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 ninth 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; Sheffield’s second response; my third reply; Sheffield’s third response; and my fourth reply.

That the Long Ending Was Original to Mark (V)

Jonathan Sheffield

The objective for this rebuttal is to examine several statements made by Dr. Carrier from his latest post.

Let’s begin with the following statement from Dr. Carrier: “Sheffield illogically thinks we have to know how the LE arose to know it arose.”

Here, I would like to thank Dr. Carrier for being honest enough to admit that he doesn’t know how it was done and cannot historically document if it ever did happen. Remember, since the development of this school of thought in the late 18th century, scholars like Griesbach (in Unholy Hands on the Bible, vol. 1, p. C-4), Hort (see Pickering’s The Identity of the New Testament Text II, 3rd ed., 2003, p. 14), Burkitt (Ibid.), and others offered a number of theories to explain the creation of traditional readings like the LE and PA common to the great mass of cursive and late uncial manuscripts of the New Testament. However, J.N. Birdsall concluded, after referring to his own work, Hort’s premise, and the investigations of Lake, Lagrange, Colwell, and Streeter that “It is evident that ALL PRESUPPOSITIONS concerning the Byzantine text—or texts…, must be doubted and investigated de novo” (“The Text of the Gospels in Photius,” Journal of Theological Studies 7 [1956], p. 43).

Kurt and Barbara Aland came to the same conclusion in 1995 affirming “no adequate history has yet been written of the Byzantine text” (in The Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed., 1995, p. 142). Therefore, all these theories amount to mere speculation, not an actual documented historical event. While Dr. Carrier states “that there are many possible ways the LE could have arisen,” we don’t need hypotheticals, but actual historical documentation that thousands of biblical texts in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic were actually interpolated, and not speculation based on approximately five extant manuscripts of unknown provenance and one subjective interpretation of Eusebius comments.

Next, let us explore the validity of Dr. Carrier’s subsequent statement pertaining to documentation of changes to biblical texts:

Sheffield illogically thinks we have detailed documentation of every church’s every change to the text of their Bibles in every decade of antiquity since the dawn of Christianity. We don’t. We have zero documentation.

Zero documentation Dr. Carrier?

While I have made no such claim that we can historically document every change, we can certainly document many changes to biblical texts throughout church history. The following empirical data will establish two points: first, both minor and major changes to biblical texts, and second, the Apostolic Churches were well aware of these changes to biblical texts and responded accordingly.

  • Tertullian, in his treatise On Baptism (section 17), documents a presbyter from Asia who composed a forged writing under the name of Paul. The presbyter was convicted, and after his confession removed from his office.
  • Caius, a presbyter at Rome, identifies four individuals, Asclepiades, Theodotus, Hermophilus, and Apollonius, as altering the text of scripture (see Eusebius’ Eccl. Hist., v. 28.).
  • In the case of Marcion, Irenaeus documents in Book 1 Against Heresies (section 27) that Marcion removed major passages in Luke and ten letters from Paul.
  • Irenaeus documents in Book 1 Against Heresies (section 20) the spurious and apocryphal writings of the followers of Marcion which were forged, and the production of a story of Jesus as a child.
  • Irenaeus documents in Book 5 Against Heresies (section 30) a variant reading in John’s Apocalypse, the number “616” that was probably the result of faulty copyists and confirms the received reading of “666” as the official wording of the text.
  • Augustine documents the change of one word in Jonah from Jerome’s Vulgate was noticed by the Bishop reading from the text, and the congregation who denounced the translation as false (Letters of Augustine, Nos. 28, 71, 82; and the Letters of Jerome, No. 112, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church).
  • We have documentation from Nikon in the tenth century accusing the Armenians of casting out the Pericope Adulterae from their scriptural texts (see S.S. Patrum qui temporibus Apostolicis by J. B. Cotelerius, 1698 Antwerp ed., vol. i, p. 235), and Augustine in the 4th Century also documents the removal of the Pericope Adulterae from scriptural texts of his day (see Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. xxxxi, p.387), yet Dr. Carrier concludes the PA was also interpolated (Hitler Homer, p. 293).

