Mark 16:9-20 - Taking It to the Streets

More than one publishing-house and more than one Christian commentator have refused to quietly correct the mistakes in their commentaries and similar books.  So I shall do so publicly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfbSjIkCIF0

In this 48-minute video I expose some commentators' errors about Mark 16:9-20 such as the popular (but erroneous) claim about doubt-conveying asterisks and obeli.

When doing apologetics and wielding the sword of the Spirit . . . make sure its metal hasn't been weakened before going into battle. First Timothy 5:20

Proverbs 18:9

Fact-checking Wallace: GA 2346, 2812, and 137

            In two earlier posts, we saw that minuscules 138, 264, 1221 do not contain an asterisk at Mark 16:9 to convey scribal doubt about Mark 16:9-20, contrary to a claim spread by Daniel Wallace.  Another manuscript which Wallace says has an asterisk accompanying Mark 16:9-20 is GA 2346.  For some time, digital photographs of 2346 have been available to view at the website of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.  Mark 16:9 is on Image #376264.

GA 2346:  Mark 16:9 begins in
the ninth line of Scripture-text. 

            David Hester offered an analysis of the evidence in 2346 in his 2015 book Does Mark 16:9-20 Belong in the New Testament?, observing what you, too, can plainly see by consulting the photographs at CSNTM:  there is no asterisk in 2346 accompanying Mark 16:9-20.  Instead, there is a dot-lozenge between Mark 16:8 and 16:9, and in the left side-margin nearby are the symbols (τελος for “stop” and αρχη for “start”) which typically signify the beginnings and ends of lections.  At the top of the page, the rubric for the third Heothinon appears – “The third resurrection-gospel,” along with the incipit-phrase to be used by the lector when reading Mark 16:9 – “When Jesus rose early.” 

            The lack of an asterisk accompanying Mark 16:9 in 2346, and the presence of ordinary lectionary-related features in 2346, are just as obvious when consulting the reproduction of the relevant page in 2346 in the 1918 volume The Gospel Manuscripts of the General Theological Seminary (reproduced here, digitally enhanced). 

            If anyone still imagines that the dot-lozenge after Mark 16:8 in 2346 is not part of the lectionary-apparatus, let his doubts be dissolved via a consultation of

            ● the twelfth line of text in CSNTM Image 376496, where a dot-lozenge accompanies the beginning of John 1:43 (with τελος and αρχη in the margin),

            ● the ninth line of text in CSNTM Image 376499, where a dot-lozenge accompanies the beginning of John 2:12 (with τελος and αρχη in the margins), and   

            ● the first line of CSNTM Image 376511 – where a dot-lozenge accompanies the beginning of John 4:5, which is the beginning of chapter 5, the rubric of which appears at the top of the page, along with its incipit.

The next manuscript which Wallace claims to have an asterisk accompanying Mark 16:9-20 is GA 2812.  I described the relevant features of this manuscript in 2016, in the post Whatever Happened to the Zelada Gospels.  As I pointed out at the time, the Gospels-text in 2812 is accompanied in the margins by the Catena in Marcum (attributed in this case to Peter of Laodicea instead of Victor of Antioch).  A comet-symbol appears next to Mark 16:9, serving the same purpose as a footnote-number; in this case the symbol was intended to draw the reader’s attention to the note which accompanies the same symbol in the margin next to the end of Mark 16:20.  (The comet-symbol also appears at the foot of the page, probably to help guide readers to the next page to find the note about the marked passage on the preceding page.)  There we find the same part of the Catena in Marcum (already encountered in GA 138) that begins with Παρὰ πλείστοις ἀντιγράφοις οὐ κεῖται, and proceeds to advocate the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20, mentioning the presence of verses 9-20 in many accurate manuscripts, including the trustworthy Palestinian exemplar. 

For convenience I present here the Greek text of the note, line for line, as it is written in the margin of 2812:

Παρὰ πλείστοις ἀντιγράφοις οὐ

κεῖνται ταῦτα ἐπὶφερόμενα εν τῳ

κατ[α] Μαρκον ευαγγελιῳ ὡς νόθα νομί-

σαντες αὐτά τινες εἶναι.  Ἡμεῖς δε ἐξ ἀ-

κριβῶν ἀντ[ι]γράφων ὡς ἐν πλείστοις

εὑρόντες αὐτὰ, κατ[ὰ] τὸ Παλαιστι-

ναῖον εὐαγγέλι[ον] Μάρκου ὡς ἔχει ἡ ἀ-

λήθεια, συντεθείκαμ[εν] κ[αι] την ἐν

αὐτῶ ἐπὶφερομένην δεσποτικὴν

ἀνάστασιν μετὰ τὸ ἐφοβοῦντο γάρ. 

