Josh Buice and the Ending of Mark

Josh Buice

            Lots of preachers are misinformed about Mark 16:9-20, and Josh Buice is one of them.  In 2016 when he announced to the congregation of Pray’s Mill Baptist Church that he was going to end his sermon-series on Mark at 16:8, he helpfully explained why he was doing so.  Here are his reasons, and my responses.

Buice:  “Below I’ve included the three main reasons why I will not be preaching the longer ending of Mark.”

(1)  The Textual Evidence

Buice:  “The disputed longer ending of the Gospel of Mark does not appear in the two oldest manuscripts of the Bible — the codex Vaticanus (B) and codex Sinaiticus (א).  Many of the Latin, Syrian, Georgian, and Armenian manuscripts likewise end with Mark 16:8.”

            Buice appears to be partly underinformed and partly misinformed.  The first thing to notice about the evidence he describes is that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are from the 300’s.  They are the oldest two Greek manuscripts of Mark 16, but they are both younger than the testimony of Justin, Tatian, the unknown author of Epistula Apostolorum, and Irenaeus, from the 100’s – all of whom utilized the contents of Mark 16:9-20 in one way or another.

Also, Codex Vaticanus’ copyist left a distinct blank space after Mark 16:8, indicating his awareness of the absent verses.  And in Codex Sinaiticus, there are other anomalous features at this point; the four-page parchment sheet containing Mark 14:54-Luke 1:76 was not made by the main copyist.

As for Buice’s claim about the Latin and Syriac (not Syrian) manuscripts, it is false.  No undamaged Latin manuscript of Mark end the text at 16:8.  And only one Syriac manuscript ends the text at 16:8.  Lots of Armenian manuscripts (all medieval) end the text there (although even more include the passage), and since the Old Georgian version was translated from Armenian, two Old Georgian manuscripts also do so.  But none of those manuscripts are remotely close to the time of Eznik of Golb, an Armenian scholar in the 400’s who used Mark 16:17-18 in his writings.

Buice:  “If the oldest (earliest) manuscripts don’t have the longer ending, it points to a later addition by some scribe who might have considered the Mark 16:8 a strange way to end John Mark’s work.”

            The manuscripts used by Justin, Tatian, the unknown author of Epistula Apostolorum, and by Irenaeus were much older than the two manuscripts from the 300’s (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) to which Josh refers.  Furthermore, why focus on those two old copies and not mention the other ancient manuscripts of Mark that support the inclusion of 16:9-20:  Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Ephrem Rescriptus, Codex Bezae, Codex Washingtoniensis, and all the other uncial manuscripts of Mark?  Over 99% of the Greek manuscripts support the passage, and they did not spring from the ground; they had ancestor-manuscripts, and it is remiss to ignore – to hide – their testimony from the man in the pew, particularly if one is going to promote the idea (as Buice does) that the more manuscripts one has, the better the text is preserved.

Buice:  “In addition, the longer ending of Mark (16:9-20) contains at least 14 different words that are not found anywhere else in the Gospel of Mark.  Considering the fact that John Mark is ending his work on Jesus’ life and ministry, it would be rather odd to start inserting new vocabulary in the last 12 verses of his work.”

            This all sounds good until one notices that Mark uses 20 words in 15:40-16:4 (12 verses) that are not found anywhere else in the Gospel of Mark.  Then Buice’s vocabulary-based argument is exposed as a hollow shell that is only persuasive when used on listeners who are uninformed about the evidence. 

Buice:  “This points to the fact that someone added it to the Gospel of Mark and was not an original ending from John Mark himself.”

            Except (a) calling it a “fact” in the course of the argument is loaded language, and (b) if the use of 14 new words in Mark 16:9-20 “points to the fact” that Mark didn’t write those verses, then the use of 20 new words in Mark 15:40-16:4 “points to the fact” that Mark didn’t write those 12 verses either.  The real facts that Buice needs to fathom are that (a) in a relatively brief work such as the Gospel of Mark, every 12-verse segment is likely to have some unique vocabulary, and (b)  if Buice were to apply his vocabulary-based approach to other parts of Mark (and to other parts of the New Testament), he would draw them into question too.

