This is my first response to Jonathan Sheffield’s opening statement. We are debating whether the “long ending” of the Gospel of Mark (verses 16:9-20) is authentic or interpolated. For essential reading and references on the subject see chapter sixteen of Hitler Homer Bible Christ.
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That the Long Ending Was Not Original to Mark
by Richard Carrier
The consensus today is that the Long Ending of Mark (or LE) is an interpolation (Hitler Homer, pp. 233-44). But consensus can be challenged. So on what evidence is this consensus based? Internal stylistic evidence and external manuscript and reportorial evidence.
Internally, there are three sets of evidence weighing against authenticity.
- The transition from verse 8 to verses 9-12 is structurally illogical (Hitler Homer, pp. 244-49). It’s more improbable the original author would have composed this than an interpolator.
- The LE is a creative summary of the other three Gospels (even including, just as suspiciously, Acts) that are now in the canon, yet they had not been written or combined into a common edition when Mark composed his Gospel. It is unlikely Mark could presciently know which three Gospels would be merged with his in that future edition, much less what would be said in them (Hitler Homer, pp. 259-68).
- Most importantly, the grammar and vocabulary is so deviant from the rest of the Gospel of Mark as to alone render Markan authorship extremely improbable (Hitler Homer, pp. 249-59).
Each of these facts is substantially less likely on Markan authorship than on later authorship. They weigh even more in combination.
Externally, there are several sets of evidence weighing against authenticity.
- All the earliest manuscripts extant, including the earliest complete bibles to survive, lack the LE; it begins to appear in the extant manuscript record only in the 4th century, which means it can only have been a rare reading before that (Hitler Homer, pp. 269-72).
- Even in translations, the earliest manuscripts (e.g. in Syriac and Latin) lack the LE; and later traditions that contain it show textual evidence of it not having originally been there (e.g. in Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgic, and Armenian); only the late 4th century Gothic likely originated from a text including the LE (Hitler Homer, pp. 272-80).
- And most later manuscripts that do contain the LE [correction per Sheffield: only those that contain the SE], place it after another forged ending, the so-called “Short Ending” (or SE, designated verse 16:9a or 16:20b), a sequence highly improbable unless the LE was added after that verse was, and thus not original to the text (Hitler Homer, pp. 280-83).
- We also have physical evidence, actual annotations, gaps, and marks in extant manuscripts indicating the LE was an additional reading, or where the LE was explicitly added by a later scribe (Hitler Homer, pp. 284-290).
- We have the testimony of Christian authors. No second century author evinces any knowledge of the LE being in Mark, even though in several places they would likely have mentioned that fact (Hitler Homer, pp. 290-95). Only a medieval Latin translation of Irenaeus includes mention of it, and there is strong evidence that’s an interpolation of a marginal note not written by Irenaeus (Hitler Homer, pp. 295-300). Third century authors all fail to mention the LE even when they should have (e.g. Hippolytus, Origen, Clement, Vincentius), while fourth century authors (e.g. Eusebius and Jerome) outright tell us it was a rare reading (Hitler Homer, pp. 300-09). A later medieval author even admitted to adding it to manuscripts he found lacking it (Hitler Homer, pp. 306-07).
Altogether, the external evidence is also far less likely on the conclusion the LE was originally in the text than on the conclusion that it wasn’t (Hitler Homer, pp. 309-12).
Against this overwhelming mountain of evidence Jonathan Sheffield offers a naive argument from silence that betrays ignorance of the state of the ancient documentary record and relies on indefensible assumptions.
Sheffield begins by misconstruing my statement that the record of the state of ancient culture is better for the first century A.D. than the 9th century B.C., as a statement that we have meticulous records of the production and alteration of ancient books. This is false. We have almost no such records even for the production of the Aeneid that he misuses as an example. And we have absolutely no such records for anything in the New Testament. Sheffield’s argument thus relies on a falsehood: that we have such records. We don’t. And you can’t say what is not in a record you don’t have.
