How a forged ending to the Gospel of Mark gave us Appalachian snake-handling, false promises, and a resurrection scene the original author never wrote.
In a related topic, I’ve always found it interesting that most of the portions of the Bible used by Christian Nationalist to justify their actions are the portions the scholars agree were not part of the original text. Adding to the Bible for your own purposes, seems to be as old as the Bible itself.
Actually, those people tend to get most of their “Christianity” from the nastier bits of the “Old Testament” and Revelation. I call them Levitical Christians.
"Then there’s Mark, the oldest of the four..." I'm sure the order the gospels are presented was chosen for a specific purpose. Chronological order would surely cause more problems (like James and Paul's argument as written, not as printed).
I've always had something of a problem with the synoptic gospels. The excuse that they tell the same stories from different viewpoints doesn't seem quite right to me. What would be the chronological order? I personally go with Mark, Luke, Matthew, John, but past scholars only seem to agree that John comes last. Some think Matthew came first, but others say Mark is the oldest, Luke came from Mark, and Matthew took from Mark and Luke. Others put Mark after Luke. Shuffling the order changes the story, much like the way shuffling the deck changes the game. If Mark is the oldest, it ends abruptly, and it doesn't include snake handling and poison drinking, that matters.
Over two thousand years later, people are still debating what's true, what was intended, and who knows what they're talking about. Am I the only one thinking Jesus is doing a face-palm?
I think the majority now goes with Markan priority. According to this position, Mark came first, the roughest of the four, and then Matthew and Luke reworked it while also drawing on a hypothetical sayings source called Q. Then John, standing apart from the other three. That's our best reconstruction at the moment, and of course it can change.
I think it's interesting that scholars still debate these things while those with Divinity degrees act like it's all set in stone. I worked with two different Methodist associate pastors; one replaced the other, as the Methodist Church likes to shuffle the deck now and again. I had a great relationship with the first. We discussed and debated, not always agreeing, but always respecting each other. He, of course, had the degrees, but he recognized that a lack of a piece of paper doesn't mean a lack of knowledge. We learned from each other, which made us both better. He introduced me to his replacement and hoped that we could share the same type of relationship.
That didn't happen. Guy #2 came in with his degrees, his certainty of his superiority, and more than a bit of misogyny. Instead of acknowledging that I was neither stupid nor rebellious, he decided to "correct me and teach me properly". You can imagine how well that worked out. I think he was pissed that I knew more about his denomination than he did. Anyway, he was trying to convince me of the inerrancy of the Bible and how my refusal to accept that proved I was rebellious and in need of repentance. Dude, I'm more up to date on Biblical scholarship than you are. I'm not the one who needs instruction.
I'm excited to see what the next big discovery is. More of Codex H perhaps? An even older codex? That would be awesome. Still, even the new discoveries only point to the conflict from the beginning after Jesus left the planet. Our disciples jockeying for position before the crucifixion went back to it, with a few other players thrown in for good measure. I think if we managed to find the very first manuscripts, we would find more of the now-apostles fighting over who knew more and throwing temper tantrums because Jesus taught Mary Magdalene the most. It's so much easier to teach someone who doesn't know everything already....
Misogyny is a big turn-off for me, but it doesn't necessarily make me angry. Instead I feel a bit of pity, since it signals a social disability of sorts.
That said, I'd hesitate to debate either one of them, because to have a productive debate the parties have to agree on what counts as a reliable source of knowledge. With Guy #1 that was easy. We both treated evidence, textual history, and the manuscript record as the ground we were standing on, so we could disagree about what it meant without arguing past each other. But there's a deeper problem here, because truth-seeking has to start with doubting everything, and in his teachings doubt itself is already a sin. That's the wall you hit. The method that gets you to reliable knowledge is the exact thing his religion labels a moral failing.
With Guy #2 there's no shared footing at all. If his starting point is that the Bible is inerrant and any evidence against it is a test of faith rather than a problem to solve, then there's nothing to actually debate. He's not weighing the same things I am. You can't have a real exchange when one person treats a conclusion as the thing you reason toward and the other treats it as the thing you're forbidden to question.
