The “Strange” Ending of the Gospel of Mark and Why It Makes All the Difference
James Tabor presents a fresh look at the original text of the earliest Gospel
This article about the Gospel of Mark was originally published on Dr. James Tabor’s popular TaborBlog, a site that discusses and reports on “‘All things biblical’ from the Hebrew Bible to Early Christianity in the Roman World and Beyond.” Bible History Daily first republished the article with consent of the author in April 2013. Visit TaborBlog today, or scroll down to read a brief bio of James Tabor below.
Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb, by Annibale Carracci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing.
Most general Bible readers have the mistaken impression that Matthew, the opening book of the New Testament, must be our first and earliest Gospel, with Mark, Luke and John following. The assumption is that this order of the Gospels is a chronological one, when in fact it is a theological one. Scholars and historians are almost universally agreed that Mark is our earliest Gospel–by several decades, and this insight turns out to have profound implications for our understanding of the “Jesus story” and how it was passed down to us in our New Testament Gospel traditions.
The problem with the Gospel of Mark for the final editors of the New Testament was that it was grossly deficient. First it is significantly shorter than the other Gospels–with only 16 chapters compared to Matthew (28), Luke (24) and John (21). But more important is how Mark begins his Gospel and how he ends it.
He has no account of the virgin birth of Jesus–or for that matter, any birth of Jesus at all. In fact, Joseph, husband of Mary, is never named in Mark’s Gospel at all–and Jesus is called a “son of Mary,” see my previous post on this here. But even more significant is Mark’s strange ending. He has no appearances of Jesus following the visit of the women on Easter morning to the empty tomb!
Like the other three Gospels Mark recounts the visit of Mary Magdalene and her companions to the tomb of Jesus early Sunday morning. Upon arriving they find the blocking stone at the entrance of the tomb removed and a young man–notice–not an angel–tells them:
“Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing (Mark 16:6-8)
And there the Gospel simply ends!
Mark gives no accounts of anyone seeing Jesus as Matthew, Luke, and John later report. In fact, according to Mark, any future epiphanies or “sightings” of Jesus will be in the north, in Galilee, not in Jerusalem.
This original ending of Mark was viewed by later Christians as so deficient that not only was Mark placed second in order in the New Testament, but various endings were added by editors and copyists in some manuscripts to try to remedy things. The longest concocted ending, which became Mark 16:9-19, became so treasured that it was included in the King James Version of the Bible, favored for the past 500 years by Protestants, as well as translations of the Latin Vulgate, used by Catholics. This meant that for countless millions of Christians it became sacred scripture–but it is patently bogus. You might check whatever Bible you use and see if the following verses are included–the chances are good they they will be, since the Church, by and large, found Mark’s original ending so lacking. Here is that forged ending of Mark:
Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After these things he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover. So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.
Even though this ending is patently false, people loved it, and to this day conservative Christians regularly denounce “liberal” scholars who point out this forgery, claiming that they are trying to destroy “God’s word.”
The evidence is clear. This ending is not found in our earliest and most reliable Greek copies of Mark. In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger writes: “Clement of Alexandria and Origen [early third century] show no knowledge of the existence of these verses; furthermore Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them.”1 The language and style of the Greek is clearly not Markan, and it is pretty evident that what the forger did was take sections of the endings of Matthew, Luke and John (marked respectively in red, green, and blue above) and simply create a “proper” ending.
Even though this longer ending became the preferred one, there are two other endings, one short and the second an expansion of the longer ending, that also show up in various manuscripts:
[I] But they reported briefly to Peter and those with him all that they had been told. And after these things Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.
[II] This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits [or, does not allow what lies under the unclean spirits to understand the truth and power of God]. Therefore reveal your righteousness now’ – thus they spoke to Christ. And Christ replied to them, ‘The term of years of Satan’s power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was handed over to death, that they may return to the truth and sin no more, in order that they may inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness that is in heaven.
I trust that the self-evident spuriousness of these additions is obvious to even the most pious readers. One might in fact hope that Christians who are zealous for the “inspired Word of God” would insist that all three of these bogus endings be recognized for what they are–forgeries.
Interested in the Gospels’ authors? Check out the Bible History Daily post “Gospel of John Commentary: Who Wrote the Gospel of John and How Historical is It?”
That said, what about the original ending of Mark? Its implications are rather astounding for Christian origins. I have dealt with this issue more generally in my post, “What Really Happened on Easter Morning,” that sets the stage for the following implications.