Those who may want examples of the use of the comet-symbol as a mark intended to draw readers’ attention to marginalia in 2812 may consult:

The page which has Mark 6:25, where the comet-symbol appears halfway through Mark 6:25, and in the margin at the beginning of the comments about the passage,

The page on which Mark 9 begins, where the comet-symbol appears at the beginning of a note about the Transfiguration in the lower margin,

The page which has Mark 13:24, on which the comet-symbol accompanies a brief note at the foot of the page, 

A page with the chapter-list for Luke, where the comet-symbol accompanies a numeral (150) in the left margin),  

           Let’s cover GA 137 today, too.  Wallace stated, “Parker, Living Text, 127, adds 137 to this list,” that is, the list of manuscripts which, he said, have an asterisk at Mark 16:9-20 to indicate scribal doubt.  Wallace was referring to David Parker, whose description of the testimony of GA 137 and 138 in his book The Living Text of the Gospels is as concise as it is inaccurate:  “Asterisks:  137 138.” 

            Page-views of GA 137 can be viewed at the website of the Vatican Library.  Unlike the page-views of GA 138, the photographs of GA 137 are in color.  The text of Mark in GA 137 is accompanied by the Catena in Marcum; the identity of the commentary can easily be made by consulting the note at the beginning of Mark 16 and confirming that it begins with Μετὰ τὴν ἀνάστασιν ἤλθεν ὁ ἄγγελος, καὶ τὸν λίθον ᾗρεν διὰ τὰς γυναῖκας, and that is how the marginalia begins at the foot of the page on page-view 309.

            (It should be noticed that the commentator, in the course of the comment on 16:1ff., utilizes Mark 16:9:  on page-view 310, beginning in the commentary that appears directly above the Scripture-text (Mark 16:3), the commentator (or the author from whom he has gotten an extract) mentions that in certain copies, the Gospel of Mark says that Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene.) 

            On page-view 310, Mark 16:9 begins in the seventeenth line of text – the same line in which Mark 16:8 ends.  Between the end of verse 8 and the beginning of verse 9, written slightly above the text-line, there is a small red cross-symbol, resembling a “+” sign.  It is hard to imagine how such an ordinary symbol could ever be confused with an asterisk.  It serves the same purpose as a footnote-number, referring the reader to a note in the margin.  The note (accompanied by another red “+”) appears at the foot of the page two pages later, on page-view 312.  It is the same note – part of the Catena in Marcum – that we encountered in 138 and 2812, beginning with Παρὰ πλείστοις.    

            Thus, out of the five manuscripts which Dan Wallace described as if they have an asterisk next to Mark 16:9-20 to convey scribal doubt about the passage – 138, 264, 1221, 2346, and 2812 –  none of them really fit that description, and neither does 137.  Minuscules 137, 138 and 2812 have a note about the passage (part of the Catena in Marcum) which supports the inclusion of the passage, and 263, 1221, and 2346 have ordinary marks – not asterisks – that are part of the lectionary-apparatus, and which recur elsewhere in the manuscripts.

  

_______________

For David Parker’s statement see The Living Text of the Gospels, page 127, © David Parker 1997, published by Oxford University Press.

Craig Evans and the Ending of Mark

             A prominent evangelical commentator has spread misinformation about an important text-critical question.  I wrote this post as a means of doing something about it, in the hope that the commentator himself, and his publishers, will gladly do more.

            Dr. Craig A. Evans – a professor at Houston Baptist University – wrote some admiring comments about Nicholas Lunn’s 2014 book, The Original Ending of Mark – A New Case for the Authenticity of Mark 16:9-20:  “I have for my whole career held that Mark 16:9-20, the so-called ‘Long Ending,’ was not original.  But in his well-researched and carefully argued book, Lunn succeeds in showing just how flimsy that position really is.  The evidence for the early existence of this ending, if not for its originality, is extensive and quite credible.  I will not be surprised if Lunn reverses scholarly opinion on this important question.”

            That was 2014.  Previously, Dr. Evans had indeed dismissed Mark 16:9-20 as non-original.  In 2008, he asserted on page 30 of the book Fabricating Jesus, “The last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark (Mk 16:9-20) are not the original ending; they were added at least two centuries after Mark first began to circulate.”

            That is a remarkable claim, because it assigns the production of Mark 16:9-20 to the 260’s (if Mark wrote his Gospel-account in the 60’s) – well beyond the lifetimes of Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus, all of whom used the passage in the 100’s.   We shall take a close look at Dr. Evans’ treatment of the evidence from Irenaeus, but first, let’s consider what he said about Mark 16:9-20 in 1988, on page 543 of his commentary on Mark in the Word Biblical Commentary series:

  

“In the ancient MSS that contain the whole of Mark, we find four endings:  (1)  in 16:8, “for they were afraid”; (2) at 16:20, the so-called Long Ending; (3) at 16:8, plus the so-called Short Ending; and (4) at 16:20, plus the Short Ending.  Many of the older MSS have asterisks and obeli marking off the Long or Short Ending as spurious or at least doubtful.”

 

Codex Bobbiensis -
the only manuscript
in any language to have
only the Shorter Ending
after Mark 16:8.

That statement has three mistakes:

(1)  Codex Bobbiensis (Old Latin k), the only extant manuscript in any language that ends the text of Mark with only the Short Ending after 16:8, does not contain “the whole of Mark.”  Mark 1:1-8:7 is missing in Codex Bobbiensis, due to incidental damage.  Smaller bits are also missing in the extant portion. 