And you're right that the discoveries keep pointing back to conflict from the start. Codex H (Coislinianus) would be a treat, though even the fragments we've got already show a movement arguing with itself over Paul's letters before the ink was dry. I should write about Codex H in detail sometime.
Papias said Mark was a collection of the sayings of Peter, and Matthew was a collection of the sayings of Jesus. We know the Ebionites had a gospel written in either Hebrew or Aramaic, and some propose that the Gospel of [Judas] Thomas is that gospel, because of its promotion of Jacob/James.
The addition to Mark says Mary Magdalen had demons. A big theme in Mark is Jesus casting out demons. Mary Magdalen is introduced in the Crucifixion scene, so that is where Mark would have mentioned this, if it were true.
Now, a speculation. Pontius Pilate was not a nice guy. He got fired after he conspired with Caiaphas the High Priest to kill 60 unarmed Samaritan demonstrators marching to Mt. Gerazim. So, why is he squeamish about executing Jesus? Maybe Mary Magdalen is the reason. Pilate wanted to buy a house near Jerusalem, but no one would sell for fear of being killed as a collaborator by zealots. But Mary Magdalen sold him a house and donated the proceeds to the Essene welfare program, which supported the family of Jesus after Joseph died while working on the Temple rebuild. Jesus said her sin was great, but her love was greater. That welfare program was known for producing zealots. So, Pilate may have realized that he had funded Jesus, which is a question he would have to answer if he faced Tiberius Caesar.
Interesting hypothesis. However, having demons in the Bible is usually about being sick, though. The received wisdom at the time was that demons caused all sorts of illness, not that they turned you wicked. So exorcism wasn't about good and bad but about getting cured by a healer.
Pilate hated Jerusalem and resided in Caesara by the sea and only visited Jerusalem when absolutely essential such as festival days so it's unlikely he would have wanted to buy a house there.
In the 1960s, the West Virginia legislature passed a law to criminalize snake handling. I can remember an interview with a Pentecostal preacher at the time who said many people in his congregation had been bitten, but only one had died, his mother-in-law. Take what you will from that.
You're right on point about snake handling. That's a bizarre practice whatever your view on the ending of Mark.
That said, I don't know that the data leads to quite such a firm conclusion about the original manuscript. You mention early patristic evidence - early patristic evidence shows awareness of the long ending, notably, in Irenaeus who quoted Mark 16:19 in "Against Heresies", a book from the late second century, substantially earlier than the earliest manuscripts that don't contain the long ending. Also, Origen and Clement wouldn't seem to count against it, because neither really quotes from that much of Mark, so if a passage had to be in their writings to be original, we'd be discarding the overwhelming majority of Mark, which no scholars I'm aware of are willing to do. Furthermore, Eusebius isn't very persuasive either way on this issue - he doesn't include the long ending in his canon tables, but in the letter he writes that discusses the long ending's absence from some manuscripts (which is what most people refer to when they invoke him on this issue), he ends by concluding that the questioner should consider the ending original! [1]
In summary, patristic evidence is not decisive against the long ending, and some seems truly in favor of it.
Regarding the unique vocabulary issue, there are nine other 12-verse passages throughout Mark that contain 18 or more words used only once in Mark, so that doesn't seem to eliminate the long ending either. [2]
Some of the repetitions you point out are odd, though, and I will grant that I don't have a full explanation for all of them. That said, as a side note, having "odd" phrases like the reintroduction of Mary Magdalene could be seen as a point in favor of the long ending's originality, on the grounds of lectio difficilior potior. If this were a non-original edit to "smooth things out", we would probably expect a more polished version without the strange phrases.
This is certainly not an open-shut case, and there could be responses to much of what I've said. I just want to suggest that there are reasonable lines of evidence supporting the long ending as original, even if that is not the majority position.
In a related topic, I’ve always found it interesting that most of the portions of the Bible used by Christian Nationalist to justify their actions are the portions the scholars agree were not part of the original text. Adding to the Bible for your own purposes, seems to be as old as the Bible itself.
Exactly. That’s why they stick to the KJV. Modern translations add corrections and footnotes they’d rather not confront.
Actually, those people tend to get most of their “Christianity” from the nastier bits of the “Old Testament” and Revelation. I call them Levitical Christians.
