Most English versions of the Bible, if they print it at all, put Mark 16:9-20 in brackets and indicate those verses' origin as fairly dubious. Going back a long, long time, we have plenty of evidence Mark's Gospel ended at 16:8, and equally plenty of evidence 16:9-20 was an addition constructed so the expected record of Christ's resurrection would be in place.
As one might anticipate, a (very minor) minority still argues Mark 16:9-20 is authentic, but the majority does not. However, that majority, at least today, falls into two camps: those who think Mark deliberately ended his Gospel with 16:8, and a smaller group which thinks Mark's original ending was lost quite early on, leaving no traces. In this post, I want to discuss a couple assumptions made by this latter group which, in my opinion, lead to an erroneous conclusion.
To be clear, I by no means think these people are crazy or incompetent: they include R.T. France, who tops my list of "Anglicans Who Are Super Good at Exegesis." France is an interesting example because, in the introduction to his commentary on Mark (in the New International Commentary on the Greek Testament series), he argues the Gospels were each drawn from a wide array of sources and were not necessarily themselves used as sources for the others' composition. This stands against the prevailing view that Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their sources, and who knows what John was up to. If France is right on the Gospels' literary origins, and I think he is (or at least the school of thought which he represents), then it doesn't matter whether Mark was written before Matthew.
At the same time, France does lean toward Mark being the first of the written Gospels, and this leads him to think it extremely unlikely Mark would not include an unambiguous record of Christ's resurrection. In other words, if Mark is the first to get the story out, he wouldn't omit its most important part. But if Mark is not the first (and I lean toward Matthew being first, with a heavy dose of agnosticism on the priority question), he doesn't have to get all the details absolutely clear. He is free to leave things a bit murky, knowing the straight story is readily available elsewhere.
This raises a related point: it seems most, if not all, assume Mark is writing his Gospel in isolation; that is, his Gospel will be the only version of the Gospel his readers will encounter. But maybe he wasn't. Peter makes reference to Paul's letters (2 Peter 3:15-16). If Churches read the letters of several apostles, why, in principle, could they not read several Gospels? In that case, the Evangelists do not present competing views of Christ, but complementary ones. As Big Ideas go, God becoming man in order to redeem mankind from sin and death and recreate the heavens and the earth in the bargain is, well, about as big as they get. Most of the time, I tend to think only four perspectives is passing few.
It's entirely possible Mark's Gospel had a longer ending than that which we currently have; after all, one cannot prove a negative. If it did, however, it was not because Mark's was the first Gospel, or because he wrote it in isolation; these scenarios cannot be proven, and at least the latter strikes me as very unlikely. At this point, I am of the opinion Mark ended his Gospel at 16:8 because that was the best way to present his contribution to inspired Christology.
No comments:
Post a Comment