(2)  No Greek manuscripts have the Short Ending after 16:20.  Evans’ fourth ending is non-existent.  Five manuscripts have the Short Ending between 16:8 and 16:9, and one has the Short Ending in the page-margin, but none have it after 16:20.  Evidently, Evans depended on the error-plagued textual apparatus in the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament, some editions of which spread this mistake. 

 
            It may be worthwhile to tangentially note that such parroting is all too common in commentaries written by evangelicals after 1971, when Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament was published.  Metzger’s claims have been so thoroughly and uncritically absorbed and paraphrased by evangelical commentators that it is very difficult to correct Metzger’s well-distributed mistakes and distortions.  For example, even after Metzger himself, in 1980, wrote a major essay retracting his earlier claim that some Ethiopic manuscripts of Mark concluded at 16:8, one can still find his false claim about Ethiopic manuscripts in commentaries written 30 years later – and even on page 322 of the fourth edition of Metzger’s own The Text of the New Testament, now edited (not very carefully, it seems) by Bart Ehrman.

(3)  Evans’ claim that “Many of the older MSS have asterisks and obeli marking off the Long or Short Ending as spurious or at least doubtful” is incorrect.  Daniel Wallace, in 2007 in Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, stated that the number of manuscripts with an asterisk or obeli accompanying Mark 16:9-20 to indicate doubt about those verses (out of over 1,600 Greek manuscripts of Mark) is “at least five.”  So who is correct:  Evans, who says that there are many such manuscripts (and that they are among “the older” ones), or Wallace, who manages to list five (all of which are medieval copies)? 

            As it turns out, both Evans and Wallace are wrong.  The manuscripts listed by Wallace are 138, 264, 1221, 2346, and 2812.  I have examined photographs or microfilm-images of the relevant pages of all five.  None of them has a column of asterisks or obeli alongside Mark 16:9-20, and the only ones that have a mark resembling an asterisk near Mark 16:9 are 138 and 264 – not a column of asterisks, but a single asterisk-like mark.
            The reason for this mark in minuscule 138 is not difficult to discern:  in the rest of the manuscript, in which commentary-material is interspersed with the Gospels-text, the reader is alerted to the resumption of the Gospels-text by the presence of Eusebian Section-and-Canon-numbers in the outer margin, as well as by diple-marks (“>”) accompanying each line of Scripture-text.  For Mark 16:9-14, the diple-marks are present, but not a Eusebian Section-number, because there wasn’t one.  The asterisk-like mark merely serves as a proxy, since there was no Eusebian Section-number, to alert the reader that the Gospels-text resumes at this point.  Minuscule 138 includes in its commentary-material a comment which confirms the legitimacy of Mark 16:9-20 and its attestation in a Palestinian exemplar. 
            It is not unusual for manuscripts in which commentary-material accompanies the text to have symbols which accompany segments of the text (usually written in red, either in the margin, or embedded in the text itself), to convey to the readers where they can find the comment about that segment (by looking for the same symbol in the margin).  Anyone who can look at the symbol in a commentary-manuscript such as 2812 and call it an asterisk, and claim that it conveys doubt, when in reality it does not remotely resemble an asterisk, and serves the same purpose as a footnote-number, plainly does not understand the marginalia.

            In minuscule 264, the asterisk-like symbol in the outer margin beside Mark 16:9 also occurs alongside Mark 11:1, 11:12, 12:38, 14:12, Luke 18:2, and Luke 19:29.  Unless someone is prepared to explain the doubts that a copyist had about those passages (I jest of course), it should be acknowledged that these marks in 264 denote chapter-breaks and lection-breaks, and are not expressions of scribal doubt at all.

            Likewise, no one who has carefully examined minuscule 1221 would report that it has a symbol at Mark 16:9 that was intended to convey scribal doubt, because the same symbol (four dots arranged like the points of a lozenge or compass) is used in the same manuscript at some other lection-breaks:  at Matthew 3:1, 3:7, 4:1, 4:12, 4:18, and (moving along) in Mark at 2:13, halfway through 5:24, about halfway through 6:7, halfway through Luke 2:22, at Luke 2:41, at Luke 3:1, and more.  It would be an act of conscious deception if a writer were to carefully examine this manuscript and then describe the symbol at 16:9 as if it conveyed scribal doubt, without mentioning the ones at the other locations.  (I do not suspect Evans of doing this, since I doubt that he consulted images of any of these manuscripts before writing about them.)

            Fifteen members of two small groups of manuscripts – the family-1 group, and the “Jerusalem Colophon” group – have special annotations about Mark 16:9-20, and in some cases the annotation is accompanied by an asterisk or by a pair of asterisks, but such features are there to draw the reader’s eye to the note; in and of themselves, such marks do not express doubt; it is not rare to see them accompanying the Gospels’ titles and rubrics.  (The annotations in these groups tend to defend the genuineness of Mark 16:9-20, stating that although some copies lack verses 9-20 and Eusebius did not include the passage in his Canon-Tables, the verses are in the ancient copies, or (in a different form of the annotation) in most copies.  The later form of the annotation omits the part about the Eusebian Canons.  These are not independent notes; they echo one or two ancestors of these two small manuscript-groups.) 
         
