the commentary, with a thoroughly distorted picture of the evidence.  It’s not that anyone has lied to them.  They simply have not been told the whole story.  Consider an example:  the recent descriptions of evidence pertaining to those two passages made by Dr. Larry Hurtado of the University of Edinburgh.  Dr, Hurtado is a distinguished professor with impressive credentials; surely he can be trusted to describe text-critical evidence objectively and accurately and with only the mildest of bias, right?  Well let’s see: 

            In a recent blog-post titled More on Rethinking the Textual Transmission of the Gospels, Dr. Hurtado claimed that John 7:53-8:11 “first appears in the extant manuscripts in the fifth century.”  Technically, it is true that we have no manuscripts made before the 400s in which the passage appears,  just as it is technically true that I recently bought a new car and won half a million dollars.  But the impression that that statement gives – that the passage did not began to occupy that location in the Gospels until the 400s – is false. 

            The risk of conveying such a false impression could have been avoided if Dr. Hurtado had shared just one more bit of evidence:  Jerome’s testimony that he had found the story of the adulteress in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin.  Or, if Jerome is too obscure an author to be considered worth mentioning, perhaps the testimony of Ambrose would have been sufficient.  

            A writer resorting to less cherry-picking might inform readers and students about the different types of early Latin breves, or chapter-summaries, which refer to the story about the adulteress in its usual place in the Gospel of John – including Type I (generally regarded as contemporary with Ambrose, and with Zeno of Verona) and Type Cy; the “Cy” stands for Cyprian, the prominent author and bishop in the 200s; this form of the breves has been assigned to the time of Cyprian or slightly later.  If the composition-dates that have been given to these chapter-summaries are correct, then their testimony implies that the pericope adulterae was in Latin copies of the Gospel of John in the 200s.   

            When these pieces of evidence are added to the equation, though, there is a cost:  the narrative in which John 7:53-8:11 doesn’t show up until the fifth century crumbles to pieces.  A wider, fuller view of the evidence does not support Dr. Hurtado’s contention that this passage became part of the text of the Gospel of John “not in some early “wild” period, but later, in the period of supposed textual stability.”           

            More cherry-picking is in Dr. Hurtado’s description of evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20.  “The first Greek manuscripts that allow us to check the matter are Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, which don’t have these verses.”  That is technically true, but why has Dr. Hurtado mentioned these two manscripts from the fourth century without mentioning the much earlier testimony of Tatian and Irenaeus?  Tatian incorporated the passage into his Diatessaron in the 170s, and Irenaeus specifically quoted Mark 16:19 from the Gospel of Mark, in Against Heresies Book 3, chapter 10, around the year 180.  Here we have two pieces of evidence, both well over a century older than Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  Why are they hidden from view?  Some of Dr. Hurtado’s readers might imagine that the testimony of Tatian and Irenaeus has been avoided because if their testimony were given a spotlight, it would be extremely difficult to convince anyone that the picture that Dr. Hurtado has painted of the history of Mark 16:9-20 can be plausibly maintained. 

Codex Vaticanus, with Mark 16:9-20
added in the space that appears
in the manuscript after 16:8.

            And why did Dr. Hurtado mention Vaticanus without also mentioning its special blank space after Mark 16:8?  Why did Dr. Hurtado mention Sinaiticus without mentioning that the last part of Mark and the first part of Luke occupy a cancel-sheet – that is, four replacement-pages, on which the lettering has unusual features that indicate the copyist’s awareness of the absent verses?  Again, students and readers might be forgiven for imagining that such information has not been shared because it makes Dr. Hurtado’s theory appear contrived.

            Finally, why did Dr. Hurtado describe Mark 16:9-20 as part of “the Medieval text of Mark,” instead of “The Second-Century Text of Mark,” in light of the testimony of Tatian and Irenaeus?  (And the testimony of Apostolic Constitutions and Ambrose and Augustine and Macarius Magnes and Marcus Eremita and some others who wrote in the time of the Roman Empire).  How is that not just spin?  Spin is exactly what it is.  