Furthermore, the empirical documentation above clearly establishes how vigilant the Apostolic churches were to changes in the biblical texts, which is a testament to the Apostolic Polity; yet history is unaware of unknown scribes or church communities as Dr. Carrier has suggested (in his previous responses), interpolating the LE into thousands of Greek, Latin, and Aramaic texts.

Remember, the Churches did report copies of Mark that didn’t have the LE; and while Dr. Carrier dogmatically asserts Eusebius (Hitler Homer, p. 305) and Jerome (Ibid., p. 308) as champions for his cause, scholars like Burgon (in Unholy Hands on the Bible, vol. 1, p. C-25) and Pickering (see Pickering’s The Identity of the New Testament Text II, 3rd ed., 2003, pg. 165-166) come to the opposite conclusion reading the same scholia, as did almost all textual editors prior to Griesbach, who ruled in favor of these verses (in Unholy Hands on the Bible, vol. 1, p. C-24).

To conclude my rebuttal, I will deal with the following statement from Dr. Carrier:

I’ve also shown by abundant external evidence that the evolution of the ending of Mark went from no evidence for one to two hundred years of the LE even existing (no patristic authors are aware of it; no known manuscripts contain it), followed by a period of one to two hundred more years of the LE existing only as an unusual or rare reading.

To uphold that assertion, Dr. Carrier has to dismiss all the allusions to the LE in the works of Papias, Justin, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Vincentius (via Cyprian), the Apostolical Constitutions, and the Gospel of Nicodemus (Hitler Homer, p. 291-305). For Irenaeus and Tatian’s Diatessaron, Dr. Carrier has to assert that the extant copies have been interpolated (Ibid., pp. 293-300).

Dr. Carrier has not even given an honorable mention to the greatest anti-Christian scholar of the Ancient World, Porphyry of Tyre, who probably made fun of the LE (see Porphyry, Against the Christians, 2004 ed. by Harnack; cf. Macarius, Apocriticus III:16). I find it interesting that Porphyry of Tyre in the third century was making fun of an obscure reading not known to the Apostolic Churches.

I suggest that the great pastor from Edinburgh, Rev. Bayes, would conclude that the probability of some, but not all, of the allusions being references to the LE would be a probability of almost 1.0.

I can understand because of Dr. Carrier’s confirmation bias that when he is confronted by the overwhelming documentation of the Apostolic Churches, he uses his very real skills as an historian to dismiss it, but the empirical evidence is still there.

In order to explain how it was done, against the view that the LE was always there, you need to reject actual documentation (in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3; Tertullian of Carthage, Against Marcion 4; Eusebius of Caesarea, History of the Church; and the Anglican Divine Richard Hooker). The writings of Tertullian, Irenaeus and Eusebius document how the Apostolic Churches were set up and organized to secure and transfer the text of the New Testament down through the ages. Each Apostolic Church has independent lists of bishops that can be traced back to an apostle. So, when we examine the texts that have come down in real historic Apostolic Churches, we find 1,800 in Greek, 8,000 in Latin, 1,000 in Syriac, and all extent lectionaries, witnessing to the LE (see Pickering’s The Identity of the New Testament Text II, 3rd ed., 2003, pg. 163-164). In any normal court of law, statements from independent witnesses that agree, and haven’t colluded on their testimony, would be considered conclusive testimony; and the Apostolic Churches have thousands of witnesses.

The weight of Dr. Carrier’s arguments come down to a number of theories that cannot be historically documented as ever happening in reality, which theories are based on several extant manuscripts of unknown provenance (Hitler Homer, pg. 269-285), and his interpretation to explain away all allusions to the LE in the second and third century.

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My reply is here. Only one more exchange between us after that will conclude the debate.

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