            In addition to those three errors, what Evans does not say is significant.  He ensures that his readers’ perception of the evidence is blurry:  he could have said that the Gospel of Mark ends in the following ways in the extant Greek manuscripts:  (1)  in two manuscripts from the 300’s, the text ends at 16:8; (2) in one thousand and six hundred manuscripts, 16:8 is followed by 16:9-20; (3) in five manuscripts, the Short Ending is present between 16:8 and 16:9, and in one manuscript, 16:9 follows 16:8 in the text but the Short Ending is written in the lower margin of the page, and (4) fifteen manuscripts (among the manuscripts in which 16:8 is followed by 16:9) perpetuate a note which states that although some copies lack verses 9-20, the majority of copies, or the ancient copies, contain the passage.
            This would have given readers a better picture of what Evans was really saying:  that at this point in the text, he prefers the testimony of two early manuscripts over the testimony of 1,600 manuscripts (including other ancient manuscripts such as Codices A, D, and W (which has an interpolation between 16:14 and 16:15).  It does not elicit much confidence in the “embarrassment of riches” when one conveys that over 99% of the coins in the treasury are counterfeit – and this may be why so many commentators resort to vague terms when discussing this subject.

            Now let’s take a closer look at what Dr. Evans has written about the evidence from Irenaeus.  As recently as 2013, Evans claimed that the text of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies at this point is corrupt:   in the Holman Apologetics Commentary (2013), after we again encounter the erroneous claims from 1988 that begin with, “In the ancient manuscripts that contain the whole of Mark,” and so forth, we read this:

“Mark 16:19 (“Then after speaking to them, the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God”) is quoted in Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.10.5), but this is uncertain testimony.  The original Greek text of this part of Against Heresies has not survived.  It survives in a later Latin translation that may have incorporated this verse from much later manuscripts.  Accordingly, it is far from certain that Irenaeus, writing c. 180, was acquainted with Mark’s so-called Longer Ending.”

            That is historical revisionism of a pernicious and preposterous kind.  Fortunately it can be easily refuted.  Granting that in some patristic writings, copyists or translators substituted their own texts when presenting quotations made by the patristic author, Evans’ proposal involves more than a simple substitution of one form of a passage for another.  He contends that the Latin translator inserted a quotation of Mark 16:19 where there was previously nothing.  That is, Evans is not proposing an exchange of texts; he is proposing that the text of Against Heresies, Book 3, chapter 10, part 5, contains a large interpolation.  His theory requires that this entire portion that consists of the quotation and the explanation of it, is all an interpolation:

“Also, towards the conclusion of his Gospel, Mark says:  ‘So then, after the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God,’ confirming what had been spoken by the prophet:  ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit on My right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool.’  Thus God and the Father are truly one and the same; He who was announced by the prophets, and handed down by the true Gospel; whom we Christians worship and love with the whole heart, as the Maker of heaven and earth and all things therein.”

A note in minuscule 72 beside Mark 16:19:  
“Irenaeus, who lived near the time of the 
apostles, cites this from Mark in the third 
book of his work Against Heresies.” 

            Is there any evidence that the translator of Against Heresies tossed this into the text, out of the blue?  No.  Is there any evidence that this was part of the text of Against Heresies, Book Three, from the time it was written by Irenaeus?  Yes.  A Greek note in the margin of Greek minuscule 1582, next to Mark 16:19, confirms that Irenaeus quoted the verse, in Book Three of Against Heresies.  (I have read the note in digital images of minuscule 1582, and have a picture of it, but I have not posted it here due to a restrictive copyright policy.)  A Greek note in the margin of Greek manuscript 72, next to Mark 16:19, says the same thing.  And according to Jeff Hargis in a report about the findings of a CSNTM-team in Romania, a Greek manuscript at the Museum of Oltenia, in Craiova, Romania, also has this note alongside Mark 16:19.

            Does Dr. Evans imagine that the author of that Greek note was using a Latin translation of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies?  Such a theory is highly unlikely, especially considering that 1582’s annotations echo the fifth-century ancestor of the family-1 group, of which 1582 is the strongest member.  So I confidently categorize Evans’ entire theory about Irenaeus’ statement as arbitrary, baseless, and absurd.        

            Finally, further along in the Holman Apologetics Commentary on the Gospels and Acts (edited by Jeremy Royal Howard), Evans wrote:  “Some manuscripts preserve the so-called Short Ending to Mark (L Y 099 0112).  Almost all of those that do also contain the Long Ending.”  He is mistaken in two ways:  first, Codex Y does not contain the Short Ending.  A typo has occurred, and the symbol Ψ should appear instead of Y.  Secondly, as far as Greek manuscripts are concerned – and that is the only kind of manuscript that Evans lists here – only six Greek manuscripts have the Short Ending, and all six contain at least part of 16:9, showing that they all had verses 9-20 when in pristine condition. 