            Dr. Hurtado stated, “To find the variant in the manuscript tradition we have to go to later, to the fifth/sixth century, in Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Bezae, and others.”  (As if the presence of Mark 16:9-20 in Codices A, D, W, the Vulgate, and the Peshitta does not imply a much earlier ancestry.)  But we have more evidence besides just manuscripts; why would anyone put on blinders by ignoring the widespread patristic evidence that demonstrates that Mark 16:9-20 was in widespread use in the early centuries of Christianity?  Why point out the testimony from Sinaiticus (c. 350) without mentioning the testimony of Aphrahat (337)?  It might seem to some readers and students that a lot of evidence that is inconvenient for their professor’s proposal has not been presented – at least, it would seem so, if somehow they were to learn about that evidence’s existence.

            A third variant was mentioned by Dr. Hurtado, and I will mention it just for the sake of thoroughness.  The scenarios involving John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20 are nothing like the scenario involving Dr. Hurtado’s third variant, the Comma Johanneum.  Its adoption in the Textus Receptus was the result of Erasmus’ statement (after he had compiled the Greek text without the Comma) that if he had possessed a Greek manuscript with the passage, he would have included it), plus two other things:  Erasmus’ desire to make another edition, and the premiere of Codex Montfortianus.  This is no more like the situation regarding Mark 16:9-20 – a passage with second-century patristic support, and which is included in over 99% of the Greek manuscript of Mark – than Barney Fife is like the Incredible Hulk.    

            If you want to be taught about the transmission of the early New Testament text in a way that treats the evidence fairly, without having your professor mold the evidence, and pick and choose which evidence gets a megaphone, and which evidence is silenced – my impression is that you won’t find what you’re looking for at the University of Edinburgh.  Asbury Theological Seminary isn’t a good option either.

            One more thing:  Dr. Hurtado recommended Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary to those who want more information about the variants he mentioned.  Let it be noted that Metzger’s Textual Commentary contains misleading statements about Mark 16:9-20.  Also, dislocations of John 7:53-8:11 occurred due to the influence of lection-cycles, not (contra Metzger, Wallace, White, et al) due to the untenable idea that the pericope adulterae was a “floating” text (a theory which has been tested, and dismantled).

                     One more one more thing:  from now till Christmas, upon the request of any student at the University of Edinburgh and Asbury Theological Seminary, I will gladly send a digital copy of my research-books, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20, and A Fresh Analysis of John 7:53-8:11, free of charge. 



Readers are invited to explore the embedded links in this post for additional resources.

Ending Inaccurate Comments about the Ending of Mark

           Last month, Larry Hurtado, at his blog, recommended the late Bruce Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, stating that readers would find it “very helpful as a first resource to consult.”  Hurtado mentioned specifically that Metzger’s book should be consulted for information about “the data on the “Pericope of the Adulteress”” and “the thorny issue of the endings of Mark.”  I chimed in to protest, in a brief comment, that Metzger’s comments on both of those passages contain some false claims, and that throughout Metzger’s book, readers frequently receive one-sided propaganda in favor of the UBS Committee’s decision.  Important evidence routinely is not mentioned, simply because it favors a variant that the UBS Committee did not adopt.

          Another reader of Hurtado’s blog chimed it to briefly say that I was making an “attack on Dr. Metzger” and that my views have been shown to be erroneous.  To this I concisely responded that my views have not been shown to be erroneous; they have been ignored.  (For instance, I have demonstrated that Metzger’s claim that some non-annotated manuscripts of Mark have asterisks or obeli accompanying Mark 16:9-20 is false.  Nevertheless Dan Wallace, Larry Hurtado, Ben Witherington III, James White, and others keep spreading that false claim.)  I also said, “Metzger’s commentary is terrible one-sided and selective.  A far more informative resource is Wieland Willker’s online Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels.”

          The following week, Hurtado told his blog-readers about Wieland Willker’s work. Better late than never, I suppose.  The data in Willker’s online textual commentary is a welcome remedy to the inaccuracies, falsehoods, and constant spin that one finds in the obsolete volume by Metzger that Hurtado had recommended just a week earlier.  I am delighted that Hurtado has, at last, discovered and acknowledged Willker’s superior text-critical commentary on the Gospels.  

          Unfortunately Hurtado did not deduce that the typographical error in my earlier comment about Metzger’s book was a typographical error (like all the times Hurtado mentions the “periscope” about the adulteress).  The word “terrible” in my sentence, “Metzger’s commentary is terrible one-sided and selective” should have been “terribly.”  This became the basis for the following sentence from Hurtado:   “I think that James Snapp was unkind and inaccurate to describe the Metzger textual commentary as “terrible” in the way it handles the questions about the ending of Mark a recent comment.”  

