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Note: You can listen to the audio version of this blog on our podcast, The Word at Westminster.

We have just journeyed through the Gospel of Mark line by line, verse by verse. We ended with the resurrection story in chapter 16 on Easter morning. Very fitting.

But chapter 16 only goes to verse 8. It seems to end very abruptly. The women who are told about the resurrection are trembling and bewildered. They flee from the tomb and say nothing to anyone because they are afraid.

Then it ends. That’s it.

The statement that they said nothing to anyone must surely have been their first response, but not their final response. After all, if they kept it to themselves we would never have Mark’s Gospel. Well, that’s not totally true. The risen Jesus appeared to a whole bunch of other people, hundreds in fact (1 Corinthians 15:6), but it makes you scratch your head about Mark’s ending—not just because of the women, but because of something else.

Some bibles have verses 9 to 20. It records Jesus appearing to certain people and giving another kind of commission: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”  He mentions people doing signs, including driving out demons (which makes sense—we’ve seen that before), speaking in tongues (Paul talks about that one in 1 Corinthians 14), and also picking up snakes, drinking poison, and not being harmed. That’s a first!

Today, most modern Bibles don’t include those additional verses (9-20) with the original text. Those verses are set apart, as if there is something different about them. Some Bibles have them in the footnotes. Others have brackets around them. My NIV Study Bibles explains why with these words: “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9-20.” My ESV Study Bible says something similar: “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include 16:9-20.”

What’s to be made from all of this?

Here are a few responses people have offered.

Some people think that Mark’s gospel had some other ending, but the last page was simply lost. That would account for the abrupt ending and the women not saying anything. But we can’t prove it.

Some other people think that the original ending was what we have in our Bibles—i.e. ending at verse 8—but that some later scribe added in additional content to make up for what they thought was an unsatisfying ending. This is what we find footnoted and listed as verses 9-20. I think a good case can be made for that.

But let me make a few more important points related to this.

The first is that the early church fathers are very instructive. They are the group of Christians who were writing, preaching, teaching and leading the church in the earliest generations right after the apostles. They were prolific writers and teachers and we have a lot of what they wrote. Most of them know Mark’s Gospel to end at verse 8, the “shorter ending.”

The second point is related to the original language used. The oldest copies of Mark (and the other Gospels for that matter) are in Greek. The writer, Mark, has a certain style. But the style changes at verse 9 suggesting that it is not original.

The third point is that we can be very thankful for the transparency of how our modern Bibles are produced. Our English translations are based on the majority of ancient reliable manuscripts. We have thousands of them. In contrast, no original manuscripts exist from Shakespeare, and he’s much more recent. But that’s a story for another day. The point is that there has been near-miraculous preservation of ancient biblical passages. It’s literally unparalleled when it comes to other ancient documents. And there is massive agreement on everything major. Most small discrepancies are obvious copying errors and that sort of thing. Not all, but most. But not a single one concerns a major doctrine. What unanimity!

We can be thankful not only for this great manuscript tradition, but also for transparency: whenever a significant alterative reading or ending is possible, they tell you about it. We can look in the footnotes ourselves and find out. Another example of this is the woman caught in adultery from John 8. That’s where we get the famous line: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” It’s a powerful story, but it’s most likely not from the original text. My personal sense is that it’s authentic to Jesus, but simply a part of another independent tradition which was later inserted into the text.

Either way, it’s not authoritative or canonical. It can be helpful for teaching, but similar ideas can be found elsewhere like in the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus speaks about dealing with your own sin before approaching others. In Matthew 7:5 he says: “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.”

The point is that this our manuscript tradition is rich and well-preserved, and that the transparency we have in modern biblical studies is wonderful.

The fourth and final point is this. I think the abrupt nature of the ending is on purpose. All through the Gospel we have been witnesses to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. He has been healing, forgiving, casting out demons, calming storms, confronting hypocrisy, the list goes on. Then he gives his life for his people so that they can be reconciled to God. He came, he said, as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

He also commissions us to continue his work. “Follow me!” he says. And this is a major theme in the Gospel. Discipleship. “Follow me.” Therefore, after the resurrection, the attention shifts more directly to you and me. What will we do with the knowledge of the resurrection of Christ? Will we stay quiet about it like some others? Or will we continue to follow Jesus, preach the gospel, share his good news, live it out in the world as salt and light in the power of the Holy Spirit, to continue his kingdom work?

I think the answer is obvious. Yes.

We end with his initial proclamation in Mark 1:14-15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the good news.”