            None of this should be considered relevant to any of Dr. Evans’ work in other fields.  But when it comes to his text-critical treatment of the ending of Mark, Craig Evans’ commentary contains numerous mistakes – so many and so bad that his commentary should be withdrawn from publication as soon as possible, so that he can correct it, in order to stop misleading his readers.  (Some other books should also be withdrawn and corrected by their authors, because of worse mistakes.  Looking at you, Stephen M. Miller.)  If he and his publishers do not do that, then it is up to ordinary readers to make full use of the margins of his commentary to ensure that future readers are not led astray by such erroneous and irresponsible mistreatment of the evidence.

Manuscript 758 and the Story About the Adulteress

          Recently at the blog of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, a writer presented minuscule 758 (from the 1300’s) as if it shows that a copyist expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the story of the adulteress by adding marks alongside the story in the margin of the manuscript.  He wrote:    

          “Some scribe (either the original one or a later scribe), upon seeing that this passage was included in John’s Gospel, put markings in the margins to denote its disputed status. However, the markings only cover John 8.3-11, leaving 7.53-8.2 unmarked.”

          If one turns to the pages in question (starting with image 318959, = page-view GA_758_0265b), one can see that the manuscript has a lectionary apparatus built into the text; i.e., lectionary-related notifications for the lector (the person who read selections from the manuscript aloud in worship-services) have been written in red within the text, in space reserved for them. 

Saint Pelagia, pictured before her conversion
(with Saint Nonnus, to the left) and after.

          Following John 7:52, there is an abbreviated note instructing the lector that when reading the lection for Pentecost, he should skip (up. kt. ts. N) from that point to the beginning of 8:12 (where, in the margin, there is an abbreviated note that means, resume here for Pentecost).  At the beginning of 8:3 there is an Αρχη symbol (written in red and embedded in the text), which means “Start here,” and on the next page – although one cannot see this using the cropped pictures at the CSNTM blog – in the upper margin (see Image 318960, = GA_758_0266a), a rubric identifies the reading For the Penitents (i.e., Saint Pelagia and the other Penitent Women), complete with the incipit-phrase to be used at the beginning of 8:3.  A Τελος (“Stop here”) symbol then appears at the end of 8:11 – to be precise, it appears after the “Again” (Παλιν) at the beginning of verse 12, because that is where a blank space had been left to add the lectionary apparatus) – to designate the end of the lection for Saint Pelagia’s Day, followed immediately by the “Resume here” symbol which told the lector where he was to resume reading on Pentecost. (This is augmented by a note meaning “Resume here for Pentecost” in the side-margin beside the same line.)

          I submit that the horizontal lines that accompany John 8:3-11 in manuscript 758 were most definitely not added by a scribe “to denote its disputed status,” as if the person who added these lines accepted John 7:53-8:2 but questioned 8:3-11.  Instead, the horizontal lines in this manuscript (and in others) alongside 8:3-11 were intended to identify the lection for Saint Pelagia’s annual feast-day (October 8), embedded within the lection for Pentecost.

Mark 16, Bruce Metzger, and Misinformation

          Very many commentators, when considering Mark 16:9-20, have not investigated the subject directly.  Instead, they have relied upon the late Dr. Bruce Metzger’s handbooks A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament and The Text of the New Testament.  Unfortunately many of Dr. Metzger’s statements about the external evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20 are incomplete, inaccurate, or incorrect, and convey false impressions.  To cast some light on all this, I have prepared this point-by-point review of Dr. Metzger’s statements, as found in A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament.

          (A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce M. Metzger is © 1971 by the United Bible Societies, Stuttgart.  Used here for review purposes.)

Metzger: “The last 12 verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts” –

           This refers to the oldest two manuscripts that contain Mark 16:  Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, from the 300’s. (Papyrus 45 is the oldest catalogued manuscript of Mark (although an older fragment containing text from Mark will probably be catalogued before 2014, God willing), but due to damage, Papyrus 45 contains no text of Mark 16 at all.)
          In Codex Vaticanus, the end of Mark is formatted differently from the ends of the other New Testament books.  Usually, after the copyist who wrote the New Testament portion of Codex Vaticanus reached the end of a book, he began the next book at the top of the very next column.  But after Mark 16:8, there’s the closing-title of the Gospel of Mark, and the rest of the column is blank (which is not unusual) and the next column is also blank.  It is as if the copyist was using an exemplar in which Mark’s text stopped at 16:8, but he recollected the remaining verses, and attempted to leave space for them in the event that the eventual owner or user of the codex wanted to include them.
          In Codex Sinaiticus, there are two unusual features that involve the end of the Gospel of Mark.  First, the pages in Codex Sinaiticus which contain Mark 14:54-Luke 1:56 are replacement-pages; the text on these four pages was not written by the copyist who produced the surrounding pages.  The person who wrote the text on these replacement-pages adjusted his lettering so that Luke 1:1-56 would fit into six columns and so that Mark 14:54-16:8 would occupy ten columns with no blank column in between (instead of nine columns plus a blank column).  Second, there is an elaborate decorative design in Codex Sinaiticus after Mark 16:8; if one compares this decorative design to the other decorative designs at the ends of books transcribed by the same copyist, it’s clear that the decorative design after Mark 16:8 is uniquely emphatic.