- Since Mark is our earliest Gospel, written according to most scholars around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, or perhaps in the decade before, we have strong textual evidence that the first generation of Jesus followers were perfectly fine with a Gospel account that recounted no appearances of Jesus. We have to assume that the author of Mark’s Gospel did not consider his account deficient in the least and he was either passing on, or faithfully promoting, what he considered to be the authentic Gospel. What most Christians do when they think about Easter is ignore Mark. Since Mark knows nothing of any appearances of Jesus as a resuscitated corpse in Jerusalem, walking about, eating and showing his wounds, as recounted by Matthew, Luke and John, those stories are simply allowed to “fill in” for his assumed deficiency. In other words, no one allows Mark to have a voice. What he lacks, ironically, serves to marginalize and mute him!
- Alternatively, if we decide to listen to Mark, who is our first gospel witness, what we learn is rather amazing. In Mark, on the last night of Jesus’ life, he told his intimate followers following their meal, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee” (Mark 14:28). What Mark believes is that Jesus has been “lifted up” or “raised up” to the right hand of God and that the disciples would “see” him in Galilee. Mark knows of no accounts of people encountering the revived corpse of Jesus, wounds and all, walking around Jerusalem. His tradition is that the disciples experienced their epiphanies of Jesus once they returned to Galilee after the eight-day Passover festival and had returned to their fishing in despair. This is precisely what we find in the Gospel of Peter, where Peter says:
Now it was the final day of the Unleavened Bread; and many went out returning to their home since the feast was over. But we twelve disciples of the Lord were weeping and sorrowful; and each one, sorrowful because of what had come to pass, departed to his home. But I, Simon Peter, and my brother Andrew, having taken our nets, went off to the sea. And there was with us Levi of Alphaeus whom the Lord …
You can read more about this fascinating “lost” Gospel of Peter at earlychristianwritings.com/gospelpeter.html, but this ending, where the text happens to break off, is most revealing. What we see here is precisely parallel to Mark. The disciples returned to their homes in Galilee in despair, resuming their occupations, and only then did they experience “sightings” of Jesus. Strangely, this tradition shows up in an appended ending to the Gospel of John–chapter 21, where a group of disciples are back to their fishing, and Matthew knows the tradition of a strange encounter on a designated mountain in Galilee, where some of the eleven apostles even doubt what they are seeing (Matthew 28:16-17).
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The faith that Mark reflects, namely that Jesus has been “raised up” or lifted up to heaven, is precisely parallel to that of Paul–who is the earliest witness to this understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. Paul notably parallels his own visionary experience to that of Peter, James, and the rest of the apostles. What this means is that when Paul wrote, in the 50s CE, this was the resurrection faith of the early followers of Jesus! Since Matthew, Luke, and John come so much later, and clearly reflect the period after 70 CE when all of the first witnesses were dead–including Peter, Paul, and James the brother of Jesus, they are clearly 2nd generation traditions and should not be given priority.
Mark begins his account with the line “The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Clearly for him, what he subsequently writes is that “Gospel,” not a deficient version that needs to be supplemented or “fixed” with later alternative traditions about Jesus appearing in a resuscitated body Easter weekend in Jerusalem.
Finally, what we recently discovered in the Talpiot tomb under the condominium building, not 200 feet from the “Jesus family” tomb, offers a powerful testimony to this same kind of early Christian faith in Jesus’ resurrection. On one of the ossuaries, or bone boxes in this tomb, is a four-line Greek inscription which I have translated as: I Wondrous Yehovah lift up–lift up! And this is next to a second ossuary representing the “sign of Jonah” with a large fish expelling the head of a human stick figure, recalling the story of Jonah. In that text Jonah sees himself as having passed into the gates of Sheol or death, from which he utters a prayer of salvation from the belly of the fish: “O Yehovah my God, you lifted up my life from the Pit!” (Jonah 2:6).
It is a rare thing when our textual evidence seems to either reflect or correspond to the material evidence and I believe in the case of the two Talpiot tombs, and the early resurrection faith reflected in Paul and Mark, that is precisely what we have.2 That this latest archaeological evidence corresponds so closely to Mark and Paul, our first witnesses to the earliest Christian understanding of Jesus’ resurrection, I find to be most striking.
Dr. James Tabor is a professor of Christian origins and ancient Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1981, Tabor has combined his work on ancient texts with extensive field work in archaeology in Israel and Jordan, including work at Qumran, Sepphoris, Masada and Wadi el-Yabis in Jordan. Over the past decade he has teamed up with with Shimon Gibson to excavate the “John the Baptist” cave at Suba, the “Tomb of the Shroud” discovered in 2000, Mt Zion and, along with Rami Arav, he has been involved in the re-exploration of two tombs in East Talpiot including the controversial “Jesus tomb.” Tabor is the author of the popular TaborBlog, and several of his recent posts have been featured in Bible History Daily as well as the Huffington Post. His book, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity became immediately popular with specialists and non-specialists alike. You can find links to all of Dr. Tabor’s web pages, books, and projects at jamestabor.com.