(2) The Historical Evidence

Buice:  “When we read authors, theologians, preachers, and scholars from church history, it’s apparent that many of them did not have any knowledge of the longer ending of the Gospel of Mark.  For instance, Clement of Alexandria and Origen both show no evidence in their writing that they embraced a longer ending of Mark.”

            Buice thus put his ignorance of patristic writers on display.  Besides the four second-century writers already mentioned – Justin, Tatian, the unknown author of Epistula Apostolorum, and Irenaeus – there are numerous early authors, preachers, and scholars who demonstrate their awareness and acceptance of Mark 16:9-20.  These individuals include the author of De rebaptismate (258), the pagan author Hierocles (305), Eusebius of Caesarea (325), Eusebius’ contemporary Marinus, Aphrahat the Syrian (337), the unknown author of Acts of Pilate (300’s), Ambrose of Milan (380’s), Ephrem the Syrian (360’s), Apostolic Constitutions (380), Augustine (late 300’s/early 400’s), Greek manuscripts mentioned by Augustine, Epiphanius of Salamis (late 300s), Patrick, the creators of various forms of the Old Latin chapter-summaries, Jerome, Macarius Magnes, Prosper of Aquitaine, Marius Mercator, Marcus Eremita, Nestorius (as cited by Cyril of Alexandria), Peter Chrysologus, Severus of Antioch, Leontius of Jerusalem, the unknown author of The History of John the Son of Zebedee, and the unknown author of the Coptic composition  The Enthronement of the Archangel Michael.

            But Buice assures us that “Clement of Alexandria and Origen both show no evidence in their writing that they embraced a longer ending of Mark.”  This is nothing but a repetition of the claim passed down from Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament:  “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses.”  This appeal to Clement is laughable, inasmuch as he scarcely used any of the Gospel of Mark except chapter 10.  Everything in Clement’s writing points to the absence of 16:9-20 as much as everything in Clement’s writing point to the absence of the first seven entire chapters of Mark.  Buice (like many others) has preposterously misrepresented the evidence from Clement.    

Buice:  “Eusebius, the church historian born approximately AD 260, claims that the most accurate copies and “almost all copies” of Mark’s Gospel ended at Mark 16:8.”

            If someone were to pass a law against misrepresenting Eusebius’ statements about Mark 16:9-20, Buice and many other commentators would be imprisoned.  The first thing that should be realized is that Eusebius, writing in the early 300’s following the Diocletian persecution, had no way to survey all manuscripts everywhere; his references to quantities of manuscripts refers to what could be compared in particular places.  

            The second thing that should be realized is that when one looks at Eusebius’ main comments about Mark 16:9-20 in the composition Ad Marinum, he addressed how to harmonize Matthew 28:1-2 and Mark 16:9 and offered two explanations:  one way is to reject the passage on the grounds that it is not in all the manuscripts, or not in the accurate ones, or seldom in any of them – and the other way is to accept the passage and punctuate the opening sentence.  And what option did Eusebius recommend that Marinus take?  The second one.  Eusebius went into verbose detail about how to pronounce Mark 16:9 to resolve the perceived discrepancy with Matthew 28.  He frames the description of manuscripts as something that could be said by someone who rejects the passage, but he does not regard this as some sort of definitive statement, or else he would not have proceeded to tell Marinus how the passages can be harmonized.  Eusebius also cited Mark 16:9 twice elsewhere in the same composition.

Buice:  “Jerome likewise points out that Mark 16:9-20 was absent from the majority of the manuscripts available during his lifetime.”

            Again Buice exposes the shallowness of his research.  For it is obvious that Jerome accepted the passage (he included 16:9-20 in the Vulgate and referred to Mark 16:14 in Against the Pelagians 2:14).  In the composition upon which Buice depends (Ad Hedibiam, Epistle 120), Jerome was abridging and loosely translating into Latin the contents of Eusebius’ earlier composition to Marinus.  Jerome, in the course of answering a broad question about Jesus’ resurrection-appearances, recycled the work of Eusebius, and even included three of the questions that Marinus had asked Eusebius, in the same order.   The statement of Jerome to which Buice refers is essentially Eusebius’ statement, put into Latin by Jerome.   D. C. Parker has written, “Jerome’s work is simply a translation with some slight changes of what Eusebius had written” (Living Text of the Gospels, p. 135).   