          I responded to explain that I meant to write the word “terribly” instead of “terrible.”  Here we are two weeks later, and no change has been made in Hurtado’s blog-entry (not even to add the word “in” to the sentence).  So I will clarify my meaning here.  

          Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on the New Testament is not terrible.  As a defense of the UBS Committee’s decisions to favor the Alexandrian Text more than 99% of the time in their allegedly eclectic approach, Metzger’s book is very good.  However, its readers should be warned that it mainly consists of terribly one-sided defensive arguments which very frequently minimize, misrepresent, or simply ignore important evidence and strong arguments for the readings which the UBS Committee rejected.

          The sad results of heavy reliance upon Metzger’s book can be seen in Hurtado’s own commentary on Mark.  He stated (in his 1983 volume on Mark in the New International Commentary series, reissued in 1989, and again in 2011 in Baker Books’ Understanding the Bible commentary-series) that “Readers of more modern translations will find these verses set off from the rest of Mark with an editorial note that they are not found in some of the most highly regarded manuscripts of the Gospel.”  By “some,” Hurtado meant two Greek manuscripts – Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. 

          Hurtado then wrote, “There is evidence in the ancient manuscripts of other material that may have formed two other endings of Mark in some editions of the Gospel.”  Hmm.  There is evidence of the “Shorter Ending” – a brief paragraph which states that the women who left the tomb reported to the disciples and to Peter, and that Jesus sent His followers to proclaim the eternal gospel from east to west.  Hurtado was referring to that little flourish when he wrote, “Several Greek manuscripts and other ancient witnesses insert a short block of material after 16:8, often followed by vv. 9-20.”  By “several,” he meant six.  In all six Greek manuscripts that have the Shorter Ending, Mark 16:9 also appears.

          But what did Hurtado mean by “often”?  He meant, in every such case except one (namely, in the Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis, in which an interpolation appears between Mark 16:3 and 16:4, and in which part of 16:8 has been removed).  Considering that Mark 16:9 appears in all six Greek manuscripts that have the Shorter Ending, and in the dozens of non-Greek copies that have the Shorter Ending, Hurtado’s statement is amusingly inaccurate:  the statement that when the Shorter Ending appears after Mark 16:8 it is often accompanied by verses 9-20 is like a statement that dead men often do not rise from the dead, eat food, and ascend to heaven.  There is only one exception.      

          And what is the second ending to which Hurtado referred by mentioning “two other endings”?  There is no such thing.  Hurtado was referring to the Freer Logion, but the Freer Logion is not another ending; it is an interpolation that appears between Mark 16:14 and 16:15 in one extant manuscript.  (I repeat:  One.  Not “Some” – the footnote about this in the New Living Translation is false and its author should issue a loud and clear apology for misleading the NLT’s readers about this.  Tyndale House Publishers should include the apology in the preface of the NLT for at least the next 20 years, to undo the damage their falsehood has done.  The NET’s false note about the Freer Logion also needs to be corrected.)  The Freer Logion is not “another ending,” and any commentator who presents it as one is mishandling the data and obscuring the evidence.

          To restate:  when Hurtado referred to “the several other endings that appear in the manuscript tradition,” he misrepresented the evidence so as to convey that rivals to verses 9-20 besides the Shorter Ending were written as continuations from Mark 16:8.  Other authors, such as Michael Holmes, have similarly juggled the formats in which Mark 16:9-20 and the Shorter Ending are presented, and have mistreated Codex W’s testimony.  

          Metzger knew that the Freer Logion was never an independent ending of the Gospel of Mark.  He described the Freer Logion as “probably the work of a second or third century scribe who wished to soften the severe condemnation of the Eleven in 16.14,” which would render the Freer Logion a piece of evidence in favor of verses 9-20 from the 100’s or 200’s.  This seems not to have registered at all upon those who are busy misrepresenting the Freer Logion as “another ending,” as if it began as a continuation of the narrative after 16:8.

The new edition of my defense
of Mark 16:9-20
as part of the original text.