Correction: In the original publication of this article, Bruce Metzger’s statement “Clement of Alexandria and Origen show no knowledge of the existence of these verses; furthermore Eusebius and Jerome attest that the passage was absent from almost all Greek copies of Mark known to them” (Metzger, 2005, p.123) was not appropriately referenced as a quotation from Metzger. We thank our careful reader James Snapp, Jr., of Curtisville Christian Church in Indiana, for bringing this to our attention. —Ed.
Notes
1. Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd edition, (Hendrickson Publishers, 2005), 123. Metzger also states: “The last twelve verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts (? and B), 20 from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis, the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, 21 and the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written a.d. 897 and a.d. 913).”
2. We offer a full exposition of these important discoveries in our book, The Jesus Discovery. The book is a complete discussion of both Talpiot tombs with full documentation, with full chapters on Mary Magdalene, Paul, the James ossuary, DNA tests, and much more. You can read my preliminary report on these latest “Jonah” related findings at the website The Bible and Interpretation, bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/tab368003. During March and April, 2012 I also wrote a dozen or more posts on this blog responding to the academic discussions, see below under “Archives” and you can browse the posts by month.
Related reading in Bible History Daily
Does the Gospel of Mark Reveal Jesus’ Anger or His Compassion?
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Mark 16:9-20 is in the original Greek and in the Textus Receptus. What text are you referring to that ends Mark at 16:8?
Apparently, since EXISTING copies of Sinaiaticus and Vaticanus are older than existing copies of Textus Receptus, they believe S and V are more reliable, a logical fallacy perpetuated by modern “scholars”. Papias referes to Mark 16:18 around A.D 100, which predates their precious codexes. As does Justin Martyr’s quote of verse 20 around A.D. 151, Irenaeus comments on verse 19 in his 3rd book against heresies in A.D. 180. These show the “long ending” to Mark was accepted as canon by the earliest church fathers but are ignored, and they claim that because Origen and Clement don’t discuss them directly, they must have not known about them – another logical fallacy.
While I agree that Mark 16:9-20 is not original we need to give more credit to to Scripture and Mark’s literary skill in concluding his gospel as he does.
(1) Any suggestion that resurrection in the ancient pagan world means other than a bodily rising from the dead must be rejected. Most in the ancient world, generally believed in life beyond the grave in one form or another, but once dead there was no return here. Some, like the Epicureans, considered that death was the literal end. Thus it was Christianity arose in a world that regarded its central teaching as false. It was foolishness to the Greek (non-Jewish) world who thought of the immortality of the soul but rejected the resurrection of the body.
(2) Mark begins his face-paced account with the message of God’s servant Isaiah and closes just as suddenly with a message from the white-clothed figure at the empty tomb (Mk 6:5). Mark closes with the words, “for they were afraid”. Were they afraid because they were conscious of their failures? That had been typical of the disciples. Were they afraid because they had forgotten what Jesus had told them and they even forget about the heavy stone across the tomb? Is their failure final? Their fear rings true; they have nothing to say.
(3) Confronted by the mystery of the figure in white, they are alarmed (16:5) and certainly they do not shout, “Hallelujah! Christ is risen today!” It’s the figure in white who says, “He is risen; he is not here; he is going ahead of you to Galilee.” Something begins to dawn. Mingled with the fear that means failure is final comes the fear that begins to grasp the glory and power of God in raising Jesus. Were they afraid because they didn’t know what to say when confronted by the glory of the Son of God as, for example, the three who witnessed the transfiguration, Mark 9:5-6? They are still confused but the young man’s word has challenged them, challenged them to respond in faith. And such is Mark’s literary skill that he stops there to challenge his readers, you and me, to draw us in. None of the Gospel accounts has any Old Testament passage quoted in reference to his resurrection before it occurred, nor are the resurrection narratives told with any emphasis on what it means. The women don’t know what it all means yet, and the disciples do not believe either (Luke 24:11-12). It’s in Luke 24 we find Jesus providing the explanation, and we see that in Jesus’ triumph over sin and death there is a new creation, the promised kingdom of God inaugurated to be consummated in due time. Our fear becomes awe and wonder and worship in the presence of the Lord of Glory in whose name repentance and remission of sins is to be preached to all nations (Luke 24:44-49).