Buice:  “The overwhelming historical evidence points to the fact that the earliest witnesses to the apostles viewed the ending of Mark to be 16:8.”

            At this point Buice is just making stuff up, all while failing to inform his congregation about the evidence from the 100’s – the earliest patristic evidence we have – that favors the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20.

Buice:  “When reading the Ante-Nicene Fathers (the ancient writings leading up to A.D. 325), it’s apparent that they viewed the ending of the Gospel of Mark to be 16:8 rather than 16:20.”

That statement is manifestly false.  The many utilizations of Mark 16:9-20 by the authors I have already listed, both before the Council of Nicea and afterwards, demonstrate that Buice’s claim is detached from reality.

(3)  Doctrinal Evidence

            Buice sees “troubling doctrines” and in Mark 16:9-20 and uses this as part of his basis for rejecting the passage.  This is a problematic approach, not only because it is not scientific, but because it is inconsistent.  If textual variants can be validly selected according to how well they correspond to one’s doctrine, then why does the ESV, made by people who subscribe to the doctrine of inerrancy, say that Jesus was descended from Asaph and Amos, or that Isaiah wrote Malachi 3:1?  Let’s just select the more doctrinally palatable variant and such things can be efficiently resolved! 

            If such an approach is not valid in those cases then it Is not valid regarding Mark 16:9-20 either.  

            I submit that what Buice sees as “strange doctrines” emanate from interpreters, and not from the text itself.  For the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20 is supported not only in 99% of the Greek manuscripts of Mark, and in 99.9% of the Latin manuscripts of Mark, and 99% of the Syriac manuscripts of Mark, but it is also in the Greek lectionaries; yet the Greek and Latin and Syriac churches have somehow avoided advocating snake-handling and poison-drinking and sensationalistic faith-healers.  Martin Luther likewise fully accepted Mark 16:9-20 (as did the formulators of the Westminster Confession of Faith) and yet he is not known for snake-handling.   

          As for “baptismal regeneration” – as if this passage says more about baptism than the New Testament teaches about confession – perhaps Buice should consider whether he is teaching correctly about the purpose of baptism in the New Testament, and ask himself and his fellow Baptists whether the baptisms described in the book of Acts were intrinsically public.  But in any case it is surely a bad methodology to base one’s text on one’s doctrine, and not the other way around.

            If Buice considers the content of Mark 16:17-18 as indicative that the passage is spurious, what is he going to do with the broader declarations in Luke 19:10 and Matthew 17:20 and Mark 11:24-25?  Should we invent a bad interpretation and use that as a reason to reject these passages (the way Buice approaches Mark 16:9-20)?  No passage is safe from such an approach. 

Finally, after mentioning that there are 643 copies of Homer’s Iliad, Buice states:  “When we compare that to the 5,839 New Testament manuscripts and approximately 25,000 manuscripts in Latin and other languages — the mountain of evidence rests on the side of the Bible.”

            It should first be noted that Buice’s example is unfair to Homer; Homer is one author; the New Testament includes works by several authors, and different parts of the New Testament are represented by very different quantities of manuscripts.

            But a larger point overshadows Buice’s whole argument:  if it is granted that the more manuscripts we have, the better the text is preserved, then Mark 16:9-20 should be accepted without a second thought, because these verses are supported in over 99% of the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels, and in the Greek lectionaries.  There can be no doubt (unless one has been a victim of sad misrepresentations of the facts of history like the one offered by Buice) that Mark 16:9-20 is part of the text that has been handed down in the churches from generation to generation, century after century, wherever the Greek text has been copied.  The mountain of evidence rests on the side of Mark 16:9-20.