Metzger: “from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis” –

          This particular Old Latin codex was made in Egypt by a copyist who was not very familiar with the contents of the Gospels.  Codex Bobbiensis (the name can be spelled both ways) has a very anomalous text of Mark 16.  In the Shorter Ending, the copyist wrote the Latin for “child” (puero) instead of Peter’s name (Petro); instead of writing “from east to west,” he wrote “from east to east,” and he skipped the Latin word for “proclaim” (praedicationis, which was then placed in the lower margin of the page).  Contrary to the impression given by the ESV’s footnotes, Codex Bobbiensis says that Jesus appeared to the disciples before He sent out the gospel through them. 
          In Codex Bobbiensis, the names of the women are removed from verse 1, and an interpolation has been added between verse 3 and verse 4, stating that angels descended to the tomb, and that Christ gloriously arose, and they ascended with him.  Also, in verse 8, the phrase stating that the women said nothing to anyone has been removed.  To sum up:  the aberrations in Mark 16 in Codex Bobbiensis are not merely the effects of incompetent copying; some of them are clearly the results of conscious editorial tampering.  The text of Mark 16 in Codex Bobbiensis is not a reliable text. 

Metzger: “the Sinaitic Syriac” –

          This is the only known Syriac copy of Mark in which chapter 16 ends at verse 8. It shares several unusual readings with Codex Bobbiensis (notably at Matthew 1:25, 4:17, 5:47, 8:12, and Mark 8:31-32), indicating that they both descend from the same transmission-stream.
Metzger: “About 100 Armenian manuscripts” –
          The Armenian copies to which Dr. Metzger refers were listed by E. C. Colwell in a 1937 article; many more Armenian copies have been discovered since then.  The history of the transmission of the Gospels-text in Armenian is still a matter of debate.  But a few things should be added to Dr. Metzger’s lonely citation.  
          First, the Armenian manuscripts to which he refers are not particularly early; they are all medieval. Second, there are hundreds of other Armenian manuscripts that include Mark 16:9-20.  Third, one of the oldest Armenian manuscripts, Matenadaran 2374 (which used to be called Etchmiadzin 229), which was produced in 989, includes Mark 16:9-20.  Fourth, long before the production-date of any of the extant manuscripts, the Armenian writer Eznik of Golb used the contents of Mark 16:17-18 in his composition De Deo (also called Against the Sects) around 440.  And, fifth, according to Armenian historians, the Armenian Version was initially produced around 410, but was extensively revised in the 430’s after cherished Greek copies were taken to Armenia from Constantinople.  Now although the history of the Armenian Gospels-text is not altogether clear, it looks like there are two ancient Armenian transmission-streams that both go all the way back to the 400’s; one contained Mark 16:9-20 and the other did not.  Those “about one hundred Armenian manuscripts” are about 100 echoes of one early Armenian transmission-stream.
Metzger: “And the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written A.D. 897 and A.D. 913).” –  
          Those two Old Georgian copies should be understood as having no more weight than two more Armenian copies would, because the Old Georgian Version was translated from Armenian.  Many readers are likely to get the impression that the Armenian evidence and the Old Georgian evidence stand side by side as two independent lines of evidence, instead of seeing that the Old Georgian evidence mentioned by Dr. Metzger is an echo of the Armenian evidence.  In addition, Dr. Metzger did not mention Old Georgian copies that include Mark 16:9-20 which are only slightly younger than the two oldest Old Georgian copies. 

Metzger:  “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses.” –  

          Clement of Alexandria hardly ever quotes from the Gospel of Mark, except for chapter 10.  His non-use of Mark 16:9-20 has no evidentiary force when one considers that he similarly does not use chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, and 15 of the Gospel of Mark.  It is senseless to deduce that Clement’s copies of Mark did not include ten chapters of Mark – but the same kind of groundless deduction is what Dr. Metzger’s statement induces uninformed readers to make about Mark 16:9-20.
          In addition, Dr. Metzger seems to have overlooked Clement’s comment on Jude verse 24 in Adumbrationes, where, according to Cassiodorus, Clement stated the following:  “In the Gospel according to Mark, when the Lord was asked by the chief priest if He was the Christ, the Son of the blessed God, said in reply, ‘I am, and you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power.’  Now this term ‘powers’ signifies the holy angels.  Further, when he says ‘at the right hand of God,’ He means the very same beings, who, because of their angelic holy powers and likeness, are called by the name of God.  He says, therefore, that He sits at the right hand, that is, He rests in pre-eminent honor.”
          Notice that Clement says that “He says, ‘at the right hand of God.’”  Who is the “he” to whom Clement refers?  It apparently cannot be Jesus, because Jesus never uses that phrase in the Gospel of Mark.  But if the “he” is, instead, Mark, then the reference must be to Mark 16:19.  The only way to avoid this conclusion, it seems, is to reckon that either Clement mixed up the sources of his citations, or that the text of Cassiodorus has been miscopied.
          Origen, like Clement, did not use the Gospel of Mark very much; his non-use of Mark 16:9-20 has no more implication about the contents of his copies of Mark than does his non-use of other large passages, including portions consisting of 54, 28, 41, 25, 39, 46, 63, 31, and 33 consecutive verses.  If it is granted that Origen’s non-use of such large portions of Mark does not imply their absence from his copies of Mark, then it should be obvious that nothing can be deduced from his non-use of a 12-verse passage.