I checked via Google, and here is a pastor who died from a snakebite.
https://abcnews.com/US/snake-handling-pentecostal-pastor-dies-snake-bite/story?id=22551754
Bible literalism at its worst.
I honestly can’t fathom how these people's minds work.
"Then there’s Mark, the oldest of the four..." I'm sure the order the gospels are presented was chosen for a specific purpose. Chronological order would surely cause more problems (like James and Paul's argument as written, not as printed).
I've always had something of a problem with the synoptic gospels. The excuse that they tell the same stories from different viewpoints doesn't seem quite right to me. What would be the chronological order? I personally go with Mark, Luke, Matthew, John, but past scholars only seem to agree that John comes last. Some think Matthew came first, but others say Mark is the oldest, Luke came from Mark, and Matthew took from Mark and Luke. Others put Mark after Luke. Shuffling the order changes the story, much like the way shuffling the deck changes the game. If Mark is the oldest, it ends abruptly, and it doesn't include snake handling and poison drinking, that matters.
Over two thousand years later, people are still debating what's true, what was intended, and who knows what they're talking about. Am I the only one thinking Jesus is doing a face-palm?
I think the majority now goes with Markan priority. According to this position, Mark came first, the roughest of the four, and then Matthew and Luke reworked it while also drawing on a hypothetical sayings source called Q. Then John, standing apart from the other three. That's our best reconstruction at the moment, and of course it can change.
I think it's interesting that scholars still debate these things while those with Divinity degrees act like it's all set in stone. I worked with two different Methodist associate pastors; one replaced the other, as the Methodist Church likes to shuffle the deck now and again. I had a great relationship with the first. We discussed and debated, not always agreeing, but always respecting each other. He, of course, had the degrees, but he recognized that a lack of a piece of paper doesn't mean a lack of knowledge. We learned from each other, which made us both better. He introduced me to his replacement and hoped that we could share the same type of relationship.
That didn't happen. Guy #2 came in with his degrees, his certainty of his superiority, and more than a bit of misogyny. Instead of acknowledging that I was neither stupid nor rebellious, he decided to "correct me and teach me properly". You can imagine how well that worked out. I think he was pissed that I knew more about his denomination than he did. Anyway, he was trying to convince me of the inerrancy of the Bible and how my refusal to accept that proved I was rebellious and in need of repentance. Dude, I'm more up to date on Biblical scholarship than you are. I'm not the one who needs instruction.
I'm excited to see what the next big discovery is. More of Codex H perhaps? An even older codex? That would be awesome. Still, even the new discoveries only point to the conflict from the beginning after Jesus left the planet. Our disciples jockeying for position before the crucifixion went back to it, with a few other players thrown in for good measure. I think if we managed to find the very first manuscripts, we would find more of the now-apostles fighting over who knew more and throwing temper tantrums because Jesus taught Mary Magdalene the most. It's so much easier to teach someone who doesn't know everything already....
Misogyny is a big turn-off for me, but it doesn't necessarily make me angry. Instead I feel a bit of pity, since it signals a social disability of sorts.
That said, I'd hesitate to debate either one of them, because to have a productive debate the parties have to agree on what counts as a reliable source of knowledge. With Guy #1 that was easy. We both treated evidence, textual history, and the manuscript record as the ground we were standing on, so we could disagree about what it meant without arguing past each other. But there's a deeper problem here, because truth-seeking has to start with doubting everything, and in his teachings doubt itself is already a sin. That's the wall you hit. The method that gets you to reliable knowledge is the exact thing his religion labels a moral failing.
With Guy #2 there's no shared footing at all. If his starting point is that the Bible is inerrant and any evidence against it is a test of faith rather than a problem to solve, then there's nothing to actually debate. He's not weighing the same things I am. You can't have a real exchange when one person treats a conclusion as the thing you reason toward and the other treats it as the thing you're forbidden to question.
And you're right that the discoveries keep pointing back to conflict from the start. Codex H (Coislinianus) would be a treat, though even the fragments we've got already show a movement arguing with itself over Paul's letters before the ink was dry. I should write about Codex H in detail sometime.