            I note in conclusion that F. F. Bruce, the deceased scholar cited by Buice at the end of his comments on Mark 16:9-20, wrote this about these 12 verses:  “While we cannot regard them as an integral part of the Gospel to which they are now attached, no Christian need have any hesitation in reading them as Holy Scripture.”

Who's Making Your Bible?

David Trobisch

          When the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece was published in 2012, it was soon followed by A User’s Guide to the Nestle-Aland 28 Greek New Testament, released in September of 2013.  The author of this introduction to NA28 is David Trobisch, who in 2011 became a member of the editorial committee entrusted with the preparation of future editions of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.  

          Trobisch’s User’s Guide to NA28 has been met with some concerns among evangelicals; Dan Wallace, for example, noted that Trobisch “got some facts wrong,” and recommended the removal of an entire chapter.  I too have some concerns.  

          One might expect all of the compilers of Novum Testamentum Graece to be Christians, since future compilations of this text will likely be the basis for future translations of the New Testament used in Christian congregations.  However, Trobisch is a fellow of The Jesus Project, an undertaking of a group called the Center for Inquiry.  His fellow-members include Frank Zindler (an atheist who is also a Jesus Mythicist, that is, he denies that Jesus ever existed), Paul Kurtz (President of the International Academy of Humanism), James Crossley (an atheist), James Tabor (perhaps best-known for his theory that the Talpiot Tomb is the tomb of Jesus), Robert M. Price (Jesus Seminar member, and also a Jesus Mythicist), and Richard Carrier (another Jesus Mythicist).    

          At the website of the Center for Inquiry, the organization is defined:  “A world-wide movement of humanists, skeptics, freethinkers, and atheists.”  And its members’ mission is plainly stated:  “To foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.”  The website also states that it is a priority of the Center for Inquiry “to oppose and supplant the mythological narratives of the past, and the dogmas of the present.”  

          Somehow I suspect that the phrase “dogmas of the present” encompasses the historical doctrines of the Christian church.  One of the research-programs of the Center for Inquiry mentioned at the website is the Council for Secular Humanism.  It is rather surprising to learn that a member of that organization, which is clearly dedicated to erode and marginalize the cultural influence of Christianity, is also an advisor for the American Bible Society, and the curator of the Museum of the Bible which is scheduled to open in Washington, D.C. in late 2017.

          An article by David Trobisch appeared in Volume 28 of the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry (from Dec 2007/Jan 2008).  His article is mentioned on the cover and it is accessible online (via this link).  In that article, Trobisch expresses some unusual interpretations of some parts of the New Testament.  He proposes, for example, that John 21:24 was written with all four Gospels in mind:  “This sentence does not refer to only one author and one manuscript; instead, it talks about “books” in the plural. The reader of John will have just finished reading the fourth account of “things that Jesus did.”  A modern rendition of this sentence may sound like:  “If everything Jesus did was written down, I suppose that the world could not contain all the books that would have to be published.  Four books are plenty!” The last sentence of John does not refer only to the Gospel according to John; it refers to the Gospel collection as a whole.”

           Trobisch also states, “The New Testament was published by Polycarp of Smyrna between 166 and 168 C. E.”  As corroborating evidence, he points to Second Timothy 4:9-20 and proposes that this passage “may contain the names of the publisher and forger of this letter.”  He focuses on the two names in these verses (without mentioning the four names in verse 21) that do not appear elsewhere in the New Testament:  Crescens and Carpus.  The name “Carpus,” Trobisch proposes, “could easily be interpreted as referring to Bishop Polycarp.”  

          He then goes on to propose that the reference to Crescens in Second Timothy 4:9 was added as an acknowledgement of the role of Polycarp’s secretary (mentioned in Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians which introduced the Letters of Ignatius).  “Although this argument cannot carry the burden of proof,” Trobisch concludes, “it is a nice example of corroborating evidence.”

          That theory is not merely weak.  It’s quackery.  And it is not the only highly dubious theory of the origins of New Testament books that Trobisch has promoted.  In a speech delivered in 2015, he referred to the text about Jesus promoted by the second-century heretic Marcion as “the oldest Gospel,” and began his speech with the claim that “Scholars now know of a Gospel-book that is probably older than the Gospels that are part of the New Testament.”  Trobisch also claimed that the author of the Gospel of Luke used Josephus as a source.        