Metzger:  “Furthermore Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them.” –   

          That is not what Eusebius and Jerome say.  Eusebius, in a response to a question about how to harmonize Matthew 28 and Mark 16 on the question of the timing of the resurrection, wrote that there are two ways to solve the perceived discrepancy.  Eusebius then framed those two options by saying that a person might say that the passage in Mark that says that Jesus arose early on the first day of the week should be rejected on the grounds that it is not in all the manuscripts, at least, the accurate manuscripts end after the statement that the women fled in silence because they were afraid; almost all the copies end there; the rest is in some copies but not in all of them.  That, Eusebius then wrote, is what someone might say to settle a superfluous question.
          But then Eusebius proceeded to present a second option:  someone else, not daring to set aside anything at all that appears in the Gospels, would insist that both statements (i.e., the one in Matthew 28:1 and the one in Mark 16:9) must be accepted, and that they each report one of two aspects of what they describe, and that both are advocated by the faithful and pious.  Therefore, since it is granted that this passage is true, it is appropriate to seek to fathom what it means.  And (he continued to write) if we accurately discern the sense of the words (in Mark 16:9) we won’t find it contrary to Matthew’s statement that the Savior was raised “Late on the Sabbath.”  For we shall read Mark’s statement, “And having risen early on the first day of the week” with a pause: after “And having risen,” we shall add a comma.  And we will separate the meaning of what follows, so, in the one case, we can read “Having risen” to correspond to Matthew’s “Late on the Sabbath,” for that is when he was raised, and, regarding the rest, we might join what follows with what is read next:  for “early on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary Magdalene.”
          Eusebius kept going, proceeding to advocate the second option, stating words to the following effect: John, at any rate, makes it clear in his account that the appearance to Mary Magdalene was early on the first day of the week.  So, likewise in Mark also he appeared early to her.  It is not that he rose early – for he rose much earlier, according to Matthew:  late on the Sabbath.  Having arisen at that time, he did not appear to Mary at that time, but “early.”  What is implied is that two episodes are represented by these phrases:  one is the time of the resurrection, late on the Sabbath.  The other is the time of the appearance of the Savior, which was early.  Mark referred to the later time when he wrote, saying what must be read [aloud] with a pause: “And having risen.”  Then, after adding a comma, one must read the rest: “Early on the first day of the week he appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.”
          The brevity of Dr. Metzger’s description of the testimony from Eusebius prevents readers from seeing the context of Eusebius’ statement.  The part that says that almost all the manuscripts, at least the accurate ones, do not contain verses 9-20 is framed by Eusebius as something that someone could say to resolve the initial question.  Clearly Eusebius was aware of such copies, and he was aware that someone had advocated such a solution, and he thought it was worth mentioning to Marinus.  But Eusebius himself, when he wrote this composition to Marinus, did not consider that claim to be decisive, because after framing it as something that someone could say, he proceeded to tell Marinus that the passage should be retained, and that the harmonistic difficulty should be resolved by introducing a comma as one reads Mark 16:9.  If Eusebius himself had believed that only a smattering of copies contained Mark 16:9-20, and that the accurate copies did not contain Mark 16:9-20, it is difficult to explain why he would acquiesce to the inclusion of the passage, and describe Mark 16:9 as something written by Mark, and even recommend to Marinus that Mark 16:9 (and thus the rest of the passage, too) should be retained, provided that a pause be introduced when reading verse 9 aloud.
          In the course of answering Marinus’ next question, Eusebius referred to Mary Magdalene as the individual “of whom it is stated in Mark, according to some copies, that He had cast seven demons out of her.”  And, further along, answering Marinus’ third question, Eusebius stated that the individual named Mary who is mentioned in John is “the same one from whom, according to Mark, he had cast out seven demons.” 
          Eusebius seems to have held two opinions about this at two different times, for when he made his Canon-tables – a cross-reference system for the Gospels – he did not include Mark 16:9-20.  It looks like he must have rejected the passage at some point, but it is not clear if he rejected Mark 16:9-20 before, or after, he wrote to Marinus.  Whatever the case may be, Dr. Metzger’s brief description does not do justice to the testimony from Eusebius.  Readers who have only been allowed to peek at a snippet of Eusebius’ letter to Marinus have received an impression of Eusebius’ testimony that is very different from the one that one obtains from a full survey of his testimony.  (This situation has recently been remedied by the publication of the book Eusebius of Caesarea:  Gospel Problems and Solutions.) 