James Tabor seems to be arguing that Jesus’ resurrection was “originally” understood as a spiritual event. This issue was addressed by N.T. Wright in his magnum opus on the Resurrection. According to Wright, there is no concept of a “spiritual” resurrection in Second Temple Judaism. Resurrection was necessarily a literal, physical event. When Paul uses the word “resurrection” we must assume that it has the meaning it normally has in the relevant context – unless we can prove otherwise. Has Tabor proved otherwise? Not remotely.
In all the Gospels that describe appearances of the risen Jesus, it is clear that a physical resurrection has taken place. The risen Jesus can be touched. In the original version of Mark no appearances are recounted. This, however, is not significant. When the women go to the tomb they are told that Jesus is risen and the place where the body had been placed is pointed out. That place is now empty. This very obviously implies that a physical resurrection has occurred. A “spiritual” resurrection is out of the question.
So at the time when the Gospels were written there is no doubt as to the meaning of “resurrection”. Was there a time before that when it had a different meaning? This possibility would be hypothetical at best even if the concept of a spiritual resurrection were well established. In reality, there is not a shred of evidence for it.
Tabor claims that Jesus’ ossuary has been found. If that was true then we would know that Jesus had not literally risen from the dead, regardless of what the followers of Jesus believed. However, this claim has not convinced a single reputable scholar. The Talpiot tomb has no place in this discussion.
I am missing any reference to Acts 1 or 1 Corinthians 15, both of which describe physical appearances of Jesus to his disciples. Indeed, in the latter chapter, Paul’s whole argument is based on a physical resurrection of Jesus. And Paul was probably earlier than Mark.
There is a church in Jerusalem, revered for centuries, where faithful people from all over the World will stand for hours……just to look in an EMPTY tomb !!!
It’s no longer “Doubting Thomas, but…..Doubting “Tabor” !
The ONE decision in life a person should fear the most…….Being wron abouut God, and betting Eternity on it !!!
What god though?
I think I’ll stick with my sincere non-belief rather than trying to fake some, if it’s all the same to you. It’s hard for me to accept something when no evidence is presented for it.
No evidence!
We have multiple eye witnesses testimonies. You clearly don’t believe them, but to say there is no evidence is clearly inaccurate.
1) The initial problem with Tabor’s ruminations is his ignorant assumption that no Christians wrote an account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection until 30-50 years after the events. Most people in the Roman Empire, even slaves, were not illiterate and the least illiterate were the Jewish Diaspora who had the synagogues where boys were taught to read the Septuagint Scriptures. Paul, Peter, James, the author of Hebrews, all wrote letters to churches because they expected their members to be able to read. The very idea that with all this evident writing, no witness to the the gospel story wrote an account for at least 30 years, is plain ridiculous.
2) In fact, “Luke” almost certainly wrote his Gospel (and began “Acts”) in 57-59 AD while he was in Judea and Galilee while Paul was in prison in Caesarea. He was almost certainly a Gentile but his narration of Mary’s song of praise is the most Jewish passage of the whole New Testament. That and two mentions of what Mary “treasured in her heart” can only have come from Mary herself. She was probably about 75 years old at that time and “Luke” the brilliant historian would not have missed the opportunity to interview her. Moreover, he started his Gospel by saying that “many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us” – “us,” not among a now-dead generation. Another point to note is that Paul’s account of the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11.26 is closer to Luke’s rendering than to Mark’s and Matthew’s. But Luke’s Gospel includes some of Mark’s, so how could Mark have been written later? Furthermore, the strangest book ending was Acts of the Apostles in which the reader is not told the Emperor’s decision in Paul’s case in 62AD. Quite obviously, the immediate recipient Theophilus already knew it. No-one writing decades later would have left that crucial information out. Another ridiculous idea!
3) Which leads me back to Mark’s missing ending. Yes, “missing.” No-one seems to have considered another possible explanation of the abrupt “end” of Mark’s Gospel. There is no evidence that any of the gospels were written on a scroll, they were written on sheets of papyrus or other materials. So Mark finishes his gospel story and he wants it to be copied and distributed. So he picks up his bundle of pages and takes them to an expert who can arrange for multiple copies to be painstakingly written out. But at some point the very last page (or maybe two pages) gets dropped or left behind. Mark himself doesn’t realise this until many copies are in circulation. What does he do? Probably rewrites the missing ending and gets that circulated as an addition. That would explain why some ancient copies have the ending and some don’t. Remember too that the claimed ending reads, “8 The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened.” Well, if they said nothing to anyone then neither Mark nor anyone else would have known about it. That cannot have been the intended ending. All this is speculative, I know, but it is based on practicalities and reading in depth, and it makes a lot more sense than James Tabor’s speculations that all three synoptic gospels and “Acts” included a pack of astonishing lies which nevertheless generated a whole new rapidly growing Spiritual movement.