          One can harbor all kinds of unusual beliefs and still be a competent textual critic.  However, Trobisch apparently believes that the Gospel of Luke post-dates the works of Josephus, and that the earliest text of the four canonical Gospels descends from the 150’s-160’s.  That position, it seems to me, is very likely to have an impact on some text-critical decisions, just as different solutions to the Synoptic Problem yield different implications about some textual variants in the Gospels. 

          Trobisch has also written that the opening sentences of Acts refer, not to the closing verses of Luke, but instead to the closing verses of John – implying that the composition of Acts post-dates the collection of the four canonical Gospels.  He has also written, “Historically speaking Paul probably did not heal.”  Trobisch’s doubts about Paul’s healing-miracles might not affect Trobisch’s text-critical work.  But does anyone think that if a textual critic believes, as Trobisch seems to, that Acts was written in the middle of the second century, this will have no impact on his text-critical decisions pertaining to the text of Acts?

          And does anyone think that it does not matter that Trobisch believes (as he has recently written) that “scribes and editors felt free to revise the Greek text during the fourteen centuries of its manuscript transmission,” rather than the normal view that a scribes’ primary ambition was to make an accurate copy of the text of his exemplar?  Do any specialists besides Trobisch believe that a typical copyist “felt free” to revise the text of the Gospels?  There were indeed some reckless copyists, but to present them as if they were typical is like saying that human beings have six digits on each hand.

          In addition to the objection that Trobisch brings some strange ideas to the compilation-committee’s table, there is a pastoral concern here.  I have never met David Trobisch but from what I have read and watched, the religion to which he subscribes is very different from the Christianity which is taught in the New Testament.  It seems to be a baptized “social gospel” philosophy which does not remotely affirm – and which directly opposes – the statement of faith of the National Association of Evangelicals, which, among other things, affirms the infallibility of the Bible, Christ’s virgin birth, His bodily resurrection, His deity, His future return, the final judgment, and salvation through the work of the Holy Spirit in personal spiritual rebirth.  

          Yet very many evangelical leaders who consider those things to be essentials of the faith – people such as D. A. Carson, James White, Craig Evans, Bill Mounce, and Steve Green – seem perfectly fine when the task of compiling the text of the Greek New Testament is entrusted to someone who denies every one of those tenets of Christianity.  At least, I have not heard much protest from them so far.  Most evangelical preachers probably would not share their pulpits with hyper-liberals and atheists.  Why, then, do they seem perfectly content to have a hyper-liberal edit the book on the pulpit?  

          It may be that our wise evangelical leaders have reckoned that just because a fox is a fox, that is no reason why a fox cannot be a skillful guardian of the chicken coop.  Nothing but bias, they might insist, would elicit a suspicion that an unbeliever might – whether purposefully or unconsciously – render the base-text of the New Testament unstable, or introduce readings into the text which have very little manuscript-support (or even none).  “It would be a gross employment of the genetic fallacy,” someone might insist, “if Christian translators deliberately avoided using a base-text compiled by someone ideologically opposed to Bible-believing Christianity.” 

          Against such politically correct wisdom I protest in the name of common sense.  The gold of the king of Sodom was as solid as the next man’s; yet Abraham (in Genesis 14:21-24) refused to receive any of it.  There is a principle being illustrated there that should not be ignored. 

          Second Corinthians 6:14 says, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.  For what partnership does righteousness have with lawlessness?  And what fellowship does light have with darkness?”  Paul stresses this theme emphatically for several verses:  “What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” and so forth.  He utilizes two stirring passages from the Old Testament in his call to the church:  “Come out from among them.”  And what co-operation can there be between Christ-centered churches, and members of the Center for Inquiry?  No one can serve two masters.  Paul’s warning against being yoked together with unbelievers is often unheeded in today’s society.  Still, one might think that in the enterprise of compiling the text of the Greek New Testament, this principle should not be ignored when alternatives are readily available.