          The impression that Dr. Metzger gives about the testimony from Jerome is much more misleading.  The statement attributed to Jerome appears in a part of his Epistle 120 (To Hedibia) in which Jerome provides his own loose Latin abridgment of Eusbius’ letter to Marinus!  Jerome frequently borrowed material from earlier writers, without plainly stating that he was doing so.  That is what he did in this case; the third, fourth, and fifth Question-and-Answers in Jerome’s letter to Hedibia are based on the first, second, and third Question-and-Answers in Eusebius’ letter to Marinus.  In addition, Jerome, like Eusebius, recommended that Mark 16:9-20 be retained, and that a comma be used in verse 9.
          We should understand this reference in Jerome’s Epistle 120 as if Jerome had said, “Here’s what someone else has said about this question, and I passed it along as I composed a letter by dictation” not as if Jerome has said, “I have made a careful search of the manuscripts available to me, and here is what I have discovered.”  In 383, Jerome included Mark 16:9-20 in the Vulgate (which he states in his Preface that he made using old Greek copies), and in a composition he wrote around 414, Mark 16:14 is cited to show where the interpolation that is now known as the Freer Logion had been seen in Greek codices.
Metzger:  “The original form of the Eusebian sections (drawn up by Ammonius) makes no provision for numbering sections of the text after 16:8.” – 
          This comment reflects a misunderstanding of the Eusebian Sections.  In their earliest extant form, the Eusebian Sections include sections that are not in Matthew.  The non-extant cross-reference system that Ammonius developed, as described by Eusebius in Ad Carpianus (which served as a User’s Guide to the Eusebian Sections), was centered upon the Gospel of Matthew, and thus could not include sections to which there is no parallel in Matthew.  Ammonius’ non-extant cross-reference system inspired Eusebius to develop his own cross-reference system but the two things should not be confused.  Unfortunately that is exactly what Dr. Metzger has done, and many commentators who have repeated his claim have shown that they, too, have never really looked into the subject, and have never even consulted the analysis that John Burgon provided about it in Appendix G of his 1871 book The Last Twelve Verses of Mark. (Burgon’s book can be downloaded for free online.)
Metzger: “Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it” –
          Dr. Metzger’s vague description of “not a few” manuscripts refers to 14 manuscripts (which, considering that there are over 1,700 Greek copies of Mark, is relatively few).  The annotations in those 14 manuscripts are not the comments of 14 independent copyists; we are dealing here with essentially three notes.  One note is simple and short; it says at Mark 16:8, “In some of the copies this [i.e., verses 9-20] does not occur, but it stops here.”  One note says at 16:8, “In some of the copies, the Gospel comes to a close here, and so does Eusebius’ Canon-list.  But in many, this also appears.”  And another note says the same thing minus the part about the Eusebian Canons.  Another note, shared by a small group of manuscripts which also feature notes stating that they were compared to old copies at Jerusalem, says, “From here to the end forms no part of the text in some of the copies.  But in the ancient ones, it all appears intact.”
          Dr. Metzger told his readers that the scribal notes state “that older Greek copies lack it.”   But when we examine the notes themselves, one form of the note says, “In the ancient copies it all appears intact.”  The note states the exact opposite of what a reader of Dr. Metzger’s note would naturally expect.  All of these notes, except for the first one I mentioned (which, for slightly complicated reasons, I consider to be just a brief version of the last one), tend to express support for the legitimacy of the passage.  Dr. Metzger’s description misleads his readers about the quantity of manuscripts with these notes, and about what is stated by the notes themselves.
Metzger: “in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document.” –          
          This statement from Dr. Metzger is not true.  Earlier researchers described various manuscripts inaccurately, “spot-checking” this particular part instead of surveying the entire manuscript, and symbols which actually represent the beginnings and ends of lections (that is, individual passages selected for public reading in the church-services) were misinterpreted as if they meant that there was some doubt about the passage.  (Dr. Metzger’s statements about asterisks and obeli have been distorted by many commentators, including Robert Stein and Craig A. Evans.)

          In addition to these misleading statements about the external evidence, Dr. Metzger misrepresented some aspects of the internal evidence, too.  For instance, he wrote, "θανάσιμον and τοις μετ’ αυτου γενομένοις, as designations of the disciples, occur only here in the New Testament."  Part of this statement simply does not make any sense, because θανάσιμον [thanasimon] is not a designation of the disciples; it is the word for “deadly thing” that appears in 16:18.  The weight of Dr. Metzger’s description of the vocabulary in Mark 16:9-20 as “non-Markan” is rather diminished by the observation (made by Dr. Bruce Terry) that the 12-verse passage consisting of Mark 15:40-16:4 contains more once-used words than 16:9-20.  

          These are not the only things that deserve clarification in Dr. Metzger’s comments, but this should prove, I think, that the descriptions of the external evidence pertaining to Mark 16:9-20 provided by Dr. Metzger (or by other commentators who have essentially borrowed and rephrased his descriptions) should not be used as the basis of text-critical decisions about Mark 16:9-20.