Anglican scholar Jonathan Sheffield and I are debating whether the “long ending” of the Gospel of Mark (or “LE,” verses 16:9-20) is authentic or interpolated. For essential reading and references on the subject see chapter sixteen of Hitler Homer Bible Christ. This is our sixth entry. If you are jumping in at the middle, you can catch up with Sheffield’s opening statement, my first reply, Sheffield’s first response, my second reply, and Sheffield’s second response.

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That the Long Ending Was Not Original to Mark (III)

by Richard Carrier

Sheffield still has not responded to the extensive internal evidence of the inauthenticity of the LE. And his only response to the multiple lines of external evidence is a single bizarre fantasy about “Apostolic Churches.” As that is the only argument he gives for his position, I’ll devote this whole entry to it. But do not be misled: he’s the one choosing to ignore a dozen converging lines of external and internal evidence against him, all of which I’ve laid out already.

Sheffield keeps quoting irrelevant and unverified assertions by Irenaeus (c. 180 A.D.) and Tertullian (c. 200 A.D.). In not a single citation or quote from either does Sheffield produce any mention of the Gospel of Mark being in any church, or how those copies ended. He therefore has no evidence from either that the LE even existed, much less was original. Sheffield even confuses statements regarding the alleged preservation of bishop lists, Epistles, and creeds as statements about Gospels. They are not. Not even in general. Much less of Mark in particular. Sheffield even tries to pass off a statement about the Gospel of Luke for the Gospel of Mark! That’s not how evidence works. The LE is not attested in Luke. Indeed, that’s one of the reasons we know the LE wasn’t in Mark when Luke wrote!

Sheffield also falsely claims Tertullian says there were copies of Luke in all the churches Tertullian names. Tertullian never says that. Much less anything of the kind regarding Mark. Even less anything of the kind regarding the LE.

It’s therefore already irrelevant that these authors speak of succession lists of bishops, lists few historians today trust, and for which Sheffield has no evidence were authentic. Likewise for Epistles and creeds. Anyone could invent such things and claim authority from it. Fabricated succession lists are believed common in ancient schools of thought; fabricated creeds and Epistles, more common still. But even if we could verify these actually existed and weren’t fabricated, that still tells us nothing about when any copy of Mark reached any of those churches, or how that copy ended.

Worse, as I said, evidence indicates both Tertullian and Irenaeus were unaware of the LE and yet should have mentioned it. Their writings are therefore not evidence for the LE, but against it. The evidence we have shows the LE started appearing in very rare manuscripts in the 3rd century and did not become common until after the 4th century. Largely owing, no doubt, to Jerome’s decision to include it in his official Latin text. All previous Latin translations we know of lacked it. In fact, all translations, in any language, made before that date lacked it.

The LE cannot have been both “very rare” and “in all the Apostolic Churches.” And yet as both Eusebius and Jerome indicate, not only was it very rare, but the LE appeared only in manuscripts they deemed less reliable. Which means they cannot have been finding the LE in any “Apostolic Church,” if in fact finding it there would, as Sheffield insists, establish a text as reliable. And no one ever—not Jerome, Eusebius, Tertullian, Irenaeus, nor anyone prior to the Middle Ages—ever says they saw the LE in a manuscript held by an “Apostolic Church.” Sheffield has claimed John Chrysostom did. But he has yet to present any evidence backing that assertion. And that’s only one church, and after the time of Jerome, when authority had already started backing the LE, enough to ensure its introduction to other churches on the pretext of it having been a lost reading.

Sheffield even cites the Medieval (Pseudo- ?) Victor of Antioch, as did I, stating he was actively adding the LE to manuscripts! Thus explaining how “Apostolic Church” copies would have acquired the LE—in the Middle Ages (Hitler Homer, pp. 306-07). This argues against Sheffield’s claim that the LE must have always been in all Apostolic texts. Sheffield also falsely claims Victor said he found the LE in an Apostolic Church in Palestine. No. Victor says he found a manuscript somewhere in Palestine. And only in the Middle Ages.

Sheffield means by an “Apostolic Church” a church founded by one of the original Apostles, even though modern historians know all stories of the Apostles and their founding of churches are dubious legends. Sheffield has named Corinth, Thessalonia, Phillipi, Ephesus, Smyrna, and Rome; maybe Antioch; and some unnamed city in Palestine. But Sheffield has presented no evidence any of these churches, even in Tertullian’s time (much less now) actually dates back to any congregation actually founded by any Apostle, much less when that congregation acquired a copy of Mark, much less how they curated its text over time. Merely “being a church in a city Paul mentions a church having been in” does not establish it was a successor of the church Paul names. Cities developed multiple competing churches over time, and religions routinely fabricated legends asserting the antiquity of their claims (see Richard Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus, Ch. 5, Element 44, pp. 214-22). There is no evidence the church at Corinth that Tertullian means, actually is the successor to any Apostle’s church at Corinth, rather than merely claiming to be a century later. Ditto every other church Sheffield could name.

So when Sheffield claims these unverified, propagandistic statements by late second century authors establish “a legal chain of custody for the text” of Mark, that simply isn’t true. There is no evidence of any chain of custody for Mark. At all. Much less containing the LE. Sheffield cannot show when any Apostolic church acquired any copy of Mark. He cannot show what ending that copy had (or endings, as they may have acquired conflicting or annotated copies). He cannot show that no one altered that ending in any generation thereafter.

Indeed, when Sheffield says we have evidence of “the transfer and control procedures to safeguard the texts” that also isn’t true. We have no mention of such procedures. Much less evidence they were reliable; much less consistently employed for centuries. To the contrary, as all the evidence attests, including declarations by eyewitnesses Eusebius and Jerome, and all the earliest manuscripts and translations made of Mark that we still have: almost no manuscripts contained the LE. It therefore must have been added to hundreds and then, through copying, thousands more. All without any mention of by what “procedure” the churches adding it decided to. Indeed, the only “procedure” we have evidence of, was unvetted opinion: Victor simply decided, on no sound reasoning we can discern, that the LE was authentic and therefore needed to be added to every manuscript he could find. Thus explaining how it was.

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Sheffield’s followup is here.