Sheffield cites Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Gaius, but none actually told us anything about the LE. Or almost any other textual variants, of which there were already hundreds. They cite no sources regarding who produced the Gospel of Mark, only late, unsourced, and implausible legends. In fact they never even mention having any sources at all for anything that happened in the first century of Christianity. Much less regarding the production and copying of the Gospels.
Sheffield cites Eusebius and Jerome, but both said the LE was a rare reading not found in the best manuscripts. They testify against him.
Sheffield asks how we can explain the origin and dissemination of the LE, but the same can be said of its deletion. Both would have generated a record of outrage, if altering the text always did that. It clearly didn’t. So this silence is equally likely on both theories. It therefore argues for neither. Even the SE came to be widely disseminated without mention or protest.
Sheffield then garbles the “Aristonian theory” of the LE. The actual argument is quite strong (cf. Hitler Homer, pp. 286-90). But we don’t argue Ariston added the LE; rather, that it came from his lost Biblical commentary on Mark, and someone else transposed it to their copy of the Gospel. Subsequent church communities then started regarding it as a lost original reading and added it (the same way the SE came to be widely disseminated, again without any notice or protest in the record). Only a few had done so by the time Eusebius noticed, and he regarded it as an interpolation. It thus only became widely disseminated after Eusebius, indeed after even Jerome. It wasn’t a common reading until after the 4th century. How then did it spread to all Bibles in the Middle Ages, without record or protest? Sheffield cannot explain that even if the LE were authentic. As it still requires an incredible distribution of alteration across hundreds of Bibles spanning three continents.
Sheffield says that’s impossible because Eusebius mentions Ariston. But Eusebius doesn’t say he read any Gospel commentary by Ariston. So he couldn’t have known he originated the LE. Whereas a medieval Armenian scholar had a text of Ariston’s Commentary to identify the passage by.
I must ask Sheffield: What are “Apostolic” churches, and what manuscripts do we have from them to judge by? What records do we have from any of those churches telling us what text of Mark they used prior to that? What records do we have regarding when they acquired any copy of Mark? What records do we have showing any of those churches actually had an unbroken chain of custody of any text at all? The answer to these questions is not going to go well for him.
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Follow up here for Sheffield’s reply.
Well argued and written in an interesting style.
A small niggle in style: Why debate in the 3rd person? How about addressing directly as “you” or “my distinguished colleague”.
In your strong arguments, if one uses the second person, then one is forced to be a tad more courteous!
Or is this an already agreed pattern of address in your guest debates?
Asher
It’s the standard in written debates between scholars.
I know that the standard for public meeting debate in Robert’s Rules of Order is to always address your remarks to the meeting chair, not the person you’re arguing against. In theory, this makes things less personal [i.e, you’re attacking the argument, not the person] and less likely to go ad hominem.
In practice, I don’t know if it makes that much of a difference; people still manage to take stuff personally…
This isn’t a parliamentary debate. Robert’s Rules don’t apply. And there is no chair. This is an academic debate. Between two scholars. So I’m following the norms well established for that context. Citing sources is fundamental, thus when the source for a claim or argument is a person, namely your opponent, you cite them by last name. It’s also a signal of seriousness and respect.
Dr Carrier please: you’v mentiond the gospels’ being “well crafted” and elsewher you positivly identify “cleverly devised myths” in 2 Peter as actually referring to the gospels themselvs.
Do we know at all the process or methud of writing that took place for Mark’s gospel? I mean he must’v gon thru sevral drafts (and I suppose these can never be ‘autografs’ or ‘original’ like the ‘pre-print/final draft.)
Could the LE/SE/ME be such editing relics – you know, as with fitting a carpit in ur room.
And whu was its publishr – the / his church cummunity with its editurs prhaps peer reviewing…making helpful remarks/emendasns?
Its opacity is weird.