          And consider Hurtado’s claim that “The testimony of the earliest “fathers” of the church (in the first four centuries) indicates that these verses were known only in a few copies.”  When we see utilizations of the contents of Mark 16:9-20 in Justin’s First Apology, in the Epistula Apostolorum, in Tatian’s Diatessaron, in Irenaeus’ Against Heresies Book Three (in which Irenaeus, in chapter 10, paragraph 5, specifically quotes Mark 16:19 from the Gospel of Mark, over a century before the production of the earliest surviving manuscript of Mark 16), in De Rebaptismate, in the pagan author Hierocles’ writings cited by Macarius Magnes, in Aphrahat’s First Demonstration (part 17), in Acts of Pilate/Gospel of Nicodemus, in the Gothic version, in the Apostolic Constututions, in the Peshitta, in the Vulgate, in Old Latin chapter-summaries, in four compositions by Ambrose, and in Greek manuscripts mentioned by Augustine – all from before the year 400 – all hope must be abandoned that a realistic appraisal of the evidence can be found in Hurtado’s work.

          Let future commentators take warning:  the days in which Metzger’s Textual Commentary could be cited as if it is a source of trustworthy and balanced information about the ending of Mark are over.  (The same should be true regarding Metzger’s comments on John 7:53-8:11.)  And so are the days when commentators could take reckless swipes at Mark 16:9-20, and spread all sorts of falsehoods, without expecting their competence to be called into question.     

          This week I released the 2016 edition of Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20 as a Kindle e-book, at a price which most researchers can easily afford.  Its new opening chapter includes numerous samples of the vague. misleading, and inaccurate (in some cases, bizarrely inaccurate) claims about Mark 16:9-20 which commentators have made.  Its appendix addresses some false claims promoted by Dan Wallace. 

          The old edition is still available for the researchers in Dallas, Wheaton, Edinburgh and elsewhere who prefer to rely on resources which are overpriced and obsolete.

The New International Commentary - Mark by Larry W. Hurtado is © 1983, 1989 by Larry W. Hurtado.  Published by Hendrikson Publishers and Paternoster Press.  

A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce M. Metzger is  © 1971 by the United Bible Societies.

Why Was the Gospel of Mark So Popular?

            “It looks like GMark suffered an almost total eclipse in the second century CE.”  So said Dr. Larry Hurtado last month (February 2013).   (“Gmark” means the Gospel of Mark, and “CE” is secularese for “Common Era,” better known to Christians as “A.D.,” that is, Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.)  He went on to say that in the 100s, the Gospel of Mark was "practically lost from sight, submerged from view."

            Why has Dr. Hurtado proposed that the Gospel of Mark was used only sparingly in the 100s, compared to the other Gospels?  His reasons are basically two:  (1)  Only one manuscript of Mark (P45) from the first three centuries is extant, whereas from the same time period, we possess remnants of over 12 copies of Matthew, 16 copies of John, and seven copies of Luke.  (2)  In patristic writings of the first three centuries, there are fewer clear quotations from Mark than there are from the other Gospels.
            Neither reason justifies Dr. Hurtado’s conclusion.