Papias said Mark was a collection of the sayings of Peter, and Matthew was a collection of the sayings of Jesus. We know the Ebionites had a gospel written in either Hebrew or Aramaic, and some propose that the Gospel of [Judas] Thomas is that gospel, because of its promotion of Jacob/James.
The addition to Mark says Mary Magdalen had demons. A big theme in Mark is Jesus casting out demons. Mary Magdalen is introduced in the Crucifixion scene, so that is where Mark would have mentioned this, if it were true.
Now, a speculation. Pontius Pilate was not a nice guy. He got fired after he conspired with Caiaphas the High Priest to kill 60 unarmed Samaritan demonstrators marching to Mt. Gerazim. So, why is he squeamish about executing Jesus? Maybe Mary Magdalen is the reason. Pilate wanted to buy a house near Jerusalem, but no one would sell for fear of being killed as a collaborator by zealots. But Mary Magdalen sold him a house and donated the proceeds to the Essene welfare program, which supported the family of Jesus after Joseph died while working on the Temple rebuild. Jesus said her sin was great, but her love was greater. That welfare program was known for producing zealots. So, Pilate may have realized that he had funded Jesus, which is a question he would have to answer if he faced Tiberius Caesar.
Interesting hypothesis. However, having demons in the Bible is usually about being sick, though. The received wisdom at the time was that demons caused all sorts of illness, not that they turned you wicked. So exorcism wasn't about good and bad but about getting cured by a healer.
Pilate hated Jerusalem and resided in Caesara by the sea and only visited Jerusalem when absolutely essential such as festival days so it's unlikely he would have wanted to buy a house there.
OK, but Caesarea is closer to Jerusalem than Galilee is close to Jerusalem. He still may have bought a house from Magdalen.
In the 1960s, the West Virginia legislature passed a law to criminalize snake handling. I can remember an interview with a Pentecostal preacher at the time who said many people in his congregation had been bitten, but only one had died, his mother-in-law. Take what you will from that.
I now find the empirical evidence convincing.
Well done with the topic. It is a shame that most Christians whether on the left or right, are woefully ignorant of how the Bible was constructed.
They don’t think it was constructed- it was dictated by God. Funny how he found it necessary to dictate four versions of the same story.
You're right on point about snake handling. That's a bizarre practice whatever your view on the ending of Mark.
That said, I don't know that the data leads to quite such a firm conclusion about the original manuscript. You mention early patristic evidence - early patristic evidence shows awareness of the long ending, notably, in Irenaeus who quoted Mark 16:19 in "Against Heresies", a book from the late second century, substantially earlier than the earliest manuscripts that don't contain the long ending. Also, Origen and Clement wouldn't seem to count against it, because neither really quotes from that much of Mark, so if a passage had to be in their writings to be original, we'd be discarding the overwhelming majority of Mark, which no scholars I'm aware of are willing to do. Furthermore, Eusebius isn't very persuasive either way on this issue - he doesn't include the long ending in his canon tables, but in the letter he writes that discusses the long ending's absence from some manuscripts (which is what most people refer to when they invoke him on this issue), he ends by concluding that the questioner should consider the ending original! [1]
In summary, patristic evidence is not decisive against the long ending, and some seems truly in favor of it.
Regarding the unique vocabulary issue, there are nine other 12-verse passages throughout Mark that contain 18 or more words used only once in Mark, so that doesn't seem to eliminate the long ending either. [2]
Some of the repetitions you point out are odd, though, and I will grant that I don't have a full explanation for all of them. That said, as a side note, having "odd" phrases like the reintroduction of Mary Magdalene could be seen as a point in favor of the long ending's originality, on the grounds of lectio difficilior potior. If this were a non-original edit to "smooth things out", we would probably expect a more polished version without the strange phrases.
This is certainly not an open-shut case, and there could be responses to much of what I've said. I just want to suggest that there are reasonable lines of evidence supporting the long ending as original, even if that is not the majority position.
Sources:
1. https://textandcanon.org/a-case-for-the-longer-ending-of-mark/
2. https://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2022/04/the-vocabulary-of-mark-169-20.html?m=1
Didn’t scribes make up the whole thing to begin with?