Drafts would not be published. So we would not have them. We would only have the “approved product,” the version the author or Mark settled on to disseminate. The only instance in which we do have two versions circulating, and do not know which is the earlier or why two exist, is Luke-Acts. Those might come from the same author, though we really don’t know they do. That is a mystery in the field still unsolved, because it is so bizarre. The nearest analog is the redaction history of the Lives of Aesop, but those were produced by different people, and thus are more akin to Matthew being a redaction of Mark: not two drafts from one author, but revisions by later authors of an earlier author’s product. We also have internal and external evidence of that redaction history for the Gospel of John, but again, that’s later authors meddling with earlier. Not the same author releasing multiple drafts.
The process of composition is fairly well understood though. It was specifically taught in schools of the day: mimesis and chreiai and ring structure and so on. All discussed, with citations of scholarship, in On the Historicity of Jesus, Ch. 10.
The LE and SE cannot come from the same author (for the reasons I just laid out). Beyond that, anything is possible, as we have no records by which to rule any possibilities out. But the evidence shows the version ending at verse 8 disseminated widely before either the SE or LE were introduced, and the SE was introduced somewhere earlier than the LE was (since the LE gets attached to versions already containing the SE but never the other way around), and somewhere different (since they betray ignorance of each other), and are rare readings even as late as the fourth century and unheard of in the third and second (which means they didn’t exist or were extraordinarily rare at that time). So it is very unlikely either the SE or LE were produced within the author of Mark’s lifetime.
Publication proceeded by an individual producing copies and sending them by messenger to whomever they wanted to have one. Recipients could then produce their own copies and disseminate them to whomever they wanted. And so on. The more resources available, the more expansive this initial distribution could be (for example, if a community supporting the author of Mark had scribes to invest in, they could put several copyists to the task and thus generate a larger first run; or if Mark were wealthy enough to have slaves he could assign that task; and so on). But it’s also possible it wasn’t disseminated at all. If the book were produced for a single community, it may have simply stayed there until a visitor asked to produce a copy and left with one.
All we know is that the versions we have, were all from the same later assembled edition of the mid-second century, which means not published by the authors of any of the books in the NT, but someone else, a lifetime later. All manuscripts that survive, are copies of that edition, and not of the original publications pre-edition (we can confirm this by various telltale details). See Three Things to Know. That we have manuscripts from that edition at all suggests whoever produced that special-assembly re-edition, must have generated a massive run and distribution—they must have intended it to swamp out and replace all other versions. And must have invested heavily in ensuring that, as it is this edition that was so widely produced that all our manuscripts come from it. Most churches by then may have not even had any Gospels, or only one (and Mark appears to have been especially rare). Those that did have any Gospel already would either reject or accept the new edition; and those who rejected it were, so far as we can tell, declared corrupt or heretical and expelled from what became the emergent “orthodoxy” that would decide the survival of all records and editions.
Some evidence even suggests other Gospels not even in the canon had wider distribution before that re-edition attempted to swamp the field: e.g. we have a manuscript fragment of the Egerton Gospel that is earlier than all other Gospel fragments, indicating it had wide distribution (in order for us to be lucky to have found even one piece of it, and earlier than any other); likewise, Justin Martyr was using the Protevangelion of James as his base Gospel as if it were the most commonly known version, which means it was, at least in communities known to him. And so on.
It is good for me to observe a debate like this. At Sheffield’s first go I had many of the questions you pose and this style of debate lets me/us see first hand what apologists are cooking up without me jumping in or going off half-cocked with “…but, but but…”
But more relevant, if he is arguing for the LE does this mean the Anglican/Episopal church is heading for or approving of snake handling?
Second person third person, who cares. It was great as always… God, I am such a groupie! Seriously though, thanks for your work and your well laid out arguments that clearly and unambigiously refute the often evasive and assumptive arguments of others.
One aspect that neither of you have not (yet) touched on would be the motive for someone adding/changing/deleting that specific text. While one might not be able to prove such a thing if one could at least make a compelling argument from that standpoint I think it would further bolster their position on this matter.