            Let’s first consider the evidence from extant manuscripts.  It is arbitrary to assume that a fragment of Matthew, when pristine, was part of a manuscript of only the Gospel of Matthew, and not a part of a manuscript of the four Gospels that included Mark.  As far as I know, not a single second-century manuscript of any Gospel can be shown to have initially been part of a volume that contained only one Gospel-account.  So what can a fragment, containing a dozen verses from Matthew, or three verses from Luke, tell us about the relative popularity of Mark?  In its current condition,  it tells us nothing about Mark’s 16 chapters that it is not telling us about 27 chapters of Matthew, or of 23 chapters of Luke:  those chapters have not survived.  That is not the same as telling us that those chapters were not there when the manuscript was in pristine condition.  There is simply not enough evidence to say one way or the other.
            If we don’t want an assumption of single-Gospel volumes to predetermine our conclusions, then we cannot validly treat small fragments as indicators of a Gospel’s relative popularity, any more than we can treat a fragment of Matthew chapter 1 as an indication that Matthew 1 was much more popular than Matthew chapter 2.  Removing early fragments of Matthew from consideration means removing all of the manuscripts of Matthew upon which Dr. Hurtado built the premise that Matthew was more popular than Mark in the 100s.
            In addition, Dr. Hurtado’s manuscript-evidence, besides being very fragmentary, is chronologically too broad and geographically too narrow.  The manuscript-fragments which form the main basis of his case include several from the late 200s or early 300s, a period which he acknowledges to be “toward the end of, or perhaps beyond, the period of our concern here.”  If fragments such as P39 (200s), P53 (200s), P80 (200s), P95 (200s), 0162 (200s or 300s), and 0171 (c. 300) are to be in the equation, then so should manuscripts from the 300s and 400s – including, besides the well-known uncials that contain Mark, fragments such as 0313 (containing Mark 4:9 and 4:15) and 0315 (containing Mark 2:19, 21, and 25, and 3:1-2), inasmuch as these copies had second-century ancestors too.  And because the fragments enlisted by Dr. Hurtado come from approximately the same place (Egypt, and mainly Oxyrhynchus), they cannot tell us about the relative popularity of the Gospel of Mark in other locales.  Meanwhile, wherever there is anything to see, we observe the Gospel of Mark being given the same treatment as the other three canonical Gospels in early versions of the Gospels, whether Sahidic or Latin or Syriac.
            What about the patristic evidence, or rather, the alleged lack of evidence of much use of Mark in the 100s?  Here we must begin by considering two things about the Gospel of Mark:  (1)  it is shorter than Matthew and it is shorter than Luke, and therefore, fewer quotations from Mark ought to be expected, because Mark has fewer words from which to quote.  (2)  While Matthew and Luke both have large sections which are unique to each one, about 90% of the Gospel of Mark is paralleled in either Matthew or in Luke.  As a result, unless a patristic writer specifically says something like, “Now I am reading from the Gospel of Mark,” it is difficult to confidently identify, as quotations from Mark, quotations of passages which appear in both Matthew and Mark, or in both Mark and Luke, or in all three.  Because Mark has so much less distinct material than Matthew and Luke, Mark has a special disadvantage:  short quotations from almost 90% of Mark, unless they are specifically identified, are impossible to confidently identify as quotations from Mark.

(Students of the Synoptic Problem wishing to indulge in a little mental exercise may wish to test Dr. Hurtado’s case for the unpopularity of Mark in the 100s by seeking out patristic quotations, from that century, from the parts of Matthew and Luke which overlap, and attempting to specifically identify which Gospel is being used.  I suspect that they will find that Dr. Hurtado’s approach will yield the strange conclusion that those passages were similarly unpopular – not because they actually were unpopular, of course, but because they, like unspecified quotations from Mark, are difficult to confidently isolate as quotations from one specific Gospel.)

            So:  the reasons why there are more identifiable quotations from Matthew and Luke than from Mark in patristic writings of the first three centuries of Christendom are (1)  because there is more of Matthew and Luke from which to quote, and (2) because there is much more unique material from which to quote in Matthew and in Luke than there is in Mark.  (A third reason is because Origen's commentaries on Matthew and John are (mostly) extant; this one factor is capable of tilting the statistics.)  When these two considerations are not ignored, the proposed support for the idea that Mark was less popular than Matthew or Luke disappears.

            In addition, the second-century uses of Mark are not trivial:  Papias (c. 110) tells us about the setting of its production; the anonymous author of Epistula Apostolorum (c. 150) shows familiarity with Mark; Justin Martyr (c. 160) refers to the unique contents of Mark 3:17; Tatian incorporates the Gospel of Mark into the Diatessaron (c. 172); Irenaeus (c. 184) quotes from Mark 1:1 and 16:19 in Against Heresies Book 3.  Irenaeus also mentions that a group of heretics existed which used Mark especially.   In the early 200s, Clement of Alexandria very loosely quotes from Mark chapter 10; Hippolytus uses Mark, and Origen refers to Mark 2:14, stating that he found a statement that Levi was one of the apostles “in some of the copies of the Gospel according to Mark.”  The manuscripts used by these writers have not survived, but their statements plainly imply the existence of at least ten copies of Mark, all produced no later than 250.  So, when we consider the special conditions that are required to identify a patristic quotation of Mark -- the writer must either say that is he quoting from Mark, or else he must quote something from Mark that is different from the parallels in Matthew and Luke -- the evidence for patristic use of Mark compares very well against the evidence for patristic use of Matthew and Luke.
            So is there any real evidence that the Gospel of Mark was relatively unpopular in the 100s, compared to Matthew, Luke, and John?  No.  When statistical mirages and the oversimplified manipulations of fragmentary evidence are rejected, nothing stands in the way of the idea that the Gospel of Mark was as popular in the 100s as the other three canonical Gospels.