Perhaps you’re just saving that for the next round. (-;
Sheffield argued in his opening that the LE was removed because it was embarrassing (though he has not elaborated much on that, nor yet shown evidence of that being at all a common opinion, much less the opinion of any “Apostolic Church”). And, he is arguing, because it was determined to be inauthentic by reference to “Apostolic Church” manuscripts (as best I can tell, Sheffield is presupposing that this happened; I have yet to see any evidence for it).
Meanwhile the consensus of scholarship concurs the LE, like the SE, was added because the original ending was embarrassing (or more precisely, “unsatisfying,” and inadequately in line with the needs of their “canon”; I cite examples of scholars’ discussion of the motives and roles it served in Hitler Homer, most notably Kelhoffer and Metzger). There are also several other endings of Mark, discussed in Hitler Homer: one expanding the original ending with Jesus ascending into outer space with a flight of angels; another expanding the LE with a long discourse on the Devil. Obviously these were added by persons who deemed the existing text unsastisfying or who wanted to promote some sort of doctrine. The SE and LE were obviously added for the same reasons.
To be clear, the answer to the question why the added longer ending was so copied over such a wide area/so many textual traditions was that it was deliberately designed to be acceptable, as a creative summary of the other three Gospels?
That’s one of several possible things that could have happened; we lack the records needed to rule that or any other possibilities out.
The Aristonian thesis, however, which is yet another possibility (and IMO just the one with the most evidential support, but still not enough support to be sure it’s what happened, rather than any of a dozen other possible things) is that Ariston wrote a Commentary on the Gospels (Commentary on the Sayings [or Stories] of the Lord) in which he summarized the other three Gospels in the anti-Marcionite “four Gospel” edition by way of explaining what happened after Mark 6:8 (or else he put that summary in the mouth of the Christian character in his Dialogue, without any source citation). And someone else either mistook that as a quotation of Mark or an alternate reading for Mark, or decided to sell it as such, and thus introduced the passage into a copy of Mark. We can’t know who, because all records that would tell us are lost. It may have even begun as a page note appended to the ending of Mark rather than a declaration of it as being Mark’s text; which note was subsequently mistook as Markan text or sold as such.
Thus originating, gradually church after church discovered the passage and regarded it as a rediscovered lost ending they were happy to recover (and possibly some church leaders enthusiastic for it promoted the passage as a rediscovered lost ending). But only very few had done so by the end of the third century. It only exploded into popularity after the fourth century. Why so many Bibles that lacked it were then having it added in the Middle Ages is unknown, as we have no comment on the motives behind it. We can simply suppose the most obvious thesis: authorities liked it (it was a more satisfying ending that aligned better with the assembled New Testament), and so promoted it as canon. Notably, Sheffield has to come up with an explanation as well. Since so many Bibles lacked the LE by the fourth century (as even Eusebius and Jerome attest, by far most in fact did), even if the LE were authentic as Sheffield maintains, he still has to explain how all the other churches in the West were convinced to add it to their texts of Mark. Whatever answer he gives, he has no more evidence for than the alternative.
Hello Professor, thank you for your work and your scholarship. I read your work published in 2009 but was wondering if you have read a recent theory/analysis by a “scholar”? The work is called (Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20: 2016 Edition) by James Edward Snapp Jr.
Thanks again Professor
-Nas
Of course! That just repeats the same material already refuted in the 2009 Errancy Wiki, updated into my chapter on the subject in Hitler Homer Bible Christ (2014).
A common practice of Christian apologists is to simply keep repeating things they already said, and ignoring the actual refutations of them. This is one of those cases. Just compare what he says in that book, with what is actually said in the corresponding chapter in HHBC on any same point. You’ll see no further rebuttal is required.
(There are only two refs. to me in Snapp’s 2016 edition, and both are obsolete, referring to material long ago corrected and thus not found in either Errancy Wiki or HHBC. But if you can find anything else in his 2016 edition you don’t see answered in my HHBC edition, please let me know what exactly that is.)